Turkey’s Prime MinisterAhmet Davutoglu has said “there will be no compromise from Turkish side to political pressure without historical facts,” APA reports quoting Anadolu Agency.
Davutoglu’s remarks came during the joint press conference with Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott on Wednesday in the Turkish capital, Ankara.
Referring to the 1915 incidents, the Turkish premier said: “We hope third parties will be careful dealing with this issue.”
April 24 will mark the centenary of the deaths of Armenians following a rebellion against the Ottoman Empire in 1915.
Armenia and the Armenian diaspora have demanded an apology and compensation for the 1915 incidents and lobbied for the killings to be identified as “genocide.”
The Turkish government has repeatedly proposed creating a joint commission to address the issue with research in all available archives.
The most significant development in normalizing Turkish-Armenian relations came in 2009 with two protocols proposing an impartial examination of the historical record, and the mutual recognition of borders. However, Armenia’s top court ruled that the protocols breached a constitutional clause which “supports the task of achieving international recognition of the 1915 Genocide.”
Five years later, the protocols were withdrawn from consideration by the Armenian parliament.
In 2014, then Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan expressed his condolences to the relatives of all Ottoman citizens who lost their lives in the 1915 events, including Armenians.
In a statement released Monday, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu repeated this message and announced a ceremony to be held on April 24 at the Armenian Patriarchate in Istanbul to commemorate those who died in World War 1 — the first official ceremony of its kind to be held in Turkey.
/Apa/
