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Turkey vows to actively counter Armenia 'genocide allegations'

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  • Turkey vows to actively counter Armenia 'genocide allegations'

    Global Post
    Jan 6 2015

    Turkey vows to actively counter Armenia 'genocide allegations'


    President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday Ankara would "actively"
    challenge a campaign pressuring Turkey to recognise 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 recognise 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 recognised as genocide.

    On Tuesday, Erdogan accused Armenia of expending its energy on
    genocide claims despite Turkey's will to normalise bilateral ties and
    politicising the issue by imposing its own "biased" view point.

    Turkey and Armenia in 2009 signed protocols to normalise ties, but
    they have still not been ratified by the national parliaments.


    http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/afp/150106/turkey-vows-actively-counter-armenia-genocide-allegations

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