Armenian Genocide Talk has Turkey Threatening to Expel Armenians

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Source: Christian Science Monitor

After politicians in the US and Sweden recently labeled the deaths of up to 1.5 million in 1915 an Armenian genocide, Turkey's Prime Minister Erdogan responded by threatening to expel about 100,000 Armenians living in Turkey.

Istanbul, Turkey

Raising the stakes in Turkey’s rejection of the genocide label by US and Swedish lawmakers for the mass deaths of Armenians a century ago, Turkey says it might send home up to 100,000 Armenians currently living in Turkey without citizenship.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, angry over the decision earlier this month by a US congressional committee and by the Swedish parliament to call the 1915 deaths of up to 1.5 million Armenians a “genocide,” has said the issue could disrupt a nascent Turkey-Armenia reconciliation process started last year.

Mr. Erdogan is now unlikely to attend an energy summit hosted by Barack Obama in April, Hurriyet newspaper reported. Erdogan already pulled out of a top-level meeting in Sweden, and Turkey withdrew ambassadors from both Washington and Stockholm after the two votes.

The issue of deaths during the expulsion of Christian Armenians by forces of the crumbling Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I are sensitive in Turkey, which argues that killing took place on both sides.

More broadly, NATO member and European Union candidate Turkey does not want to be lumped with Nazi Germany, Cambodia, or Rwanda as perpetrators of genocide in the 20th century.

“There are currently 170,000 Armenians living in our country,” Erdogan told the BBC Turkish service in London on Tuesday, according to Reuters. “Only 70,000 of them are Turkish citizens, but we are tolerating the remaining 100,000. If necessary, I may have to tell these 100,000 to go back to their country because they are not my citizens. I don’t have to keep them in my country.”

more: http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2010/0317/Armenian-genocide-talk-has-Turkey-threatening-to-expel-Armenians