SPANISH GOVERNMENT SAID TRYING TO BLOCK ARMENIA GENOCIDE MOTION
ABC Newspaper website
March 22 2010
Spain
The following is the text of the report by the Spanish newspaper ABC
website, on 22 March.
The Spanish government is making moves to halt a parliamentary motion
condemning the Armenian genocide in the early 20th century so as not
to harm relations with Turkey, according to a Madrid daily. It says
the foreign minister has talked to the speaker of the lower house to
try to prevent the motion from prospering.
Madrid: The government is taking steps to prevent from prospering
in the Congress [of Deputies – lower house of parliament] a motion
presented by ERC [Republican Left of Catalonia] which seeks to condemn
the Armenian "genocide" at the hands of the Turkish-Ottoman Empire
during World War I. The government is aware that a decision of this
type would arouse considerable discontent in Turkey, its main ally
in the Alliance of Civilizations [between the West and Muslim worlds].
[Foreign Minister] Miguel Angel Moratinos has contacted Jose Bono
[speaker of the Congress] in the last few days to try to halt the
processing of the initiative, so ABC has learned from reliable sources.
The room for manoeuvre of the speaker of the Congress, however, will
be limited when the initiative reaches the parliamentary assembly
before moving on to the House business committee, which will decide
the way in which it will be processed.
A similar proposal was approved by all the groups in the [regional]
parliament of Catalonia, for which reason the government fears
that the same thing might happen in Madrid. Even the simple fact
of debating it would arouse discontent in the Turkish authorities,
who are very sensitive about this issue.
The government is concerned that there will be a repeat of what
happened to Turkey’s relations with the USA and with Sweden, where
measures have been passed which describe as "genocide" the massacre
of a million-and-a-half Armenians over several years, starting in
1915, carried out under the leadership of the "Young Turks" during
the Ottoman Empire and before the formation of the current republic
of Turkey by Ataturk, in 1923.
Ankara withdrew its ambassador in Washington after on 4 March a US
Congress committee sanctioned the initiative by a difference of a
single vote. It did the same thing with its ambassador in Stockholm
after the Swedish parliament passed a similar motion on 11 March.
Vain explanations
Both [Barack] Obama and the Swedish foreign minister, Carl Bildt,
disagreed with what was passed by their respective parliaments,
but Turkey considered they had not done enough to stop it. Turkish
discontent is even greater because they are two countries with
which it maintains good relations – and the same goes for Spain,
which has backed Turkey’s membership of the EU, once it meets the
necessary requirements.
It must be remembered that [Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip]
Erdogan co-sponsors with [Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez]
Zapatero the Alliance of Civilizations, the Spanish government’s
main foreign policy project, which could be affected by a Congress
resolution regarding the Armenians.
All that means that the Foreign Ministry is pulling strings to try
to ensure that the ERC initiative, signed by Joan Tarda [male], does
not go ahead. The proposition states that the government must urge
Ankara to acknowledge the massacre perpetrated almost a century ago
"as a gesture of concord with Armenia", in line with the spirit of
the Alliance of Civilizations.
Healing wounds
In another point, the EU is asked to act as mediator between Turkey
and Armenia for the definitive overcoming of the genocide because,
in his opinion, "the historical recognition of the crimes perpetrated
is necessary to heal wounds".
Turkey has never recognized the massacre of those million-and-a-half
Armenians and puts the number of victims at 300,000, but blames it
on fighting among ethnic groups and the famines of World War I,
not on a repressive policy directed at that minority. In Turkey,
describing what happened to the Armenian community as genocide is
punishable by up to three years’ imprisonment.
In statements that are hardly very suitable for the Alliance of
Civilizations, Erdogan has told the BBC about the possibility of
expelling some 100,000 undocumented Armenians. In addition, the
Turkish authorities have warned of the possible consequences for
economic relations with the countries that describe the deaths of
the Armenians as "genocide". As well as France, the United States
and Sweden, some 20 countries have recognized the "genocide". The
European Parliament did so in 1987.