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Turkey's foreign minister, Abdullah Gül, has
criticised Switzerland for briefly detaining a
Turkish politician on suspicion of violating Swiss
anti-racism laws.
Doğu Perinçek, who is leader of Turkey’s Workers’
Party, has twice denied that the killings of
Armenians around the time of the First World War
amounted to genocide. He is the subject of two
criminal investigations.
Under Swiss law, any act of denying, belittling or
justifying genocide is a violation of the country’s
anti-racism laws.
"It is not possible for us to accept these things to
be done to the leader of a political party in
Turkey," Gül was quoted in the Hürriyet newspaper.
"Do these actions suit a country like Switzerland?"
he asked.
Questioned
The public prosecutor of Winterthur questioned
Perinçek on Saturday for more than two hours after a
news conference he gave on Friday in Glattbrugg,
near Zurich.
In the speech honouring the 82nd anniversary of the
Treaty of Lausanne, which fixed the borders of
modern-day Turkey, Perinçek called claims of
genocide against the Armenians an imperialist lie,
authorities said.
Perinçek is also under investigation from
authorities in canton Vaud after a complaint from a
Swiss-Armenian Society over a speech he gave in
Lausanne in May.
Gül described Saturday’s questioning as
"unacceptable" and "absolutely contrary to the
principle of free speech".
On Sunday, Perinçek repeated his denial of the
Armenian genocide at celebrations attended by about
2,000 Turks near the Beau-Rivage hotel, scene of the
treaty negotiations.
Kurds
About 300 Kurds, who also marked the anniversary,
demonstrated in front of the Palais de Rumine where
the treaty was signed.
Speakers criticised the treaty, which had "made a
mockery of the hope for freedom" of Turkish
minorities.
Armenians say 1.5 million of their people were
killed as the Ottoman Empire forced them from
eastern Turkey between 1915 and 1923. They argue
that this was a deliberate campaign of genocide by
Turkey’s rulers at that time.
Turks say the death count is inflated and insist
that Armenians were killed or displaced as the
Ottoman Empire tried to secure its border with
Russia and stop attacks by Armenian militants.
Switzerland and Turkey have argued over the issue in
the past.
In June, a Turkish cabinet minister postponed a
visit to Switzerland to protest against a Swiss
investigation of a Turkish historian who made a
similar speech denying that the mass killings of
Armenians in the early 1900s amounted to genocide.
Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey had been
scheduled to travel to Turkey in 2003, but Ankara
withdrew its invitation after the parliament of a
western Swiss canton recognised the killings of
Armenians in Turkey as genocide.
www.swissinfo.org
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