Turkey’s leader on Tuesday asked President Biden to reverse his declaration on the Armenian genocide, saying it would hurt relations between the two countries and that the US should “look in the mirror” of how it treats Native Americans.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in his first public comment about the 1915 massacre since Biden’s statement on Saturday, that “wrong steps” could damage relations between the US and Turkey.
“The US president has made baseless, unjust and untrue remarks in our geography about the tragic events of a century ago,” Erdogan said after a cabinet meeting. “I hope that the US President will back down from this wrong move as soon as possible.”
Erdogan urged Turkish and Armenian historians to form a commission to investigate the incident.
Biden, in a statement released on Armenian Remembrance Day on Saturday, recognized mass killings during the First World War by Ottoman Turks.
The President stated, “With the arrest of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople by Ottoman authorities on April 24, 1915, one and a half million Armenians were deported, massacred, or killed.
E Radogan accused the US of not intervening to prevent a fight between Azerbaijani troops and Armenian separatists in Nagorno-Karabakh, a conflict being mediated by Russia and France.
He also picked up the history of America.
“If you say genocide, then you need to look and evaluate yourself in the mirror. “Native Americans do not even need to mention them,” Erdogan said, which is clear. “While all these truths are out there, you cannot accuse the Turkish people of genocide.”
The Armenian Genocide took place during World War I and the fighting in the last period of the Ottoman Empire.
Turkish leaders sided with Germany in the war and blamed the Armenians for supporting the Russians, claiming they were a threat to the declining empire.
The bloodshed killed 1.5 million Armenians.
Turkey has admitted that it was killed fighting with Armenian soldiers living in the Ottoman Empire, but participated in an accidental count.
Erdogan said about 150,000 people were killed, claiming it was “exaggerated by adding zeros at the end.”
With post wires
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