AKEL commemorates the victims of the Armenian Genocide
AKEL C.C. Press Office, 23rd April 2020, Nicosia
AKEL commemorates the 1.5 million victims of the Armenian genocide perpetrated by the Neo-Turks during the period 1915-1923. We join our voice with the international community in denouncing the horrific crime committed against the Armenian nation. At the same time, we express our sincere sympathy and respect to the friendly people of Armenia, to the Armenians of the Diaspora and in particular to the Armenian community of Cyprus, which has made and continues to make an enormous contribution to our country’s progress.
We support the struggle of the Armenian nation for the international recognition and memory of the genocide it suffered. We call on all countries of the world to recognize it. The defence of the memory and the universal recognition of the Armenian Genocide is a duty towards the Armenian nation. It is the duty of all the peoples of the world to preserve the memory of the Armenian Genocide, because the historical truth is the best way to prevent the repetition of such heinous crimes committed in humanity’s history.
At the same time, we condemn the Turkish state’s ongoing refusal to recognize the Armenian genocide and the persecution of activists, journalists, writers inside Turkey who are speaking up in public in favour of the recognition of the genocide. We honor people like journalist Hrant Dink, who paid with his life after he denounced the genocide. This attitude of the official Turkish state is an expression of a more general state policy that oppresses the Kurdish population of the country, persecutes any democratic progressive voice within it, is causing bloodshed in Syria, intensifies its provocative actions against Greece, continues the occupation and colonisation of half of our homeland and escalates its aggression against the Republic of Cyprus.
