Dutch political parties scrap candidates who deny WWI massacre of Armenians was genocide
The Associated Press
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands The two largest Dutch political parties have scrapped ethnic Turkish parliamentary candidates who refuse to acknowledge the mass killings of Armenians during World War I amounted to genocide.
The candidates include Ayhan Tonca of the governing Christian Democrat Party. Tonca is one of the country's most prominent Muslim politicians and is chairman of an umbrella organization of Islamic groups known as CMO.
The Christian Democrats also retracted the candidacy of Osman Elmaci, and the opposition Labor Party ended the candidacy of Erdinc Sacan.
In their platforms ahead of next month's election, both parties have staked out positions on Turkey's possible entry into the European Union, a divisive issue around the continent.
The Labor Party has adopted a view shared by others in Europe that Turkey should be required to recognize the killings as genocide before it can be allowed to join the EU.
Whether the mass killings of a million or more Armenians in the last years of the Ottoman Empire nearly a century ago constituted a genocide has been the subject of academic and political debate.
The Netherlands and most European governments consider it a genocide. Turkey and many Turkish scholars, and others, vehemently deny the deaths resulted from systematic slaughter, saying the death toll of 1.5 million is wildly inflated and that both Armenians and Turks were killed in fighting during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
The U.S. government has shied away from using the word "genocide" to define the killings.
Earlier this month the European Parliament voted for the inclusion of a clause requiring Turkey "to recognize the Armenian genocide as a condition for its EU accession."
Though their parliamentary runs were ended, the three politicians were not expelled from their parties. None could immediately be reached for comment Wednesday.
Tonca and Elmaci had initially said they would assent to the Christian Democrat Party's official position acknowledging the killings as genocide,but both later denied they shared that view in an interview with a Turkish newspaper.
"As a result of an interview in the Turkish paper Sabah, a discussion took place between the party and Mr. Elmaci and Mr. Tonca," the CDA said in a statement. "In this discussion it was determined that there is a structural difference of opinion over recognition of the Armenian Genocide."
It said the men would not be candidates and thanked them for their services.
Labor's Sacan had never accepted his party's position accepting the
genocide as a fact.
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