DON’T ASK ME ABOUT GENOCIDE: TURKISH NGO LEADER LEAVES PRESS CONFERENCE UNFINISHED

Tert.am
30.04.10

Salih Yuge, a Turkish political figure and President of Youth Union
Association non-governmental organization, currently in Armenia,
left a press conference today untimely due to questions over the
Armenian Genocide.

With the press conference yet to begin Yuge informed the journalists
he would not answer to any question pertaining to Genocide and that
he was in Armenia as a head of the NGO to establish a dialogue between
the Armenian and Turkish societies.

"I would like to inform you from the very beginning not to ask
questions about Genocide, if you do ask anyway, they will go
unanswered," said Yuge.

Anyway, all the questions the Armenian journalists posed related to
the Armenian Genocide in the break up of the Ottoman Empire in 1915.

Yuge was answering them by saying that the history should be left
to historians.

"We are always ready for dialogue, and it does not depend on historical
and political circumstances," said Yuge.

Asked whether his decision not to answer to questions on the Armenian
Genocide meant "we should forget about the past," Yuge said that
political figures do their job, historians and NGOs, in turn, doing
theirs as what pertains to the issue.

But when the Armenian journalist kept on posing questions about the
Genocide, Yuge, saying that they had agreed with the administration of
the press club, hosting the press conference, to exclude such questions
from the agenda, he did not consider it expedient to continue the
press conference and left the hall.