ARMENIAN GENOCIDE CONNECTED FIRST OF ALL WITH IDEOLOGY: RUSSIAN HISTORIAN
Yerevan, May 23. ArmInfo. The attempts of a number of Turkish
historians to justify the Genocide of Armenians with the pro-Russian
sentiments of Armenians are absolutely baseless like the statements
that “the Armenians and Turks had normal relations before Russia’s
coming to the Caucasus.” Head of the 19th Century Section, State
Historical Museum, Victor Bezotosny told ArmInfo.
He stressed that for centuries the Turkish state government machine
repeatedly organized ethnic purges accompanied with pogroms of the
Christian nations in the Ottoman Empire: Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians, and
Armenians. The history of Russian-Turkish wars shows that every time
after war Russia would undertook the protection of Christian peoples
in the Ottoman Empire, the historian said. After the Russian-Turkish
war of 1887-1878, Russia insisted on its military presence in Western
Armenia as a guarantor of security of western Armenians before the
Sultan would carry out reforms. West-European super powers headed
by great Britain were against these plans for the fear of the future
expansion of the Russian Empire. And Alexander II yielded to Europe
for the results of the Crimea war were fresh in the memory of the
Russian public.
Armenian Genocide in Ottoman Turkey as well as the annihilation of
Jews in Germany under Hitler were connected with domestic political
matters and first of all with ideology, he said. He underlined that
historical documents leave no doubts that Genocide was committed
against the Armenian people in Ottoman Turkey.