ANKARA
Turkey's EU minister on Wednesday spoke of the “common pain” facing both Turks and Armenians over atrocities committed during World War I.
Volkan Bozkir issued a statement following the European Parliament’s decision to label the deaths of Armenians in 1915 as genocide – a claim Turkey refutes and which Bozkir called a “slander.”
Denouncing the parliament’s decision to recall a 1987 resolution on the subject, he said the vote "contradicts historical and legal facts."
He added: "[The] role of parliaments, and in particular that of the European Parliament, which represents millions of Europeans, is not to write history but to provide realistic and lasting solutions to the challenges that we face today in Europe.”
Bozkir also accused the parliament of adopting a “selective standpoint” and disregarding atrocities suffered by Turks during World War I.
While "understanding and sympathizing with the Armenians' remembrance of their pain… is a duty of humanity… it is not acceptable either to exploit the matter for invoking hostility towards Turkey or to make it a matter of political conflict.
“The incidents which occurred during World War I are a common pain for all of us."
He reiterated that Turkey had called for a joint historical commission to study the events of 1915 and said genocide was a legal concept. “Qualifying the events of 1915 as genocide, about which there is no international court decision, is bound to remain as a slander,” he said.
Turkey has acknowledged that the events of 1915 were a great tragedy and that both parties suffered heavy casualties.
Last year, then Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan expressed his condolences to relatives of all Ottoman citizens who lost their lives in 1915.
