Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu shakes hands with his Armenian opposite number, Edward Nalbandian, after the latter arrived in Yerevan for regional talks following years of icy relations. AFP photo
Posted on 12/14/2013 4:36:10 PM PST by SunkenCiv
The “deportation” of Armenians in 1915 was inhumane, and Turkey has never supported the move, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said yesterday as he made a landmark visit to the country’s long-time foe, Armenia.
Accompanied by Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Feridun Sinirlioğlu, Davutoğlu visited Yerevan for the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC) group meeting. The top diplomat met with his Armenian counterpart, Edward Nalbandian, on the sidelines of the summit.
“We are very pleased with the meeting with Nalbandian; it was candid. The primary aim is to build an environment of dialogue on a strong basis,” Davutoğlu said after the meeting, while dismissing claims that he suggested to Armenia that it withdraw from two regions in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Davutoğlu expressed his hope that a collective consciousness between the two countries could be created with a “just memory.”
“We say ‘just memory.’ What I mean with that is we should know the facts. Then we see that Turkish-Armenian relations do not date back like German-Jewish ties. In every street, there is a common sign.
After you discover this, then you see the deportation, which I see as a totally wrong practice done by [the Ottoman-era rulers under the Committee of Union and Progress]. It was inhumane,” Davutoğlu told a group of reporters en route to Yerevan.
Yerevan wants Ankara to recognize the mass killings of Armenians during the forced deportation in World War I as genocide, but Turkey has steadfastly refused to do so.
“But when you write a history taking the deportation into account, then a collective conscious was created from this side [Turkey] that Armenians betrayed their nation and deserved the deportation.
We should destroy these two collective consciousnesses. We abolished this wrong consciousness in 2005, but Armenians still have it,” he told reporters.
(Excerpt) Read more at hurriyetdailynews.com ...
Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu shakes hands with his Armenian opposite number, Edward Nalbandian, after the latter arrived in Yerevan for regional talks following years of icy relations. AFP photo
Until “The Holocaust” appeared on German TV, there was a lack of awareness of that reality among postwar Germans. One German textbook said merely, “anti-Jewish measures were intensified”.
The link leads to a confused discussion of Cypress. It and the excerpt above are confusing. If Turkey is beginning to step back from it’s genocide denial, that is a good thing. Time will tell.
This is a huge step by the Turks, and is a hopeful sign for the future of the region.
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