Category: Sweden

Sweden, Turkey jointly denounce genocide vote

(Reuters) – The foreign ministers of Turkey and Sweden condemned on Saturday a vote in the Swedish parliament that defined the early 20th-century killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks as genocide.

Luke Baker

SAARISELKA, Finland Sat Mar 13, 2010

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt (C) and his Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu (R) talk to the media after their meeting in Saariselka Inari, in the Finnish Lapland March 12, 2010. Credit: Reuters/Lehtikuva/Jussi Nukari

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, who is holding informal talks with foreign ministers including Turkey’s Ahmet Davutoglu in northern Finland, said he was upset by the vote on Thursday and concerned it could affect Turkish-Armenian reconciliation.

“It’s regrettable because I think the politicization of history serves no useful purpose,” he told reporters.

“We are interested in the business of reconciliation, and decisions like that tend to raise tensions rather than lower tensions,” he said.

Sweden’s parliament, by a vote of 131-130, backed a resolution that branded the killing of up to 1.5 million Christian Armenians by Ottoman Turks as a genocide, a term that Turkey resolutely rejects.

Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt phoned his Turkish counterpart, Tayyip Erdogan, on Saturday and said he disagreed with the resolution, according to a statement on the Turkish prime minister’s official website.

The vote followed a decision by a committee of the U.S. House of Representatives the week before approving a nonbinding measure condemning the 1915 killings.

In both cases Turkey responded angrily, withdrawing its ambassadors to Washington and Stockholm.

The vote in the Swedish parliament was particularly galling for Turkey as Sweden is one of Ankara’s strongest backers on issues such as Turkey’s desire to join the European Union.

Reinfeldt told Erdogan Sweden would continue to back Turkey’s EU bid and that the vote was driven by domestic politics and would not affect bilateral relations, the statement said. Erdogan canceled a planned visit to Sweden this month, and the government recalled its ambassador from Stockholm.

Davutoglu said Turkey would not stand by quietly if other nations took similar steps to describe the 1915 killings as a genocide and said it was pointless for countries to think they could put pressure on Turkey.

“We will not be silent and we will not just show the usual attitudes. For each case we will have a different (set of) measures,” he said.

“What is the purpose of this? If the purpose is to make pressure, nobody can make pressure on Turkey. if the purpose is to get local domestic concerns raised, Turkish historical events should not be misused for these narrow issues.”

Davutoglu, the architect of Turkey’s foreign policy of re-engaging with its neighbors, including Armenia, said it was wrong for parliaments to think they could define history purely via a vote.

He also said he was concerned about the impact the vote could have on efforts by Armenia and Turkey to reconcile their history and find a political common ground at a time when they are making progress toward normalizing relations.

(Editing by Matthew Jones)

March 14, 2010
Sweden’s FM Denounces Parliament Vote on Armenian Genocide

Carl Bildt tells reporters vote was ‘regrettable’ and ‘serves no useful purpose’

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt (Photo: AP)

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt has denounced a parliamentary resolution that recognizes the killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks as genocide.

Bildt held talks with his Turkish counterpart late Friday on the sidelines of a meeting of European foreign ministers in Finland. He told reporters on Saturday that the vote in Sweden’s parliament was “regrettable” and “serves no useful purpose.”

Swedish lawmakers by a narrow margin Thursday passed the resolution recognizing the “genocide of Armenians.” Days earlier, there was a similar vote by a U.S. congressional committee.

Turkey condemned both measures and recalled its ambassadors from the United States and Sweden.

Armenians say Ottoman Turks slaughtered as many as 1.5 million people from 1915 until 1923.

Turkey recognizes that Armenians were killed, but says the death toll is greatly exaggerated. It says the Armenians died in a civil war that accompanied the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Saturday that parliaments should not try to define history.

www1.voanews.com, 13 March 2010

March 14, 2010
Armenia Thanks Sweden For “Genocide” Recognition

Armenia — President Serzh Sarkisian greets Goran Lennmarker (L), chairman of the Swedish parliament committee on foreign affairs, in Yerevan, 12 March 2010.

12.03.2010

Ruben Meloyan

Armenia’s leaders thanked Sweden’s parliament on Friday for adopting a resolution that recognizes the World War One-era mass killings and deportations of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as genocide.

President Serzh Sarkisian hailed the development at a meeting with Goran Lennmarker, the visiting chairman of the Swedish parliament’s foreign affairs committee. He said “recognition of and condemnation of crimes against humanity is the best way to avert such crimes.”

Speaking to RFE/RL earlier in the day, Lennmarker endorsed the resolution which was opposed by the Swedish parliament but passed by a 131-130 vote. He said he would have voted for the measure had he not been absent from Stockholm during Thursday’s vote.

Lennmarker, who is better known in Armenia as the Nagorno-Karabakh rapporteur of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, visited on Thursday the Yerevan memorial to up to 1.5 million Armenians killed in what many historians consider a genocide.

Parliament speaker Hovik Abrahamian also welcomed the resolution strongly condemned by Ankara. “I think that with its historic decision Sweden’s parliament … will also contribute to peace and stability in the South Caucasus,” Abrahamian said in a letter to his Swedish counterpart, Per Westerberg.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned, meanwhile, that the Swedish vote “can hurt relations between Turkey and Armenia.” He appeared to refer to the fence-mending agreements signed by the two estranged nations last fall.

The Turks were already fuming over a similar resolution that was approved last week by a key committee of the U.S. House of Representatives. Reuters news agency reported that Turkish parliamentary speaker Mehmet Ali Sahin said on Friday Western countries whose assemblies have passed such resolutions should “look in the mirror, if they want to find criminals.” He mentioned no specific country.

“Our ‘friend’ Sweden has stabbed us in the back with one vote!” read a front-page headline in “Sabah,” a leading Turkish daily.

Fatih Altayli, editor-in-chief of “Haberturk” daily cited by Reuters, was more sarcastic: “Soon, there will be no Turkish ambassadors left abroad and no foreign country our officials can visit.”

https://www.azatutyun.am/a/1982309.html

March 12, 2010
Turkey Recalls Envoy After Sweden Recognizes Armenian ‘Genocide’

Turkish Ambassador to Sweden Zergun Koruturk said Swedish lawmakers ”acted thinking that they were historians rather than parliamentarians, and it’s very, very unfortunate.”

March 12, 2010

(RFE/RL) — Turkey has reacted angrily to a decision by Sweden’s parliament to recognize as genocide the World War I-era mass killings of Armenians by Turkish forces.

The parliament narrowly approved the resolution on March 11 despite opposition from the government in Stockholm.

Ankara immediately recalled its ambassador to Sweden over what it condemned as a resolution made for “political calculations.” And it said its Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was canceling a visit to the Scandinavian country planned for next week.

Sweden’s move comes just a week after Ankara recalled its ambassador from Washington following a U.S. congressional panel’s decision to approve a similar “genocide” resolution.

“I’m very disappointed,” said Turkey’s ambassador to Sweden, Zergun Koruturk. “Unfortunately the parliamentarians — I think they acted thinking that they were historians rather than parliamentarians, and it’s very, very unfortunate. This is going to have drastic effects on our bilateral relations and I don’t think it will be compensated in a short time.”

Genocide Issue

Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their kin were killed by their Ottoman Turk rulers in 1915 in a planned campaign of extermination.

Turkey accepts that many Armenians were killed, but it rejects the term “genocide,” saying the death toll has been inflated and that many Turks were also killed during a period of civil war and unrest.

Sweden now joins a growing list of countries recognizing the massacres as genocide, alongside Russia, France, and Switzerland among others.

But the March 12 vote was razor-thin. It passed by a one-vote margin thanks to several lawmakers from the ruling center-right coalition who broke ranks to back the measure.

Conservative legislator Gustav Blix and Hans Linde of the Swedish Left Party argued each side of the debate, with Blix saying: “This is not something that should be decided by parliament. It is a question for historians and not for politicians to decide on.”

Linde responded that “If the victims are not acknowledged and get their sufferings proved true, this trauma may go on for generations.”

Complicating Normalization?

Some worry that the vote could complicate not just bilateral relations between Turkey and Sweden — which has been a firm backer of Ankara’s long-standing bid to join the European Union.

Sweden’s foreign minister, Carl Bildt, said it would have a knock-on effect on the halting process now under way to normalize ties between Turkey and Armenia.

“I’m very concerned, I am worried about the consequences,” Bildt said. “I got a report from Turkey that the opposition now wants the normalization of the contacts between Armenia and Turkey to stop. I think this politicizing of history risks making reconciliation more difficult.”

Ankara has also made similar warnings. In the latest, an official in Turkey’s ruling party said before Sweden’s vote that Ankara was extremely unlikely at this point to ratify its fence-mending protocols with Armenia.

Suat Kiniklioglu, deputy chairman of the Justice and Development Party, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that Turkish ratification had been made “more difficult” by the U.S. resolution.

But Swedish lawmaker Goran Lennmarker, told RFE/RL that he believed the reconciliation process would not be jeopardized, “irrespective of what happened” in Sweden or the United States.

Lennmarker is chairman of the Swedish parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee and the special representative of the OSCE’s Parliamentary Assembly for Nagorno-Karabakh, a territory disputed by Armenia and Azerbaijan and site of a war in the 1990s.

“There should be ratification in the [parliament] of Turkey of the agreement as soon as possible, they don’t’ have to wait for anything else, not least a solution on Nagorno-Karabakh,” Lennmarker said.

