Parliament urges international community to recognise Armenian genocide

Cyprus' parliament on Friday called on the international community to recognise and condemn the Armenian genocide.

Addressing the plenary before its legislative work, House of Representatives speaker Demetris Syllouris marked the anniversary of April 24.

He said: "Turkey continues to be provocative, describing the murder of one and a half million Armenians as displacement and continues without remorse a policy of ethnic minority cleansing with its criminal actions against the Kurds in Syria."

Cypriot MPs have declared April 24 as the National Day of Commemorating the Armenian genocide since 1990 and have passed relevant resolutions to that effect.

"We would like to once more condemn Turkey`s policy of ethnic cleansing and to express our full support to our friends, the people of Armenia as well as to reiterate once more our call to the international community to globally recognise and condemn the Armenian genocide," said Syllouris.

Armenian Representative to the House Vartkes Mahtesian said: "It is indeed inconceivable that civilised states, which appear as protectors of human rights and of democracy, continue to give in to the pressure exerted by Turkey, who takes advantage of its geostrategic position and its purchasing power, deterring them from recognising the Armenian genocide."

He described the Armenian genocide as "a tragedy which shook the civilised world at the time and which has caused the deepest wounds in the history of the Armenian nation."

According to Mahtesian, between 1915 and 1923 more than 1.5 million innocent Armenians suffered torture, were put to death, slaughtered or forced to walk to their death in the inhospitable Deir ez-Zor desert, while more than 800,000 Armenians became refugees and had to flee to many different parts of the world, shaping the Armenian Diaspora as it is known today.

Turkey — the Ottoman Empire’s successor state — argues that it was a collective tragedy in which equal numbers of Turks and Armenians died.

Ankara vehemently rejects the term “genocide,” saying up to 500,000 died when Armenians rose up and sided with invading Russian troops in World War I.

So far, parliaments in more than 20 countries, including Germany, have voted for laws or resolutions explicitly recognizing the Armenian genocide.