Yahoo – AFP,
20 April 2015
Ankara (AFP) - Turkey shares the pain of Armenians whose parents or grandparents were killed under the Ottoman Empire during World War I, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Monday.
Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu delivers a speech on April 15, 2015 in Ankara (AFP Photo/Adem Altan) |
Ankara (AFP) - Turkey shares the pain of Armenians whose parents or grandparents were killed under the Ottoman Empire during World War I, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Monday.
"We
once again respectfully remember and share the pain of grandchildren and
children of Ottoman Armenians who lost their lives during deportation in
1915," Davutoglu said in a statement released by his office to mark the
100th anniversary of the tragedy.
Armenians
consider the mass killings a genocide, a term Turkey has consistently refused
to recognise.
Davutoglu
made clear once more in the statement that Turkey did not accept the word
genocide to describe the killings.
"To
reduce everything to a single word, to put responsibility through
generalisations on the Turkish nation alone... is legally and morally
problematic," he said.
The
relatively conciliatory tone of the statement contrasts with the furious
reaction from Ankara early this month when Pope Francis used the term genocide
to describe the killings.
Davutoglu
had on April 12 lashed out at Francis for what he described as
"inappropriate" and "one-sided" comments on the issue.
The latest
statement said the "Ottoman Armenians" would be remembered at a
service to be held at the Armenian patriarchate in Istanbul on April 24.
Davutoglu
said Turks and Armenians should "heal their wounds from that century and
reestablish their human relations".
The
statement builds on an expression of condolences issued by President Recep
Tayyip Erdogan while he was still prime minister in April 2014.
In that
statement, Erdogan described the killings as "our shared pain" in
what was the weightiest statement yet from a Turkish leader on the issue.
Armenia and
Armenians in the diaspora say 1.5 million of their forefathers were killed by
Ottoman forces in a targeted campaign ordered by the military leadership of the
Ottoman empire to eradicate the Armenian people from Anatolia in what is now
eastern Turkey.
Turkey says
hundreds of thousands of Turks and Armenians lost their lives as Ottoman forces
battled the Russian Empire for control of eastern Anatolia during World War I.
The
controversy has long prevented the establishment of normal trade and diplomatic
relations between Turkey and neighbouring Armenia.
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