Turkey’s Patriotic Party reacts to George Clooney referring to 1915 events as ‘genocide’

Turkey's Patriotic Party ('Vatan Partisi' in Turkish) reacted to Hollywood star George Clooney's statements two days ago during his interview in the South California Public Radio where he referred to 1915 as "Armenian Genocide."

Clooney said the events of 1915 constituted "genocide" and there was no argument about it. He said: "There was a genocide in Armenia in 1915."

Reacting to Clooney's remarks, the Patriotic Party's international relations head member Onur Sinan Güzaltan said on Thursday, "The truth cannot be hidden," and advised the Hollywood star to look at the European Court of Human Rights' (ECtHR) verdict in which Switzerland's appeal to overrule the conviction of the party's chairman (Doğu Perinçek) over the denial of the Armenian genocide was rejected.

Switzerland was represented by a defense team during the trial of Switzerland and Armenia versus Doğu Perinçek case, one of whom included the lawyer Amal Alamuddin Clooney, better known as the wife of Hollywood superstar George Clooney.

Güzaltan claimed that the Clooney family was "one of the toys used to manipulate the 1915 events."

Doğu Perinçek, a Turkish politician, lawyer and academic who has been chairman of the socialist Patriotic Party since 1992, was convicted by a court in Switzerland, where denying the Armenian genocide is criminalized, for his remarks branding the genocide "an international lie" in that country. He had argued that the denial was in line with his freedom of speech and took the case to the ECtHR.

The court had ruled in his favor in 2013, but Switzerland appealed the verdict. ECtHR said in the ruling that there was no international legal obligation for Switzerland to criminalize such statements and "Swiss courts appeared to have censured Mr. Perinçek simply for voicing an opinion that diverged from the established ones in Switzerland, and the interference with his right to freedom of expression had taken the serious form of a criminal conviction."

Armenia claims up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed in an act of genocide by the Ottoman Empire in 1915 during World War I. Turkey accepts the mass deaths of Armenians during their forced deportation during the war but claims the death toll was much lower and attributes mass deaths to diseases and isolated cases of attacks. Ankara has also urged Armenia to let historians handle the matter, though Armenia demands recognition of the incidents as "genocide" in order to advance relations between the two neighboring countries.

In April 2014, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who was prime minister at the time, offered condolences for the Armenian deaths that occurred in 1915 – a first for a Turkish leader as the country froze diplomatic relations with Armenia both over the genocide issue and Armenian occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave also claimed by Turkey's close ally, Azerbaijan. The move was seen as a significant step toward a possible reconciliation. Separately, Turkey has called for a joint Armenian-Turkish research project into the events, making use of the archives in both countries, to establish the facts.

Many Armenians argue that denying allegations that the events of 1915 constituted "genocide" should be a crime, just as negating the Holocaust is. In 2003, the National Council of Switzerland, the country's parliament, recognized the events of 1915 as "genocide." Several other countries also recognize the events as genocide.