The Catholic website FIDES reported on 9 March 2016 that on 27 February 2016 Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu held a speech in the city of BingĦl, in the Kurdish east of the country. In that context, Davutoglu said that
the Kurds of the PKK are collaborators, "just like the gangs of Armenians who collaborated with the Russians." The accusation of pro-Russian collaboration towards the Armenian community of the Ottoman Empire is part of a plan with which the Turkish official historiography tries to resize the extermination of Armenians and other ethnic minority groups planned by the Young Turks in the context of the First World War. Davutoglu"s statement were used again a few days later by the mayor of the town of A?kale (also in the Kurdish east), Enver Basharan. He also publicly thanked "our ancestors who cleared this land and threw out the Armenians."
Rolf Zeegers, persecution analyst for World Watch Research, believes: "The ongoing war with the Kurds is raising fierce and dirty Turkish nationalism. It is rather odd to see experienced Turkish politicians using such vulgar language against an innocent minority. What is the logic behind attacking Armenians when the problem is with the Kurds? Maybe it is because the Kurds are too powerful, maybe it is because they are at least Muslims. Whatever the reason, it is a fact that Armenians are not involved in the fighting at all. They are a tiny minority in Turkey after the 1915 genocide. "Armenian scum" is an easy scapegoat that can be used any time by Turkish nationalists to draw attention. What is an even bigger problem is that very few people in Turkey object to this attitude."
