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Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, left, chats with European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso - Source: Reuters -
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Turkey's prime minister has threatened to expel thousands of
illegal Armenian immigrants after US and Swedish lawmakers passed
votes branding World War I era killings of Armenians by Ottoman
Turks as genocide.
Turkey, a NATO member and candidate to join the European Union,
recalled its ambassadors to Washington and Stockholm after the
non-binding votes and warned they could hurt a fragile effort to
reconcile with Armenia after a century of hostility.
Asked about the votes in an interview with the BBC Turkish service
that was broadcast late on Tuesday, Erdogan said: "There are
currently 170,000 Armenians living in our country.
"Only 70,000 of them are Turkish citizens, but we are tolerating
the remaining 100,000. If necessary, I may have to tell these
100,000 to go back to their country because they are not my
citizens. I don't have to keep them in my country."
Thousands of illegal Armenian immigrants, mostly women from the
impoverished countryside, work as cleaning ladies and in other
low-skilled jobs in Istanbul, where they settled after an
earthquake in their homeland in 1988.
The exact number of Armenian immigrants in Turkey is unknown.
But Turkish-Armenian groups say Turkish politicians inflate
numbers of illegal workers and threaten expulsions whenever
tensions escalate between Ankara and Yerevan.
Erdogan said Armenian immigrants had been allowed to work in Turkey
as a display of our peaceful approach, but we have to get something
in return.
Aris Nalci, an editor at Turkish-Armenian weekly newspaper Agos,
said it was not the first time Erdogan had made such remarks. "We
are not taking it as a serious threat," he said.
Historic accords
Muslim Turkey and Christian Armenia signed historic accords last
year to establish diplomatic ties and open their common
border.
But the deal has yet to be ratified by their respective parliaments
and the governments have accused each other of trying to rewrite
the texts.
Erdogan's comments could further strain the process of
normalising ties that have been burdened by the deportation and
killing of Armenians during the chaotic end of the Ottoman Empire
nearly a century ago.
The deportation threats will also be frowned upon in Europe, which
supported the peace accords with Armenia and said they would help
Ankara's EU bid.
Suat Kiniklioglu, foreign affairs spokesman for the ruling AK
Party, played down Erdogan's words, saying the premier felt the
need to remind the public about Armenians living illegally in
Turkey.
He said Erdogan was not talking about something that would
happen today or tomorrow.
In the interview, Erdogan accused the Armenian Diaspora of pushing
the resolutions in the United States and Sweden and called on
Armenia and other foreign governments to avoid being swayed by
their lobbying.
The US and Swedish governments opposed the non-binding
resolutions, which passed by extremely thin margins.
The issue of the Armenian massacres is deeply sensitive in Turkey,
which accepts that many Christian Armenians were killed by Ottoman
Turks but vehemently denies that up to 1.5 million died and that it
amounted to genocide - a term employed by many Western historians
and some foreign parliaments.
