The RA President Serzh Sargsyan responded to Turkish President Recep Erdogan’s invitation letter to visit the one hundredth commemoration event dedicated to the Battle of Gallipoli in Turkey, which will take place on 24 April 2015. The response of the RA President in particular reads:
“Dear Mr. President,
I received your invitation to take part in the ceremonies dedicated to the one hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Gallipoli.
Indeed, the World War I was one of the most horrible chapters in the history of humanity that resulted in millions of human losses and crippled destinies.
Captain Sargis Torosyan, an Armenian gunner, was one of the participants at the Battle of Gallipoli in the Ottoman forces. He had devoted himself to the defense and security of the Empire, and had received military awards on behalf of the Ottoman Empire for his faithful service and heroism. Meanwhile the mass atrocities and forced deportations, which the Ottoman Empire planned and implemented against the Armenian people, and which reached their peak in the same year, touched even Sargis Torosyan’s family. His parents were among the one and a half million Armenians slaughtered in the Genocide. They were brutally killed. His sister died in the Syrian deserts.
Raphael Lemkin developed the term “genocide” as a result of these unprecedented massacres, and the impunity of this massacre created grounds for the Holocaust and genocides in, Rwanda, Cambodia and Darfur.
According to you the battle of Gallipoli is a unique example for the friendly relations that were born as a result of war, not only for Turkey, but for the international community as well. Whereas the battlefield reminding of bitter legacy of war currently is a monument of peace and friendship. Leaving aside the well-known significance of the Battle of Gallipoli, and the controversial role of Turkey in the First and the Second World Wars, we must remember that the peace and friendship first of all should be based on the courage to face with the one’s own past, the historical justice as well as on recognition of the universal memory and not the selective approach.
Alas, Turkey continues its traditional policy of denial and year in year out “improve” its toolset of distorting history, and the one hundredth commemorations of the Battles of Gallipoli will be marked on 24 April for the first time, notwithstanding the fact that the battles began on 18 March 1915 and lasted till late January 1916. Whereas the allies’ landing and battles started on 25 April. What is this aimed at, if not to the simple purpose to divert the international community’s attention from the events of marking the one hundredth commemoration of the Armenian genocide? Whereas prior to initiating of a commemoration event, Turkey had much more important responsibility towards its own people and the mankind, which is the recognition and condemning of the Armenian Genocide.
Therefore, I would advise not to forget to include in your calls of international peace the message to the world urging to recognize the Armenian Genocide and to remember its one and a half million innocent victims. It is the duty of all of us to pass to the future generations the real and undistorted history, thus preventing the repetition of outrage on humanity and creating grounds for the closer relations and further cooperation of the nations and especially of the neighboring nations.
P.S. Your Excellency, just a few months ago I had invited you to Yerevan to honor the memory of the innocent victims of the Armenian Genocide on 24 April, 2015 together. It is not in our traditions to visit the invitee without receiving a response to our own invitation.”
