Merkel-Erdogan Tension Set to Rise With Armenian Genocide Vote

[Purveyor]

Chancellor Angela Merkel risks provoking Germany’s next run-in with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan with a parliamentary vote to condemn the 1915 killings and deportations of Armenians as genocide, even though she plans to skip the ballot.

Merkel’s Christian Democratic-led bloc, her Social Democratic junior partner and the opposition Greens are sponsoring the resolution and have the votes to pass it in the lower house, or Bundestag, on Thursday. The measure, which cites “the almost total extermination of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire,” would put Germany in line with countries such as France, Russia, Greece, Sweden and the Netherlands that recognize the events as genocide.

With angry reactions by Turkish officials preceding the vote, Merkel and Erdogan spoke by phone on Tuesday to discuss the resolution and try to hold together the European Union’s refugee accord with Turkey, the linchpin of Merkel’s effort to stem the flow of migrants to Germany.

“It puts her in a difficult position with Erdogan,” Carsten Nickel, a Brussels-based analyst at Teneo Intelligence, said by phone on Wednesday. The timing of the vote -- part of “a prolonged poker game” between Europe and Turkey -- is awkward and “it’s not going to make things easier,” he said.

Merkel has other engagements around the time of the vote and doesn’t plan to attend, government spokeswoman Christiane Wirtz said in Berlin. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said he’ll be on a previously planned trip to Latin America

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-01/merkel-erdogan-tension-set-to-rise-with-armenian-genocide-vote

[bemildred]

1. Turkey’s demographic winter and Erdogan’s duplicity: Spengler

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan demanded that Turkish women abandon contraception in a televised address May 30, Reuters reported. “We will multiply our descendants. They talk about population planning, birth control. No Muslim family can have such an approach,” Erdogan said. The Turkish leader has denounced Turkish women for refusing to have more babies on many earlier occasions.

Erdogan has played every side of every issue, alternately courting and rejecting the European Union, claiming the United States as an ally against ISIS while aiding the terrorist army on the sly, succoring Hamas while proposing to rebuild relations with Israel, helping Iran run sanctions while claiming the Gulf States as Sunni allies. Christina Lin catalogued his double-dealings in a May 31 news analysis for this publication.

When he talks about Turkey’s failing demographics, though, Erdogan is speaking from the heart. Turkey’s Kurdish citizens continue to have three or four children while ethnic Turks have fewer than two. By the early 2040s, most of Turkey’s young people will come from Kurdish-speaking homes. The Kurdish-majority Southeast inevitably will break away. Erdogan’s hapless battle against the inevitable motivates the sometimes bewildering twists and turns of Turkish policy.

A review of the recently-released 2015 population data shows that the demographic scissors between Kurds and Turks continues to widen. Despite Erdogan’s exhortations on behalf of Turkish fertility, the baby bust in Turkish-majority provinces continues while Kurds sustain one of the world’s highest birth rates. Even worse, the marriage rate outside of the Kurdish Southeast of the country has collapsed, portending even lower fertility in the future.

http://atimes.com/2016/05/turkeys-demographic-winter-and-erdogans-duplicity/