The Prime Minister of Turkey has for the first time offered condolences for the mass killings of Armenians during World War I, when the country was under Ottoman rule.  Armenians and many others consider the deaths of as many as 1.5 Million people to be an act of genocide.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s comments came on the eve of the 99th anniversary of the mass deportation of Armenians in 1915, the act that led to death marches and mass killings.  He stopped short of using the word “genocide”, and Turkey officially disputes the death toll (although Turkish official records prove the Armenian population decreased by almost one million over two years).  But Erdogan described the events as “our shared pain” to the grandchildren of Armenians killed in 1915.

“Having experienced events which had inhumane consequences – such as relocation – during the First World War, (it) should not prevent Turks and Armenians from establishing compassion and mutually humane attitudes among towards one another,” he said, adding “millions of people of all religions and ethnicities lost their lives in the First World War.”

Turkey has had a troubled history even acknowledging the events of 1915.  It used to refer to it dismissively as “so-called Armenian genocide”.  In 2007, Erdogan ordered government agencies to use the more neutral phrase “1915 Events”.  Prosecutors used to arrest and charge Turkish intellectuals who spoke or wrote of what happened, and some have been killed in the streets for acknowledging the genocide.