‘Genocide’ tension with Sweden thaws, US ties still strained

Davutoğlu, speaking in an interview aired late on Wednesday on the CNN Türk television station, said Ambassador Zergün Korutürk will return to her office either over the weekend or at the beginning of next week at the latest.

“The US and Swedish cases are not the same. The Swedish government has clearly displayed its stance against the approval of the resolution and, in a subsequent statement, clearly declared this position,” Davutoğlu said. “In this regard, statements coming from Sweden are satisfactory,” he added.

Earlier this month the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs approved a nonbinding resolution condemning the 1915 killings. It was followed by the Swedish parliament’s vote recognizing the early 20th century killings of Anatolian Armenians as genocide.

In both cases Turkey responded angrily, withdrawing its ambassadors from Washington and Stockholm while also suggesting that these votes would have a damaging impact on the process of normalization between Armenia and Turkey.

When asked why Turkey’s response to the votes were so harsh, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said in an interview with German weekly Die Zeit that third countries should not get involved in the issue. “This is solely the Armenian diaspora’s propaganda, and parliaments are allowing the expression of these individual views,” Erdoğan said in the interview, published this week.

Following parliament’s vote, Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said the vote could complicate efforts between Turkey and Armenia to normalize relations after a century of hostility.

The countries agreed last year to establish diplomatic ties and open their border if their parliaments approved peace accords, but the votes have not taken place, and the governments have accused each other of trying to rewrite the text of the agreements. Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, meanwhile, phoned his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and said he disagreed with the resolution.

In remarks published on Tuesday in The Washington Post, Davutoğlu made clear that Turkey will not send its recalled ambassador back to Washington until the Obama administration and Congress make it clear they will not judge Turkish history.

“We cannot accept the judgment of the members of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, who do not know anything about our history,” Davutoğlu said in an interview in Ankara, while setting two conditions for Ambassador Namık Tan’s return: The administration and Congress must show they will refrain from deciding what he called “our history,” and the two countries “should agree to develop our strategic alliance,” he said.

Ankara’s uneasiness with the US administration’s stance on the issue was clearly expressed on Wednesday by Foreign Ministry spokesperson Burak Özügergin, describing the US administration’s recent reaction vis-a-vis the vote at the US House committee as “delayed and weak” when reminded that senior US officials, including US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, had only recently commented on the vote, with Gates calling it a “mistake.”

In Stockholm, meanwhile, as of Wednesday, Bildt suggested that a similar bill on the recognition of the alleged Armenian genocide could be brought to the agenda of parliament next year, with the result being the complete opposite at that time.

Bildt’s remarks came on Wednesday during a visit to the Turkish Youth Federation in the Swedish capital, state-run broadcaster Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT) reported on its Web site.

“Decisions made at European parliaments concerning Armenian allegations can never be put forward as a condition in Turkey’s European Union membership negotiations,” Bildt was also quoted as saying by TRT.

The issue of the killings of Anatolian Armenians during the chaotic end of the Ottoman Empire nearly a century ago is deeply sensitive in Turkey, which 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.