VISITING ISTANBUL, ARMENIAN ORTHODOX LEADER SAYS TURKS COMMITTED GENOCIDE AGAINST ARMENIANS
AP Worldstream
Jun 25, 2006
Armenian Orthodox leader Karekin II said in Istanbul Sunday that Turks
committed genocide against Armenians, a statement that is likely to
increase tensions during the last two days of his weeklong visit here.
Karekin II, whose official title is Catholicos of All Armenians, has
been facing protests since his plane landed at the Istanbul airport
on Tuesday.
The protesters included prominent lawyers from the Turkish Lawyers’
Union, who previously pushed for the prosecution of novelist Orhan
Pamuk after he said that Turks had killed 1 million Armenians.
Turkey vehemently denies that the killing of Armenians by Ottoman
Turks around the time of World War I was genocide, and several cases
have been brought against those who say otherwise. The cases have
been opened under a law making it a crime to "insult Turkishness."
Armenians say that as many as 1.5 million of their ancestors were
killing in an organized genocidal campaign by Ottoman Turks, and have
pushed for recognition of the killings as genocide around the world.
Karekin II was unreceptive Sunday to Turkey’s requests that Turkey and
Armenia, which are neighbors but have no diplomatic relations, open
their historical archives to researchers from both countries to try
to ease tensions and reach an objective conclusion about the killings.
"For our people research is not an issue. This is something that
happened and it needs to be recognized," the Dogan news agency quoted
Karekin II as saying. "The genocide issue has been researched for 90
years by academics."
Karekin II said the protests hadn’t affected him.
"They didn’t break my spirit and they don’t reflect my visit," he
said. "But if these kinds of protests continue, it shows that we have
a lot of work so that these two societies can live together."
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
