Reconciliation of two peoples is a long and complex process

PanARMENIAN.Net -
Reconciliation of two peoples is a long and complex process, David Phillips , chairman of the Turkish-Armenian Reconciliation Commission TARC said in Yerevan. American expert, who was taking part in the presentation of the his book’s Armenian translation "Talking about the past” in Armenia, particularly said "In 2001, any conversation about the Armenians and the Armenian issue was a certain code for the Turks, meaning only Armenian Genocide. But then, when the commission started functioning, it managed to break the ice and remove the existing taboos, " David Phillips said.



According to him, TARC helped to start communication between officials of Armenia and Turkey. "Many Turks fear that by raising the issue of Armenian Genocide the international community is trying to scare Turkey. This is "Sevres syndrome", David Phillips said.



According to him, TARC, which originally was supposed to operate a year, continued its activities for three years.



The Armenian Genocide (1915-23) was the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I. It was characterized by massacres, and deportations involving forced marches under conditions designed to lead to the death of the deportees, with the total number of deaths reaching 1.5 million.



The date of the onset of the genocide is conventionally held to be April 24, 1915, the day that Ottoman authorities arrested some 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople. Thereafter, the Ottoman military uprooted Armenians from their homes and forced them to march for hundreds of miles, depriving them of food and water, to the desert of what is now Syria. Massacres were indiscriminate of age or gender, with rape and other sexual abuse commonplace. The Armenian Genocide is the second most-studied case of genocide after the Holocaust.



The Republic of Turkey, the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, denies the word genocide is an accurate description of the events. In recent years, it has faced repeated calls to accept the events as genocide.



To date, twenty countries and 44 U.S. states have officially recognized the events of the period as genocide, and most genocide scholars and historians accept this view. The Armenian Genocide has been also recognized by influential media including The New York Times, BBC, The Washington Post and The Associated Press.



The majority of Armenian Diaspora communities were formed by the Genocide survivors.