Ankara denounces that Israel uses the recognition of the Armenian genocide to cover up its crimes in Gaza and criticizes a decision that it labels as malicious.

The Turkish Executive has lashed out at the Israeli Government’s decision to officially recognize the Armenian genocide, the extermination of the Armenian population at the hands of the former Ottoman Empire during World War I, a historical episode that Ankara has never accepted as genocide.

“The Israeli Government, which systematically oppresses the Palestinian people before the eyes of the entire world and is being tried in the International Court of Justice for genocide against the people of Gaza, wants to cover up its own crimes with the political decision adopted on the events of 1915,” the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs denounced in a statement.

For the Turkish authorities, this resolution is “malicious” and “disregards the legal and historical facts” related to the persecution suffered by the Armenians.

In the note, Ankara emphasizes that the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, “and his accomplices” are under an “arrest warrant” and states that it will continue “working with determination for the end of Israel’s expansionist and destabilizing policies in the region.”

“The Netanyahu government must be held accountable under the law for the crimes it has committed against civilians, especially against the Palestinian people,” the text concludes.

The Israeli cabinet approved this Sunday the proposal of its Foreign Minister, Gideon Saar, to recognize the Armenian genocide for the massacre of 1.5 million Armenians between 1915 and 1918. These events have been considered genocide since 1965 by several dozen countries and by 43 states in the United States, in addition to the Vatican, the European Parliament, the World Council of Churches, and other international institutions.

“It is never too late to do the right thing,” said Saar, who thanked Netanyahu and the rest of the cabinet for their support. “As Jews, and especially as the nation-state of the Jewish people, I believe it is our moral duty to make this decision,” he stated.

Descendants of the Armenians who managed to survive the massacres have been demanding for years that Western powers officially classify these events as genocide, despite pressure from Turkey, an influential member of NATO and a key partner for European countries.

Turkey, as the heir to the Ottoman Empire, admits that massacres of Armenian civilians occurred, but rejects that they constituted a genocide and maintains that the deaths were not due to a systematic extermination plan designed by the Ottoman authorities.