ISLAMABAD: Turkey has thanked Pakistan for supporting its stance on the events of 1915 related to Armenia and for stressing that ‘one-sided approaches and political categorization of historical events could undermine polarization between nations’.
“Thank you brotherly Pakistan! Long live Turkey-Pakistan friendship,” the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs tweeted in response to a statement by Pakistan Foreign Office.
Pakistan had noted with appreciation Turkey’s constructive approach on the subject including its proposal for a Joint History Commission to ascertain the facts, allowing all to move forward.
According to Turkey’s Anadolu Agency, U.S. President Joe Biden called the events of 1915 a “genocide,” breaking American presidents’ long-held tradition of refraining from using the term.
“Turkey’s position on the events of 1915 is that the deaths of Armenians in eastern Anatolia took place when some sided with invading Russians and revolted against Ottoman forces. A subsequent relocation of Armenians resulted in numerous casualties,” Anadolu Agency reported. It said Turkey objected to the presentation of these incidents as “genocide,” describing them as a “tragedy in which both sides suffered casualties”.
Earlier, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi supported Turkish thesis on the events of 1915 against US President Joe Biden’s controversial declaration that massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire constituted genocide. In a phone call with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu, Qureshi stressed Islamabad’s support for Ankara’s take on the events of 1915, said an official statement. Turkey, established in 1923 after the Ottoman empire collapsed, has always denied there was a systematic campaign to annihilate Armenians.
It says that thousands of Turks and Armenians died in inter-ethnic violence as the empire started to fall apart and fought a Russian invasion of its eastern provinces during World War-I. “We believe that one-sided approaches and political categorization of historical events could undermine trust and lead to polarization between nations,” Foreign Office (FO) spokesperson Zahid Hafeez Chaudhri said in a statement.
The statement also praised Turkey’s “constructive approach” on the subject including Ankara’s proposal for a joint historical commission to explore the facts. Turkish Foreign Ministry thanked Pakistan for its support, saying on Twitter: “Thank you brotherly Pakistan! Long live Turkey-Pakistan friendship!” Biden, in his statement, said the American people honour “all those Armenians who perished in the genocide that began 106 years ago today.”
“Over the decades, Armenian immigrants have enriched the United States in countless ways, but they have never forgotten the tragic history,” Biden said. “We honor their story. We see that pain. We affirm the history. We do this not to cast blame but to ensure that what happened is never repeated.” The largely symbolic move, breaking away from decades of carefully calibrated language from the White House, comes at a time when Ankara and Washington grapple with deep policy disagreements over a host of issues.–Agencies
