Mumcu: Not A Single Incident That Can Be Called As Genocide Occurred In Turkish History

ANTALYA - Culture and Tourism Minister Erkan Mumcu said on Thursday, ''no single example of an incident that can be called as genocide has occurred in Turkish history. This does not comply with our view towards the world and our genetic roots in cultural meaning.''
Mumcu, who was in southern Antalya province to attend the Stage Project: Third Ministerial Colloquy, replied questions of reporters.
Mumcu said that Stage Project was very important for Turkey and added that the project aimed to spread values, which settled and developed mainly in Europe in human rights and democracy fields, in Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia.
Noting that Turkey had an important function in the project, Mumcu said, ''Turkey has important functions in conveying its own democracy experience to these countries. This is significant in the aspect of Turkey's contribution to regional peace and its benefiting from this peace.''
When asked whether this meeting would find a solution to Karabakh issue, Mumcu said, ''this is not a platform that discusses political problems on the first hand and aims to solve the problems. But it certainly will have an indirect contribution. Because it creates a dialogue atmosphere and unity of understanding. This project does not have short term targets, it has middle term targets. Thus, it cannot be expected to find solutions to Karabakh issue in short term, but a solution can be expected in middle term with the improvement of unity of understanding and dialogue.''
When a reporter asked what would be the effects of the meeting to the issue of Armenian genocide allegations, Mumcu said, ''we have told this many times. First of all, we are talking about a problem regarding history. Experts and historians, instead of politicians, should discuss a problem regarding history. Both sides, which were living side by side during a war process, suffered some incidents with the influence of various provocations. Human history has witnessed hundreds of examples of it. But no single example of an incident that can be called as genocide has occurred in Turkish history. This does not comply with our view towards the world and our genetic roots in cultural meaning. There is no such thing in our history. And there is no such possibility in the future as well. I think the goal here is development of a different political discourse, not to reveal a historical truth. But as I said, projects like Stage will contribute to develop different attitudes for these problems by drawing an understanding frame.''
Noting that the focus of a big part of accusations towards Turkey was not coming from Armenian state, Mumcu said that the reason of those could be some concentrations out of Armenia and those concentrations usually had an attitude that provoked disagreements, not an attitude respecting good neighborhood relations between Turkey and Armenia and the interests of neighbor Armenia. He added that it was necessary to attribute importance to relations between cultures and to respect every type of cultural attitude and Turkey's attitude had always been like this.
When he was reminded the positive remarks of Armenian Deputy Culture Minister Karen Arisakesyan who spoke at the opening session of the meeting about relations of the two countries, Mumcu said he was pleased with those remarks.
(GC-AÖ) 18.09.2003