Diplomat, expert of Eastern Studies Ara Papyan assures that Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan's claims against 100,000 illegal Armenians in Turkey are groundless. According to Erdogan, there are currently 170,000 Armenians living in Turkey and he has threatened to exile 100,000 illegal Armenians from the country.
"We can talk about 12-14,000 Armenians in Turkey for now. The majority of them are legal citizens. It's not about them, but Turkey's attitude, especially to the world's reactions. Erdogan's words remind me of the Middle Age and revenge," Ara Papyan told "A1+".
According to him, the world must respond to the Turkish Prime Minister's statement against Armenians.
Papyan recalls that in the European Union-member countries, which Turkey strives to be a part of, there are 8-10 million illegal immigrants. "Among them there are several hundreds of thousands of migrants from Turkey. Some of them, unlike Armenians living in Turkey, live on the account of local taxpayers. According to much data, there are 1.5-3 million Arabs of origin or citizenship living in the US. After the US was attacked on September 11, 2001, not one US official talked about exiling illegal Arabs from the US.
To underscore the absurdity of Erdogan's threat, Papyan said: "Armenia hasn't attacked Turkey, Armenians haven't ridden a plane into the Blue Mosque or the grave of Ataturk, they haven't killed three and half thousand Turks in central Istanbul as some did in central New York. It's just that a group of citizens of the US and Sweden, the majority of them being Armenian by origin, have reached the point where the US and Sweden have adopted resolutions. If the Turks are offended by the resolutions, although it is nonsensical to be offended by the reaffirmation of the truth, let Turkey exile the Americans and the Swedish. Turkey hasn't changed."
