Ahmet Davudoghlu: In 19th century Armenians and Turks lived together

PanARMENIAN.Net -
Turkey’s minister of foreign affairs Ahmet Davutoghlu want Armenians and Turks, irrespectively where they live, have good relations. “Will we worry about the history or construct our future? We do not accept Genocide, since Armenians and Turks lived in the same towns and villages, without any tensions,” Turkey’s foreign minister said at the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London. According to him, Ankara, by signing Protocols on normalization of Armenian-Turkish relations, want to settle the relations with Armenia and see peaceful Caucasus, Hurriyet Avrupa reported.



The Protocols aimed at normalization of bilateral ties and opening of the border between Armenia and Turkey were signed in Zurich by Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian and his Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu on October 10, 2009, after a series of diplomatic talks held through Swiss mediation.



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.



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.