Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan claimed on June 30 that his country has never committed genocide, massacres, opp...

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan claimed on June 30 that his country has never committed genocide, massacres, oppression, or colonialism, insisting that "throughout our thousands of years of glorious history, there has been only justice and compassion." The video of his remarks has been viewed nearly 100,000 times on X. Historians and researchers were quick to point out the statement's contradictions with the documented record. The Hellenic Canadian Research Institute has compiled an extensive catalogue of atrocities carried out by the Ottoman Empire and its successor, the Turkish Republic, spanning roughly a century. That record includes the Chios Massacre of 1822, in which up to 100,000 Greeks were killed or sold into slavery. It includes the Armenian Genocide of 1915 to 1923, in which an estimated 1.5 million Armenians were systematically exterminated. The Greek Genocide during that same period resulted in the deaths of over one million Greeks across Anatolia and the Pontic coast. More recent events are also documented. The Istanbul Pogrom of 1955, widely described as state-organized mob violence, killed at least 37 people, injured over a thousand, and triggered the near-total departure of the city's remaining Greek community. Hundreds of women and children were raped during the two-day assault, and damage was estimated at around $500 million. Erdogan's claim that Turkey has "never" engaged in colonialism also drew attention to Ottoman expansion across the Balkans, the Middle East, and North Africa, which lasted several centuries before the empire's collapse in 1923. Critics note that Turkish denials often backfire by reigniting public interest in the historical record, bringing renewed scrutiny to crimes that formal international recognition campaigns have sought to address for decades. #Erdogan #ArmenianGenocide #GreekGenocide