Turkey: Ankara Threatens to Send Illegal Armenians Home

In a fresh blow to the troubled Turkey-Armenia reconciliation efforts, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to expel as many as 100,000 Armenian immigrants from Turkey.

Erdogan's threat has been billed in Armenia as a Turkish response to recent votes in the US congress and Swedish parliament that acknowledged the 1915 Ottoman Turkish killings of Armenians as genocide. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

The Turkish prime minister told the British Broadcasting Corp.'s Turkish Service on March 15 that "if necessary" he would order the deportation of some 100,000 Armenians who reside in Turkey without citizenship, Today's Zaman Newspaper reported.

Erdogan's warning augurs ill for the international push for reconciliation between the two neighbors. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].