ISLAMABAD: 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 on Sunday, 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!”
Thank you brotherly #Pakistan! Long live Turkey-Pakistan friendship! 🇹🇷🇵🇰https://t.co/0UqSWACQKh
— Turkish MFA (@MFATurkey) April 25, 2021
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.
The Turkish government and most of the opposition showed rare unity in their rejection of Biden’s statement. Cavusoglu said Turkey “entirely rejects” the US decision which he said was based “solely on populism”, while the opposition denounced it as a “major mistake”.
Ankara has repeatedly proposed the creation of a joint commission of historians from Turkey and Armenia as well as international experts to tackle the issue.
In 2014, Recep Tayyip Erdogan — then Turkish prime minister and now president — expressed condolences to the descendants of Armenians who lost their lives in the events of 1915.
