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AKP condemns one tragedy but downplays another

Turkey's Justice and Development Party (AKP) has pummeled the opposition CHP party for its responsibility in the 1937 Dersim tragedy, but has avoided discussing past mistakes made by Islamists.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan (R), Speaker of the Turkish parliament Cemil Cicek and Chief of Staff General Necdet Ozel (L) attend a ceremony at the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, marking the anniversary of his death, in Ankara November 10, 2014. Thousands of Turks visited Ataturk's mausoleum on his 76th death anniversary. Ataturk, the first president of Turkey from 1923 and founder of the modern secular state, died on November 10, 1938. He was 57. REUTERS/Umit Bektas (TURKEY - Tags: POLITICS ANNIVE

Cemil Cicek, speaker of the Turkish parliament, expressed concern Nov. 17 that the international community would begin a smear campaign in 2015 against Turkey, marking the centennial of the lost Armenian lives at the end of the Ottoman Empire. While Turkey has accepted the 1915 events as a “massacre,” it contradicts the international community that calls it a “genocide.” Since the 1980s, Turkey has also been lobbying foreign parliaments, and especially the US Congress, not to make any binding or nonbinding decision declaring it a genocide.

Previous Turkish governments, before the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power over a decade ago, argued all along that foreign parliaments are no place to judge history, and that it should be the job of historians to debate in all ways this bloody tragedy in history. “That is why we tell to the parliaments, ‘You are not an international court or a scientific committee. You must focus on building todays and tomorrows.’ I still hold the same point,” Cicek said. “The Turkish parliament should also make an effort in the same direction.”

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