Armenians yesterday marked the 93rd anniversary of mass killings of their compatriots under the Ottoman Empire, an event many countries have recognized as genocide despite Turkey’s angry rejection of the label.
Thousands were expected to attend ceremonies in the Armenian capital Yerevan and in other countries to commemorate the killings, which began in 1915 and lead to a mass exodus of Armenians from what is now eastern Turkey.
Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian and other officials were to lead a ceremony on a hilltop memorial in central Yerevan, where an eternal flame has burned since its construction in 1965, when Armenia was part of the Soviet Union.
On Wednesday night, more than 10,000 young people carrying torches and candles marched through the streets of Yerevan demanding that Turkey recognize the killings as genocide.
Some held banners reading: “Save Europe! Keep Turkey out of the EU!” and “93 years since the Armenian genocide.”
“They tell us: Forget this tragedy, move on with your life. But how can we forget? The pain of this tragedy is passed from generation to generation,” said 19-year-old Dvin Titizian, a Canadian student who was among the many from Armenia’s widespread diaspora taking part in the march. “We will continue to condemn Turkey for denying the genocide because we must believe that one day it will recognize the genocide and ask our forgiveness.”
Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their kinsmen died in orchestrated killings during the final years of the Ottoman Empire.
Turkey rejects the killings constituted genocide, saying that 300,000 Armenians and at least an equal number of Turks were killed in civil strife from 1915 to 1917 when the Christian Armenians, backed by Russia, rose up against the Ottomans. The dispute has been a major obstacle in relations between Turkey and Armenia, which have no diplomatic ties and whose border has remained closed for more than a decade.
It has also complicated relations between EU-aspirant Turkey and many Western countries, especially those with large ethnic Armenian communities such as the US and France.
More than 20 countries, including Belgium, Canada, Poland and Switzerland, have officially recognized the killings as genocide. In 2006, French lawmakers voted to make it a criminal offense to deny that Armenians were victims of genocide.
But many countries, including Britain and the US, refuse to use the term to describe the events, mindful of relations with Turkey. The US House Foreign Affairs Committee’s endorsement of a resolution labeling the killings as genocide last October sparked fury in Ankara, which recalled its ambassador to Washington. Under intense pressure from the White House, the authors of the bill later asked Congress not to hold a debate on the issue.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS