Gul Called On The Countries Which Become A Tool To Armenian Allegations

Turkish Press ^ | 3/22/2005

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ANKARA - ''I launch a call to countries who become a tool of the Armenian allegations: Either you account for what you have done, or prove the allegations,'' Turkish Foreign Minister & Deputy Prime Minister Abdullah Gul said on Tuesday.

Gul addressed his party group meeting as the acting Prime Minister.

Mentioning the so-called Armenian allegations, Gul recalled that Turkish and Armenian peoples lived together for nearly a thousand years and contributed to each others' culture and security within this period.

Gul stated that Armenians worked as high ranking officials and Armenian church has been set up in the Ottoman period, and said: ''Armenian language and religion were preserved and developed. Our Armenian citizens, those who consider the issue objectively, and many historians clearly saw those facts. Despite this, there is an enmity against Turkey.''

''The sorrows and dangers experienced by the elements comprising the Ottoman society during the last period of the Ottoman Empire is another fact of the history. Everybody had difficult times in those years. All those were historical facts,'' Gul noted.

-DIASPORA-

Gul said there were documents and evidences of the sufferings of thousands of Ottoman citizens, and stressed that those who affirmed so-called Armenian allegations were the imperialist circles and chauvinist Armenian nationalists.

''Armenian Diaspora living in the United States and Europe are in good spirits. Since they are minority, they needed a tool to preserve their minority conscience and their power. They needed an issue to exploit. They are also guilty as they do not go to Armenia to help their brothers. They have a comfortable life where they live. They exploit this issue both to strengthen their presence there and to use their minority powers.''

''Unfortunately, several parliaments made wrong decisions. We have shown our reactions to the decisions taken in those parliaments, and we will continue to react,'' Gul stressed.

-GENOCIDE-

Emphasizing that genocide was a crime against humanity, Gul said this was not an ordinary crime that can be imputed to anybody. Gul reminded that Turkey also signed the UN treaty on genocide in 1948.

Noting that provisions pertaining to genocide became a part of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK), Gul said, ''in order to consider an act as genocide, members of an ethnical or religious group should be killed with the aim of eradicating them totally or partially.''

Gul said, ''has something like this happened in our history? If it had happened, so why the Armenian churches still exist? Why there are Armenian citizens in Turkey? ''

Describing the allegations as ''sophistry and slander'', Gul said, ''we are launching a call to the parliaments and countries who become a tool of those allegations: 'if you are able to make such allegation, then either you will account for them, or you will prove the allegations.''

''We have invited everybody and we have opened our achieves. We have invited all the scientists, including the Armenian, French, American and British scientists. The archives in Leningrad, Britain, Paris and Armenia should also be opened,'' Gul emphasized.

''If such a tragedy happened in this country, it has been experienced altogether. Families of all of us had experienced such sorrows,'' Gul stressed.

Gul said the (Turkish) parliament and the government from now on would be involved in further activities on such issues.

[happyathome]

The Turks have always been a bit blind about this. I think they believed that the secular, pro-Western nature of the regime set up by Attaturk basically absolved them from having to face the crimes of the Ottomans. However, the Armenian genocide is impossible to deny. Maybe the recent Euro resistance to letting Turkey into the EU is causing a nationalistic backlash in Anatolia? That and the fact that Islamist parties (who tend to glorify the past - any past) are now legal and active in Turkey.

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Don't forget that under Autoturk, 500,000 Armenians, 500,000 Assyrians and 2 million Iotolin Greeks were snuffed. This to add to the 100,000 Cypriot Greeks and 58,000 Kurds of a more modern day nature.

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