Armenian massacre hangs over Turkey
By Lisbeth Kirk
Hundreds of thousands of Armenians on Sunday (24 April) demonstrated in Armenia’s capital Yerevan for recognition of the massacre of Armenians between 1915 and 1923 as genocide.
The demonstration marked the 90th anniversary, commemorated by Armenians around the world, of the start of the killings of up to 1.5 million people by the Ottoman Empire.
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The Armenians are not seeking financial compensation, but simply recognition of the killings as genocide.
"We are not talking about compensation, this is only about a moral issue", Armenia’s president Robert Sedraki Kocharian was quoted saying.
Last week, Poland joined a list of 15 countries that have officially acknowledged the killings as genocide and the issue is beeing debated in the German parliament.
France and Russia have already recognised the massacre as genocide, while the US, which has a large Armenian community, has not.
Seeking membership of the EU, Turkey is under increasing pressure to acknowledge its part in the tragedy.
The leader of the French centre-right UDF party, Francois Bayrou, present at the demonstrations in Yerevan on Sunday, announced the submission of a resolution in the European Parliament to recognise the term "Armenian genocide" as a precondition for accepting Turkey into the EU.
The issue is very sensitive in Turkey and individual Turks have faced prosecution for saying that the deaths were genocide.
Ankara sees the killings as an act of war because the Armenians rose up against their Ottoman rulers and sided with invading Russian troops during World War I.
Seven EU member states have already recognised the killings as genocide: Cyprus, Greece, Belgium, Sweden, Italy, Poland and France. Slovakia, Germany and The Netherlands are considering to do so.
Today some 3 million people are living in Armenia.