Turkey's FM welcomes "US common sense" over Armenia bill

Turkey has long been facing a systematic campaign of defamation carried out by Armenian lobbying groups.

Thursday, 23 December 2010

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Thursday expressed pleasure that the resolution on the Armenian allegations regarding the incidents of 1915 had not been included in the official daily agenda of the U.S. House of Representatives.

"We are pleased that a development that would put a blow on balances in the Caucasus, Turkish-American and Turkish-Armenian relations did not happen in the U.S. Congress. Common sense prevailed yesterday," Davutoglu told reporters.

Davutoglu said, "We closely monitored the developments. We thank U.S. administration, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and other executives for their efforts. This incident once again proved that assessment of historical incidents by political authorities is principally wrong. Turkey's stance on this issue is fairly apparent. We are ready for every kind of confrontation and every kind of study. However, we can not accept use of those historical incidents as blackmailing towards our country and it is not true to revive historical issues like the sword of Damocles swinging on Turkish-U.S. relations."

"We would wish to endeavor for positive diplomatic efforts with the U.S. executives in the past 3-4 days instead of trying to prevent a possible crisis. It is obvious that such kind of initiatives lead to waste of energy and time. It is time for dialogue, meetings and agreement. We are obliged to intensify efforts reciprocally and prevail peace and dialogue in the whole world. I would like to underscore once again that efforts to put pressure on Turkey via representatives who are unaware of the issue would remain inconclusive and harm Turkish-U.S. and Turkish-Armenian relations. We hope that such initiatives would not be brought to the agenda in the coming days," he said.

The resolution "H. Res. 252" --labeling the 1915 incidents which took place shortly before the fall of the Ottoman Empire as "genocide" -- was approved by the Foreign Relations Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives by a vote of 23 against 22 last March.

The adoption of the resolution caused wide reaction in Turkey, which recalled its ambassador, who returned to Washington, D.C. a month later.

Turkey has long been facing a systematic campaign of defamation carried out by Armenian lobbying groups. The Armenian diaspora has lately increased its organized activities throughout the world for the recognition of their unfounded allegations in regard to the events of 1915 as "genocide" by national and local parliaments.

Turkey is of the view that parliaments and other political institutions are not the appropriate fora to debate and pass judgments on disputed periods of history. Past events and controversial periods of history should be left to the historians for their dispassionate study and evaluation. In order to shed light on such a disputed historical issue, the Turkish Government has opened all its archives, including military records to all researchers. Furthermore, Turkey encourages historians, scholars and researchers to freely examine and discuss this historical issue in every platform. In order to have an objective and complete analysis of the Turkish-Armenian relations, the Armenian archives should also be opened and made available to the public and researchers. For reaching the truth, historians must have access to all related archives.

In this respect, in 2005, Turkey has officially proposed to the Government of Armenia the establishment of a joint commission of history composed of historians and other experts from both sides to study together the events of 1915 not only in the archives of Turkey and Armenia but also in the archives of all relevant third countries and to share their findings with the public. Unfortunately, Armenia has not responded positively to this initiative, yet. Turkey's proposal is still on the table.

If accepted by Armenia, Turkey's proposal for setting up a Joint Commission of History would also serve as a confidence-building measure paving the way for a dialogue towards normalization of relations between the two countries.

Source: World Bulletin.
Link: http://www.worldbulletin.net/news_detail.php?id=67733.