TURKEY RECALLS AMBASSADOR TO CANADA IN GENOCIDE SPAT: DIPLOMAT
Agence France Presse
April 22 2009
France
ANKARA (AFP) — Turkey has recalled its envoy to Canada after Ottawa
reaffirmed its position that Armenians were victims of a genocide
under the Ottoman Empire, officials said Wednesday.
"Our ambassador to Canada has been called to Ankara for comprehensive
evaluations and consultations," foreign ministry spokesman Burak
Ozugergin told AFP, without saying when the envoy, Rafet Akgunay,
would return.
Ankara undertook the move after Canadian Prime Minister Stephen
Harper issued a message referring to the killings as "genocide",
and ministers attended commemorations, ahead of April 24, the date
on which Armenians remember the massacres, said a government official
who declined to be named.
"A country hundreds of kilometres away is doing that, threatening to
undermine the (dialogue) process that we have launched with Armenia,"
the Turkish official said.
Reconciliation talks between Turkey and Armenia gathered steam in
September when President Abdullah Gul paid a landmark visit to Yerevan,
the first by a Turkish leader, to watch a football match.
The genocide dispute is on the agenda of the talks, along with other
issues such as re-opening the border between the two neighbours and
establishing diplomatic relations.
Ankara argues that third countries will only harm the reconciliation
efforts by taking a side on the genocide dispute.
The incident is the latest diplomatic spat between Ankara and Ottawa
over the issue since the early 2000s when the Canadian Senate and
House of Commons recognised the Armenian killings as genocide.
Much to Turkey’s ire, a number of countries have endorsed Armenian
claims that up to 1.5 million of their kin were killed in what was
a genocide from 1915 to 1917 as the Ottoman Empire was falling apart.
Turkey rejects the genocide label and says 300,000-500,000 Armenians
and at least as many Turks died in civil strife when Armenians took
up arms in eastern Anatolia and sided with invading Russian troops.