UPDATE - Turkish opposition leader slams WWI remembrances

UPDATE WITH MORE REMARKS OF BAHCELI

By Muhammet Emin Avundukluoglu

ANKARA (AA) - The leader of an opposition nationalist party on Tuesday criticized recent commemorations in Paris of the centenary of the end of World War I, as it marked the end of the Ottoman Empire.

"What will we commemorate about this unfortunate agreement? Will we gloat over our collapsed empire?" Devlet Bahceli, head of the opposition Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), asked at his party’s parliamentary group meeting on Tuesday.

"The Turkish nation emerged from the wreckage" after World War I, said Bahceli.

"The cease-fire agreement, whose 100th anniversary was commemorated in Paris” was a “declaration of our execution” and is devoid of morals, ethics, and conscience, he said.

On Sunday, a ceremony near Paris’ Arc de Triomphe on the Champs-Elysees hosted the centenary of the end of World War I.

The Armistice of Nov. 11, 1918, signed between the Allies and Germany, put an official end to World War I.

Bahceli also criticized the U.S. decision to put multimillion-dollar bounties on three key PKK terrorists as obscuring the link between the PKK and its Syrian branch, the PYD/PKK.

"Putting a bounty on PKK terrorists is covering up and losing sight of the PYD/YPG," he said.

Bahceli called on the U.S. to keep its distance from the terrorist PYD/YPG, which it has been supplying arms and working with, ignoring Turkey’s objections that it is part of the terrorist PKK.

On Nov. 6, the U.S. offered a $3-5 million bounty for information on the identification or location of PKK terrorists Murat Karayilan, Cemil Bayik, and Duran Kalkan.

In its more than 30-year terror campaign against Turkey, the PKK -- listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S. and the EU -- has been responsible for the death of some 40,000 people, including women and children. The PYD/YPG is its Syrian branch.