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MSNBC: Turkey recalls officials for talks

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  • MSNBC: Turkey recalls officials for talks

    MSNBC
    May 8 2006

    Turkey recalls officials for talks

    Turkey said on Monday it had recalled its ambassadors from France and
    Canada "for consultations" in a diplomatic dispute over moves to
    recognise Armenian claims of genocide during the first world war.

    Ankara's anger has been stirred by a decision of the French
    parliament to debate a draft law later this month that would make
    denial of the Armenian genocide claim a crime similar to denial of
    the Holocaust. Stephen Harper, Canada's prime minister, also recently
    backed Armenia's genocide claim. Both France and Canada have
    substantial Armenian communities.

    Namik Tan, a spokesman for the Turkish foreign ministry, said the
    ambassadors had been recalled to Ankara "for a short period for
    consultations regarding recent developments over the baseless
    Armenian genocide claims in France and Canada".

    The withdrawal of the envoys threatens to further sour relations
    between Ankara and Paris, which are already strained because of
    French resistance to Turkey's ambition to join the European Union.

    Armenia claims that up to 1.5m civilians were massacred by Ottoman
    troops as the empire collapsed starting in 1915, and that the
    massacres amounted to genocide because they were the result of
    deliberate Ottoman policy. The Armenians were citizens of the empire
    at the time.

    Turkey denies the genocide claim. It says hundreds of thousands of
    Armenians, as well as a similar number of Turkish Muslims, died in
    partisan fighting, famine and forced removal. It also insists the
    mass killings cannot be blamed on the republic of Turkey, which was
    created in 1923.

    From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
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