Erdogan Vows to Actively Counter Armenia 'Genocide Allegations'
إقرأ هذا الخبر بالعربية
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday Ankara would "actively" challenge a campaign pressuring Turkey to recognize as genocide the mass killings of Armenians in World War I, on the 100th anniversary of the tragedy this year.
"I believe that both the foreign ministry and the relevant institutions will actively counter those allegations," Erdogan told Turkey's ambassadors in a keynote speech, adding that discussions were already under way to detail an action plan.
One of the sessions at the annual ambassadors' conference this week in Ankara focuses on defining a strategy to counter a campaign by Armenia and the Armenian diaspora who want Turkey to recognize the 1915 killings at the hands of the Ottoman security forces as genocide.
Turkey has so far vehemently rejected the claims and says up to 500,000 Armenians died in fighting and of starvation after Armenians sided with invading Russian troops. It claims a comparable number of Turks were also killed.
Last year, Erdogan offered an unprecedented expression of condolence for the massacres when he was prime minister but this was far from satisfying the Armenians, who want the deaths of an estimated 1.5 million people recognized as genocide.
On Tuesday, Erdogan accused Armenia of expending its energy on genocide claims despite Turkey's will to normalize bilateral ties and politicizing the issue by imposing its own "biased" view point.
Turkey and Armenia in 2009 signed protocols to normalize ties, but they have still not been ratified by the national parliaments.
11 January 2015, 02:04
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THE CLOCK DOES NOT START IN 1915 ( Part 2)
Armenians today are screaming, crying, lying, and pounding your kitchen table with their shoes every single day, playing victim. But the facts tell us a different story; a story of persistent propaganda, violent agitation, systematic terrorism, bloody revolts, supreme treason, territorial demands, raids, assassinations, bombings, murders, and more. Armenians took up arms against their own government and killed their Muslim neighbors and fellow Ottoman citizens. What's even worse, they heinously handed over the city of Van that they had cleansed of Muslims to the invading Russian armies and then joined thm in search of more Turks to kill. Turks only defended their home. The homeland security measure the Turks took to mitigate this serious wartime military threat was temporary resettlement (TERESET) of the Armenian insurgents and their supporters.
11 January 2015, 02:07
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THE CLOCK DOES NOT START IN 1915 ( Part 3)
But that is old history. Turks have long since chosen to forgive and forget and forge ahead with hope. Turks built a nation out of the remnants of a collapsed empire and an economy 16th largest in the world today. What did Armenians do in the meantime? They cultivated hatred and vengeance, promoting a bogus genocide. They should blame the Armenian leaders for causing Armenians to undermine a millennium of relatively peaceful cohabitation with Turks in Anatolia. They should hold accountable the Dasnaks, Huncaks, Armenakans, Ramgavars, Nemesis, (and more recently ASALA, JCAG, ARA) and other Armenian terror groups, for sawing discord and polarization in the Ottoman communities and for revolts, terrorism, and treason. Maybe 2015 will provide a forum for civilized debates by honest truth-seekers. Peace.
