050427 - Turkey insists genocide campaign obstructs normalizing ties with Armenia.htm

Turkey. ANKARA - Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday an Armenian campaign to have the massacre of Armenians by Ottoman Turks recognized internationally as genocide is an obstacle to establishing formal relations between the two neighbors.
>
> "Before we make a political decision (on normalizing ties), there is a very important issue that should be resolved and this is the problems stemming from history," Erdogan told reporters.
>
> He was commenting on a letter from Armenian President Robert Kocharian, who accepted in principle a Turkish proposal to create a joint committee to study the genocide allegations but that Ankara should first normalize relations with Yerevan without pre-conditions.
>
> Turkey demands that Armenia abandon its campaign for the recognition of the World War I massacres as genocide before formal diplomatic relations can be established between the two countries.
>
> In 1993, Turkey also shut its border with Armenia in a show of solidarity with its close ally Azerbaijan, which was at war with Armenia, dealing a heavy economic blow on the impoverished nation.
>
> Erdogan stressed Turkey had opened its archives to all historians to study whether the massacres constituted a genocide, and urged Yerevan to follow suit.
>
> "Why don't they open their archives? It is very curious," he said.
>
> "Let historians and experts work in the archives. If the outcome of these studies require us to question our history, we will do that," he said.
>
> Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their kinsmen perished in deportations and orchestrated killings between 1915 and 1917.
>
> Ankara argues that 300,000 Armenians and at least as many Turks died in what was civil strife during World War I when the Armenians took up arms for independence in eastern Anatolia and sided with Russian troops invading the crumbling Ottoman Empire.
>
> Armenians across the world Sunday marked the 90th anniversary of the beginning of the massacres, which have already been recognized as genocide by a number of countries.
> Ankara fears that the genocide allegations could fuel anti-Turkish sentiment in international public opinion at a time when it is vying for membership in the European Union.
>
> Some EU politicans are also pressing Turkey to address the genocide claims in what Ankara sees a politically-motivated campaign to impede its EU bid.
>

V.V