Is Ankara trying to regain the Diaspora?

March 26, 2010 - 18:53 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net - Adoption of the Armenian Genocide resolutions in the Swedish Parliament and the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs, perhaps forced the Turkish leadership to soften its policy in regard to the Armenian Diaspora.

According to CNN - Turk, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu expressed willingness to establish contacts with representatives of Armenian Diaspora.

"We want to normalize relations not only with Armenia, but also to establish contacts with Armenian Diaspora", Turkish foreign minister said, stressing that approach to the Armenian Diaspora as a "monolithic mass" is wrong.

Regarding the Armenian Genocide issue, Ahmet Davutoglu stressed the issue cannot be approached from a unilateral perspective. "We must create such an atmosphere in which we can fully understand what happened to the Armenians, but they also need to show respect to our memories," the Turkey's minister of foreign affairs said.

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.

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.

The Armenian Genocide

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

Present-day Turkey denies the fact of the Armenian Genocide, justifying the atrocities as “deportation to secure Armenians”. Only a few Turkish intellectuals, including Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk and scholar Taner Akcam, speak openly about the necessity to recognize this crime against humanity.

The Armenian Genocide was recognized by Uruguay, Russia, France, Lithuania, Italy, 45 U.S. states, Greece, Cyprus, Lebanon, Argentina, Belgium, Austria, Wales, Switzerland, Canada, Poland, Venezuela, Chile, Bolivia, the Vatican, Luxembourg, Brazil, Germany, the Netherlands, Paraguay, Sweden, Venezuela, Slovakia, Syria, Vatican, as well as the European Parliament and the World Council of Churches.