After Putin’s words about the genocide, Erdogan reproached him with Ukraine

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that Russia should explain its own actions in Ukraine before calling the mass killings of Armenians by Turks in the Ottoman Empire in 1915 a genocide.

“This is not the first time Russia has used the word genocide on this issue. I personally regret that Putin took such a step. What is happening in Ukraine and Crimea does not raise any doubts. First they need to explain it and then call it genocide,” the Turkish president said at a press conference in Ankara.

Vladimir Putin, speaking last week in Yerevan at a memorial event in memory of the massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, said that Russia “sincerely sympathizes with the Armenian people, who experienced one of the most terrible tragedies in the history of mankind.” According to him, the massacres of Armenians were perceived in Russia “as their own grief.”

April 24 marked 100 years since the beginning of the massacre of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. Data on the number of victims vary greatly. Turkish sources talk about a little over two hundred thousand, Armenian sources - about two million.