The Turkish Foreign Ministry has harshly criticized the countries that refer to the mass killings of Armenians in the final days of the Ottoman Empire as “genocide,” accusing them of “distorting historical facts.”
April 24 is marked as Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, when the victims of a forced deportation by the Ottoman Empire during World War I are commemorated.
Joe Biden in 2021 became the first US president to use the word “genocide” to describe the campaign of violence. The White House had previously avoided using the term for fear of alienating Turkey, a NATO ally that categorically denies the commission of a genocide.
Biden repeated the term Wednesday in a statement that recounted the start of the “campaign of cruelty” on April 24, 1915, with the arrest of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders.
“Today, we pause to remember the lives lost during the Meds Yeghern—the Armenian genocide—and renew our pledge to never forget,” he said in his statement, which drew an angry reaction from Turkey.
The foreign ministry did not point to the US in its statement but said it rejects “one-sided” statements about the events of 1915, claiming that they have been made to satisfy certain radical circles.
Ankara agrees that many Armenians died in ethnic fighting and the deportation process between 1915 and 1917 during World War I, putting its estimate at 500,000 casualties. Armenia, meanwhile, says 1.5 million died in the process – including the march to Syria – in what it calls a genocide. The accusation is denied by Turkey, who says there was no systematic attempt to kill all Armenians.
It said such statements not only distort historical facts but are also contrary to international law, citing a European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) decision, which said the events of 1915 are a legitimate subject of debate.
In 2015 the ECtHR ruled that Turkish politician Doğu Perinçek should not have been prosecuted by Switzerland for denying that the mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turkey in 1915 was genocide. The court ruled that Perinçek’s conviction in 2007 after a series of press conferences in Switzerland was an infringement on his right to free speech.
The Strasbourg-based court also said at the time that it did not have the authority to rule on whether the Armenian killings were a genocide or not as it was a job for international criminal courts.
“These biased and partial statements about history undermine the reconciliation efforts between the two communities, and encourage radical groups to commit hate crimes,” the ministry added while calling on all parties to support Turkey’s proposal for a Joint Historical Commission and the process of normalization that has been initiated with Armenia.
Turkey and Armenia have never established formal diplomatic relations, and their shared border has been closed since 1993, when Turkey closed it as a display of solidarity with Azerbaijan, which was engaged in a conflict with Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
All efforts at normalization of relations have so far failed.
