Swedish parliament approved Armenia genocide

Swedish parliament approved on Thursday a resolution that brands the World War One deaths of Anatolian Armenians as genocide.
The resolution including recognition of Armenian allegations was approved with 131 votes against 130. Foreign Relations Commission of the Swedish Parliament discussed the resolution on March 2.
Parliamentarians from the leftist Social Democrat Party, Left Party and Environment Party, who were in favor of the resolution, said the incidents that had occurred in the last years of the Ottoman Empire in 1915 were genocide defending that Turkey had to face its history and admit it.

Some parliamentarians of the rightist parties opposed the resolution saying Swedish Parliament was not an international court.

Mehmet Kaplan, Turkish parliamentarian of the Environment Party, said the resolution could obstruct the recent developments in Turkey and called on the parliamentarians to vote against the resolution.
A US House of Representatives committee approved last week a nonbinding measure condemning killings that took place nearly 100 years ago, in the last days of the Ottoman Empire.
Turkey was infuriated and recalled its ambassador after the announcement.
Swedish television programme Aktuellt reported that the Turkish ambassador in Stockholm would be recalled to Ankara.

The issue of the Armenian massacres is deeply sensitive in Turkey. Turkey strongly rejects the genocide allegations and regards the events as civil strife in wartime which claimed lives of many Turks and Armenians.

Turkey and Armenia signed two protocols on October 10, 2009 to normalize relations between the two countries. The protocols envisage the two countries to establish diplomatic ties and open the border that has been close since 1993. Turkey and Armenia also agreed to take steps to operate a sub-commission on impartial scientific examination of the historical records and archive to define existing problems and formulate recommendations, in which Armenian, Turkish as well as Swiss and other international experts would take part. However, on January 12, 2010, the Constitutional Court of Armenia declared a decision of constitutional conformity on the protocols. Turkey thought the fifth article of Armenian Constitutional Court's verdict regarding the protocols was against the target and basis of the protocols.