ARMENIA COURT REFERENCE TO KILLINGS ANGERS TURKEY

Reuters
wsdesk/LDE60J1UB.htm
Jan 20 2010

Jan 20 (Reuters) – Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said on
Wednesday that a ruling by a top court in Armenia could derail efforts
to end a century of hostility between the two neighbours.

Here are some details of the troubled history between the two
countries.

NAGORNO-KARABAKH

Turkey closed its land border with Armenia in 1993 in protest at
Yerevan’s backing for ethnic Armenian rebels fighting for control of
Nagorno-Karabakh, a breakaway region of Azerbaijan populated mainly
by ethnic Armenians.

Turkey is a close ally of Muslim Azerbaijan and the two countries
share close cultural and linguistic ties.

Some 30,000 people were killed in the war, which ended in 1994 with
Armenian forces occupying Nagorno-Karabakh and seven other, adjacent
districts of Azerbaijan.

CONFLICT

In the late 19th century, the Ottoman Empire’s some two million
Armenians began to assert nationalist aspirations.

Repression by Ottoman irregulars, mainly Kurds, led to the massacre of
30,000 Armenians in eastern Anatolia in 1894-1896. Several thousand
more were killed in Constantinople in August 1896 after Armenian
militants seized the Ottoman Bank.

As the Ottomans fought Russian forces in eastern Anatolia in World
War One, many Armenians formed partisan groups to assist the invading
Russian armies.

On April 24, 1915, the Ottoman Empire arrested and killed hundreds
of the Armenian intelligentsia.

In May, Ottoman commanders began mass deportation of Armenians from
eastern Anatolia. Thousands were marched towards Syria and Mesopotamia
and Armenians say some 1.5 million died, either in massacres or of
starvation and exhaustion in the desert.

DIFFERING VIEWS

The Zurich accords signed between the governments of Turkey and
Armenia in October 2009 call for the creation of a commission of
international experts to study the events.

Armenia insists they should be declared a genocide. President Serzh
Sarksyan said in a speech to mark Armenia’s annual Genocide Day that
securing international condemnation of the killings was a priority
for his administration.

Ankara strongly rejects the "genocide" description, saying large
numbers of both Christian Armenians and Muslim Turks were killed
during the chaotic break-up of the Ottoman Empire. Use of the term
genocide has led to court cases under a law which forbids insulting
the Turkish state.

WHAT NEXT?

Armenia’s Constitutional Court last week rejected opposition complaints
over the legality of a government push to end a century of hostility
with Turkey.

The ruling means accords calling for the establishment of diplomatic
relations and the opening of the Turkish-Armenian border can move to
parliament, although there is little sign they will be adopted soon.

The accords, which need parliamentary approval in both countries,
have been gathering dust since they were signed by the two governments
last October, with Turkey facing a backlash from close ally Azerbaijan,
a key energy supplier to the West.

Erdogan said on Wednesday the Armenian court’s reference to the mass
killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks — a position strongly rejected
by Ankara — and to a conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan meant
"the process will be challenged unless this mistake is corrected."

Sources: Reuters/Dictionary of Twentieth Century History.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress