Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has once again gone to great lengths to deny the Armenian Genocide and advance the Turkish narrative of that period when speaking at a ruling AK Party congress in Bursa.

“The first genocide of the 20th century was perpetrated against the Turks,” Erdogan was quoted as saying by Turkish media.

“For years, ee had been proposing to open the archives to those raising the Armenian claims but no one accepted what we were offering.”

Some three dozen countries, hundreds of local government bodies and international organizations have so far recognized the killings of 1.5 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as genocide. Turkey denies to this day.