The Turkish Ambassador Erkan Özoral strongly criticized France’s Makron on recognition of the so-called Armenian genocide in their forged history. He also pointed out the impact of such a decision on the Turkish-French relations. 

“The 1915 event has always been a controversial issue which has been a centre of a dispute among Turkish and French officials, including the French President as well. This is the fact that French President blatantly neglects the laws of the French Constitution and the European Human Rights Court because of having his hidden Armenian voters behind the scene” - the ambassador said in his interview to Eurasia Diary.      

This is disappointing to acknowledge the politics have always been based on interests.

Before discussing the so-called genocide, I would like to stress the massacre of over 500000 Muslims by Armenian gangs during the demise Osmanli Empire.

By concealing crimes and massacres in its own history, France can never take inequitable decisions on other countries. The spokesperson of the ministry has a clear outline with respect to the statement on 6 February 2019.   

How are the current activities of Diasporas of Turkish speaking citizens living outside the country and in particular Europe? 

We have a lot of members of a Turkish speaking Diaspora living outside our country. We highly consider the activities of organizations and Diasporas and members of Turkic nations supporting them.

On the 24th of October 2013, we had a congregation in Baku with the participation of the leaders and founders of Diasporas. Our third meeting took place in Ankara on the 8th of November 2018. The meeting aimed to strengthen the collaboration with other organizations.

Lately, for the coordination of the Diasporas, we set up a new strategic plan. We organized many cultural and educational events within this plan. This coordination is managed by Turkey and Azerbaijan.    

How would you depict the current cooperation between Turkey and Azerbaijan?  

In the political, economic and cultural spheres, Turkey gives more significance to the cooperation with Azerbaijan as the brother country. This cooperation particularly carries importance in the format of trio among Turkey-Azerbaijan and Georgia. The energy transfer strategy through Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway, TANAP projects can be the success history of this cooperation. We are looking into developing many fruitful projects while our current cooperation is in progress.     

Interview by Nicat Ismayilov