The Turkish government on Thursday said a Turkish-Armenian advisor to Prime Minister Ahmet Davutogou had "retired", days after he caused a furore within the ruling party for describing the mass killings of Armenians during the Ottoman Empire as genocide.
The government denied any link between the departure of Etyen Mahcupyan and the looming 100th anniversary on April 24 of the start of the 1915 killings of Armenians, which Yerevan regards as genocide.
Mahcupyan, 65, "has retired on the grounds of age," a Turkish government official, who asked not to be named, told AFP, noting this was the age limit for all Turkish civil servants.
But Mahcupyan, who was appointed last year as senior advisor to Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, infuriated some within the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) this week when he described the mass World War I killings of Armenians as a "genocide."
"If accepting that what happened in Bosnia and Africa were genocides, it is impossible not to call what happened to Armenians in 1915 genocide too," Mahcupyan said in an interview published this week.
Comments
Comments are closed.