PM Erdoğan: Armenian resoluions do nothing to help Armenia

Currently in Washington for a nuclear security summit, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan yesterday attended the opening of George Mason University's Ali Vural Ak Center for Global Islamic Studies. Delivering a speech on the Alliance of Civilizations initiative as a vision for global peace, Erdogan criticized the identification by some of terrorism with Islam, stressing that Islam and terrorism are irreconcilable. "Islam and terrorism contradict each other. Islam says that if one person kills another, this amounts to killing all of humanity," he said. Underlining that the West and the East need to know each other better, Erdogan complained about what he called an Orientalist, unilateral, egocentric approach in the West which excludes differences and claims a monopoly on the truth. Referring to resolutions adopted by a US House committee and the Swedish Parliament to officially recognize the so-called Armenian "genocide" claims, Erdogan said that only love and peace, not enmity and hatred, can bring about a bright future. Expressing Turkey's opposition to history being used as political fodder, Erdogan said, "Nobody has the right to make one-sided and prejudiced interpretations or to pass baseless judgments on history. We firmly reject parliaments painting a false picture of the incidents of 1915. It is not parliaments but the historical discipline and historians that should shed light on historical incidents through an impartial examination of archives and documents. History neither can be written in parliaments nor judged by them." Citing Turkey's proposal to set up a joint historical committee to investigate what really happened in 1915, he stressed that Turkey is ready to face its history. Stating that Armenian resolutions adopted by foreign parliaments bring no benefit to Armenia, Erdogan said on the contrary they only damage efforts for peace, dialogue and compromise. "I hope those taking such decisions become aware of this as soon as possible," he added. On the Iranian nuclear controversy, Erdogan reiterated Turkey's well-known stance that it opposes nuclear weapons both in its region and the world. "We're against the proliferation of nuclear weapons in the world, and urge nations with nuclear weapons to get rid of them in a particular timeframe." Erdogan also said he remains optimistic on reaching a diplomatic solution to the Iranian dispute, adding that Turkey would continue its efforts towards that end.