Sweden’s prime minister regrets parliament’s ‘genocide’ vote

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt and his Turkish counterpart, Ahmet Davutoğlu, participated in a two-day informal meeting of European Union foreign ministers held over the weekend in the Finnish ski resort of Saariselkä and hosted by Finnish Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb.

Bildt said he was upset by the vote on Thursday and was 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 Anatolian Armenians during the Ottoman Empire era as genocide, a term that Turkey resolutely rejects.

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

The vote followed a decision by a committee of the US House of Representatives the week before approving a nonbinding resolution 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 Erdoğan 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. Erdoğan cancelled a planned visit to Sweden this month, and the government recalled its ambassador from Stockholm.

Davutoğlu said Turkey would not stand by quietly if other nations took similar steps to describe the 1915 killings as 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 pressure us, no one can put pressure on Turkey. If the purpose is to get local domestic concerns raised, Turkish historical events should not be misused for these narrow issues.”

Davutoğlu, 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.

Davutoğlu was the only foreign minister from a non-EU member country at the two-day meeting dedicated to discussions on the EU’s relationship with developing powers at the top of the agenda.

The EU’s new foreign policy director, Catherine Ashton, and the foreign ministers of Estonia, France, Italy, Spain, Sweden and Turkey participated in the gathering. Stubb also invited his counterparts from Britain, Germany and Norway, but they were unable to attend because of scheduling conflicts. At a time when Turkey is involved in strategic discussions on the future of the EU, Stefan Füle, the EU commissioner for enlargement and European neighborhood policy, will today have talks in Ankara on his first visit since assuming the post. Davutoğlu is expected to convey Ankara’s uneasiness over some European countries’ approach to the Armenian issue as a tool for scoring in domestic politics while also sharing his concerns that such moves will have a negative impact on the ongoing process of normalization with Armenia.