TURKEY THREATENS TO KICK OUT ARMENIAN MIGRANTS
EUobserver.com
29710
March 18 2010
Turkish premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that some 100,000
Armenians working illegally in his country could be expelled "if
necessary," as historic tensions over mass killings in World War I
bubble up on the EU’s fringe.
Ottoman Turks killed hundreds of thousands of Armenians in 1915.
Ankara has staunchly refused to accept that the events amount to
actions "genocide." But recent parliamentary resolutions in the US
and Sweden have urged the Turkish government to accept the terminology.
Turkey’s reconciliation with Armenia is on hold (Photo: zz77)
Ankara retaliated by recalling its ambassador from Washington and by
strongly criticising Stockholm.
But in an interview with the BBC on Wednesday, Mr Erdogan went a
step further, saying that the resolutions "harm the Armenian people
as well …and things become deadlocked."
He threatened to deport 100,000 Armenian migrants who have no residence
or working permits in Turkey.
Mr Erdogan said that out of the 170,000 Armenians living in the
country just "70,000 are Turkish citizens.".
"We are turning a blind eye to the remaining 100,000 …Tomorrow,
I may tell these 100,000 to go back to their country, if it becomes
necessary," he said.
His Armenian counterpart, Tigran Sarkisian, reacted by saying that such
comments "do not help to improve relations between our two states."
Ankara was last year praised by the EU for its "historic" decision
to unfreeze diplomatic relations with Yerevan, under an agreement
signed in October 2009.
Normalising relations with its neighbours is an important step in
Turkey’s EU accession bid. The union is also keen for Turkish diplomacy
to help pacify the South Caucasus region, a strategic energy corridor.
The Turkish-Armenian agreement is still pending ratification in both
parliaments and things seem to have been put on hold for now, however.
During his first visit to Turkey on Monday, enlargement commissioner
Stefan Fuele voiced support for the reconciliation efforts and warned
against politicising historic events.
"As someone who is coming from former Czechoslovakia, from the
Czech Republic, I know that politicising your history is making
reconciliation difficult," he was quoted as saying by the AFP.
Turkey applied for EU membership as early as 1987, but has begun
accession talks only in 2005. So far it opened negotiations in
12 out of the 35 policy chapters it has to conclude with Brussels
before joining.
Unlike other candidate countries, Turkey’s negotiations are "open
ended," meaning that its membership can still be vetoed by any one
EU country at the end of the process.
From: Baghdasarian