Siasat Daily (India)
January 28, 2015 Wednesday
Hollande asks Turkey to ‘break taboos’ on Armenia WWI killings
Paris
Paris, Jan. 28 — French President Francois has called on Turkey to
take new steps towards the “truth” behind the mass killings of
Armenians a century ago, saying “it is time to break the taboos”.
“The effort towards the truth must continue and I am convinced that
this centenary year will see new gestures, new steps on the road to
recognition,” Hollande said yesterday at a dinner with Armenian groups
in Paris.
Armenia says an estimated 1.5 million people were killed by Ottoman
forces during World War I in what it calls a genocide.
But modern Turkey has always rejected the term “genocide”, putting the
toll at 500,000 and blaming their deaths on war and starvation.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan this month said he would
“actively” challenge a campaign to pressure Turkey to recognise the
massacres as genocide, though a year ago he offered an unprecedented
expression of condolences for the 1915-1916 killings.
Recalling Erdogan’s stance last year, Hollande told members of
France’s Armenian community, the biggest in the European Union, that
Ankara’s position “cannot stop there”.
“It is time to break the taboos and for the two nations, Armenia and
Turkey, to create a new beginning,” he said.