Armenia welcomes Dutch response to Erdogan's denialist remarks

PanARMENIAN.Net - Yerevan welcomes the international reaction against denialist remarks by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the Armenian Genocide, Foreign Ministery spokeswoman Anna Naghdalyan said in a tweet.

The Dutch House of Representatives on Tuesday, June 11 adopted a resolution condemning Erdogan’s April 24 comments concerning the victims of the Armenian Genocide.

Erdogan said back then that the deportation of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century was “appropriate at the time.”

The “deportation of Armenian gangs who were massacring Muslims including women, children and elderly people in the Eastern Anatolia region was the most appropriate act at that time,” Erdogan said. “No group or state has been able to prove their claims on the Armenian issue with archive documents.”

"By adopting this motion, the Netherlands and its parliamentarians once again demonstrated their principal stance on human rights and genocide prevention," Naghdalyan said.

The Dutch parliament in February 2018 passed a motion recognizing as genocide the massacre of as many as 1.5 million Armenians in 1915-1923.

April 24, 1915 is the day when a group of Armenian intellectuals was rounded up and assassinated in Constantinople by the Ottoman government. On April 24, Armenians worldwide commemorated the 104th anniversary of the Genocide which continued until 1923. Some three dozen countries, including the Netherlands, hundreds of local government bodies and international organizations have so far recognized the killings of 1.5 million Armenians as Genocide. Turkey denies to this day.