The European Peace and Democracy Assembly (ABDEM) has urged the Turkish state to recognize the 1915 genocide committed against the Armenians, Assyrians, Syriacs, Chaldeans and Pontus Greeks. In a written statement it vehemently condemned the genocide on its 100th anniversary. ABDEM said they also condemned all the governments, including the current fascist AKP government, which is perpetuating the genocide mentality today by denying it.

The statement of ABDEM recalled that a variety of ethnic groups, Assyrians, Syriacs, Chaldeans, Armenians, Pontus Greeks, Circassians, Laz, Arabs, Muhalmis, Turkmens and those from different religious backgrounds, Christians, Alevis, Yazidis, Jews and Muslims have all lived in fraternity in Mesopotamia, Kurdistan and Anatolia throughout history, but faced massacres and genocides carried out by the dominant powers. The Ottoman Empire and its successor the Unity and Progress Party committed genocide against the Assyrians, Syrians, Chaldeans, Armenians and Pontus Greek people in the name of its racist national interests, added the statement.

The statement also stressed that the imperialist powers and local groups pursuing their own interests remained silent in the face of genocide or contributed to it, adding that the Turkish state inherited the genocide mentality and perpetrated massacres in Kocgiri, Zilan, Dersim, Maraş, Çorum, Sivas and Roboski. The Turkish state and the AKP government today perpetuate the same mentality by supporting the fascist ISIS and its massacres in Nineveh, Sinjar, Kobane and Khabour, said the statement.

The statement recalled historic facts about the forced migration of millions of Armenians, Pontus Greeks, Assyrians, Syriacs and Chaldeans and the confiscation and plunder of their properties and the destruction of their cultural heritage, the churches, the written documents, and the forced Islamisation of those who could not escape. ABDEM further stressed that the same repression and cruelty continued in the Turkish Republic against the Kurds, Alevis and Yazidis, against revolutionaries and democratic forces through executions, summary killings, torture and imprisonments.

ABDEM called on the Turkish state to confront its history and to apologise to all the communities in the country for all the crimes it has committed against the people. “We call on the Turkish state and AKP government to stop denying the Seyfo genocide, to confront this most painful tragedy of the people and to return all the properties, lands and their written histories that have been plundered by the state to the people themselves”, the statement concluded.