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  • 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
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