Turkey recalls envoy to Sweden over genocide vote

Source: PressTV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=120642§ionid=351020204


Turkey has recalled its ambassador to Stockholm after the Swedish parliament branded the killing of Armenians by Ottoman forces during World War I as "genocide."

"We strongly condemn this resolution, which is made for political calculations. It does not correspond to the close friendship of our two nations. We are recalling our ambassador for consultations," Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in a statement released on Thursday. He also cancelled a Stockholm visit scheduled for next week.

Turkish ambassador to Sweden, Zergun Koruturk, told Swedish television program Aktuellt that the vote would have "drastic effects" on Ankara-Stockholm relations.

"I am very disappointed. Unfortunately, parliamentarians were thinking that they were rather historians than parliamentarians. It's very, very unfortunate," Koruturk said.

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said the vote was a "mistake" but that it did not change the position of his government, which supports Turkey's bid for membership of the European Union.

He noted that the vote could complicate efforts between Turkey and Armenia to normalize relations after a century of hostility. Turkey and Armenia signed two protocols last October to normalize relations. Parliaments of the two countries have not passed them yet.

Sweden's parliament narrowly approved the resolution Thursday that described the 1915 killing of Armenians in Turkey as genocide. The resolution was passed by an extremely narrow margin, with 131 parliamentarians voting in favor and 130 against in the 349-seat assembly. Another 88 lawmakers were absent during the vote.

The Swedish vote comes less than a week after the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US House of Representatives also approved a similar resolution. The non-binding resolution was approved by a vote of 23 to 22.

Turkey fiercely rejects Armenian claims that more than a million of its people were deliberately killed as some sort of a social-cleansing campaign.

Ankara points to historical evidence, ignored by Armenian lobbyists and their Western supporters, that puts the figure of Armenian victims at 300,000 and also makes clear that nearly as many Ottoman Turks were killed as well in the civil unrest that led to the downfall of the Ottoman Empire.

US observers have also pointed to the close association of the influential Armenian lobby in the US with the powerful Israeli lobby in pushing through the symbolic resolution as a general publicity campaign against the Muslim state of Turkey, which has become one of the leading critics of violent Israeli policies against the Palestinians.