Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Marking the 95th anniversary of the Battle of Gallipoli, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said no country's parliament can challenge Turkish history, in reference to decisions in various parliaments around the world declaring the 1915 killings of Armenians who lived under Ottoman rule “genocide.”

Erdogan was in Chanakkale yesterday commemorating the soldiers killed during the 1915 Battle of Gallipoli, which was won by the defending Ottoman army and laid the groundwork for the Turkish War of Independence and the foundation of the Turkish Republic eight years later under Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

“I should underline that this country’s soldier is bigger than history and that this country’s history is as clean and clear as the sun. No country’s parliament can tarnish it,” Erdogan said, speaking at the ceremony at the March 18 Stadium.

Erdogan also said that if the events of eastern Anatolia in 1915 are to be illuminated, that will take place through archives, documents, memoirs, reports, letters and pictures, and “not the parliaments that are thousands of kilometers away,” adding that there are new documents, reports, letters and pictures emerging about the Battle of Gallipoli and that historians dedicate their whole lives to sharing this history.

Erdogan said some states that had imperialistic desires in Chanakkale then are now making “irresponsible announcements, passing unfair judgments” against Turkey, which “needs an apology.”

“There is no genocide in our civilization. Our civilization is the civilization of love, tolerance and brotherhood,” Erdogan added. “Those who stay in the past can never reach a bright future.”

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