ANKARA (Agence France Presse)–Turkey summoned Switzerland’s ambassador to Ankara on Wednesday to protest at the Swiss parliament’s recognition of the killing of thousands of Armenia’s under the Ottoman empire as genocide.
"Ambassador Kurt Wyss will be informed of the Turkish position," foreign ministry spokesman Huseyin Dirioz said.
Switzerland’s decision on Tuesday was swiftly condemned by Ankara which warned of unspecified "negative consequences" on bilateral relations.
The Armenian Diaspora says that 1.3 million or more Armenia’s were deliberately massacred because of their race and religion in 1915–and long argued that the killing should be recognized as genocide and a forerunner of the Jewish Holocaust.
Turkey has always denied that its leaders deliberately set out to exterminate the Armenia’s although it acknowledges that up to 300,000 Armenia’s died along with large numbers of Turks during World War I.
The French parliament similarly recognized the killings as genocide in 2001–triggering a crisis in relations between Paris and Ankara.
