Agence France Presse — English
November 24, 2006 Friday 4:09 PM GMT
Armenia hails Cypriot haven for Ottoman-era refugees
LARNACA, Cyprus, Nov 24 2006
Armenian President Robert Kocharian on Friday laid the foundation
stone for a memorial marking the spot where Armenian refugees landed
in Cyprus after fleeing Ottoman Turkish persecution.
Around 200 members of the Armenian community in Cyprus attended the
symbolic ceremony at the marina of the southern resort of Larnaca.
"I’d like to thank the Cyprus government for funding this memorial at
this historic point," said Armenian Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian.
"Cyprus gave our people a new home and we express our gratitude for
that."
Oskanian is accompanying Kocharian’s official visit to a country
viewed as a close ally of Armenia.
The Mediterranean town of Larnaca was the first port of call for
Armenian refugees fleeing the massacres that took place under Ottoman
rule between 1915-1917.
At least half of the 3,000-strong Armenian community in Cyprus can
trace its roots to those refugees who sought a safe haven on the
island, which was a British colony until independence in 1960.
"The Armenian diaspora started from Cyprus. Larnaca was the first
place they came by boat in the 1920s and the Cypriots welcomed them
openly," Vartkes Mahdessian, the Armenian representative in the
Cypriot parliament, told AFP.
"This memorial is a reminder of the criminal act of genocide the
Ottoman Turks committed," he added.
Armenians say they were victims of genocide during World War I, but
Turkey vehemently denies this version of events.
Cyprus is one of a number countries, along with France, to recognize
the killings as genocide.
Armenians claim up to 1.5 million of their kin were slaughtered in
orchestrated killings between 1915 and 1917.
Turkey rejects the genocide label, arguing that 250,000 to 500,000
Armenians and at least as many Turks died in civil strife when
Armenians took up arms for independence in eastern Anatolia.
The Republic of Cyprus and Turkey do not recognise each other. Ankara
invaded and occupied the northern third of the island in 1974 in
response to an Athens-engineered coup aimed at uniting the island
with Greece.