Hurriyet, turkey
April 16 2015

Turkey’s EU Minister disapproves of remarks by Mahcupyan over 1915

EU Minister Volkan Bozkir has 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,” Bozkir 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.

“The Vatican could have said such a thing long ago, but it did not do
so,” he said.