Mr. President, distinguished deputies; I will not talk about the content of the article because I believe that I will not change the fate of that article with my speech.

I would like to touch upon an issue that concerns the Christian peoples living in Turkey and is very topical these days. I have been in this Parliament for two years, last year and this year, I made two short speeches and addressed an issue and asked a question to all political parties in the Parliament and the Turkish public: In 1915, the Ottoman population was 13 million, of which about 3 million were Christian peoples, namely Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians; today it is 2025, one hundred and ten years have passed, while Turkey’s population is 86 million, under normal conditions, the population of Christian peoples should reach millions, why is it expressed in tens of thousands, what happened to these people? Of course, there was no answer to this question. While we were expecting a sincere confrontation about the genocide against Christian peoples in 1915, on the contrary, the perpetrators are being named in public spaces, streets, parks, schools and monuments are being erected.

Finally, a monument for Talat Pasha was recently erected in Altındağ district by Ankara Metropolitan Municipality Mayor Mansur Yavaş. We do not accept that a monument should be erected for the tens of thousands of Armenians in the Sanjak of Ankara who were killed, exiled and their property seized in 1915, but we do not accept that a monument should be erected for the person who ordered their deaths and that streets and schools should be named after him. For one people, some people can be heroes, they can be very valuable, but for other peoples, these people are not heroes, they are murderers.

TURAN YALDIR (Aksaray) – Not a murderer, Talat Pasha is a hero.

GEORGE ASLAN (Continued) – Therefore, Talat Pasha is also like that for us because he is responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of people.

AYYÜCE TÜRKEŞ TAŞ (Adana) – The terrorist leader is a murderer. Abdullah Öcalan is a murderer.

GEORGE ASLAN (Continued) – In 1915, when he was at the head of the telegraph, his companions told him “You have the authority, you can stop these massacres.”

TURAN YALDIR (Aksaray) – You cannot call Talat Pasha a “traitor”, you cannot call him a “murderer”!

AYYÜCE TÜRKEŞ TAŞ (Adana) – Nobody committed massacres.

TURAN YALDIR (Aksaray) – You were the king of massacres!

GEORGE ASLAN (Continued) – And he says, “When I put my nationalism and these things on the scale, my nationalism outweighs.” And he continues the massacres.

AYYÜCE TÜRKEŞ TAŞ (Adana) – No massacres!

GEORGE ASLAN (Continued) – In 1912, before he came to power, he told the Danish orientalist Johannes Ostrop that when he came to power he would use all his power to exterminate the Armenians, and that is exactly what he did. He exterminated not only Armenians but also Assyrians and Greeks. Governor Reşid, who was specially appointed by him to Diyarbakır, also carried out massacres; he gathered Assyrians in the courtyard of the Virgin Mary Church in Diyarbakır and had them shot.

AYYÜCE TÜRKEŞ TAŞ (Adana) – No one can accuse the Turkish state in Parliament.

GEORGE ASLAN (Continued) – I don’t take you seriously.

AYYÜCE TÜRKEŞ TAŞ (Adana) – We don’t take you seriously either.

TURAN YALDIR (Aksaray) – We don’t take you seriously.

AYYÜCE TÜRKEŞ TAŞ (Adana) – No one can accuse the Turkish state in the parliament.

GEORGE ASLAN (Continued) – Those around him asked Dr. Reşit: “You are a physician who has taken the Hippocratic oath, how can you do this to people?” Like Talat Pasha, he said, “When I put my nationalism and these things on the scales, my nationalism weighs more.”

TURAN YALDIR (Aksaray) – May you be as stoned as Talat Pasha!

GEORGE ASLAN (Continued) – Mr. President, dear MPs; it is 2025, but we see that the same mentality continues today; the Mayor of Ankara Metropolitan Municipality is erecting a monument for these people. All these are practices that contradict the discourse on social peace. This is why we believe that the past must be confronted. If there was a sincere confrontation with the past, such monuments would not be erected today.

AYYÜCE TÜRKEŞ TAŞ (Adana) – This society is already at peace, the Turkish nation is a whole, indivisible! Happy are those who call themselves Turks!

GEORGE ASLAN (Continued) – The names of the perpetrators would not be given to streets and schools. There are countries in the world, especially Germany, that have confronted their past genocides.

AYYÜCE TÜRKEŞ TAŞ (Adana) – We did not commit genocide!

GEORGE ASLAN (Mardin) – These confrontations did not weaken those countries, on the contrary, they strengthened and liberated them.

AYYÜCE TÜRKEŞ TAŞ (Adana) – Go tell them to the Germans.

GEORGE ASLAN (Mardin) – Confronting the pain of the past is not only about remembering the pain of the past, but also an important step towards preventing it from happening again. Therefore, monuments should be erected not for those responsible for the genocide of 1915, but for the victims; the perpetrators should be exposed and condemned. This is vital for social peace. Ankara Metropolitan Mayor Mansur Yavaş should demolish that monument and apologize to the peoples.