ANKARA, Turkey — Turkey on Tuesday criticized Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper for remarks he made in support of recognizing the mass killings of Armenians during the First World War as genocide, and warned that such statements threatened to harm Turkish-Canadian relations.
In a statement on April 21, Harper recalled that Canada’s Senate and House of Commons had adopted resolutions recognizing the killings as genocide and said, “I and my party supported those resolutions and continue to recognize them today.”
Turkey’s Foreign Ministry issued a stern statement saying it “regretted” Harper’s remarks over the killings that occurred more than eight decades ago.
“Statements concerning disputed historic events by foreign parliaments or governments nearly a century later will not change the nature of what happened in reality,” the statement said.
“Such statements do not contribute to the environment of dialogue between Turkey and Armenia, and have a negative effect on Turkish-Canadian relations,” it added. “The stagnation of relations between the two countries after the Canadian Parliament’s decision … is the clearest example of this.”
Turkey’s Hurriyet newspaper reported Tuesday that Turkey would bar Canadian companies from bidding for the construction of a nuclear power plant that Turkey hopes to build in the Black Sea coastal town of Sinop.
In 2001, Turkey cancelled millions of dollars’ worth of defence deals with French companies after legislators in France recognized the genocide.
Armenians say some 1.5 million of their people were killed as the Ottoman Empire forced them from eastern Turkey between 1915 and 1923 in a deliberate campaign of genocide.
Turkey denies it was genocide, saying the death count is inflated and insisting that Armenians were killed or displaced as the Ottoman Empire tried to secure its border with Russia and stop attacks by Armenian militants.
Several other countries, including Argentina, Poland, France and Russia, have declared the killings a genocide, and there is strong pressure from Armenians worldwide for the U.S. Congress to recognize the killings as genocide as well.
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