TOP ADVISER TO TURKISH PM ETYEN MAHCUPYAN DISMISSED ‘BECAUSE OF AGE’ AFTER GENOCIDE REMARKS

13:51, 16 Apr 2015
Siranush Ghazanchyan

Top adviser to Turkish Prime Minister, ethnic Armenian Etyen Mahcupyan
has been dismissed, the TurkishHurriyet reported. It said, however,
that Mahcupyan left office automatically on March 9 because of his age.

The move comes after Mahcupyan said that there was no other way of
viewing the incidents of 1915 other than “genocide.”

EU Minister Volkan Bozkır earlier expressed unease over remarks by
Prime Ministerial adviser Etyen Mahcupyan that it was impossible to
say that Armenians were not subjected to a genocide in 1915.

Mahcupyan’s description “was not appropriate for his title of adviser,”
Bozkır said on April 16 during a televised interview.

But the remarks are to “each their own,” he said, noting that Mahcupyan
would likely reconsider his remarks.

“If accepting that what happened in Bosnia and Africa were genocides,
it is impossible not to call what happened to Armenians in 1915
genocide, too,” Mahcupyan said in an interview with news website
Karar.com.

Commenting on Pope Francis’ remarks on April 12 describing 1915 as
“the first genocide of the 20th century,” Mahcupyan said the Vatican
had “thrown off a 100-year-old psychological burden.”

Mahcupyan, who became the ever first Armenian-origin chief adviser
to a Turkish prime minister, said that what actually needed to be
questioned was the 100-year resistance to using the term.