Erdogan represents murderous Ottomans: Assad

Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad has said his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan represents the murderous Ottomans who massacred Armenians a century ago.

Assad made the remarks on Thursday as he drew a parallel between the threats posed to Armenians a hundred years ago and those faced by the Syrian people today. 

He said the Turkish leader and his government were using the same tool as was used in the killing of Armenians, namely terrorism, against the Syrian people.

Assad was speaking during a meeting with the visiting delegation of the Armenian-Syrian Friendship Association at the National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia.

Armenians say that up to 1.5 million Armenian Christians were systematically slaughtered in eastern Turkey through mass killing, forced relocation and starvation, a process that began in 1915 and took place over several years during World War I and the breakup of the Ottoman Empire.

Ankara rejects the term “genocide” and says 300,000 to 500,000 Armenians, and at least as many Turks perished between 1915 and 1917, in what the Turkish government sees as the “casualties” of World War I. Erdogan has blasted the European Union, the United States and other countries that have recognized the massacre of Armenians as genocide.

Elsewhere, Assad also warned against the expansive threat of terrorism on the entire Middle East region and the world, saying terrorism “knows no border and doesn’t stop at the frontier of this or that country.”

Syria has been struggling against an implacable militancy since March 2011. The US and its regional allies - especially Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey - are supporting the militants operating inside Syria.

Anti-Damascus militant groups also use the Turkish territory to infiltrate into Syria, according to reports.

A video, posted by center-left Turkish daily newspaper Cumhuriyet on its website on May 29, purportedly showed trucks belonging to Turkey’s intelligence agency carrying weapons to the Takfiri terror groups operating in neighboring Syria.

It featured trucks of the National Intelligence Organization (MIT) being inspected by security officers.

The inspectors then were seen spotting cardboard boxes inside the metallic container with the “fragile” marking on them. They open the boxes, but find a considerable amount of munitions hidden in crates below boxes of medicine, the footage featured.

Cumhuriyet said the trucks were carrying around 1,000 mortar shells, hundreds of grenade launchers and more than 80,000 rounds of ammunition for light and heavy weapons.

HN/KA/HMV

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