Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan engaged in historical revisionism regarding the Armenian Genocide by claiming that “Armenian gangs” even killed Greeks in Pontus.

“The research of historical events and the appearance of the truth must be left to these experts of the work,” he said on a speech given on Monday.

As is typical within the Turkish propaganda model, the Turkish president did not mention the fact that the Turkish-perpetrated genocide against Greeks, Armenians and Assyrians had academic consensus.

He also said “many states that are today in the territories of the Balkans were cut off from the country by asymmetric wars that began in this way.”

Of course, Erdoğan does not say that the First Balkan War was a joint effort by the states of Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria to liberate their historical homeland from Turkish-Ottoman occupation.

He then went onto say that “Armenian organisations, strengthened by the economic and political support of the West and the military support of Russia, attacked cities and villages, killing anyone in front of them.”

Although Turkey often emphasises this point, they cannot somehow explain that Genocide against Christians began as early as 1913 against the Ottoman Empire’s Greek minority, a whole year before World War I began.

“In many parts of our country there are many mass graves of Turks who were killed by Armenians, but nowhere will you find a mass grave of Armenians, because there was no such incident,” he said in defiance of academic consensus.

Nothing said by Erdoğan thus far is different from the decades long propaganda model adopted by Turkey.

However, he did add a new detail to Turkish propaganda regarding the genocide.

Erdogan claimed that “Armenian gangs did not hesitate to massacre even Greek Ottoman citizens in the area of Trapezounta (Τραπεζούντα, Turkish: Trabzon), as well as Jews in the area of Hakkâri.”

As has been accustomed though, the Turkish president provided no evidence for his claim.

During the Genocide, Ottoman-Turkish forces killed over three million Christians – about one million Greeks, with nearly a third of them from Pontus alone.