BERLIN - None of the UN bodies qualified as "genocide" the tragic incidents that happened in 1915, said Turkish Ambassador to Germany Mehmet Ali Irtemcelik.
In an exclusive interview with the German news agency DPA, Irtemcelik recalled that "genocide" crime was defined by the UN, only in 1948, and pointed out that there is not any evidence that any UN body acknowledged the tragic incidents of 1915 as "genocide".
Irtemcelik stated that the matter was debated only at an UN sub-committee, and said that the report presented to that sub- committee was not debated.
On February 14th, DPA broadcast a story on "Armenians in the Ottoman Empire", and alleged that "the UN deems the massacre, made after long preparations, as genocide". Later, this sentence was erased from the data bank.
After this story was aired, Irtemcelik wrote a letter to DPA Editor-in-Chief Wilm Herlyn, and asked him to correct this remark as soon as possible.