The Turkish Cypriot ‘foreign ministry’ on Monday excoriated the State of Israel for its decision to recognise the mass displacement and death of 1.5 million ethnic Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in 1915 as a genocide.
It said the decision constitutes “a futile attempt to cover up the crimes against humanity committed against the Palestinian people, as well as the state terrorism they perpetrate in the Middle East”.
“The Israeli government, which is currently before the International Criminal Court for the crime of genocide against Palestinians, not only ignores historical and legal facts, but continues to exploit historical events for its own purposes,” it said.
It added that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his “collaborators” cannot “cover up the crimes against humanity they committed in the eyes of the world”, and pointed out that international arrest warrants have been put out in Netanyahu’s name, and in the names of other Israeli ministers.
“This latest political initiative undertaken by the Israeli government, which extends its expansionist and provocative policies in the Middle East to the eastern Mediterranean through increasingly deep military and strategic cooperation with the Greek Cypriot administration, and targets our motherland, Turkey, constitutes another effort to destabilise the region,” it said.
As such, it said that it “condemns and strongly denounces this political smear campaign targeting our motherland, Turkey”.
Turkey, it added, “has taken a principled stance based on international law against the expansionist policies of the Netanyahu government and has raised its voice most strongly against the grave crimes against humanity committed against the Palestinian people”.
“The Turkish Cypriot people, who have been subjected to all kinds of inhumane treatment, including genocide, reiterates once again that it will always support and stand by our Palestinian brothers and sisters in their just cause, and calls on Israel to immediately end the violence it is perpetrating in the Middle East,” it said.
The decision to recognise the events as a genocide was passed unanimously by Israel’s legislature on Monday, with the country’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, who was behind the bill, saying that “it is never too late to do the right thing”.
“Israel joins 32 countries which have fulfilled a moral duty by recognising the historical truth, and rejecting attempts to deny it,” he said.
The Cypriot government, among others including Armenia, France, Germany, Greece, and the United States, recognise the events of 1915 as a genocide carried out by the Ottoman Empire and not as Ottoman casualties of the first world war.
Turkey, the north, Azerbaijan, and Pakistan consider the deaths to be casualties of the first world war, while countries including the United Kingdom and Spain have not formally declared them to be a genocide.
Prior to the passage of the bill in Israel’s legislature, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said that he believed that offering no response to Israel’s decision was the best route forward for his country and government to take.
“We see no need to respond because we believe that refraining from entering into the issue of the weaponisation of the Armenian genocide is in the interests of the Republic of Armenia,” he said.
