Turkish Opposition Proposes Deporting Illegal Armenians

As a sort of backlash from Sweden and US congressional panels passing resolutions recognizing the Armenian Genocide, Canan Arıtman, a deputy from Turkey’s largest opposition party, the Republican People’s Party, proposed deporting all Armenian citizens living in the country illegally.

On the matter of these resolutions, Turkey’s parliament convened a closed-door session on March 15, attended by Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu.

According to Turkish daily Radikal, Republican People’s Party and Nationalist Movement Party MPs proposed countering those resolutions quite radically, such as recalling the Armenia-Turkey Protocols from parliament and closing down the American Incirlik Air Base, a key military base for the US.

In another move, Arıtman proposed that all Turkish national deputies who voted in favor of the Armenian Genocide resolution in the Swedish riksdag be deprived of Turkish citizenship, while the Swedish parliamentarians voting for the resolution be denied entry to Turkey.

Davutoğlu, responding to opposition demands to recall the Protocols from parliament, said that those documents are tools to eliminating Turkey’s worldwide image of an irreconciliable state, and they will continue to remain in the parliament.