ANSAmed , Italy
March 12, 2010 Friday 10:16 AM CET

TURKEY: ARMENIAN MASSACRES; DIPLOMATIC CRISIS WITH SWEDEN;
STOCKHOLM CONSIDERS IT ‘GENOCIDE’;ANKARA SUMMONS AMBASSADOR

ANKARA

(ANSAmed) The Swedish Ambassador in Ankara, Christer Asp, has been
summoned this morning to the Turkish Foreign Ministry following a
diplomatic crisis which yesterday exploded between Ankara and
Stockholm after the Swedish Parliament approved a motion in which the
Armenian massacres are recognised as "genocide."

The news was reported by private television broadcaster NTV, quoting
sources at the Foreign Ministry. Yesterday Ankara decided to call its
Ambassador to Sweden to return to Turkey for consultations.

Exactly a week after the vote by the Foreign Affairs Committee of the
US Congress which recognised the massacres of the Armenians at the
time of the Ottoman Empire as "genocide", the same vote of
condemnation came from the Swedish Parliament yesterday, provoking an
immediate and aggravated reaction from Ankara, which has cancelled the
planned visit by Premier Tayyip Erdogan for the intergovernmental
summit between the two countries scheduled for March 17.

A few minutes after the Anadolu agency released the news of the
Swedish MPs’ decision (131 votes in favour and 130 against, decisive
were four MPs from the majority who ignored indications from the
Government and voted with the left-wing opposition), a statement
attributed to Premier Erdogan appeared on the Turkish Cabinet Office
website which read: "We strongly condemn this decision which has been
reached for political reasons and which does not correspond with the
close friendship that links our two countries." In addition,
Ambassador Zergun Koruturk, who took up office in Sweden on November 1
last year, was immediately recalled.

Ankara has always denied that the Armenian massacres were premeditated
genocide and maintains that between 300,000 and 500,000 Armenians (and
not the one and a half million as maintained by Yerevan) were killed
in a civil war which also caused the loss of Turkish lives. On
Thursday, immediately after the approval of the resolution by the US
Congress committee, Ankara recalled its Ambassador, Namik Tan, who
took up office on February 25. Now Ankara, as Erdogan has recently
said, is waiting to know what the administration in Washington intends
to do, letting it be understood that the Turkish diplomat will only
return to Washington when Turkey has guarantees that the resolution
will not be brought to a vote of the Congress plenary assembly.

But now the problem has also arisen with Sweden, despite Foreign
Minister Carl Bildt hastening to describe "the politicisation of
history" as an error and to say the line of the government, which is
in favour of the Turkey’s entrance into the EU, "remains unchanged."