Turkey denies the killing of up to 1.5 million Armenians in what is now Turkey in 1915, at the height of World War I, constitutes genocide and relations with Armenia are still blighted by the dispute.
Parliament in Germany, Turkey’s biggest trade partner in the European Union, risked a diplomatic rupture with Ankara and upsetting its own many ethnic Turkish residents by joining the many Western scholars and two dozen countries to use the word.
Its resolution, approved overwhelmingly, marks a significant change of stance in a country which has worked hard to come to terms with its responsibility for the murder of six million Jews in the Holocaust.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday he “shared the pain” of Armenians, but as recently as Thursday he again refuted the description of the killings as genocide and has shown no sign of changing his mind. The French and Russian presidents, Francois Hollande and Vladimir Putin, were among guests who placed a yellow carnation in a wreath of forget-me-nots at a hilltop memorial near the Armenian capital Yerevan and led calls for reconciliation.
“Recognition of the genocide is a triumph of human conscience and justice over intolerance and hatred,” Armenian president Serzh Sarksyan said in speech under grey skies, with many guests wrapped in coats or blankets. In a speech at the ceremony that was met by warm applause, Hollande said a law adopted by France in 2001 on recognition of the killings as genocide was “an act of truth”.
“France fights against revisionism and destruction of evidence, because denial amounts to repeat of massacres,” he said, describing his own attendance as “a contribution to reconciliation”.
Putin warned that neo-fascism and nationalism was on the rise in the world, terminology he uses to describe what Russia regards as radical elements in Ukraine, whose forces are trying to put down a rebellion by pro-Russian separatists in the east. “But remembering the tragic events of the past years we must be optimistic about our future and believe in the ideals of friendship ... and mutual support,” he said.
Obama avoids calling massacre ‘genocide’
US president Barack Obama has described the World War I massacre of Armenians as “terrible carnage”, but avoided the term genocide, as tempers flared ahead of the 100th anniversary of the bloodshed. Friday marked a century since the start of the massacres waged by Ottoman forces, which Armenia says killed 1.5 million people between 1915 and 1917. Modern Turkey, the successor state to the Ottomans, rejects the term “genocide,” arguing that 300,000 to 500,000 Armenians and as many Turks died.
The deaths remain a bone of contention on Friday between the two countries and a sensitive topic for Armenians around the world, including in the US, where local groups were outraged at Obama’s choice of words.
“The Armenian people of the Ottoman Empire were deported, massacred, and marched to their deaths. Their culture and heritage in their ancient homeland were erased. Amid horrific violence that saw suffering on all sides, one and a half million Armenians perished. Against this backdrop of terrible carnage, the American and Armenian peoples came together in a bond of common humanity,” Obama said in a carefully worded statement.