Turkey threatens to kick out Armenian migrants

Ankara has staunchly refused to accept that the events amount to actions "genocide." But recent parliamentary resolutions in the US and Sweden have urged the Turkish government to accept the terminology.

Ankara retaliated by recalling its ambassador from Washington and by strongly criticising Stockholm.

But in an interview with the BBC on Wednesday, Mr Erdogan went a step further, saying that the resolutions "harm the Armenian people as well ...and things become deadlocked."

He threatened to deport 100,000 Armenian migrants who have no residence or working permits in Turkey.

Mr Erdogan said that out of the 170,000 Armenians living in the country just "70,000 are Turkish citizens.".

"We are turning a blind eye to the remaining 100,000 ...Tomorrow, I may tell these 100,000 to go back to their country, if it becomes necessary," he said.

His Armenian counterpart, Tigran Sarkisian, reacted by saying that such comments "do not help to improve relations between our two states."

Ankara was last year praised by the EU for its "historic" decision to unfreeze diplomatic relations with Yerevan, under an agreement signed in October 2009.

Normalising relations with its neighbours is an important step in Turkey's EU accession bid. The union is also keen for Turkish diplomacy to help pacify the South Caucasus region, a strategic energy corridor.

The Turkish-Armenian agreement is still pending ratification in both parliaments and things seem to have been put on hold for now, however.

During his first visit to Turkey on Monday, enlargement commissioner Stefan Fuele voiced support for the reconciliation efforts and warned against politicising historic events.

"As someone who is coming from former Czechoslovakia, from the Czech Republic, I know that politicising your history is making reconciliation difficult," he was quoted as saying by the AFP.

Turkey applied for EU membership as early as 1987, but has begun accession talks only in 2005. So far it opened negotiations in 12 out of the 35 policy chapters it has to conclude with Brussels before joining.

Unlike other candidate countries, Turkey's negotiations are "open ended," meaning that its membership can still be vetoed by any one EU country at the end of the process.