On Friday Erdoğan had dismissed criticism and reassured Turkey’s Armenian community that they are not being targeted after facing anger for his threats to expel illegal Armenian immigrants. “We have never had any problems with our Armenian citizens,” Erdoğan said, complaining that he was misquoted in the media, which he said misrepresented his remarks to suggest that they are targeting Turkey’s Armenian community.
Also on Friday the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) suggested that Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Philip Gordon, the US State Department’s top diplomat for Europe, “sought to justify recent threats by Erdoğan to deport Armenian citizens from Turkey.”
ANCA called upon “President [Barack] Obama to immediately condemn Secretary Gordon’s comments and affirm for the record that the US government in no way condones renewed threats by Turkey against the Armenian people.”
According to ANCA, Gordon said last week that “in my opinion, Prime Minister Erdoğan only wanted to highlight that there are 100,000 Armenians living in Turkey illegally. I don’t believe he threatened to deport them from the country. Those are separate issues. Every country has an issue with illegal immigrants and approaches it according to its laws.” ANCA said Gordon’s comment was originally reported by CNN-Türk, reprinted on the Armenian news site Tert.am and verified by ANCA in a conversation with State Department officials.
