TURKEY’S OPPOSITION PARTY PROPOSES WITHDRAWING OF NORMALIZATION PROTOCOLS WITH ARMENIA

People’s Daily Online
March 23 2010
China

Turkey’s leading opposition party on Monday brought forward a motion
that requests a parliamentary session on withdrawing the country’s
normalization protocols with Armenia, the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet
Daily News reported.

"There is no advantage but instead serious disadvantages of keeping
the protocols in the parliament," the newspaper cited the motion,
signed by key members of the main opposition Republican People’s Party,
as saying.

The motion came after a U.S. congressional panel and the Swedish
parliament passed resolutions that recognize the killings of Armenians
at Ottoman hands during the World War I as genocide this month.

Holding the normalization protocols at the parliament created
pressure on Turkey, while the current situation would inevitably have
destructive consequences on relations between Turkey and European
Union countries, says the motion.

Turkey and Armenia signed protocols to normalize relations last October
but they needed to be ratified by the two countries’ parliaments
before taking effect. The U.S. government has urged Turkey to approve
the protocols as soon as possible.

Turkey and Armenia have been bogged down in a row over the deaths of
Armenians under Ottoman rule during the World War I. Armenians claim
that more than 1.5 million Armenians were killed in a systematic
genocide then, but the Turkish government insists the Armenians were
victims of widespread chaos and governmental breakdown as the Ottoman
empire collapsed before modern Turkey was created in 1923.