Erdogan strikes back at US in Armenian genocide row
TURKEY’S president has said he will recognise the mass killing of Native Americans by European settlers as genocide in a tit-for-tat move against a US Congress resolution.
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan hit out at Congress for a recent bill that highlighted the 1915 Armenian genocide at the hands of the Ottoman authorities.
“We should oppose [the US] by reciprocating such decisions in parliament. And that is what we will do,” Mr Erdoğan said, speaking on the progovernment A Haber news channel.
“Can we speak about America without mentioning [Native Americans]? It is a shameful moment in US history.”
Around 1.5 million ethnic Armenians were killed by modern Turkey’s predecessor, the Ottoman Empire, in the early 20th century.
Turkey accepts that many were killed in clashes with Ottoman forces during the First World War, but contests the figures and denies that the killings were systematic.
In the US, scholars, activists and indigenous communities have been writing and teaching about the slaughter of Native American people since the 19th century. The US legislation is seen as largely symbolic, but the timing and the subject will be viewed by Ankara as a deliberate provocation.
Relations between the two Nato allies have been strained over issues including Turkey’s purchase of Russian missile systems and its incursion into Kurdish-held areas of northern Syria.
Seeking to placate Turkey, Mr Trump’s administration said yesterday that it does not consider the mass killings of Armenians in 1915 to be genocide.
“The position of the administration has not changed” after the votes by Congress, Morgan Ortagus, the state department spokesman, said in a terse statement. “Our views are reflected in the president’s definitive statement on this issue from last April.”