Deutsche Welle, Germany
April 24 2005

Armenian Massacre Clouds Turkey’s EU Bid

Photo: Honoring the dead at Armenia’s national memorial on Sunday

Tens of thousands of Armenians including the president and top
officials filed through the towering Genocide Memorial in Yerevan on
Sunday to commemorate the 90th anniversary of mass killings by
Ottoman Turks.

A silent procession headed by President Robert Kocharian laid flowers
at an eternal flame as Armenia’s chief clergymen sang an emotional
Gregorian Apostolic requiem service beneath the baking sun.

The long line and pounding sunshine were too much for many ordinary
Armenians who came to pay their respects.

Women could be seen as they were carried out of the line leading to
the memorial half-conscious from sunstroke after having made the long
climb to the hilltop where it is situated above the capital.

Armenia wants Turkish acknowledgment

In the run-up to the anniversary, Armenia has pulled out all the
stops in an effort to make Turkey acknowledge the massacres as
genocide and officials have estimated that 1.5 million people will
visit the memorial through Sunday.

The events being commemorated are the mass expulsion and mass deaths
of Christian Armenians in what was then the Ottoman Empire during
World War I.

“For 30 years now on this day, I’ve come to this memorial early in
the morning. Here I lay six tulips, the number of deaths in my family
at the time of the genocide,” said Mikhitar Haroutounian, 74.

April 24 marks beginning of massacre

On April 24, 1915 the Ottoman Turkish authorities arrested some 200
Armenian community leaders in the start of what Armenia and many
other countries contend was an organized genocidal campaign to
eliminate ethnic Armenians from the Ottoman Empire.

Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their kinsmen perished in
orchestrated killings between 1915 and 1917 as the Ottoman Empire,
the predecessor of modern Turkey, was falling apart.

Ankara counters that 300,000 Armenians and thousands of Turks were
killed in “civil strife” during World War I when the Armenians rose
against their Ottoman rulers and sided with invading Russian troops.

Ninety years ago “a crime was committed that had no equals in the
history of Armenia or all of humanity, it did not even have a name,”
Kocharian said according to the presidential administration.

Apology, not compensation sought

He called on Turkey and the international community to condemn the
killings as genocide, adding that the former Soviet republic was
ready to build “natural” relations with its larger neighbor if it
faced up to its history.

A mass was to be celebrated later on Sunday in Yerevan’s Saint
Gregory cathedral, as well as in churches all over Armenia, and a
minute’s silence was to be observed throughout the country at 7 p.m.

Meanwhile, Kocharian (photo) made a conciliatory gesture towards
Ankara, saying his government would not ask for financial
compensation for the killings if Turkey recognized them as genocidal.

“We are not talking about compensation, this is only about a moral
issue,” Kocharian told Russia’s Rossiya television, which is also
broadcast in Armenia.

Pressure on Turkey ahead of EU talks

The row over whether or not to call the killings genocide has
embarrassed Turkey as it readies for the start of European Union
accession talks later this year.

On Friday, French President Jacques Chirac accompanied Kocharian to a
Paris monument for victims of the massacre, and in Germany members of
parliament from across the political spectrum appealed to Turkey to
accept the massacre of Armenians as part of its history, saying this
would help its EU aspirations.

On Tuesday, Poland joined a list of 15 countries that have officially
acknowledged the killings as genocide.

The decision has drawn protest from Ankara, where officials called it
“irresponsible,” and said it would hurt relations.

However, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan (photo) recently
proposed the creation of a joint Armenian-Turkish commission to
review the issue, though officials expressed confidence that the
study would confirm Turkey’s current position.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress