Ahmet Davudoghlu: In 19th century Armenians and Turks lived together
30.01.2010 18:42 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Turkey’s minister of foreign affairs Ahmet
Davutoghlu want Armenians and Turks, irrespectively where they live,
have good relations. `Will we worry about the history or construct our
future? We do not accept Genocide, since Armenians and Turks lived in
the same towns and villages, without any tensions,’ Turkey’s foreign
minister said at the International Institute of Strategic Studies in
London. According to him, Ankara, by signing Protocols on
normalization of Armenian-Turkish relations, want to settle the
relations with Armenia and see peaceful Caucasus, Hurriyet Avrupa
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.
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.
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.