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Armenians mark 86th anniversary of mass deaths
YEREVAN, Armenia
Heads bowed in respect, a solemn procession of Armenians filed past a monument and eternal flame in Yerevan Tuesday to mark the 86th anniversary of the beginning of the deaths of Armenians in Turkey.
Armenians say 1.5 million of their people died in an Ottoman Empire campaign to force them from eastern Turkey between 1915 and 1923. Turkey says the death count is inflated, and that Armenians were killed or displaced as the Ottoman Empire tried to quell civil unrest.
The country's government has asked Turkey to apologize as a condition for establishing diplomatic relations. Turkey insists the killings did not amount to genocide, a term used for the systematic annihilation of an racial, political or cultural group.
Memorial activities began Monday evening with student activists marching to the memorial on a hill in Yerevan carrying torches lit from a burning Turkish flag in Opera Square near the city center.
In a conciliatory note, Armenian politicians and religious leaders were accompanied to the monument Tuesday by Turkish intellectual Ali Ertan, who heads a group of Turks who want their government to recognize the killings. Ertan lay flowers on the monument.
The deaths began before April 24, but the date was chosen for memorial services because it marks the day in 1915 when Turkish authorities executed a large group of Armenian intellectuals and political leaders, accusing them of helping the invading Russian army during World War I. Armenia was then part of the Ottoman Empire.
On Wednesday, the Canadian Senate is scheduled to review two measures on recognizing the Armenian genocide. Similar laws are under consideration in the United States, Austria, Germany and other countries.
Argentina, Greece, France, Cyprus, Russia and several other countries
already have officially recognized the historic events as genocide, along
with eleven U.S. state governments.
Armenian, Assyrian and Hellenic Genocide News Archives