Tens of thousands of people silently marched in Yerevan on Tuesday in an annual
remembrance of some 1.5 million victims of the Armenian genocide in Ottoman
Turkey.

The day marked the 92nd anniversary of the start of the 1915-1918 mass killings
and deportations that affected virtually the entire Armenian population of the
crumbling Ottoman Empire. Nearly two dozen countries, among them France, Canada
and Russia, have recognized the massacres as the first genocide of the 20th
century.

As always, the official commemoration of the anniversary began with a prayer
service at the genocide memorial on Yerevan’s Tsitsernakabert Hill that was led
by the head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, Garegin II, and attended by
President Robert Kocharian and other top government officials.

Ordinary Armenians laid flowers around the memorial’s eternal fire throughout
the day. The stream of people walking to the memorial was thinner than usual due
to heavy snow which is highly unusual for this time of the year in Armenia.
Mourners were again joined by representatives of foreign diplomatic missions in
Yerevan.

In a written address to the nation, Kocharian evoked the increasingly successful
Armenian campaign for international recognition of the genocide. “The
international community has realized that genocide is a crime directed against
not only a particular people but the entire humanity,” he said. “Denial and
cover-up of that crime is no less dangerous than its preparation and
perpetration.”

“A strong, democratic and prosperous Armenia must be the Armenian people’s
response to the masterminds, perpetrators and deniers of the Armenian Genocide,”
added Kocharian.

In a separate statement, Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian said genocide
recognition will remain on the Armenian government’s foreign policy agenda. “We
remember our past, but Armenia is moving forward, seeking to establish normal
relations with all of its neighbors,” he said, effectively reaffirming Yerevan’s
support for an unconditional normalization of Turkish-Armenian ties.

The Turkish government, which vehemently denies that the 1915 mass killings
constituted a genocide, says the establishment of bilateral diplomatic relations
and the opening of the Turkish-Armenian border is contingent on a halt to the
genocide recognition drive.

In his statement, Sarkisian voiced solidarity with dissident Turkish
intellectuals recognizing the genocide. He also urged Armenians to use the
occasion for again paying tribute to the assassinated Turkish-Armenian editor
Hrant Dink who also challenged the official Turkish version of the bloody
events.

Leaders of Armenia’s main political parties also visited the genocide memorial.
“A state can not live by denying its past,” said Hrant Markarian of the
governing Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun). “Turkey must
recognize the Armenian genocide as soon as possible for the sake of Turkey’s
future.”

“For us, genocide recognition is, first of all, a matter of dignity and
historical truth and also a matter of Armenia’s national security,” Markarian
told RFE/RL.

Dashnaktsutyun branches in the worldwide Armenian Diaspora have for decades been
lobbying the parliaments and governments of Western states to officially
recognize the Armenian massacres as genocide. The nationalist party controls one
of the two main Armenian lobbying groups in the United States that look set to
push a genocide resolution through the U.S. House of Representatives this year.

While praising Armenian efforts at genocide recognition, Raffi Hovannisian, a
U.S.-born opposition leader, sounded a note of caution. “I believe that we must
not excessively concentrate on or be very buoyed this spate of recognitions
because the Armenian genocide and the loss of our people’s homeland is a fact
affirmed by many historians,” he said.

By Ruzanna Khachatrian and Hovannes Shoghikian