TURKISH ENVOY TO RETURN TO WASHINGTON
By Ivan Watson and Yesim Comert
CNN International
April 2 2010
Istanbul, Turkey (CNN) — Turkey’s prime minister announced Friday
he will send his country’s ambassador back to Washington next week.
The announcement comes nearly a month after Ankara recalled its
diplomat to protest the passage of a non-binding resolution in the
House Foreign Relations Committee, which calls the 1915 massacre of
hundreds of thousands of ethnic Armenians in Ottoman Turkey "genocide."
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Ambassador Namik Tan would
return to Washington, ahead of his own trip to attend a nuclear
non-proliferation summit in the United States in mid-April.
During an appearance before Turkish television cameras on Friday,
Erdogan was asked whether the diplomatic crisis between the two NATO
allies was now over.
"Our foreign minister and the U.S. foreign minister talked earlier.
There are certain positive developments," Erdogan responded, referring
to last Sunday’s phone conversation between U.S. Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton and Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.
"I wish that these positive developments continue in April."
Video: Genocide vote upsets Turkey RELATED TOPICS Turkey Genocide
Sweden U.S. Government Last month, the Turkish government also
recalled its ambassador from Sweden for several weeks after the
Swedish parliament passed its own law recognizing the Armenian
massacres as genocide.
One columnist in the Turkish press joked that at this rate, Turks
could form a new soccer team made up of ambassadors recalled from
foreign capitals.
Turkish officials have defended the decision.
"We are opposed to the legislation of history," said Burak Ozugergin,
the spokesman for Turkey’s foreign ministry, in a telephone interview
with CNN on Friday. "This should be done by historians, by qualified
people."
Turkey officially denies a genocide took place in the last days of
the crumbling Ottoman Empire. Ankara argues instead that Muslim Turks
and Christian Armenians massacred each other on the killing fields
of World War I.
But every year on April 24, Armenians around the world observe a
remembrance day in honor of the "genocide". Historians have extensively
documented the Ottoman military’s forced death march of hundreds of
thousands of ethnic Armenians into the Syrian desert in 1915. The
massacres decimated the Armenian population in what is modern-day
eastern Turkey.
For years, the government in Yerevan and influential Armenian diaspora
groups have mounted a campaign to persuade other countries to formally
label the events of 1915 "genocide."
The Turkish government will be listening closely on April 24, to
see whether President Barack Obama will use the word "genocide"
in an annual speech commemorating the 1915 massacres.
Last month, Prime Minister Erdogan triggered a firestorm of domestic
criticism from both pro- and anti-government commentators, however,
when he suggested during an interview with the BBC’s Turkish service
that his government might deport citizens of neighboring Armenia
illegally working in Turkey.
"Tomorrow, I may tell these 100,000 [Armenians] to go back to their
country, if it becomes necessary," Erdogan was reported to have said.
He has since accused the foreign media of misrepresenting his remarks.
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