Turkish politicians unite against Biden’s Armenian message

Main opposition leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, of the centre-left Republican People’s Party (CHP), said in a written statement that Biden using the word “genocide” in the annual presidential message he will give on the memorial day on April 24, which marks the beginning of the deportation procedures for Ottoman Istanbul’s Armenian intellectuals in 1915, would be “unrighteous, uncalled for, and unjust”.

“The CHP is against pitting painful events against one another and abusing them for politics. We as politicians must prioritise learning from past pains, and making sure they don’t happen again,” the opposition leader said. “States people make history, scientists write it. Persons in positions of authority taking on the act of writing down history is unacceptable.”

Kılıçdaroğlu also warned against “irreparable damage” to the strategic relations between United States and Turkey, and called on Biden to “support steps to bring peace to the Southern Caucasus”.

Meral Akşener, leader of the smaller centre-right opposition Good Party (İYİP) also issued a statement voicing similar sentiments, where she said the fragile state of U.S.-Turkey relations puts a responsibility on the leaders of both countries.

“Prioritising short-term calculations will harm relations between allies and the peoples, and implicate future generations to come,” Akşener said.

“Governments are temporary, but in the end, the relations between Turkey and the United States, and the friendship between the Turkish and American peoples are permanent,” added the opposition leader. “As such, it is my most sincere expectation that (Biden refrains from) pursuing a thesis of so-called genocide and taking steps to cause an irreparable break between our peoples.”

“President Biden is not sitting on a senator’s seat anymore,” continued Akşener. “I hope that he will consider regional and even global implications of the matter.”

Back in 1987, when Biden was a senator, he had sponsored a bill titled Genocide Convention Implementation Act, which established the criminal offence of genocide in U.S. law.

During his term as vice president, Biden also attended the centennial memorial of the Armenian Genocide at the Washington National Cathedral in 2015, together with Armenia’s then-president Serzh Sarkisian and then-foreign minister Edward Nalbandian. The memorial was titled “The Holy Martyrs of the Armenian Genocide: A Prayer for Justice and Peace”.

Archbishop Sahak Mashalian, head of the Armenian Patriarchate in Turkey, said “the suffering of our people and the suffering of our ancestors are instrumentalized by some countries for everyday political purposes”, state-run Anadolu Agency reported on Friday.

Mashalian spoke against “the tension caused by the usage of the issue in parliamentary agendas for decades”, saying global efforts for genocide recognition provoked hostile feelings and delayed peace.

Turkey and Armenia are destined to co-exist as neighbours, Mashalian said, considering the location and history of the two countries.

According to the archbishop, “Dear Recep Tayyip Erdoğan” has been “the only top state official in the history of the Turkish republic” to share “our pain and a certain respect for the children of our nation that lost their lives in exile”.

Turkish Presidential Communications Director Fahrettin Altun shared in a tweet Mashalian’s message, with the caption, “I offer my gratitude to the Patriarch of Turkey’s Armenians, Esteemed Sahak Mashalian, for expressing that past grievances must not be made into tools for daily political agendas.”

Türkiye Ermenileri Patriği sayın Sahak Maşalyan’a geçmişte yaşanan acıların gündelik politik amaçlara alet edilmemesi gerektiğini ifade ettiği için şükranlarımı sunuyorum.

Bu topraklarda barış ve huzur içerisinde kardeşçe yaşamaya devam edeceğiz.

Biz birlikte Türkiye’yiz. https://t.co/06VxBiGpt0 — Fahrettin Altun (@fahrettinaltun) April 23, 2021

In an earlier tweet, Altun had announced an exhibition titled “Martyr Diplomats”, which will open for visits on Saturday in Los Angeles and Istanbul simultaneously.

Los Angeles was chosen for the exhibition because it was where Mehmet Baydar and Bahadır Demir, two Turkish diplomats, were assassinated by Gourgen Yanikian in 1973. Yanikian is said to have inspired the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA), whose assassinations and bombings resulted in the death of 46 people, at least 36 of whom were Turkish diplomats.

“We condemn Armenian terrorist organisations,” Altun said in his message.

The communications director had issued a statement earlier in the week, saying, “So-called ‘Armenian Genocide’ allegation is a nonfactual slander, engorging itself solely on political accounts.”

Majority of scholars agree that the mass deportations and deaths of Armenians and other Christian minorities from Anatolia between 1915 and 1923 constituted a genocide, with 1.5 million victims. Officially, Turkey acknowledges the deaths, but rejects that they were the result of a coordinated and systemic campaign and maintains the actual number of deaths was much lower.

Ahval News