The government and the president of Turkey are under criticism after their decision to mark the centenary of the Battle of Gallipoli on April 24th. Critics believe Ankara is seeking to distract attention from the commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, which is also marked on April 24th. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (left picture) has invited world leaders to the Gallipoli acts, which will be commemorating a battle that pitted  the Ottoman Empire and Germany on one side against France, the United Kingdom and their allies on the other for control oover the Dardanelles Strait. After eight months of fighting, the Ottomans secured victory.

President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan argues the decision by Turkey is "a cynical act," as he recalls that the Battle of Gallipoli neither began nor ended on April 24th. Indeed, the allies' attempt to occupy the Dardanelles began on April 25th. Sargsyan says Turkey attempts to "wound the Armenian people."

On 24th April 1915, the Ottoman authorities arrested over 200 Armenian intellectuals and leaders, an event considered to be the beginning of the Armenian genocide, in which some 600,000 to 1.8 million people were killed. Turkish authorities deny that those massacres can be considered a "genocide", even if specialized academics say it was indeed a genocide since the aim of the Ottoman authorities was to exterminate most of the Armenian people.

Turkish media criticism

Criticism against Erdogan is not stemming only from Armenia, but also from within Turkey. In this article, Today's Zaman managing editor Deniz Arslan writes that Turkey's decision "hurts national legacy" and "has been widely perceived as a crude attempt to distract attention from Armenian commemorations of the 1915 massacres."

In Turkey too, Armenian weekly Agos criticized the decision, calling it "a very indecent political manoeuvre," writes columnist Ohannes Kiliçdagi.

Writing for Turkish Cihan News Agency, Omer Taspinar regrets Turkey is "squandering yet another opportunity" to review its past and especially the Armenian genocide, "one of the darkest chapters of Turkish history."