Only courageous recognition of truth and protection of justice can  position Turkey as civilized and responsible state committed to  universal values - Serzh Sargsyan 

ArmInfo.  At the beginning of the 20th century, one and a half million victims of the Armenian Genocide planned and carried out by the Ottoman Empire were tortured and killed in indifference and silence only because they were  Armenians. This is stated in the message of the third President of  Armenia Serzh Sargsyan on the occasion of the 110th anniversary of  the Armenian Genocide of 1915.

He emphasized that no one can silence the voice of justice and that  worthy Armenians, together with civilized humanity, must become the  voice of innocent victims and sound louder and louder.

Sargsyan noted that Turkey's state policy to this day is based on  denial, distortion of historical facts and propaganda against the  truth, while only courageous recognition of the truth and protection  of justice can position Turkey as a civilized and responsible state  committed to universal values, which is ready to overcome the dark  pages of its history for the sake of peace, reconciliation and  stability.

He also touched upon the events of September 2023. The former  president stressed that what happened to more than 140 thousand  Artsakh residents, who in September 2023 were subjected to ethnic  cleansing by Azerbaijan with the open support of Turkey and were  forcibly evicted from their historical homeland, is a continuation of  the Genocide that was carried out a century ago and was not  condemned.

"Following the example of the Ottoman Empire, Azerbaijan today is  deliberately destroying the Armenian trace in Artsakh - the spiritual  and cultural heritage of millennia, distorting history," he said.

Sargsyan recalled that in 2015, on the 100th anniversary of the  Genocide, Armenia turned into a global platform for voicing the  demand for historical justice, a worthy tribute to the memory of the  survivors of the Genocide and the fight against genocides by  civilized humanity. He stressed that this was a clearly formulated  agenda, which was enshrined in the Pan-Armenian Declaration. "This  declaration, as an expression of a unified national will, must remain  on the agenda of the Republic of Armenia until historical justice is  restored," the former head of state added.

He stated that the Armenian authorities should not forget that more  than a million lives cut short those days 110 years ago can never be  a subject of bargaining, and the indisputable fact of genocide cannot  be presented as .

According to Sargsyan, the opposite approach cannot be qualified as  anything other than political moral decline and betrayal of the  nation.

"Respect for one's own chairs is not higher than the all-Armenian  will and honor. The authorities that betray national interests and  threaten the existence of the state must be removed, because the  shortest path to the loss of statehood is through the renunciation of  one's own rights and dignity, the struggle for justice and the  erasure of historical memory. Therefore: to remember is our duty, to  demand is our right, to fight is a necessity," Serzh Sargsyan's  statement says.

Today, April 24, 2025, the Armenian people celebrate a mournful date  - the 110th anniversary of the first genocide in the history of  mankind. On April 24, 1915, more than two hundred representatives of  the Armenian intelligentsia - poets, musicians, publicists, editors,  lawyers, doctors, deputies were arrested in Constantinople by order  of the Turkish authorities. All of them were sent into exile and  brutally killed. The extermination of the Armenian intelligentsia was  part of a systematic diabolical plan to destroy the Armenian people  in their homeland. In total, 1.5 million Armenians were exterminated,  hundreds of thousands of people were deported. This was the first  genocide of the twentieth century, planned and carried out by the  state. On April 24, 1965, demonstrations were organized in Soviet  Armenia demanding recognition of the Armenian Genocide. Thus, the  wall of silence created around this issue during the years of Soviet  power was destroyed. 

However, that recently the issue of international recognition of the  Armenian Genocide has fallen out of the priority areas of the foreign  policy agenda of the Armenian authorities, which has caused a sharply  negative reaction from the opposition, which has introduced a draft  law on criminalizing the denial of the Armenian Genocide.

The fact of the Armenian Genocide has been recognized by many  countries of the world and international organizations, including the  United States, Russia, France, Canada, Cyprus, Belgium, the  Netherlands, Slovakia, Germany, Lithuania, Poland, etc., as well as  the European Parliament and the World Council of Churches