{In response to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s invitation to the events commemorating the centenary of the battle of the Çanakkale Campaign of World War I to be held on April 24 this year, Armenian President Serzh Sarksyan has said that before organizing such a commemorative event, Turkey has a much more important obligation toward the whole of humanity to recognize and condemn the Armenian “genocide” at the end of World War I.}
In an open letter to Erdoğan, which has also been published by the Armenian news agency Armenpress, Sarksyan stressed on Friday that he first invited Erdoğan a few months ago to join Armenians in commemoration of the victims of the Armenian “genocide” in Yerevan on April 24. “It is not common practice for us to be hosted at the invitee’s without receiving a response to our invitation,” Sarksyan noted.
Ankara denies claims that the events of 1915 amounted to genocide, arguing that both Turks and Armenians were killed when Armenians revolted against the Ottoman Empire during World War I in collaboration with the Russian army, which was then invading Eastern Anatolia. Every year on April 24, Armenians around the world commemorate the Armenian victims who died at the end of World War I in Ottoman Turkey. Armenians are preparing for the centennial commemoration events this year in April.
Erdoğan invited Sarksyan to the 100th anniversary celebration of the Çanakkale Campaign of World War I to commemorate the Armenian and Turkish soldiers who fought and died together side-by-side during the war, the Milliyet daily reported on Friday.
Turkey sent invitations to the leaders of 102 states whose soldiers fought in World War I, inviting them to attend an event commemorating the anniversary that is scheduled to take place on April 23-24. A government official, cited by Milliyet, said a large number of soldiers of Armenian origin fought and died together with Turkish soldiers during the war.
“Turkey continues its traditional policy of denialism. Year by year, improving its tools of history distortion, this time Turkey marks the anniversary of the Battle of Gallipoli (Çanakkale) on April 24 for the first time, while it began on March 18, 1915, and lasted till late January 1916. Furthermore, the Allies’ land campaign — Gallipoli land battle — took place on April 25, 1915,” said Sarksyan in his letter.
“What purpose does it serve if not a simple-minded goal to distract the attention of the international community from the events dedicated to the centennial of the Armenian Genocide? Whereas, before organizing a commemorative event, Turkey has a much more important obligation towards its own people and the entire humanity, namely the recognition and condemnation of the Armenian Genocide,” he added.
Sarksyan advised Erdoğan that when calling for international peace, he should not forget to send a message to the world to recognize the Armenian “genocide” and “pay tribute to the memory of 1.5 million victims.”
In his letter addressed to Erdoğan, Sarksyan also gave the example of an artilleryman of Armenian descent, Cpt. Sargis Torosyan, who served in the Ottoman Empire in the Çanakkale battle. Sarksyan said Torosyan served as an officer, dedicated to defend the Ottoman Empire and who was decorated with Ottoman military awards for his loyalty and heroism.
“Nevertheless, in that same year, marking the culmination of mass killing and forced deportation, preliminary planned and perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire, the wave of massacres did not bypass even Sargis Torosyan. His parents, brutally killed, and sister, who perished in the Syrian desert, were among 1.5 million Armenian victims of genocide,” he said.
Sarksyan also claimed in his letter that “impunity” thereof paved a path to the Holocaust and genocide in Rwanda, Cambodia and Darfur.
The Armenian president also said that peace and friendship first and foremost should be based on the courage to confront the past, as well as on the recognition of a universal memory but never on a “selective approach.”
Speaking to the Agos daily on Friday, Turkish citizens of Armenian descent reacted strongly to Erdoğan’s invitation, calling it a “joke” and an “ill-mannered” action, and further criticizing it as a “political maneuver.”
The Çanakkale battle, also known as the Gallipoli Campaign, was an Allied military campaign against the Ottoman Empire that began on April 25, 1915. The Allied forces were repelled in 1916 and the campaign went down in history as one of the greatest Ottoman victories during World War I.
While Erdoğan sent invitations to many of his counterparts, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu also invited the heads of numerous states.
In a historic first for the Turkish Republic last year, Erdoğan, who was prime minister at the time, extended Turkey’s condolences to the grandchildren of Armenians who had lost their lives in 1915. Although the statement was widely welcomed by the West and Armenians living in Turkey, Yerevan remained unsatisfied.
An invitation was also sent to US President Barack Obama, whose statements on the anniversary of the 1915 events are of importance to both Ankara and Yerevan. Armenia is lobbying the US to recognize the 1915 events as “genocide,” a charge Turkey categorically denies.
Armenia is also preparing a wide-scale anniversary ceremony for the 1915 events. Last year, the Armenian president invited his Turkish counterpart to visit Armenia on April 24 of this year to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the events.
Source: Todays Zaman
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