Erdogan rejects Israel`s Armenian genocide move and points to Gaza  deaths

ArmInfo.  Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has dismissed an Israeli proposal to recognize the violence against Armenians by the Ottoman Empire during World War I  as genocide

Slanders against Turkiye are Israel's attempts to cover up its  "barbarity in Gaza," President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said.

Addressing the media after a Cabinet meeting in Ankara on Tuesday,  Erdogan said: "We pay no heed to the slanders directed at our country  by the murder network that has the blood of 75,000 innocent people in  Gaza, mostly children and women, on its hands."

Turkiye's history, he said, includes the virtue of giving refuge to  those fleeing Nazi persecution and "those who slander Turkiye to  cover up their barbarity in Gaza know it best."

"We do not take the slanders against our country by the network of  murderers, whose hands are stained with the blood of 73,000 innocent  Gazans, most of them children and women, even the slightest bit  seriously. There is no genocide, no massacre, no oppression and no  colonialism in our history. In our thousands of years of glorious  history, there is only justice and compassion.

"There is the act of extending a hand to all the oppressed,  regardless of their religion, origin or identity. There is the virtue  of protecting those who fled the Inquisition and Nazi persecution.  There is the dignified stance of our heroic ancestors, who said: 'I  would give up my throne, I would give up my crown, but I would not  hand over those who have taken refuge in my state.' Those who slander  Turkiye and the Turkish nation to cover up their barbarity in Gaza  know this best, if they look at their own history," he said.