TURKISH PM SLAMS INTERNET APOLOGY TO ARMENIA

EuroNews France
December 19, 2008 Friday

The Turkish Prime Minister Reccep Tayyip Erdogan has criticised a
public apology by some 200 Turkish intellectuals for the killing of
ethnic Armenians during World War One. An internet campaign has been
gathering signatures from Turks wanting to offer a personal apology. It
has angered the prime minister. "I don’t accept the campaign that
they have started and I don’t support it," Erdogan said. "I cannot
be part of it. I have not committed a crime. Why should I apologise?"

Turkey and Armenia have been working re-establish diplomatic
ties. Turkish President, Abdullah Gul, recently went to Armenia
in a bid to end 100 years of hostility. The internet campaign does
not use the term genocide, vehemently denied by the Turks. It uses
massacre instead. But nationalists still say it is an act of national
betrayal. Recognition in the West of the term genocide, in relation
to around 1.5 million deaths in Armenia between 1915 and 1917, caused
uproar in Turkey. It does officially accept that many Armenians were
killed during the waning years of the Ottoman empire, but strongly
denies genocide. Eleven thousand people have so far signed the online
petition.