Calling 1915 events as Genocide isn’t crime in Turkey: Ankara

Calling the 1915 events that happened to Armenians in the Ottoman Empire is not a crime, according to an article published at a section of Turkish Foreign Ministry’s official website called “Foreign policy with questions.”

In the text, which is presented as questions and answers, the Turkish Foreign Ministry responds to answers related to issues like Israel, the Iranian nuclear enrichment program, Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), the Armenian Genocide and a series of other issues.

To the question “Is it a crime in Turkey to call the 1915 events as Genocide and does that envisage criminal responsibility,” the Ministry has responded as follows:

“It can be said that Turkey is the only country that freely discusses the 1915 events. Claims that in Turkey some people have been over the issue persecuted by Article 301 of the Turkey’s Penal Code are not true because neither the Article 301 of the PC nor any other article do not include provisions that envisage criminal responsibility for denying the fact of the Armenian Genocide.

“Unlike the free atmosphere in Turkey, the denial of the fact of Genocide is considered as a crime in a series of European countries, including EU members, and consequently our citizens are being persecuted [in those countries]. We take with great pity those initiatives by the extremist groups of the Armenian Diaspora, which hinder the development of free atmospheres to study the 1915 events,” reads the text.