Uruguay’s President Luis Lacalle Pou described as “regrettable” the gesture linked to an ultra-nationalist group that Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu made to demonstrators from the Armenian community protesting his visit to Montevideo, Deutsche Welle reports.

Speaking to the press, Lacalle Pou assured that the attitude of the Turkish foreign minister, Mevlüt Cavusoglu, should be “strongly criticized (…), the community is hurt, and rightly so.“

Cavusoglu made the gesture of this far-right movement to a group of Armenian demonstrators who were waiting for him on April 23 at the inauguration of the Turkish Embassy in Uruguay, a country where he is visiting to start negotiations with a view to signing a Free Trade Agreement.

In this sense, Lacalle Pou distanced himself from the policy of the Government of the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan: “Advancing in commercial matters does not mean” that Montevideo agrees “with the internal or external policy” of the other party.

The Uruguayan foreign minister, Francisco Bustillo, joined the condemnation of Lacalle Pou on Sunday afternoon and called the gesture of his Turkish counterpart “inadmissible” during the 107th anniversary of the Armenian genocide.

Bustillos, who on Saturday summoned the Turkish ambassador to a meeting on April 25 to explain the event, affirmed that the Uruguayan government rejects “any invocation or offensive gesture that generates violence.”