Is Ankara trying to regain the Diaspora?
26.03.2010 18:53 GMT+04:00
/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.