CHP deputy demands DNA tests for President Gul

PanARMENIAN.Net - The dispute between a main opposition deputy and President Abdullah Gul over the latter's ethnic origin took on another dimension with the request of a DNA test from Gul to prove his ethnic background, Hurriyet reports.



Canan Aritman, the Izmir deputy of the Republican People's Party, or CHP, said Gul had Armenian roots, which is why he has not openly rejected the apology campaign carried out by a group of intellectuals. In a counter-statement Gul said his family was 100 percent Muslim and Turk and filed a lawsuit against Aritman.



President Gul announced that his mother's side, the Satoglu family from Kayseri, and his father's side, the Gul family also from Kayseri, are Muslim and Turkish, according to centuries of written genealogy records.



"I respect the ethnic background, different beliefs and family ties of all my citizens and see this as a reality and also the wealth of our country with its imperial history. I also would like to emphasize that all my citizens are equal to one another regardless of any differences. No one has any superiority whatsoever over another one. Everybody has the equal and same rights under the guarantee of our Constitution," Gul said. "I am proud of our country, which has reached this level of understanding."



"Today, ethnic origin does not gain legal and scientific validity through family trees, but through DNA tests," Aritman said in her written statement late Monday. "Birth records during the Ottomans were based on declarations and while recording non-Muslims, the state used to write a Muslim name as the father's name. Thus, nobody can prove their ethic identity through a family tree."



Aritman said it was Gul's prerogative to file a suit against her and that she was not after anyone's DNA results, but in the event of a judicial process, she would have to produce documents and witnesses. She also said she expected the president to say the Turkish nation had not committed any crime of genocide. Many nations owe an apology to our nation, but we do not owe an apology to anybody. "I do not think I have requested a difficult thing. This is the president's constitutional duty. If he does not perform this task, he commits a crime against the Constitution and he should resign," she said.