Armenian, Assyrian and Hellenic Genocide News

Dispute between Britain and Turkey over Armenian massacre
by Agence France Presse, January 21, 2001
Posted: Tuesday, January 23, 2001 00:33 am CST

LONDON, Jan 21 -- The British government faces a backlash from Turkey over its plans to mention the controversial massacres of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire at an official Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony next weekend, the weekly Observer reported.

The government had said the ceremony to remember victims of genocide would concentrate only on the Holocaust and later massacres, the paper reported on Sunday.

But under pressure from Armenian lobby groups the government decided to modify the programme to include the killings of hundreds of thousands of Armenians in 1915 by the Young Turks regime, the paper said.

A British Home Office official, in an interview with the paper, denied the government had back-peddled, saying the plan had always been "to mention everything" during the ceremony.

Prime Minister Tony Blair and Prince Charles are due to attend the ceremony.

A spokesman for the Turkish embassy in London told the paper his country would "object in the strongest terms" to the inclusion, adding Turkey had not been informed of the plan.

He reiterated his country's stiff opposition to the term "genocide" being applied to the killings of Armenians amidst the chaotic dissolution years of the Ottoman Empire.

"It was not genocide, it was different. It was not an attempt by a government to destroy a people," the spokesman said, adding "the figures about the number of people killed are inaccurate."

Armenians say that 1.5 million people died in orchestrated massacres and mass deportations between 1915 and 1917, but Turkey puts the figure at between 300,000 and half a million.

French deputies provoked a deep rift in their country's relations with Turkey on Thursday by adopting a bill that recognises as genocide the killings of hundreds of thousands of Armenians under Turkish rule more than 80 years ago.

Turkey has recalled its ambassador to France in protest.

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