Armenian church in Van to be restored

Thursday, May 19 2005 @ 06:16 AM Central Daylight Time

Below is a good symbolic gesture aimed at demonstrating good will to EU.

[...]Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan revealed yesterday that he has given orders to the Ministry of Culture that the Armenian church in Van Akdamar is to be restored as soon as possible. [...] Armenian Patriarch Mesrob Mutafian will oversee the restoration of the church.

However below is a threat as if it will go down very well with EU.

Erdogan also reiterated at the meeting that genocide had never occured in Turkey [...] if the campaign to gather parliamentary resolutions supporting Armenian claims goes much further, Turkey will take steps of its own to pass resolutions condemning the past histories of those countries condemning Turkey.

Why am I getting the feeling that Armenians are being used as political pawns by Turkey in its attempt to get into the right side of EU members? But then threatening EU members is not the best way to gain their approvals. So what is Turkey trying to do?

Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears on:
http://www.turks.us/article.php?story=20050519061626526&mode=print
Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...].The bold emphasis is mine.