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By Lilit Harutiunian<\/span><\/p>\n Nearly 300 Armenian intellectuals and other public figures have appealed to Turkey to acknowledge that the 1915 mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire constituted genocide, saying that is a necessary condition for Turkish-Armenian reconciliation.<\/p>\n In an open letter to Turkish President Abdullah Gul made public on Tuesday, they said modern-day Turkey bears \u201chereditary responsibility\u201d for what they consider an \u201cmonumental crime against humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cGenocide is a crime against humanity and present civilization values, and no individual, organization or even state authority can cast doubt on what happened,\u201d the letter said, challenging Ankara\u2019s vehement denial of any government policy to exterminate Ottoman Turkey\u2019s Armenian population.<\/p>\n \u201cYour generation of Turkish leaders must accept the undeniable truth and recognize the fact of the Armenian Genocide \u2026 Only in that case can there be a sincere dialogue and a process of real reconciliation between our peoples,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n The letter was apparently initiated by prominent writers, musicians and artists close to Armenia\u2019s ruling establishment, suggesting that it was approved by President Serzh Sarkisian. The latter has been instrumental in an unprecedented thaw in Turkish-Armenian relations observed in recent months. Sarkisian has won plaudits in the West for inviting Gul to visit Yerevan and watch with him a September match between Armenia\u2019s and Turkey\u2019s national soccer teams.<\/p>\n The so-called \u201cfootball diplomacy\u201d was followed by a series of further negotiations between the Turkish and Armenian foreign ministers. It is still not clear, however, whether Ankara is ready to normalize relations with Yerevan before a resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.<\/p>\n The unprecedented open letter to Gul was welcomed on Tuesday by Giro Manoyan, a leading member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun), a junior partner in the ruling coalition that has watched with unease Sarkisian\u2019s diplomatic overtures to the Turks. \u201cI think this letter is significant in the sense that it originated from Armenia and clearly reflects our public\u2019s view that it is impossible to evade the issue of genocide recognition,\u201d Manoyan told reporters.<\/p>\n Dashnaktsutyun\u2019s top governing body urged the Sarkisian administration last week to exercise caution in the ongoing rapprochement with Turkey, saying that Ankara is using it to scuttle recognition of the Armenian genocide by more countries, notably the United States.<\/p>\n https:\/\/www.azatutyun.am\/a\/1598796.html<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 By Lilit Harutiunian Nearly 300 Armenian intellectuals and other public figures have appealed to Turkey to acknowledge that the 1915 mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire constituted genocide, saying that is a necessary condition for Turkish-Armenian reconciliation. In an open letter to Turkish President Abdullah Gul made public […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":107015,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-armenia","category-armenian-question"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8027\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}