Garo Paylan, who was elected to the Turkish Parliament from Tigranakert, made a statement on international recognition of the Armenian Genocide during discussions on the country’s state budget in parliament today.

He particularly stated the following: “Before 1915, Armenians were living on these lands, in Sparta, Mersin, Adana, Trabizon, Tigranakert and Bursa, and one of every five was Armenian in this country. Now, you can’t even fill a stadium, if you gather all Armenians in Turkey. A great catastrophe took place, and unfortunately, we have been denying it with the policy of denial for over 104 years. We refuse to talk about it. Look how other parliaments are talking about it, while we tell them that they shouldn’t.

We tell them that the topic concerning this region should be talked about in this reason. If there is only one parliament in the world that has to talk about this topic, it is the Grand National Assembly of Turkey because we are the sons of these lands.”