Armenia praises recognition of genocide: Turkish 'blackmail' fails to deter Canada: minister

October 19, 2006 Thursday
Ottawa Citizen
Final Edition
by Mike Blanchfield, The Ottawa Citizen

Countries such as Canada and France are standing up to Turkey's
political "blackmail" through their recent decisions to recognize the
genocide of the Armenian people, Armenia's foreign minister said
yesterday.

Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian also said if Turkey has any hope of
attaining its goal of joining the European Union, it too would have
to acknowledge the past violence of Ottoman Turks.

Mr. Oskanian offered that provocative assessment yesterday in an
interview prior to his meeting with Foreign Affairs Minister Peter
MacKay in Ottawa, the first high-level interaction between Armenia
and Canada since the Harper government recognized as genocide the
deaths of 1.5 million Armenians in 1915 during the bloody demise of
the Ottoman Empire, a decision that has angered Turkey.

Last week, the French parliament passed a law that would outlaw any
denial of the Armenian genocide and make that punishable with
imprisonment, the same French penalty for denying the Nazi Holocaust
that killed six million Jews.

"Precisely because Turkey is a good ally of France, Canada and other
countries -- it is a NATO ally -- Turkey should not use the method of
blackmail to stop these kinds of things because these are moral
processes, these are democratic processes," Mr. Oskanian told CanWest
News Service.

"The irony is in the fact that Turkey itself is engaged in strong
denialist state policy," he added. "What France has done is a
reaction to this kind of policy and use of blackmail to stop
recognition."

Turkey, the country created out of the fallen Ottoman Empire in 1923,
denies the genocide and has been vocal in its condemnation of the
two-dozen mostly European countries -- and Canada -- for recognizing
it as such. Turkey says hundreds of thousands of its own people were
killed by Armenians in what was a costly war on all sides, not a
systematic extermination and expulsion of one group.

Turkey threatened France with economic repercussions and made
similar, less direct noises toward Canada following a statement by
Prime Minister Stephen Harper in April that recognized the genocide.

Turkey's ambassador to Canada immediately withdrew to Ankara for
consultations and the Turkish air force later pulled out of a
military training exercise in Alberta.

Mr. Oskanian predicted Turkey would have no choice but to eventually
recognize the genocide; otherwise, its ambitions for European Union
membership will never be realized.

"Our hope (with) Turkey's EU accession process is that they open up
their society and this issue becomes a non-taboo issue and people
will debate it more freely," he said.

Mr. Oskanian said his country wants normal relations with Turkey and
he stressed they don't have to formally recognize the genocide to do
that.

"That border is the last closed border in Europe. It needs to be
opened without any preconditions, to allow our people to engage with
each other, to create new memories that can replace the old ones."