RPA: PROTOCOLS DO NOT CONTAIN PRECONDITIONS

PanARMENIAN.Net
12.01.2010 13:37 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Secretary of the parliamentary group of the
Republican Party of Armenia, Eduard Sharmazanov supposes that it’s
quite natural that the Constitutional Court annexed ARFD’s juridical
conclusion to the Armenian-Turkish protocols case.

"It will be a good foundation for a multifaceted discussion," he said,
refraining, however, from making any forecasts.

Asked by a PanARMENIAN.Net reporter whether a public discussion of
the protocols would be more expedient, Mr. Sharmazanov said that
"it’s up to the CC to decide."

"Our party has numerously stated that the Protocols do not contain
preconditions and that Armenia will not give up the policy calling
for worldwide recognition of the Armenian Genocide," he said.

The Protocols aimed at normalization of bilateral ties and opening of
the common border between Armenia and Turkey were signed in Zurich
by Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian and his Turkish
counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu on October 10, 2009, after a series of
diplomatic talks held through Swiss mediation.

The Republican Party of Armenia is a national conservative political
party in Armenia. It was the first political party in independent
Armenia to be founded (2 April 1990) and registered (14 May 1991). It
is the largest party of the centre-right in Armenia, and claims to have
140,000 members. The party controls most government bodies in Armenia.

At the 2003 parliamentary elections on May 25, the party received
23.5% of the popular vote, winning 31 out of 131 seats. At the last
parliamentary elections on May 12, 2007, the party received 33.91%
of the popular vote, winning 64 out of 131 seats. The former Prime
Minister, Andranik Markaryan, was the leader of the party. Currently,
President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan is the chairman of HHK board.

The Armenian Genocide in Ottoman Empire (1915-23) was the deliberate
and systematic destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman
Empire during and just after World War I. It was characterized by
massacres, and deportations involving forced marches under conditions
designed to lead to the death of the deportees, with the total
number of Armenian deaths generally held to have been between one
and one-and-a-half million.

The date of the onset of the genocide is conventionally held to be
April 24, 1915, the day that Ottoman authorities arrested some 250
Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople.

Thereafter, the Ottoman military uprooted Armenians from their homes
and forced them to march for hundreds of miles, depriving them of
food and water, to the desert of what is now Syria. Massacres were
indiscriminate of age or gender, with rape and other sexual abuse
commonplace. The Armenian Genocide is the second most-studied case
of genocide after the Holocaust.

The Republic of Turkey, the successor state of the Ottoman Empire,
denies the word genocide is an accurate description of the events. In
recent years, it has faced repeated calls to accept the events as
genocide.

To date, twenty countries and 44 U.S. states have officially recognized
the events of the period as genocide, and most genocide scholars
and historians accept this view. The Armenian Genocide has been also
recognized by influential media including The New York Times, BBC,
The Washington Post, The Associated Press.

The majority of Armenian Diaspora communities were formed by the
Genocide survivors.