CE Noticias Financieras , Uruguay
Monday
The Turkish president arrives and Armenians will show repudiation
It is expected that on February 7 and 8 visit Uruguay in the framework of a tour of Latin America, the controversial Turkish President Recep Erdogan and the local Armenian community, which has some 15,000 members, is on alert. Uruguay has a strong commercial relationship with Turkey, a country to which last year it sold merchandise for US $ 263 million, mainly cattle on foot and, to a lesser extent, cellulose and tissues.
But at the same time, it is one of the states that recognized the genocide of the Armenian people, that is to say the massacre of members of that community by the Turkish state, in 1915. The number of victims is calculated between 600,000 and 1, 8 million. The Turkish Republic, the successor of the Ottoman Empire, denies genocide to this day with the argument that the deaths were not the result of a plan of deliberate extermination. The genocide gave rise to the diaspora of the Armenians all over the world. Sources from the Frente Amplio assured El País that beyond the fact that the government will receive Erdogan, no change is foreseen in the historical policy of the Uruguayan State to recognize the genocide.
Erdogan, 63, has been president of Turkey since August 2014. Previously, he was prime minister between March 2003 and August 2014, and former mayor of Istanbul (1994-1998) for the party called Refah.
According to El País, the Minister of Tourism, Liliam Kechichian, of Armenian origin and who usually participates in acts of commemoration of the genocide, informed Erdogan's visit to the organizations of the Armenian community in February. El País contacted the minister who limited herself to saying "nothing to declare". The minister will be on leave when Erdogan comes.
The Armenian community of Uruguay will meet tonight to discuss the way in which the rejection of Erdogan's visit will be manifested. In social networks, several members of the Armenian community already showed their repudiation. In one of the messages that already circulates on social networks is called to protest "against everything that this man and his accomplices represent."
The messages say that "today represents for many, especially for its victims, the head of a policy directed towards the most ruthless violation of human rights." "A man who pays, among other things, the denial about the genocide of the Armenian people," he adds.
The member of the Armenian community of Uruguay, Diego Karamanukian, told El País that "it is news that nobody expected since there is no international report and Uruguay is confused with Paraguay to mislead". Karamanukian added that the visit of a Turkish president "is an unprecedented fact since Uruguay was the first country to recognize the genocide."
Karamanukian considered that "there is no one who is going to greet the visit or to say welcome, is a questioned character in his country and is the Turkish ruler who put more obstacles in recent decades." He also explained that "we are clear that the Uruguayan government knows what the 1965 generation decided and over the years all the governments ratified." It is that Uruguay was the first country in the world to declare on April 24 as Day of remembrance of the Armenian martyrs.
Karamanukian said that "the Uruguayan government knows well the issue of genocide." For the Armenian journalist "it is a lie that the visit is due to economic reasons, the visit of a president is always political, he comes to try to generate in the world the opinion or the image that in Uruguay the doors are not closed".
In 1915, the Ottoman government ordered the deportation of the Armenians, a Christian community, to the deserts of Syria. TheOttoman participation in the world war opened with a resounding defeat before the Russians in the Caucasus front. Although the main reason was the disastrous strategy of the Ottoman commanders, the government, led de facto by a triumvirate of Turkish nationalists, attributed it to the alleged support of the Armenian local population to the Russian Tsar's troops.
On April 24, 1915, about 250 Armenian intellectuals and leaders from Istanbul were arrested and deported to Ankara, where they would be executed. It was the beginning of an ethnic cleansing plan that would be reflected in the Law of Transfer and Resettlement, approved on May 27.
The route, through the steppe of Anatolia and to the deserts of Syria, was the scene of death marches. With barely access to food or water, decimated by diseases, thousands of Armenians died on the roads. The columns of deportees were usually subjected to the harassment of the gendarmes and the attacks of bands of Kurds, Turkmen and Circassians, who in addition to depriving them of their belongings, kidnapped the girls to rape them or take them as wives.
Turkey is also questioned by the treatment of the Kurdish minority in its territory and by entering with its troops frequently to Syria to fight the Kurds of that country.
In July 2016 there was an attempted coup in Turkey that was stifled. Since then, Erdogan has been accused by some countries of accentuating the authoritarian character of his government. The process of Turkish entry into the European Union is frozen.
On April 25, 2015, the Armenian community in Uruguay commemorated the centenary of the Armenian genocide. In that instance that was developed in the Legislative Palace, the community received the support of all the political parties of Uruguay. President Tabaré Vázquez attended the event along with then Vice President Raúl Sendic who took the floor. In addition, the exmandatarios were Julio María Sanguinetti, Luis Alberto Lacalle, Jorge Batlle and José Mujica. The ceremony showed the cohesion of the political parties behind the claim of the people of Armenia, in commemoration of the centenary. On that occasion, the community gave recognition to Vázquez, Sanguinetti, Lacalle, Batlle and Mujica.