Turkey has recalled its ambassador to Canada, Aydemir Erman, for consultations to protest Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s recent remarks describing the forced deportation of Armenians in 1915 Ottoman Turkey as “genocide.”
Harper, in a three-paragraph statement on April 19, recalled motions adopted by the Canadian Senate and the House of Commons backing the Armenian genocide claims and said, “My party and I supported those resolutions, and continue to recognize them today.” It was the first time a Canadian prime minister acknowledged the so-called genocide.
Turkish diplomatic sources said over the weekend that Ambassador Erman has not yet been officially withdrawn from Canada, but that following his consultations with government officials, it could be an option. Another option includes barring Canadian firms from participating in official tenders, including the construction of a major nuclear power plant. Turkish sources expressed particular uneasiness about the acknowledgement of genocide claims coming from the Canadian government for the first time.
In the past five years, the parliaments of France, Russia and Poland have also adopted motions describing the occurrences in 1915 as “genocide,” but the governments of these countries have tried to disassociate themselves from the motions and have noted that they won’t change their foreign policy.
On April 25, Turkey’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement accusing Harper of exhibiting a “gravely prejudiced attitude.”
“Such statements … are not only counter-productive to the atmosphere of dialogue we wish to build between Turkey and Armenia, but also adversely affect relations between Turkey and Canada,” the Foreign Ministry said.
Turks and Armenians are at odds over the genocide claims. The Armenian diaspora accuses the Ottoman Empire of deliberately massacring up to 1.5 million Armenians between 1915 and 1919. Turkey stresses that these figures are inflated, and claims that far fewer Armenians died, but that it was due to civil unrest under the conditions of World War I and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Turkey also asserts that during the ethnic conflict, thousands of Turks were also killed by Armenian militants.
To break the deadlock, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan last year suggested in a letter sent to Armenian President Robert Kocharian the establishment of a committee of Turkish and Armenian historians to study the claims. However, Kocharian refused Erdogan’s proposal, saying that the two countries must first establish diplomatic relations and that committees could be formed only within the process of normalization of relations.
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