Dutch parliament slams Erdogan’s comments on Armenian Genocide

PanARMENIAN.Net - The Dutch House of Representatives on Tuesday, June 11 adopted a resolution condemning Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s April 24 comments concerning the victims of the Armenian Genocide, lawmaker Alen Simonyan said in a Facebook post.

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.”

The document adopted by the parliament of the Netherlands obliges the government to inform the Turkish authorities on the lawmakers stance.

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.