Erdogan about Genocide: Turkey ready to ‘pay the price’ if found guilty

Erdogan about Genocide: Turkey ready to ‘pay the price’ if found guilty

PanARMENIAN.Net - Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that Turkey was ready to "pay the price" for mass killings of Armenians that began in 1915 — if, and only if, an “impartial board of historians” agree the dying Ottoman Empire was truly guilty of the crime, the Washington Post reports.

“If the results actually reveal that we have committed a crime, if we have a price to pay, then as Turkey we would assess it and take the required steps,” Erdogan told state-run TRT channel.

“We are saying, ‘If you are sincere on this matter, then come, let’s leave this to historians, let historians study the issue, let’s open our archives,’” Erdogan continued. “We have opened our archive. We have revealed more than one million documents on this. If Armenia also has an archive, then they should open it too."

Erdogan's comments come a few months before the centenary of the Armenian Genocide to be commemorated on April 24.

Just before the 99th anniversary of the killings, he “expressed condolences” for the “inhumane incident”.

The Turkish president's latest comments are unlikely to placate his biggest critics, who would argue that the historical record on the Armenian killings has already been set, The Washington Post notes. Twenty-five countries currently call the 1915 killings Genocide, and many historians already use the term: In fact, the man who coined the word genocide, Raphael Lemkin, was thinking of the killings of Armenians in what is now Turkey when he created it, the publication reminds.

On Twitter, Sarah Leah Whitson, the executive director of Human Rights Watch's Middle East and North Africa Division, called Erdogan's comments "doublespeak."

The Armenian Genocide

The Armenian Genocide (1915-23) was the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I. It was characterized by massacres and deportations, involving forced marches under conditions designed to lead to the death of the deportees, with the total number of deaths reaching 1.5 million.

The majority of Armenian Diaspora communities were formed by the Genocide survivors.

Present-day Turkey denies the fact of the Armenian Genocide, justifying the atrocities as “deportation to secure Armenians”. Only a few Turkish intellectuals, including Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk and scholar Taner Akcam, speak openly about the necessity to recognize this crime against humanity.

The Armenian Genocide was recognized by Uruguay, Russia, France, Lithuania, Italy, 45 U.S. states, Greece, Cyprus, Lebanon, Argentina, Belgium, Austria, Wales, Switzerland, Canada, Poland, Venezuela, Chile, Bolivia, the Vatican, Luxembourg, Brazil, Germany, the Netherlands, Paraguay, Sweden, Venezuela, Slovakia, Syria, Vatican, as well as the European Parliament and the World Council of Churches.

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