Armenians staged a bloody uprising and joined the invading Russian armies during World War I, when Ottoman Empire was fighting for its survival. Ottomans responded by moving most, not all, of those Armenians to out of war zones. Due to wartime conditions, epidemics, and famine, some inhabitants of Eastern Anatolia, both Armenians and Turks, died.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan said on Sunday that Turkish authorities regarded the issue of 1915 incidents as "risky area" in the relations between Turkey and the United States during the period of the new U.S. administration.
The Armenian national soccer team, which had replaced its emblem featuring a silhouette of Turkey's Mount Ararat, known in Turkey as Mount Ađrý, ahead of a match against Turkey in a World Cup qualifying game in September, has recently started to use the old emblem again.
Columnist Mustafa Balbay comments on a recent initiative by a group of intellectuals to apologize for the killings of Armenians during the World War I era. A summary of his column is as follows:
Turkey's prime minister on Wednesday said he will not join a group of Turkish intellectuals who issued an apology on the Internet for the World War I-era killings of Armenians.
“Relocations,” the measures taken against the instigations and treacheries of the Armenians have not been viewed through the mirror of truth, but in the mirrors where the truth was deflected. However, the “documents” testifying history cannot be denied.
Armenia has created a new ministry to cater to the needs of the country's far stretching diaspora. President Sarkisian started work on the Ministry of the Diaspora immediately after his election to office in February.
Official Yerevan will jeopardize recognition of the so-called Armenian genocide by the new U.S. administration if it agrees to a Turkish-Armenian academic study on the subject, a senior member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun) warned.
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan Thursday once again called on the Armenian government to open their archives for studies on the incidents of 1915.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev visited Turkey on November 5 and 6 as his first official trip abroad since reelection, underscoring the two countries’ special relationship. While traditional, that relationship has evolved substantially during Ilham Aliyev’s presidency and is no longer asymmetrical. As he remarked during his visit to Ankara, “Turkey supported Azerbaijan during hard times, but in the meantime Azerbaijan has become stronger and is contributing fully to the bilateral relationship” (www.day.az via ANS-Press, November 6).
U.S. president-elect Barack Obama's Iraq policy is likely to be the main issue that would shape the future of Turkish-American relations despite concerns over a problematic period over his stance on the Armenian genocide claims.