Agence France Presse
Oct 16 2009

Armenians rally against reconciliation with Turkey

YEREVAN, Oct 16 2009

Several thousand angry protesters on Friday rallied in the Armenian
capital to denounce the government’s policy of reconciliation with
century-long foe Turkey.

Some 2,000 protesters waving national flags crowded Charles Aznavour
square — named after the famed singer of Armenian origin — in
central Yerevan carrying placards reading "Turkey must pay its debt to
the Armenian people."

The rally was organised by the nationalist Armenian Revolutionary
Federation (Dashnaktsutyun), which quit the ruling coalition earlier
this year over the reconciliation efforts.

Several other opposition parties joined the protest, which attracted
significantly less people than the 10,000 who attended a similar rally
last Friday.

Turkey and Armenia, long divided by a bloody history, signed two
historic deals last week to end decades of hostility, establish formal
ties and open their border.

But many Armenians oppose the reconciliation until Ankara recognises
the World War I-era massacre of Armenians in the falling Ottoman
Empire as genocide.

Opponents also fear that Armenians will have to drop their territorial
claims if Turkey’s borders are recognised.

"How is it possible to sign the deal if it questions the fact of
genocide and links (reconciliation) with the Karabakh conflict
(resolution)?" one of the Dashnaktsutyun leaders, Ghegham Manukyian,
told the crowd as protesters shouted "No! No!"

Turkey closed its border with Armenia in 1993 in solidarity with ally
Azerbaijan over Yerevan’s backing of ethnic Armenian separatists in
the breakaway Nagorny Karabakh region.

Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their kin were systematically
killed between 1915 and 1917 in the Ottoman Empire, the predecessor of
modern Turkey. Several countries, including France and Canada, have
recognised the massacres as genocide.

Turkey rejects the genocide label and argues that 300,000-500,000
Armenians and at least as many Turks died in civil strife when
Christian Armenians took up arms against their Ottoman rulers and
sided with invading Russian troops.