People’s Daily
53/6929520.html
March 24 2010
China
Turkey to restore Armenian church of Ottoman Empire period
A near 300-year-old Armenian church in the hometown of a famous
Turkish-Armenian journalist will be restored, the semi-official
Anatolia news agency reported Wednesday.
The restoration of the Tashoron Church, located in the Cavusoglu
neighborhood of East Turkey’s Malatya Province, will be carried out
with the support of the Malatya Municipality, said Latif Yildirim,
president of a local mosque foundation.
Yildirim said the church was constructed in the 18th century during
the reign of the Ottoman Empire and showed "a tolerant and libertarian
culture" in that period.
"People lived all together and practised their religious beliefs freely
in those times. This happens and should happen today as well," he said.
The Cavusoglu neighborhood is the birthplace of journalist Hrant Dink,
the editor-in-chief of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos who
was shot dead outside his newspaper’s offices in Istanbul in 2007,
the agency said.
Turkey and Armenia have seen tensions rise after a U.S. congressional
panel and the Swedish parliament passed non-binding resolutions that
recognize the killings of Armenians by Ottoman forces during the
World War I as genocide this month, drawing ire from Ankara.
Armenians claim that more than 1.5 million Armenians were killed
in a systematic genocide during the World War I, but the Turkish
government insists that the Armenians were victims of widespread
chaos and governmental breakdown as the Ottoman empire collapsed
before modern Turkey was created in 1923.
The two countries signed protocols to normalize relations last
October but the protocols needed to be ratified by the two countries’
parliaments before taking effect. Turkish authorities have warned the
row over the "genocide" claims could hamper the normalization process.