Erdogan: Armenian ‘Genocide’ Campaign Seeks To Attack Turkey, Not Un

ERDOGAN: ARMENIAN ‘GENOCIDE’ CAMPAIGN SEEKS TO ATTACK TURKEY, NOT UNCOVER TRUTH

Today’s Zaman, Turkey
March 19 2015

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday slammed Armenian efforts
for greater international recognition of an alleged genocide of
Armenians at the hands of the former Ottoman Empire a century ago,
urging the Armenian diaspora to prove its claims by bringing out
documents to support them.

Addressing a meeting in Ä°stanbul, Erdogan said the Armenian campaign
to promote the genocide claims was meant to attack Turkey, not to
uncover the truth or commemorate the suffering of Armenians, adding
that Turkey has nothing it cannot account for regarding what happened
a century ago.

Turkey categorically denies Armenian claims that 1.5 million Ottoman
Armenians were victims of a genocide campaign during World War I,
insisting that both Turks and Armenians were victims of civil strife
during the period of the war. The dispute has become a heated issue
as the centennial of the alleged genocide approaches. Armenians say
April 24, 1915, when a group of Armenian intellectuals was rounded
up in Ä°stanbul, is the date when the alleged genocide campaign got
under way and they commemorate the date every year as the anniversary
of a genocide.

Erdogan said there “might have been tragedies in the time of war,”
but added that thousands of Turks were also killed by the Armenians
during the civil strife.

“Oh Armenian diaspora, Oh Armenian administration, our archives are
here. We have hundreds of thousands of documents, over a million
documents. How many documents do you have? Bring your documents, and
we will task the historians, our historians, political scientists,
even archeologists and lawyers [with studying them]… let’s seek the
truth here,” he said, adding that “anti-Turkey campaigns carried out
by paying money and forming lobbies will not earn you anything.”

Erdogan’s remarks came soon after more than 40 members of the US House
of Representatives introduced a draft resolution in the US Congress
describing the killings of the Armenians a century ago as genocide.

The parliaments of several countries have already passed resolutions
supporting the Armenian claims in recent years.

“The truth should be sought in the archives,” Erdogan said, accusing
the Armenians of not responding to Turkey’s call to examine the
archives and uncover the truth of the history.

“Our calls are not answered because the aim is not to explore the
facts. We have nothing we cannot account for,” he said. “Instead,
if we examine what our nation had to go through over the past 100-150
years, we would find far more [suffering] than the Armenians allegedly
went through,” he said.

‘World War I not yet over’

Erdogan also slammed the post-World War I order in the Middle East
established by the Sykes-Picot agreement, a secret deal between
Britain and France that defined their proposed spheres of influence
in the Middle East.

Erdogan said the Sykes-Picot agreement, which brought nothing but
“tears and oppression,” defined boundaries in order to deepen, not to

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress