Ankara, The New Anatolian

The Federation of Turkish Associations in the U.K. organized a conference in London to commemorate Turkish diplomats killed by Armenian gangs.

“This is the second conference held in memory of our martyred diplomats, and this is the most serious way to enlighten painful incidents of history,” Bahadir Kaleli, Turkey’s consul general in London, said during the conference.

On the other hand, Professor Kemal Cicek of Turkey’s Karadeniz (Black Sea) Technical University said some segments qualified the relocation of Armenians in 1915 as a “cross- border” migration. “However, they just changed their location within the territories of the Ottoman Empire,” he told.

Cicek said it is totally wrong to qualify the relocation as “genocide” or “ethnic cleansing”, and recalled that the UN convention defines “genocide” as “annihilating a group for national, ethnic or religious reasons.”

“However, the Ottoman citizens of Armenian origin were not relocated because they were Armenians. There are many other people who were not relocated like Protestant and Catholic Armenians,” he told.

Cicek also said Armenians living in many cities like Bursa, Izmir and Aydin were kept out of the movement.

“Soldiers, bureaucrats, postmen, teachers and their families, and Istanbul Armenians were not relocated either,” he told.

According to Cicek, there is no mention in historical documents saying that the Armenians were subject to a mass killing.

“On the contrary, 67 people who committed crimes against the Armenians during the migration were executed, while 521 others were imprisoned,” Professor Cicek also said.