The vote, passed narrowly by just one vote in the Swedish Riksdag, led to immediate and furious reaction in Ankara, with Turkey recalling its ambassador to Stockholm and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan cancelling a planned visit to Sweden.
The condemnation of the 1915 events was mainly driven by Sweden’s centre-left opposition, which Erdogan accused of exploiting the issue in order to make political gains ahead of Sweden’s general elections in September.
However, centre-left parties were not alone in passing the resolution. They were joined by four MPs from the governing centre-right coalition and these votes proved decisive in securing the result. MPs who supported the vote described it as an important symbolic victory for Swedes of Armenian descent.
The Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU) welcomed the vote, praising Sweden as a country which "often strives to reconcile effectiveness and ethics in its relations with the world".
"We applaud it for its principled and constructive stance on the genocide. The truth will set us all free," said Nicolas Tavitian of AGBU Europe.
Big mistake, says Bildt
But Sweden’s centre-right foreign minister Carl Bildt, one of the EU’s global diplomacy heavyweights, said he was "heavily disappointed" with the Riksdag’s decision.
"It is wrong to politicise history this way," he argued, blaming the outcome on power games among Sweden’s coalition of leftist parties. Bildt believes the rising influence of the formerly communist Left party (Vänsterpartiet) was behind the vote.
The move is likely to prove a significant setback to the previously excellent diplomatic relations between the two countries. Sweden has been one of the most vocal supporters of Turkish EU membership in recent years, though Bildt argued that this remained the case despite yesterday’s vote.
A December 2008 initiative by Turkish intellectuals apologised to Armenia for the mass killings (EurActiv 18/12/08). Despite the fact that the petition stopped short of using the word genocide, it was immediately condemned by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The controversy flared up again last week when the foreign affairs committee of the US House of Representatives approved a non-binding measure condemning the killings as genocide.
