TURKEY CALM OVER ARMENIAN ‘GENOCIDE’ MOVE AT KNESSET
Today’s Zaman
March 28 2008
Turkey
The Knesset, Israel’s parliament, decided on Wednesday that a
parliamentary committee will hold an unprecedented hearing on whether
to recognize the World War I era killings of Anatolian Armenians as
genocide, the Israeli media reported.
The decision to hold the hearing was proposed by left-wing Meretz
Chairman Haim Oron and the government did not oppose the motion,
the Israeli daily Haaretz said. The Knesset House Committee will
decide whether the issue will be handed over to the Knesset Education
Committee or to the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. The Israeli
government has full support for Ankara’s stance on the controversial
1915 incidents, Turkish diplomatic sources, speaking on customary
condition of anonymity, told Today’s Zaman on Thursday, expressing
confidence that the Armenian allegations would not be officially
recognized by Israel. Armenians claim that up to 1.5 million of their
kin were slaughtered in orchestrated killings during the last years
of the Ottoman Empire. Turkey categorically rejects the claims,
saying that 300,000 Armenians along with at least as many Turks
died in civil strife that emerged when the Armenians took up arms
for independence in eastern Anatolia. "One should not ignore the
fact that a small number of members of the Knesset, only 11 members,
were present when on Wednesday, they agreed to take the issue to a
committee. There is no change in the Israeli government’s stance on
this issue," the same sources said.