Erdogan rejects Israeli decision on Armenian genocide, highlights deaths in Gaza

Published on June 30, 2026 at 10:40 a.m.: Updated on June 30, 2026 at 12:52 p.m.

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey’s president on Tuesday rejected an Israeli proposal to classify the violence against Armenians perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire during World War I as genocide, and turned the accusation back on Israel by pointing to the deaths of Palestinians in Gaza.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was responding to a measure approved by the Israeli cabinet on Sunday. The proposal still requires parliamentary approval and comes amid deteriorating relations between Israel and Turkey.

Turkey lobbied fiercely to prevent countries from officially recognizing the mass deaths of Armenians around 1915 as genocide, even as Armenians pushed for it.

Historians estimate that up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed by the Ottoman Turks at the time of World War I, an event widely considered by researchers to be the first genocide of the 20th century. Turkey denies the deaths constitute genocide, saying the toll has been inflated and those killed were victims of civil war and unrest.

“We pay absolutely no attention to the slander against our country by this criminal network, which has on its hands the blood of 73,000 innocent people from Gaza, mostly children and women,” Erdogan said in a televised speech after a Cabinet meeting.

“Our history is free from genocide, massacres, oppression and colonialism,” Erdogan said.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, whose government is working to normalize relations with neighboring Turkey, refused on Monday to respond to the Israeli proposal, suggesting the issue should not be turned into a political weapon.

“We do not see the need to respond because we believe that refraining from addressing the issue of the militarization of the Armenian genocide is in the interests of the Republic of Armenia,” Pashinyan was quoted as saying by the official Armenpress news agency.

Turkey and Armenia do not have formal diplomatic relations and their border has been closed since 1993. The countries have, however, engaged in normalization talks in recent years, with special envoys meeting to discuss reopening the border and restoring ties.

For years, Israel avoided officially recognizing the violence as genocide for fear of angering Turkey, but those relations have deteriorated over the past two decades, particularly as the most recent wars in Gaza, Lebanon and Iran have dragged on.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, who presented the proposal, said Sunday that “the Armenian genocide remains to this day the subject of an institutionalized campaign of denial and minimization” by the Turkish government, despite overwhelming historical evidence.

Saar noted that Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, had previously called the violence against Armenians a genocide. But this was never officially recognized in a vote in the Israeli Knesset.

He noted that 32 countries, including the United States, Syria and Lebanon, have also called the violence genocide.

Israel and Turkey were once close allies, but their ties deteriorated after Erdogan, whose party is rooted in Turkey’s Islamic movement, came to power. Relations steadily deteriorated over his vocal criticism of Israeli policy towards the Palestinians.

On Sunday, Turkey’s Foreign Ministry called Israel’s decision a “politically motivated” move intended to distract from the country’s own actions against the Palestinians and proceedings before the International Court of Justice over the alleged genocide in Gaza. In 2024, Turkey officially joined the ongoing case filed by South Africa.

Israel has faced repeated accusations, including from the United Nations and Turkey, that its Gaza offensive amounts to genocide. Israel, founded in the aftermath of the Holocaust, denies these accusations.