Erdoğan under fire at home for remarks on Armenian workers

“Look, there are 170,000 Armenians in my country -- 70,000 of them are my citizens, but we are managing [tolerating] 100,000 of them in our country. So, what will we do tomorrow? If it is necessary, I will tell them, ‘Come on, back to your country.' I will do it. Why? They are not my citizens. I am not obliged to keep them in my country. I mean these are [defenders of the Armenian claims of genocide], their attitude is affecting our sincere attitude in a negative way, and they are not aware of it,” Erdoğan told the BBC Turkish service in an interview on Tuesday during a visit to London for talks with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. He was responding to a question about a couple of resolutions passed at a US congressional panel and in the Swedish Parliament earlier this month recognizing Armenian claims of genocide by Ottoman Turks a century ago. He described the votes as a “show” and warned that they were harming Turkey's efforts to normalize its ties with Armenia. “We are committed to the zero-problem policy [with Turkey's neighbors], but there is nothing we can do if the other side clenches its fist while we extend a hand.”

Leaving aside foreign policy considerations, civil society organizations criticized Erdoğan's remarks on several grounds: first, he mentioned Armenian Turkish citizens together with the citizens of Armenia, and secondly, he was using foreign workers as a tool of foreign policy and neglecting the humanitarian side of the problem.

But Suat Kınıklıoğlu, deputy chairman of the AK Party Foreign Affairs Committee, underlined that Erdoğan was trying to explain that Turkey tolerates the irregular Armenian workers. “As has been known for many years, there are Armenians illegally living and working in Turkey, and as a reflection of our goodwill and efforts toward normalization which started in 2005, we do not really touch them.

We tolerate them and take their difficult circumstances into consideration. In particular, we are not questioning their status due to the acceleration of the normalization process in Turkish-Armenian relations. The prime minister needed to draw this fact to people’s attention, especially now, when resolutions have been accepted which damage normalization. I think Turkey’s magnanimity is being ignored,” he said, and added that the prime minister did not mean he would immediately send those workers back to their country.

Öztürk Türkdoğan, the chairman of the Human Rights Association (İHD), said Erdoğan’s remarks could easily be considered a “threat” and as discrimination. “These remarks could lead some people to think that to expel people is a 2010 version of forced migration. This mentality is far from human rights-oriented thinking. People have the right to work, and this is universal. There are many Turkish workers all over the world; does it mean that Turkey will accept their expulsion when there is an international problem? Secondly, these remarks are discriminatory; there are many workers in Turkey of different nationalities,” he said.

Ceren Öztürk from the immigrant solidarity network said that free circulation of people is a universal right and Erdoğan’s remarks are not acceptable. “The right to free circulation cannot be used as a wild card in international relations. Immigrants have to have equal rights with Turkish citizens because they are producing and contributing to society,” she said.

Armenian issue as litmus test

Journalist Hayko Bağdat said Turkish foreign policy loves the principle of “reciprocity,” but uses its own citizens who are minorities. “If the prime minister is angry with the US or Sweden, he should expel the citizens of those countries who are living or working in Turkey. The poor Armenian workers here -- by the way, their number is not 100,000 at all -- have nothing to do with the genocide resolutions,” he said.

He added that Erdoğan had also made a distinction between “good Armenians” and “bad Armenians.” “The prime minister mentioned Armenian Turkish citizens and Armenian citizens together, but later talked about expelling the poor Armenian workers. This means that the official policy has been lying to us for years. He put everyone in the same category, but according to what -- according to their ethnic origin. But for years we have been told that there are no distinctions on the basis of ethnic origin. This means that “unity” is not internalized and the roots of discrimination are very strong,” Bağdat said.

He added that there are two camps in Turkey now: one is claiming that it is trying to change the system and the other one is resisting this change, but when it comes to the Armenians, they have a common understanding.

“The Armenian question is the litmus test for everyone to find out if they really want a change in the system,” he said. After the “genocide” resolutions in the US and Sweden, during a debate over the issue in Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Commission, Canan Arıtman from the Republican People’s Party (CHP) suggested deporting Armenian workers in Turkey. In the past, she has also called for an investigation into the ancestry of President Abdullah Gül’s mother, implying that she was of Armenian origin. Gül took Arıtman to court.

The İHD’s Türkdoğan was also critical of Erdoğan’s remarks regarding ethnically Armenian Turkish citizens: “We can see that the classic republican understanding based on ethnic Turkism is still valid. Minorities cannot be the subject of bargaining in international relations. This is racist discourse and only proves how far we are from a human rights-oriented perspective,” Türkdoğan said.

Number of Armenian workers is controversial issue

There is controversy over the precise number of Armenians illegally working in Turkey, but a recent study by the Eurasia Partnership Foundation claimed that there are between 12,000 and 13,000 Armenian citizens working in Turkey. The study conducted by Alin Özinan states that according to official numbers, 6,000 Armenians did not return home after traveling to Turkey between 2000 and 2008. Özinan adds figures from the 1990s to this number and says the number of Armenians illegally living in Turkey is not 70,000 to 100,000 as has previously been asserted, but is actually between 12,000 and 13,000.

According to the study, 94 percent of the Armenians working in Turkey are women, with very few Armenian men accompanying their spouses or working here. Armenian women tend to work as childcare providers, servants, janitors and saleswomen. Most of the Armenian men who accompany their wives here choose not to work at all, while those who do tend to work in the jewelry business. In the past, Turkish foreign ministers and diplomats have also claimed that the Armenians living in Turkey number around 70,000. Turkey has deported very few Armenians working irregularly here in recent years, the report says, asserting that Armenians are only deported if they have committed a crime outside of working illegally; the crime rate amongst immigrant Armenians is very low.