Garo Paylan: Statements of President and Prime Minister Make Armenians a Target

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Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) MP, Garo Paylan has stated that the statements of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu make the Armenian society a target.

President Erdoğan at the press meeting he held on April 3 at Brookings Institue said, “Ahead of the talk I would give at the conference at the Brookings Institute, I saw representative of Parallel State Structure which gives an illegal organization image in legal image. Not only terror organizations in Turkey but also Armenian ASALA organization was there too”.

Prime Minister Davutoğlu in his speech on February 27 in Bingöl province addressing the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) said, “They are cooperating with Russia like Armenian gangs. They go to Moscow and open representation office”.

“The expression Armenian is still a swear word”

Garo Paylan has noted that those expressions of the President and the Prime Minister turned the Armenian society which had the statute of minority, into a target. 

“Pronouncing the name of a society consistently together with the words ‘organization’ and ‘gang’ means the attempt to criminalize the aforementioned Armenian society. We have seen in the writings on the walls In cities under barricade, that the word ‘Armenian’ was still being used as a swear word in Turkey. 

“Yet the expressions of the President and the Prime Minister are supporting this phenomenon and encouraging those targeting the Armenians. Besides these expressions do increase the apprehension of the Armenian people as the first target of hate speech who are also exposed to attacks and still suffer losses due to hate crimes. As an Armenian Prime Minister with the citizenship of Turkey, I condemn these expressions of the President and the Prime Minister and hope that they would not repeat that. (NV/TG/DG)