SWEDISH PARLIAMENT RECOGNIZES ARMENIA GENOCIDE AGAINST GOVERNMENT WISHES
Before It’s News
arliament_Recognizes_Armenia_Genocide_Against_Gove rnment_Wishes.html
March 17 2010
GOTHENBURG, Sweden–The Swedish Parliament has decided to acknowledge
the 1915 massacre in the Ottoman Empire as genocide, but it happened
against the wishes of both the government and the leader of the
biggest opposition party, as representatives on both sides voted
against party lines.
The issue has now grown into both a diplomatic problem between Turkey
and Sweden as well as a domestic debate about who actually controls
foreign policy in Sweden. The resolution passed by just one vote.
Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt was quick to call the decision
"deeply regrettable" on his blog. He is worried that anti-reformists
within Turkey would use this in their attempts to make normalizing
relations between Turkey and Armenia more difficult.
Turkey reacted by swiftly withdrawing their ambassador from Sweden
for consultations and Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan has canceled his
planned visit to Sweden. Sweden normally has very good relations with
Turkey, but this decision has angered both the Turkish government
and many Turks.
One of the issues that Sweden focused on during their chairmanship of
the European Union last year was the question of Turkey’s application
for membership into the union. Turkish membership is controversial,
and one of the reasons is that their human rights record is not seen
as living up to European standards. More than 20 countries have
recognized what happened in 1915 as genocide, and Turkey is under
certain pressure to deal with this aspect of its past, as a way to
demonstrate that it respects the rights of its minorities.
The massacre in 1915 was a result of Muslim Turkish rulers of the
Ottoman Empire siding with the Germans during World War I, while some
of the repressed minorities, mainly Christian, sided with Russia. An
unknown number of Armenians, Chaldeans, Greeks, Syrians, and Assyrians,
some claim as many as 1.5 million, were deported or killed as modern
Turkey rose from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire.
Turkey does not recognize the events as genocide. It claims that
some 400,000 people died, mostly in battles. It is illegal to call
the events genocide in Turkey. There is a lot of nationalist pride
in Turkey and people don’t want the birth of their nation to be
associated with genocide.
Some Swedish commentators feel that the question of whether it was
genocide or not (the term genocide and conventions regarding it
did not appear until the 1940’s) should be appraised by historians
and not politicians. Others argue that this recognition is welcome
and long overdue and that the stance of the Swedish government and
the leadership of the biggest minority party, the Social Democrats,
are shameful. The debate has become quite heated on blogs.
Meanwhile, some of the focus in Swedish media has also shifted to the
question of how Parliament came to vote against the government line,
which is very unusual in Sweden, and to question the stability of
Swedish foreign policy and who is really in charge of it.
Last week, Turkey also pulled its ambassador from the United States
after the House Foreign Affairs Committee narrowly passed a nonbinding
resolution, 23 votes to 22, naming the 1915 killings as genocide.