Cemil Cicek, speaker of the Turkish parliament, expressed concern Nov. 17 that the international community would begin a smear campaign in 2015 against Turkey, marking the centennial of the lost Armenian lives at the end of the Ottoman Empire, Al-Monitor reports.
“While Turkey has accepted the 1915 events as a “massacre,” it contradicts the international community that calls it a “genocide.” Since the 1980s, Turkey has also been lobbying foreign parliaments, and especially the US Congress, not to make any binding or nonbinding decision declaring it a genocide,” the agency writes.
Previous Turkish governments, before the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power over a decade ago, argued all along that foreign parliaments are no place to judge history, and that it should be the job of historians to debate in all ways this bloody tragedy in history.
“That is why we tell to the parliaments, ‘You are not an international court or a scientific committee. You must focus on building todays and tomorrows.’ I still hold the same point,” Cicek said. “The Turkish parliament should also make an effort in the same direction.”
