Serzh Sargsyan: Ankara made vein attempt to resist or affect larger process related to recognition of genocide

"We have stated many times that our struggle does not end in 2015 - it will just enter a more mature phase. Let us not forget that we have had an opportunity to raise the issue of the Armenian Genocide, and condemn it only after the declaration of independence of the third Republic of Armenia. And that means that our struggle has just started. And it will be more coordinated and purposeful in the upcoming years," President Serzh Sargsyan said in an interview with the Hurriyet.  

"The bridges of rapprochement are not burned yet and we even initiated rapprochement ourselves. However, it is impossible to open the door whose key we don't have. And even now, when we commemorate the centennial of our innocent victims, I declare that we are ready for the normalization of relations with Turkey, for starting a process of rapprochement between the Armenian and Turkish nations without any preconditions," the president said.

Commenting on the Turkish prime minister's April 19 statement at the request of the Hurriyet correspondent, Sargsyan said: "It is interesting that this message was published on April 19. If it had been made public on April 24, i.e., on the day of the centennial of the genocide or a day before that, I would have considered it as an ordinary statement whose denialist content we know from the previous statements. However, since it was made public so early, in our opinion, it is an attempt to resist or affect the larger process related to the recognition of the genocide that is under way around the world. It is understandable why it was made public on April 19. And I think it was inappropriate to distort, manipulate or respond to His Holiness Pope Francis' words," the president said.  The president said he expects that on April 24, Mr. Erdogan, the president of Turkey, "will prove to be more robust and rational and will make a real statement, in which he will say what happened, which will make it possible for us to start a process of rapprochement between our two nations. To be more accurate, perhaps, one needs to say - not between the nations, but between ourselves and the Turkish government because I don't blame the Turkish people, the Turks for anything whatsoever."   

Asked to comment on the "pain suffered by the Turkish and Muslim societies during the same war" the president said that the Armenian people cannot but understand that suffering because the Armenian people have suffered many defeats and won many victories during their three-millennia-old history. "However, it is one thing to suffer and another thing to undergo genocide. If the Turkish people also went through genocide during the Ottoman rule, let the current government of Turkey recognize the genocide of both Armenians and Turks, which was committed by the Ottoman government.  It is one thing when residents of one, two, or three villages move to another place, or individual citizens change their places of residence, which we pity, but when a whole people is eliminated, it is quite another thing," the president said.