On the 111th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, the Kurdistan National Congress (KNK) called on all relevant parties and bodies to recognize it, and stressed that the Republic of Turkey’s failure to recognize this massacre, as the successor to the Ottoman Empire, means that it is complicit in it.
The Executive Council of the Kurdistan National Congress issued a statement on Friday, on the 111th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, which included,
“In 1915, the Ottoman Empire and its allies committed a major genocide against the Christian peoples living in Mesopotamia and Anatolia. In addition, a large number of Yazidi Kurds lost their lives in this genocide.
The leaders of the Union and Progress Association, the mercenaries of the Special Organization (Special Secret Organization), the Hamidiye Brigades, the Ottoman Army, and officers serving in the Ottoman Army all participated in this genocide, committing a major crime against humanity.
They exterminated the Armenian, Assyrian, Syriac, and Chaldean peoples with the aim of eradicating their history and culture. This genocide is considered an undeniable crime against humanity. The clearest and most tangible evidence of this is the killing of more than one and a half million people. Ottoman state population records confirm this fact.
More than half a million Assyrians, Syriacs, and Chaldeans, as well as more than one million Armenians were brutally killed in various places and different ways.
Under the deportation law, hundreds of thousands of people were expelled from their homes. Tens of thousands, mostly young girls and women, were forcibly converted to Islam and forced into inhumane marriages.
Thousands of villages, monasteries, schools, libraries, and factories were destroyed. Unknown amounts of property and wealth were looted and seized. The killing of Assyrian, Syriac, Chaldean, and Armenian peoples and the destruction of their homes and cultural and historical heritage were deemed permissible, and ethnic and religious cleansing was carried out under the guise of “jihad” and the issuance of orders.
The Ottoman Empire occupied and plundered the lands of Mesopotamia and Anatolia for centuries, and in 1915, it committed genocide against peoples; the wounds of this genocide continue to bleed to this day.
This trauma inflicted upon these peoples has, over the course of 111 years, transformed into an ongoing tragedy for new generations, burdened with bitter and deeply painful memories.
111 years after this ethnic cleansing, the Republic of Turkey’s failure, as the successor to the Ottoman Empire, to recognize this massacre makes it complicit in this crime, which constitutes a continuation of it in another form.
On the 111th anniversary of the ethnic cleansing, we call upon the Republic of Turkey to recognize this genocide and fulfill its responsibilities accordingly.
As the Kurdistan National Congress (KNK), we reiterate our strongest condemnation of the ethnic cleansing perpetrated in 1915 and demand that all relevant parties and bodies recognize this genocide.
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