In the run-up to the election, Johan Vande Lanotte, leader of the Socialist Party – Different, refused to acknowledge the Turkish genocide on its Armenian minority in the midst of a controversy about the strong allegiance to Turkey expressed in Turkish at a meeting by a Turkish-Belgian CD&amp;V Senate candidate, Ergün Top, but also in the aftermath of a similar problem aroused during the campaign for the Dutch general election a few months earlier. The position of Yves Leterme (CD&amp;V) on this issue was unclear at first, but he later confided to the Flemish parliament that he does acknowledge the Armenian genocide.