An ethnic Armenian senior adviser to Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu announced his resignation on Thursday just days after describing the First World War-era massacres of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey as genocide.
"If accepting that what happened in Bosnia and Africa were genocides, it is impossible not to call what happened to Armenians in 1915 genocide too," Etyen Mahcupyan said in an interview with Karar.com published this week.
Mahcupyan, who became last year the first-ever member of Turkey's Armenian community to hold such a post, effectively defended Pope Francis for calling the 1915 mass killings a genocide during a Sunday Mass. The Vatican has thus “thrown off a 100-year-old psychological burden,” he said.
The remarks reportedly infuriated some within the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). Turkey’s minister for European affairs, Volkan Bozkir, said they were “inappropriate” for a Turkish government official.
The AFP news agency quoted an unnamed Turkish official as saying that Mahcupyan, 65, has retired because of having reached the age limit for all Turkish civil servants. The official denied any link between the departure and the approaching 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide.
Mahcupyan gave the same explanation in comments to the Turkish daily “Hurriyet.” He claimed to have tendered his resignation on March 9, just over one month before the pope’s statement.
“At this stage I continue with my work voluntarily. The only change is that I am not getting a salary anymore,” he said.
In an interview with AFP in December, Mahcupyan said 2015 will be a "tough year" because of the genocide centenary. He said the priority for the future should be establishing relations with Armenia as well as the millions-strong Armenian Diaspora.