Ankara: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Monday that US President Joe Biden’s decision to recognize the Armenian genocide is regretful, adding that these issues “should be decided by historians, not politicians.”
“Biden used an unfair phrase, not based on history, in relation to events that took place over a century ago. We were deeply saddened. These issues should be decided by historians, not politicians. But from the opposite side, there is no answer. The West shows hypocrisy about the Armenian issue and towards terrorist organizations,” the Turkish president said in a televised address.
According to Erdogan, “Armenian gangs did not fight the regular military but were killing innocent people” in the Ottoman Empire during the First World War.
“Our archives contain more than a million documents. Therefore, I speak based on documents. What does Biden rely on, I do not know. In the US or in Europe, if there are such archives, are they ready to open them? We are ready, come and study,” Erdogan added.
On April 24, the Armenian Remembrance Day, Biden said that “the American people honor all those Armenians who perished in the genocide that began 106 years ago today.” Turkey condemned the designation and called on Biden to reverse it for the sake of promoting the peaceful coexistence of peoples in the region. The president of Azerbaijan, Turkey’s close regional ally, said that labeling wartime Armenian massacres as a genocide was a historic mistake.
