TURKEY SHOULD CONFESS ARMENIAN AND BULGARIAN GENOCIDES
By Olga Yoncheva
Assyrian International News Agency
April 27 2007
Turkey should give official recognition of the Armenian genocide
committed by the Turkish state and army in the period 1915-1918,
insist 45 Bulgarian intellectuals and public figures in a declaration
distributed by BTA.
In the declaration the intellectuals insist also on the recognition
of the genocide of Bulgarians in 1903-1913.
According to the authors of the document, Turkey should take the
responsibility and should apologize for the 5-century yoke over
Bulgarians, for the committed crimes and mass murders of the
Bulgarians, who lived in its territories due to the Berlin contract.
It should also compensate the refugees’ heirs for their suffering
and the stolen property.
The declaration continues that the contemporary Turkish state,
which emphasizes itself as heir of the Ottoman Empire and seeks its
700-century "cultural and historical heritage" in a number of states
including Bulgaria, should consider itself morally obliged to admit
the committed genocides against Bulgarians, Armenians, Assyrians and
other nations.
"We call for the Bulgarian parliament to follow the example and the
active measures of the international community and of influential
constitutional bodies around the world, which recognized the
international crime "Armenian genocide".
Among these countries are: Switzerland, Poland, Slovakia, Lebanon,
Canada, Argentina, Germany, Belgium, France, Netherlands, Italy,
Greece, Uruguay, Sweden, Russia, Venezuela, Cyprus, Ukraine, the
Vatican, Lithuania and more than 30 US states, concludes the document.
The declaration will be submitted to the Armenian embassy in Bulgaria
and to the Human Rights Committee of the European parliament.
Signatories of the document are: prof. Georgi Markov, prof. Georgi
Bakalov, Lyubka Rondova, Ivan Granitski, Anton Donchev, Leda Mileva,
Lilyana Stefanova, Acad. Vassil Gyuzelev, Michail Konstantinov, prof.
Grisha Ostrovski, prof. Krikor Azaryan, prof. Sarkis Sarkisyan, prof.
Norair Nurikyan, Angel Vagenstein, Haigashot Agassyan.