The Turkish parliament commenced its 2013 sessions with arguments yet again, but this time the dispute referred to who had massacred the Armenians at the turn of the 20th century.  

During his address devoted to hate crime, the parliament’s pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) member Sirri Sakik said: “Your history is a story of massacres. You know very well how at the time you had massacred the forefathers of those that fight today,” Radikal daily of Turkey reports.     

Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) MP Nurettin Canik responded to the Kurdish MP and claimed that massacres, genocides, and assimilation have never occurred in the history of the Turkish nation.

In his turn, Turkey’s Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) MP Yusuf Halacoglu—who is well known for his Armenian-Genocide-denialist studies—addressed the Kurdish MP and said: “There have been no massacres  in Turkey’s history, there have been wars. In this case, tell me honestly, and I will show all the documents: Who massacred the Armenians? Speak about the Kurdish clans that collaborated with the Russians during the First World War!”