ANKARA (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 16th December, 2019) The Turkish parliament is sure to support the recognition of the so-called North American Genocide of the indigenous people in the United States if such a resolution is submitted to the legislature for voting, Turkish lawmaker Ozturk Yilmaz told Sputnik on Monday.
On Sunday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that the country's unicameral parliament would adopt a resolution, if presented with such, on recognizing the slaughter of indigenous peoples in North America as genocide, in an apparent tit-for-tat after the US Senate adopted a resolution recognizing the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire in 1915.
"If such a request is received in the parliament, I believe the decision [to recognize the North American Genocide] will be taken. I hope this statement will not stop at the president and will be further taken to be discussed by us in the parliament," Yilmaz said.
He further opined that the Senate's decision might seriously damage the US-Turkish relations.
"Those who adopted it [the resolution], were acting exclusively for the domestic political audience with the involvement of the Armenian lobby. Its purpose is to gain their [US Armenians'] support in the forthcoming election," Yilmaz added.
On Thursday, the US Senate adopted a resolution officially recognizing the massacre of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in 1915 as genocide. In November, the genocide was recognized by the US House of Representatives. The official recognition now stipulates that the US government not be associated with denials of the Armenian Genocide.
Earlier this year, the official recognition of the Armenian Genocide by Italy and Portugal caused a similar outrage in Ankara. In France, the denial of the Armenian Genocide is made into a punishable criminal offense by President Emmanuel Macron and the event is commemorated annually on April 24. The Genocide has been recognized by a total of 32 countries, including Russia, Canada, Germany, Uruguay and others, as well as by Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Over 1.5 million Armenians were killed, tortured and starved to death in the Ottoman Empire in the period from 1915-1921 in what Armenia claims was a deliberate campaign of the Turkish authorities for eliminating the Armenians as a group. Ankara claims that the atrocities took place during World War I and Armenians were not the only ethnic group affected.
