Agence France Presse — English
April 15, 2006 Saturday 2:00 PM GMT

Greek-Armenians stage anti-Turk march over WWI massacre

ATHENS, April 15 2006

Around 300 Greeks of Armenian descent marched on the Turkish embassy
in Athens on Saturday to mark the 91st anniversary of massacres
allegedly committed against their kin by the Ottoman Empire during
World War I.

Waving Armenian flags and chanting anti-Turkish slogans, the marchers
sent a delegation to deliver a message of protest to the Turkish
ambassador but were denied access to the embassy, organisers said.

The message warned Ankara that “the gates of Europe, which it so
greatly desires to cross, will remain closed” if it continues to
refuse to recognise the 1915-17 massacre.

Turkey is seeking to join the European Union, of which Greece is a
member.

The peaceful demonstration, which included both toddlers and elderly
people, momentarily soured when a group of protestors started burning
a Turkish flag. That prompted riot police guarding the embassy to
intervene with truncheons.

The marchers later dispersed without further incident.

Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their kinsmen were slaughtered in
an orchestrated genocide in the final years of the Ottoman Empire.

Ankara denies the attacks amounted to genocide but the Armenian view
has been endorsed by countries such as Greece, France and Russia.

These three countries recognise April 24 as a day of rememberance for
the Armenian genocide, as does the European Parliament — the EU’s
direclty-elected assembly — and the United Nations Sub-Commission on
Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities.

Turkey categorically rejects claims of genocide. It argues that
300,000 Armenians and at least as many Turks died in civil strife
when Armenians began fighting for independence in eastern Anatolia
and sided with Russian troops invading the crumbling Ottoman Empire.