ARMENIA FOCUSED ON HAMPERING BILATERAL RELATIONS, SAYS TURKISH PARLIAMENT SPEAKER
Journal of Turkish Weekly
March 25 2015
25 March 2015
Turkish Parliament Speaker Cemil Cicek has said that even though
Turkey is “approaching Armenia with candidness in an effort to resolve
the 1915 incidents,” Yerevan focuses on the events to hamper the
normalization process between the two countries.
“We see that Armenia chooses to focus on intensifying its anti-Turkey
events organized within the concept of the centenary of the 1915
incidents, rather than carrying the normalization process further on
the path towards April 24. This is despite all the well-intentioned
initiatives coming from our country,” said Cicek during a speech titled
“Turkey-U.S. Relations in the 21st Century” at the Center for Strategic
and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington on March 24.
He said there was “no change” in Turkey’s stance toward normalizing
relations with Armenia, adding there was still hope for it to improve.
“The condolences messages and statements about these issues by our
president and prime minister are important steps taken in this way,”
Cicek said, referring to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s message
issued in April 2014.
Cicek also said Turkey had opened all of its archives to researchers
and wished that the Armenians would do the same.
“We want the exploitation [of the subject] to be removed and for
peace to be supported by enlightening historical facts. We are ready
to give support to any kind of research,” he added.
The year 2015 marks the centenary of the 1915 Ottoman Armenian mass
killings during World War I.
While Armenia and a number of other countries and international
organizations legally refer to the incidents as genocide, the Turkish
state does not accept the term.
The Turkish Foreign Ministry’s view of the issue, published on its
website, states that Turkey “does not deny the suffering of Armenians,
including the loss of many innocent lives, during the First World War.
However, a greater numbers of Turks died or were killed in the
years leading up to and during the War. Without belittling the
tragic consequences for any group, Turkey objects to the one-sided
presentation of this tragedy as genocide by one group against another.”
25 March 2015