ArmInfo. Justification of genocide under the veil of denial is shameful and dangerous. It encourages new crimes against humanity and civilization, the Spokesperson of the Armenian Foreign Ministry Anna Naghdalyan responded to today's statement by the Turkish government that Yerevan is afraid to open the archives of 1915 due to the lack of factual evidence of the Genocide and the statement made earlier by Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu that there was no genocide and colonization in Turkish history.
''On the eve of the commemoration of the Armenian Genocide I must note with regret that all this time we have witnessed various forms of denial of the Armenian Genocide by Turkey. The denial has been consistent, but the forms and the substance of denial have not.
They have always been subjected to changes, either attempting to equalize the perpetrators and the victims of the genocide, or as in this case to accuse the victims of the genocide and justify the perpetrators. Often pure falsifications are put into action, for example the allegation about our closed archives, while all genocide experts are aware that the archives of Armenia are open. These turbulences in the denialist mind attest to their powerlessness if exposed to the truth, while the truth of the Armenian Genocide is an acknowledged fact in the international community.
Justification of genocide under the veil of denial is shameful and dangerous. It encourages new crimes against humanity and civilization, and the primary responsibility of the international community is to fight against it'', Naghdalyan concluded.
As ArmInfo previously reported, the Turkish government today issued a statement in which it emphasized that Armenia is "afraid" to open its archives of 1915, since after that the whole world will receive evidence that the events of 1915 are not genocide, but "the extermination and genocide of the Muslim population in the Ottoman Empire by the Armenians."
At the same time, the Turkish government went further and assured that all the claims of the Armenians regarding the events of 1915 do not have a legal basis. "In the archives of Turkey there are thousands of facts about how Armenian gangs, with the support of external forces, killed civilians in the provinces of Agra, Kars, Erzrum, Van, as well as Turkish government officials during the Ottoman Empire. The Armenian authorities, instead of thinking about the benefits on the genocide industry, should think about the future of their people. If the Armenian lobby believes that by influencing the parliaments of Western countries, it can somehow put pressure on Ankara, then it is mistaken. Yerevan simply cannot normalize relations with Ankara, making claims of genocide, " the Turkish government concluded.