RA WILL NEVER QUESTION ARMENIAN GENOCIDE AND IMPORTANCE OF ITS INTERNATIONAL RECOGNITION

PanARMENIAN.Net
18.01.2010 14:09 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ RA will never question the Armenian genocide and the
importance of its international recognition, Armenian Foreign Minister
Edward Nalbandian noted. According to him, historic subcommittee,
the creation of which was stipulated by RA-Turkey rapprochement
Protocols, will be in charge of restoration of trust between the
people of Armenia and Turkey.

As Edward Nalibansian noted, he sees no alterations of Genocide
issue- related policy as conducted by current or previous Armenian
leadership. "President’s statement on having no intention to question
Armenian Genocide and importance of its international recognition
suggests there are no changes in foreign policy," the Foreign Minister
said, Radio Svoboda reported.

The Protocols aimed at normalization of bilateral ties and opening of
the 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.

On January 12, 2010, the Constitutional Court of the Republic of
Armenia found the protocols conformable to the country’s Organic Law.

The Armenian Genocide (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 deaths
reaching 1.5 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 and The Associated Press.

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