RFE/RL’s Armenian Service contributed to this report. With agency reports

https://www.rferl.org/a/Turkey_Recalls_Envoy_After_Sweden_Recognizes_Armenian_Genocide/1981705.html

March 12, 2010
Turkey’s FM sure of eventual EU membership despite critics

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt (L) arrives with his Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu

STOCKHOLM — Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Saturday hit out at opponents of his country’s EU aspirations, such as France and Germany, and said Turkey’s future within the European Union was assured.

“We have full confidence that our French, British and other colleagues will keep their commitment… There is no need for convincing, it is already sure that Turkey and the European Union will integrate in the future,” Davutoglu told reporters after talks with his EU counterparts in Stockholm.

Turkey, which has been knocking on Europe’s door for decades, began formal EU accession talks in 2005.

Today they are stalled by French, German and Austrian opposition as well as Ankara’s refusal to trade openly with EU member Cyprus.

EU nation Cyprus is also opposed to membership for Turkey, which is the only nation to recognise the Turkish-Cypriot statelet in the north of the island of Cyprus.

“The negative voices that we keep hearing from some countries in the EU just spread doubt among our citizens and impede our efforts to continue reforms,” Davutoglu wrote in an op-ed piece published in Sweden’s paper of reference Dagens Nyheter on Saturday.

Davutoglu said Turkey had carried out reforms that were “unthinkable just a few years ago,” citing greater freedom of religion and expression, the abolishment of the death penalty and radio broadcasts in Kurdish.

He said critics of Ankara’s EU bid were harming the country’s “silent revolution.”

“Like us, Sweden realises that Europe can never be a strong and united entity as long as Turkey remains outside the EU,” he said.

“The support from countries like Sweden, with their objective and encouraging attitude, is very important in the process,” the Turkish minister added.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner reiterated his country’s opposition to Turkish membership.

Asked about Swedish support for Ankara he replied “others (in the EU) are opposed”.

“They (the Turks) are not first on the list. We have all the Western Balkans to let in (to the EU) and that is necessary,” he added.

There was also a call on Turkey to open its ports to Cypriot ships, a main hurdle to its EU aspirations.

France and Germany have suggested a “privileged partnership” for Turkey rather than full EU membership.

Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved.

Source: www.google.com, 6 September 2009

September 7, 2009
France lays down the law on Turkey’s EU progress

HONOR MAHONY

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS – France has warned Sweden to respect its views on Turkey’s EU membership negotiations during its EU presidency, saying it will tolerate the two sides moving closer only in certain areas.

“Everybody knows that as regards enlargement we don’t have exactly the same position as regards Turkey,” said French president Nicolas Sarkozy following a meeting with his Swedish counterpart Fredrik Reinfeldt on Friday (3 July).

France drew red lines for the Swedish EU presidency (Photo: European Commission)

“I am very sensitive to the fact that the chairman of Europe has to take into account all the points of view.”

Mr Sarkozy, a vocal opponent of Turkey’s full membership of the EU, said he would not hinder further progress in accession negotiations but only if it concerns non-sensitive areas.

“France will not be against the opening of new chapters under the Swedish chairmanship but, of course, these chapters should allow that Turkey should be an associate member of Europe and not a fully-fledged member,” the president said.

“I would not like to create any problems for the prime minister and he doesn’t want to create problems for me.”

Paris in the past blocked negotiations on economic and monetary union with Turkey, seeing it as a step too far.

Meanwhile, Sweden’s Mr Reinfeldt, in charge of the EU until the end of the year, outlined Stockholm’s position as diplomatically as possible.

“We also talked about the continued enlargement of the EU. I think the Swedish position is well known,” he said.

Sweden is one of the strongest proponents of Turkey eventually becoming an EU member

The issue already caused tension between the two countries in June when Mr Sarkozy abruptly called off a planned visit to Stockholm due to pro-Turkey comments by Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt to leading French daily Le Figaro.

Slow progress

Progress on Turkey’s EU membership negotiations has been painfully slow – in part due to foot-dragging by Ankara itself on reforms in human rights and democracy areas. But also due to a reluctance within part of the bloc itself, particularly France and Germany.

Turkey has opened 11 of the 35 policy areas up for negotiation but has only managed to close one – with member states approval needed to both start and end each policy chapter – since it started membership talks with the EU nearly four years ago.

Ankara has repeatedly warned that the EU’s lack of enthusiasm will turn ordinary Turks against the project. It has also suggested that the bloc would be shooting an own goal in terms of energy independence if it lost Turkey’s support.

It has openly linked its co-operation on the Nabucco project, a cross-Turkey pipeline aimed at reducing Europe’s gas reliance on Russia, to EU membership progress.

https://euobserver.com/eu-political/28412

July 6, 2009