Turkey offer historic condolences to Armenia over WWI mass killings

Press TV
Thu, 24 Apr 2014 03:01 UTC

© AFP

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Turkey has, for the first time, offered condolences to the descendants of the victims of the mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman troops during the First World War.

In a rare expression of sympathy on the eve of the 99th anniversary of the mass killing of Armenians, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan issued an official statement on Wednesday which was translated into nine different languages, including Armenian.

Using an unprecedented conciliatory language, the Turkish premier called for dialogue between the two countries, and the formation of a commission to probe the incident.

"It is with this hope and belief that we wish that the Armenians who lost their lives in the context of the early 20th century rest in peace, and we convey our condolences to their grandchildren," Erdogan said.

"Having experienced events which had inhumane consequences - such as relocation - during the First World War, should not prevent Turks and Armenians from establishing compassion and mutually humane attitudes towards one another," he added.

Erdogan, however, re-iterated a long-held Turkish position that the incident should be commemorated "without discriminating as to religion or ethnicity."

"Using the events of 1915 as an excuse for hostility against Turkey and turning this issue into a matter of political conflict is inadmissible," he added.

Yerevan claims up to 1.5 million Armenians were systematically killed between 1915 and 1917 when the Ottoman Empire was falling apart.

Ankara categorically rejects the term genocide, saying 500,000 died in fighting and of starvation during World War I.

Turkey closed its border with Armenia in 1993 in a show of support for its regional ally, Azerbaijan, which had a dispute with Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

The region is internationally recognized as an Azeri territory but was seized by Armenia-backed separatists in the 1990s.

Comment: It has taken almost 100 years for Turkey to admit to this dark spot in Turkish history and despite it being a genocide, this is not acknowledged by Ankara. Israel has been a key supporter in not calling it a genocide and certainly not a holocaust, a term which Israel has virtually claimed a patent on.

The forgotten holocaust:

The Armenian Genocide was a systematic extermination that occurred during World War One, mostly in 1915. The killers were Ottoman Turks: agents and soldiers of that government, as well as eager civilians.

The slaughter took place in two phases. First was the wholesale killing of able-bodied Armenian males through massacre and forced labor. Afterward came the deportation of women, children, the elderly and the infirm, on death marches into the Syrian Desert.

All told, perhaps 1.5 million people were killed. The vast majority of these were Armenians, but the Turks also killed large numbers of Assyrian Christians, Greeks, and other minority groups.

In many ways - including that of medical experiments on victims - the Armenian Genocide was the direct forerunner of the Nazi Genocide against the Jews.

© Wikipedia

“Scenes like this were common all over the Armenian provinces, in the spring and summer months of 1915. Death in its several forms—massacre, starvation, exhaustion—destroyed the larger part of the refugees. The Turkish policy was that of extermination under the guise of deportation.”