'Turkiye will never accept such efforts to politicize any human tragedy'

ANKARA

​​​​​​​Turkiye will never accept such efforts to politicize any human tragedy, Turkiye's Communications Director said Sunday regarding the 1915 events.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has taken every possible step to recognize the painful memories in history, Fahrettin Altun said on Twitter.
"He (Erdogan) has also fought every effort to shamelessly politicize any human tragedy. We will never accept such efforts and will always look toward building peace in our region," Altun said.

"Our common and honorable history with its happy as well as painful memories must not be the source of fake political crises but the basis of building our common future," he said, adding that they have been committed to this vision and are working with Armenia to normalize relations.

Noting that pain has a color, religion, or nation, he said: "Those who repeatedly politicize our common pain are after scoring cheap and shortsighted political gains. We will not let them!"

The 1915 events and what transpired afterwards is yet another "sad episode of pain" and suffering experienced by peoples in a war conducted by imperialists vying for power and territorial expansion, he added.

Stressing that the I. World War inflicted the most pain on societies that were attacked by "imperialist European powers," he said the "unspeakable massacres and crimes" committed in the Balkans during the war is an important proof of this fact.

These nations systematically denied the rights of their minorities, he said. Their "provocations and sabotage efforts" against the multiethnic and multicultural diversity in the Ottoman Empire were part of their strategy to reject the aspirations of their minorities, he added.

"These nations planned to instill hatred among various ethnic and religious groups within the Ottoman Empire but to no avail. Their efforts were meant to create internal divisions to bring down the empire from within," he said.

"One thing is common about the states that accuse our nation of so-called 'genocide': They all incited violence and sponsored terror groups against the Ottoman Empire in its last years," he added.

1915 events

Turkiye's position on the 1915 events remains that the death of Armenians in eastern Anatolia took place when some sided with invading Russians and revolted against Ottoman forces.

Turkiye objects to presenting the 1915 events as "genocide," describing them as a tragedy in which both Turks and Armenians suffered casualties.
Ankara has repeatedly proposed the creation of a joint commission of historians from Turkiye and Armenia under the supervision of international experts to examine the issue.