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Gül warns political debates on history hurdle to peace
Turkey has expressed outrage over the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs’ approval last Thursday of a non-binding resolution calling the killings “genocide,” the vote on which was broadcast live on Turkish television, and recalled its envoy to the United States for consultations. As of yesterday afternoon, the Swedish parliament was debating a motion to recognize the 1915 events as genocide.
“First of all, I would like to say that these resolutions have no currency as far as the Turkish people are concerned,” Gül was quoted as saying by the Anatolia news agency during a visit to Central Anatolian province of Isparta when reminded of both the US committee vote and the debate in the Swedish parliament. The debate in the Swedish parliament had not been finalized by the time Today’s Zaman went to print.
The Swedish parliament had voted on the issue before and approved a report in 2000 recognizing disappearance of Armenians, Chaldeans, Syrians, Assyrians and Pontian Greeks from April 1915 as genocide. But the recognition was later withdrawn “on a technicality.”
“All of them are very wrong and constitute unfairness to the science of history. There can be nothing more wrong than politicians and individuals who have no knowledge of history making decisions about history,” Gül went on to say.
The issue of the Armenian killings is a deeply sensitive one in Turkey. Turkey accepts that many Christian Armenians were killed by Ottoman Turks but vehemently denies that up to 1.5 million died and that it amounted to genocide -- a term employed by many Western historians and some foreign parliaments.
“What I consider important is peace, stability and cooperation,” the president said.
Turkey has also said the resolution could jeopardize a fragile drive by Turkey and Armenia to end a century of hostilities and lead to further instability in the south Caucasus, a region crisscrossed by oil and gas pipelines to Europe.
“Consequently, the issue of the resolution of problems for peace and stability in the Caucasus is also important for me. I hope that everybody will see over time that these kinds of political decisions are damaging and obstructive to maintaining peace and stability,” Gül concluded.
A Swedish English-language online daily, The Local, reported yesterday that the motion in the Swedish parliament had the backing of members of five of the seven Swedish parliamentary parties, including the Left Party. While several center-right politicians have supported the motion and, according to the Left Party’s foreign policy spokesman, Hans Linde, made their support public on Thursday, the vote’s outcome is uncertain as the parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs has recommended its rejection, The Local reported.
Some Swedish editorial writers, meanwhile, argued that parliamentarians are not the right people to define history and that this should be left to historians.
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