Member of the Turkish parliament Margar Yesayan, who is a member of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, published an article titled “Turks, Armenians, and Manazkert.”
Yesayan, who is always quick to please the Turkish authorities, discussed the battle in Manazkert, Armenians’ participation, and then the “favor” Turks gave to Armenians. The Armenian parliamentarian wrote that Armenians supposedly didn’t want to fight alongside the Byzantines against the Seljuks, which was the basis for the conflict between Armenians and Byzantines for the religious territory.
According to Yesayan, the Byzantines’ defeat in the battle at Manazkert and the Seljuks’ advancement east started a period of peace for Armenians. The Armenian politician, going even further, said that Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire were living in the most peaceful time period, giving the examples of the first Ottoman sultan Osman giving Armenians a religious representative in the first capital of the empire, Bursa, and Mehmed II’s permission to have a patriarch in 1461. Yesayan says that those are examples of Turks showing kindness to Armenians.
The Armenian parliamentarian gave a few other examples to try and prove that Armenians and Turks allegedly have lived together in this region for centuries without problems.
Ermenihaber.am