Agence France Presse
March 18 2010

Turkish PM faces the heat over Armenian deportation threat

Ankara, March 18 2010

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan came under fire Thursday
for his threat to deport thousands of illegal Armenian workers, with
critics saying it damages the country’s prestige and overshadows a
limping peace process with Armenia.

In comments late Tuesday, Erdogan said such action could be taken if
foreign parliaments continue to pass votes branding the massacres of
Armenians by Ottoman Turks as genocide.

Resolutions voted recently in the United States and Sweden to that
affect "adversely affect our sincere attitude" towards illegal
Armenians, Erdogan told the BBC Turkish service.

"There are 170,000 Armenians in my country. Of these, 70,000 are
citizens, but we are tolerating the remaining 100,000… If necessary,
I may have to tell them to go back to their country… I am not
obliged to keep them here," he charged.

Erdogan’s outburst is an attempt to "blackmail" foreign countries into
rejecting Armenian allegations of a genocide, using illegal Armenians
in Turkey as pawns, commentator Can Dundar wrote in the Milliyet
daily.

"Treating innocent Armenian workers as bargaining chips as if they
were hostages is grave enough to add a new example to the
centuries-old accusations against Turkey," he added.

Armenians charge that up to 1.5 million of their kin perished in a
systematic extermination campaign during 1915-1918 as the Ottoman
Empire fell apart.

Turkey categorically rejects the genocide label, arguing that up to
500,000 Armenians were killed in civil strife and forcible
deportations for rising up against Ottoman rule and siding with
invading Russian forces.

"These kinds of political statements do not help to improve relations
between our two states…. When the Turkish prime minister allows
himself to make such statements it immediately for us brings up
memories of the events of 1915," Armenian Prime Minister Tigran
Sarkisian said Wednesday.

In a bid to overcome decades of enmity, Turkey and Armenia in October
signed a historic deal to establish diplomatic ties and open their
shared border.

But the process has already hit the rocks, with both countries
accusing each other of trying to rewrite the accord and withholding
their parliaments from ratifying the deal.

Erdogan’s threat — which comes in stark contrast to Ankara’s vow to
pursue reconciliation efforts with Armenia — is likely to further
strain the process, Hadi Uluengin wrote in the Hurriyet daily.

"Neither Armenia nor its influential diaspora will leave such a
Turkish threat unaswered… Erdogan’s threat has harmed our diplomatic
prestige," he said.

To limit the fallout, Suat Kiniklioglu, the foreign affairs spokesman
for the ruling party, played down Erdoganâ?¬?¢s words, saying the prime
minister was merely underlining the tolerance shown to illegal
Armenian workers.

Erdogan was "not talking about something that would happen today or
tomorrow," he said in a written statement Wednesday.

Most analysts do not believe Turkey will ever follow through with the
threat as it would be too costly.

"It would be absolutely unthinkable to see dozens, hundreds or
thousands of Armenians gathered by police and expelled back to
Armenia. That would be a deadly blow to the image of Turkey abroad,"
said Fabio Salomoni, an Italian sociologist from Istanbul’s Koc
University who has researched Armenian immigrants in Turkey.

Turkish authorities have long been aware of the presence of the
illegal Armenians, most of them women working as nannies or cleaning
ladies and mainly in Istanbul.

Their exact numbers are unknown, but analysts say Turkish authorities
have a tendency to inflate the figures — starting with 40,000 and
going up to 100,000 — to put pressure on Armenia.

Salomoni put their numbers at between 10,000 to 20,000 while Alin
Ozinian, the author of recent research on the subject for the
Armenia-based Eurasia Partnership Foundation, says there are between
13,000 and 15,000 illegal Armenians in Turkey.