Turkey to revise its diaspora concept: FM

ANKARA - Hürriyet Daily News

Ahmet Davutoğlu says Turkish officials will have face-to-face talks with anyone who migrated from Anatolia. DAILY NEWS photo

Turkey renews its rhetoric that it applied within its action plan against Armenian initiatives on the incidents of 1915. Ankara constitutes its action plan on raising awareness in the international arena on overall incidents of the World War I-era in a way that includes what all Ottoman people suffered.

Turkey would change its “concept of diaspora,” Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said. Turkish officials would have face to face talks on joint history with anyone who migrated from Anatolia from whichever religion or sect they were, including Armenians, Greeks and Jews, he said. “They are our diasporas.” Turkey would tell how France and some colonialists had set “riot between us” in that era, he said.

Turkey’s short-term action plan against Armenian resolutions and long-term plans for the upcoming 100th year of the alleged Armenian “genocide” will be an issue during the meetings of Turkish ambassadors, who gathered in Ankara to review Turkey’s foreign policy, a diplomatic source told Hürriyet Daily News Dec. 23. Ankara was also concerned with Armenian initiatives in
the U.S. because of the upcoming presidential elections in that country. Ankara would raise its voice against the bill “all around the world,” Davutoğlu said, adding that Turkey would decide whether to “sharpen or ease” measures against France according to Paris’ attitude.

Parliament scraps friendship group
In a related development, Parliament Speaker Cemil Çiçek said yesterday that the adoption of the denial bill had made the France friendship group in Parliament redundant and announced that its 350-odd members had begun resigning. Çiçek said the stance of French Parliament was “biased, hostile and poisonous” for bilateral relations. “Maintaining friendly relations with such a country has become meaningless and unnecessary. There will be no France friendship group until they make up for their decision,” Çiçek said, stressing that the stance of the Senate, the next legislative stage for the bill, would be crucial. The overwhelming majority of the group’s members belonged to the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).