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Should the United States formally recognize the World War I-era killing of Armenians as genocide?

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RA President: Armenian Genocide bears universal significance and must receive universal recognition
24.04.2008 13:52 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Armenia’s President Serzh Sargsyan issued an address on occasion of the 93rd anniversary of the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire, the RA leader’s press office reported. The statement reads,

“Dear Compatriots,

Today we pay tribute to the memory of the victims of the Armenian Genocide.

As a result of the state-conspired and carried out genocide in the Ottoman Turkey, a vast number of the Armenians were annihilated on their native land and lost their living space. At the time numerous cultural and material values, which the Armenian people had been creating for thousands of years, were destroyed and are being destroyed even today.

International recognition and condemnation of the Armenian Genocide is an appropriate and inevitable part of the Armenia’s foreign policy agenda. The Motherland of all Armenians – the Republic of Armenia – should double its efforts for the restoration of historic justice. When it comes to the genocide condemnation, the denial has no future, especially today, when many countries of the world have added their voices to the voice of truth.

Recognition and condemnation of the Armenian Genocide is not just an Armenian issue. Crime against humanity bears universal significance and reverberation and must receive a universal recognition. Our goals have nothing to do with animosity or revenge. While keeping the memory of the innocent victims alive, presently we are ready to establish normal relation with Turkey without any preconditions.

Dear Compatriots,

The preconditions and causes of the Armenian Genocide have been widely spoken and written about. Many new facts and analytical works are waiting to be published. However, one thing is absolutely clear: execution of such a crime became possible only in the absence of the Armenian state.

Today, on April 24 we must acutely realize the exceptional meaning of the Armenian state. The Armenian nation should develop and strengthen, embracing our state - the guarantor of our people’s security.”

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In praise of ... Arat DinkLeader The Guardian, Wednesday April 23 2008
Article history
About this articleClose This article appeared in the Guardian on Wednesday April 23 2008 on p30 of the Leaders & reply section. It was last updated at 00:31 on April 23 2008. Since it was introduced three years ago, article 301 of Turkey's penal code, which makes insulting Turkishness a criminal offence, has been used to bring charges against illustrious names in literature, academia and journalism: Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel prize-winning author; Noam Chomsky; the novelist Elif Safak; Hrant Dink, the Armenian-Turkish journalist who was assassinated by radical nationalists; and last year Hrant's son Arat. On Monday night Arat received the Guardian Journalism Award from the campaigning group Index on Censorship. It was not just to commemorate his father's work, but for his own brave refusal to buckle under the censorship laws that led to his father's death. Arat, executive director of Agos, an Armenian newspaper in Istanbul, was brought to trial as a co-defendant, along with Serkis Seropyan, holder of the weekly's publishing licence. Their crime was to have republished an interview that Hrant gave to Reuters in which he referred to the 1915 massacre of the Armenians in the Ottoman empire as genocide. Arat was convicted as charged and given a one-year suspended sentence. The Agos staff continue to be threatened by extreme nationalists but remain determined in the face of bigotry and physical threat. Arat Dink believes both Turks and Armenians are postponing a common historical reckoning and looks forward to the day when both peoples can commemorate the events in 1915 as a common part of their history, without threatening each other's identity. Like father, like son.