Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan assured that Turkey will not allow its citizens of Armenian origin to be discriminated against or marginalised, during a message issued on the occasion of 24 April, the date on which Armenia and its diaspora commemorate the Armenian Genocide.
“The security, prosperity and well-being of our Armenian citizens, who enrich the lands of Anatolia with their culture and human relations, continue to be under our protection,” Erdoğan said in a message delivered to Sahak Maşalyan, Patriarch of the Armenian Orthodox Church of Turkey. “We have not and will not allow a single one of our Armenian citizens to be discriminated against, marginalised, or to feel a second-class citizen in our land,” insisted the Turkish leader, who again this year conveyed his condolences for the Ottoman citizens of Armenian origin who died during World War I “as a result of armed conflicts, rebellions, armed gangs and terrorist acts”.
“It is important to approach history under the guidance of wisdom, conscience and science, rather than favouring radical and hateful discourse. Showing empathy without indiscrimination for the incidents etched in our memory as a nation will prevent the sown seeds of hatred from taking root,” he said. “We believe that the way to protect future generations from the spiral of violence and war that haunts the world is to build a future together illuminated by the lessons we have learned from our common pain,” the Turkish president added.
This is not the first time that Erdoğan refers to the “common pain” shared by Turks and Armenians during the fall of the Ottoman Empire in World War I to refer to the so-called Armenian genocide, events in 1915 that Armenia and its diaspora consider a deliberate genocide against Armenians living in Anatolia, claiming that more than one million Ottoman Armenians were killed. Turkey, on the other hand, considerably reduces this figure, claiming that an equal or greater number of Muslim Turks died as a result of famine, epidemics and the political and social chaos resulting from the war.
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Edited and reviewed by:
Pablo Gómez is a specialist in Turkey and has been editor-in-chief of Hispanatolia since 2011. He has been analysing current affairs and geopolitics in Turkey and the surrounding region since 2006.
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