Harut Sassounian
BY HARUT SASSOUNIAN
For many decades Turkish officials have outright denied the occurrence of the Armenian Genocide. In recent years, however, some Turks have made the excuse that today’s Turkish Republic is not responsible for the Armenian Genocide because it was committed by the Ottoman Empire, a defunct state.
With this pretext, the issue is no longer whether genocide was committed or not, but who is responsible for it. Those who use this justification, claim that the Republic of Turkey is neither the successor nor the continuation of the Ottoman Empire, but a new and separate state!
This argument has gradually grown weaker as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan began speaking and acting as an Ottoman Sultan! Two weeks ago, the Turkish leader made matters worse for his country when he, according to The Times of London, asserted that “modern Turkey is a ‘continuation’ of the Ottoman Empire — a direct contradiction of Ataturk’s ideology, which cast the Imperial era as backwards, stale and to be discarded and forgotten rather than celebrated.â€
