As Armenians marked 111 years since the mass killing of their people under the Ottoman Empire during World War I, some in Yerevan expressed anger at normalising ties with Turkey without concessions.
Armenia and Turkey have moved towards a reset in recent years, after decades of hostility over the World War I-era massacres and Ankara’s support for Azerbaijan in its long-running conflict with Yerevan.
Both sides have taken steps towards opening their land border after more than three decades, while Turkey’s flag-carrying airline launched direct flights to Yerevan last month.
“The borders must be opened, but everything has its time. Even without taking the genocide into account, we only just emerged from a war. There’s no need to rush,” said Azat Aleksanyan, a 29-year-old programmer in Yerevan.
At a rally in the capital on Thursday, hundreds of young people carried torches in commemoration of the 1915 massacres, which Armenia and more than two dozen countries have recognised as a genocide — a charge Turkey firmly rejects.
“I think every country should recognise this, because it’s very important,” said Vrej Kiledjian, a 21-year-old IT technician taking part in the rally.
He was against opening the border.
“It is not very efficient for Armenia. Not for the economy, but for the people,” said Kiledjian.
Armenia has fought two major wars with Turkey’s ally Azerbaijan since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
A 2023 Azerbaijani offensive led to an exodus of ethnic Armenians from Azerbaijan’s Karabakh region.
Armenia and Turkey have no diplomatic ties, and their land border has remained closed since 1993.
But the two sides have signalled interest in warming ties in recent years.
In 2021, the two countries appointed special envoys to explore a path toward reconciliation.
Relations have further thawed since Azerbaijan and Armenia inked a US-brokered peace agreement last year, although many points of contention remain, including Azerbaijan’s imprisonment of ethnic Armenian separatists.
– ‘We want peace’ –
Artur Avanesyan, a 55-year-old Armenian veteran and a key figure in billionaire opposition leader Samvel Karapetyan’s election campaign, spoke to AFP from the Armenian Genocide Memorial complex, known as Tsitsernakaberd.
“Three million Armenians live in Armenia today, another 10 million abroad, in various countries. And today, they are united by one grief: the grief of genocide,” he said on Thursday.
“This has not been forgotten and will never be forgotten. Today, we want peace, we want a stable, just, and strong peace,” he added.
He also called for the return of Armenian separatists jailed in Azerbaijan.
“Without the return of these patriotic people, it is impossible to establish a just peace,” he said.
After he spoke, dozens of schoolchildren came to lay flowers at the monument, built into a hillside overlooking the capital.
Armenia has long sought international recognition that the mass killings under the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1917 amounted to a genocide, saying 1.5 million people died.
Turkey strongly denies the accusation of genocide and says that both Armenians and Turks died as a result of World War I. It puts the death toll in the hundreds of thousands.
Araksya Zakaryan, a 40-year-old dentist walking in Yerevan with her two daughters said “the pain remains”.
“Of course, we remember and will remember. I hope that one day this issue will also be resolved and people will regret their actions or the actions of their ancestors.”
cad/pdw
—