Turkey Parliamentarians Argue Over Who Killed Armenians
4/1/2013
ANKARA, Turkey (A.W.)—The Grand National Assembly of Turkey (TGNA) witnessed an argument between parliamentarians over who killed the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in 1915, Turkish newspapers reported on Jan. 3.
“Your history is a history of massacres. You know very well how the grandparents of those who are struggling today were killed,” said parliamentarian Sirri Sakik (Mush), from the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), according to the Turkish newspaper Radikal.
In the ensuing argument, parliamentarian Yusuf Halacoglu, from the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), addressed Kurdish members of the National Assembly asking, “Then tell me frankly—and I, in turn, will show you all the documents—who killed the Armenians?”
Halacoglu is the former director of the Turkish Historical Society.
Other members of parliament pointed to massacres committed against Kurds, while parliamentarians from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) argued that it is the Kurdish guerilla group PKK that has committed atrocities in Turkey, and that Turkish history is genocide-free.
Nurettin Canikli, head of AKP parliamentary group said, “There is no massacre, genocide, and assimilation in this nation’s history.”
