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Turkey PM says could deport up to 100,000
Armenians 18.3.2010
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March
18, 2010
ANKARA, —
Turkey's prime minister has threatened to expel
thousands of illegal Armenian immigrants after U.S.
and Swedish lawmakers passed votes branding World
War One-era killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks
as genocide.
Turkey, a NATO member and candidate to join the
European Union, recalled its ambassadors to
Washington and Stockholm after the non-binding votes
and warned they could hurt a fragile effort to
reconcile with Armenia after a century of hostility.
Asked about the votes in an interview with the BBC
Turkish service that was broadcast late on Tuesday,
Erdogan said: "There are currently 170,000 Armenians
living in our country. |
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan |
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."
Thousands of illegal Armenian immigrants, mostly
women from the impoverished countryside, work as
cleaning ladies and in other low-skilled jobs in
Istanbul,www.ekurd.netwhere
they settled after an earthquake in their homeland
in 1988.
The exact number of Armenian immigrants in Turkey is
unknown. But Turkish-Armenian groups say Turkish
politicians inflate numbers of illegal workers and
threaten expulsions whenever tensions escalate
between Ankara and Yerevan.
Erdogan said Armenian immigrants had been allowed to
work in Turkey as a "display of our peaceful
approach, but we have to get something in return."
Aris Nalci, an editor at Turkish-Armenian weekly
newspaper Agos, said it was not the first time
Erdogan had made such remarks. "We are not taking it
as a serious threat," he said.
HISTORIC ACCORDS
Muslim Turkey and Christian Armenia signed historic
accords last year to establish diplomatic ties and
open their common border.
But the deal has yet to be ratified by their
respective parliaments and the governments have
accused each other of trying to rewrite the texts.
Erdogan's comments could further strain the process
of normalizing ties that have been burdened by the
deportation and killing of Armenians during the
chaotic end of the Ottoman empire nearly a century
ago.
The deportation threats will also be frowned upon in
Europe, which supported the peace accords with
Armenia and said they would help Ankara's EU bid.
Suat Kiniklioglu, foreign affairs spokesman for the
ruling AK Party, played down Erdogan's words, saying
the premier felt the need to "remind the public"
about Armenians living illegally in Turkey. He said
Erdogan was "not talking about something that would
happen today or tomorrow."
In the interview, Erdogan accused the Armenian
diaspora of pushing the resolutions in the United
States and Sweden and called on Armenia and other
foreign governments to avoid being swayed by their
lobbying. The U.S. and Swedish governments opposed
the non-binding resolutions, which passed by
extremely thin margins.
The issue of the Armenian massacres 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 -- a term employed by
many Western historians and some foreign
parliaments.
Copyright, respective
author or news agency,
Reuters
First world war
massacres | Related issue (external page):
Armenian Genocide by
Turkish Muslims against Christians
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