Hayat London-based Arabic newspaper slammed Turkey’s police towards the Arab world.

As Shahan Kandaharian, Editor-in-Chief of Beirut-based Aztag newspaper told a PanARMENIAN.Net reporter, Ankara was criticized for using double standards in relation to Arab world.

“Turkey criticizes Israel while denying Armenian Genocide,” the newspaper said.

At the same time, Turkey is developing a unified strategy with Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. “Nevertheless, strategic partnership between Turkey and Israel continues,” Shahan Kandaharian emphasized.

The <b>Armenian Genocide</b> (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.

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.