Turkey’s Erdogan dismisses foreign ‘lobbying efforts’ on Armenian killings
AP Worldstream
May 17, 2005
Turkey’s prime minister said Tuesday that his country rejects
outsiders’ “lobbying efforts” on last century’s mass killing of
Armenians by Ottoman Turks, and said other countries should open
their archives on the period.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s comments at a summit of the 46-nation Council of
Europe came after Armenia’s president, speaking at the same gathering
Monday, underlined his country’s call for the killings to be recognized
as genocide.
Erdogan, whose country is under pressure to address the issue as it
prepares to open membership talks with the European Union, referred to
“the issue of the so-called genocide.”
“We say that we do not appreciate any lobbying efforts that do
not find their basis in documents,” he said, speaking through an
interpreter. “By taking action in other parliaments, this will not
have positive effects on the issue.”
Several countries, including Argentina, Canada, France and Russia,
have declared the killings a genocide, and there is strong pressure
from Armenians worldwide for the U.S. Congress to recognize the
killings as genocide as well.
Armenians say some 1.5 million of their people were killed as the
Ottoman Empire forced them from eastern Turkey between 1915 and 1923
in a deliberate campaign of genocide. Turkey says the death count is
inflated and insists that Armenians were killed or displaced in the
civil unrest during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
Erdogan recently sent a letter to Armenian President Robert Kocharian
inviting Armenia to set up a committee of historians to jointly
research the killings.
“We are opening up our military archives and we ask for Armenia to do
the same _ open their archives,” he said Tuesday. “If other countries
have pertinent information, let them open their archives.”