Turkey has said it “shares the pain” of Armenians who are marking a century since their ancestors were massacred by the Ottomans, but vowed never to accept that the killing of up to 1.5 million people was genocide.
Ankara offered condolences to Armenians as they use the build-up to Friday’s centenary to press for greater international recognition that they suffered genocide. Germany became the latest state to move towards such a stance.
"We once again respectfully remember and share the pain of grandchildren and children of Ottoman Armenians who lost their lives during deportation in 1915," Turkish prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu said in a statement.
Ankara insists that ethnic Turks and other non-Armenians also suffered terribly during the first World War in what is now eastern Turkey, and claims there was no orchestrated attempt to eliminate all Armenians from the area.
Rejecting calls from Armenia and elsewhere to accept the term “genocide”, Mr Davutoglu added: “To reduce everything to a single word, to put responsibility through generalisations on the Turkish nation alone . . . is legally and morally problematic.”
In Germany, a spokesman for chancellor Angela Merkel said the government would support a resolution in parliament on Friday that calls the massacres genocide.
A draft of the non-binding motion described the Armenians’ fate as “exemplary for the history of mass destruction, ethnic cleansing, expulsions and genocides by which the 20th century is marked in such a terrible way”.
A resolution from Germany – Turkey's biggest EU trading partner and home to millions of ethnic Turks – would put more pressure on Ankara after Pope Francis and the European parliament recently called the massacres genocide.
Mr Davutoglu said the pope’s comments showed he had joined “an evil front” working against Turkey, and that the European Parliament’s decision was “a new reflection of the racism in Europe”.
Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said it was "out of the question for there to be a stain, a shadow called 'genocide', on Turkey".
Mr Erdogan was prime minister last year when Turkey offered condolences to Armenia for the first time. He has been criticised for rescheduling commemorations of the 1915 Gallipoli military campaign for this Friday – when Armenia remembers the massacres.
Stigma and claims
Analysts say Turkey resists genocide recognition because it fears the stigma it would bring and possible territorial and compensation claims.
Several European states consider the massacres genocide; the US does not, but president Barack Obama has referred to them by the Armenian term “Meds Yeghern”, or “Great Calamity”.
“Recognition of past genocide is the only way to prevent future genocide,” said Tigran Mkrtchyan, a senior adviser at Armenia’s foreign ministry, who criticised Turkey’s use of “weird mottos” to avoid using the contentious word.
"Our calls for genocide recognition are not against Turkey or the Turkish people," he told The Irish Times. "If Turkey acknowledged that the Ottomans committed genocide, then it would create an opportunity for us to turn this black page of our histories together."
