INTELLECTUALS CONCERNED WITH FATE OF ARMENIAN MONUMENTS IN TURKEY

YEREVAN, JULY 15, ARMENPRESS: Members of Armenian intellectual community, concerned with the plight of Armenian historical and cultural monuments in Turkey, have welcomed today the authorities' efforts for international recognition of Armenian genocide in the Ottoman empire, but urged them to condemn Turkish authorities' policy of destruction and misappropriation of Armenian monuments and ask international organizations to hold Turkey responsible for this crime.
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[...] Armenian authorities must make full use of relevant international legislation to stop the barbaric policy of Turkey and [...] raise this issue at the ParliamentaryAssembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) [...].
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[...] thousands of Armenian cultural monuments are subject to a policy of willful neglect and destruction on the part of Turkey. This policy violates Turkey's commitments under the 1923 Lausanne Treaty, [...].
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Turkey has also signed various treaties that provide for the protection of monuments. These treaties include the 1954 Hague treaty and the UNESCO treaties of 1970 and 1972. [...] Turkey actively uses these treaties to sue for possession of cultural artifacts that originate within its territory.

Using the UNESCO treaties, Turkey gets financial support from the international community to maintain selected monuments, but discriminates, however, against important monuments of Armenian origin. [...] UNESCO data about Armenian monuments in Turkey [...] say that after 1915 genocide there were 1,000 monuments, in 1974 there remained 464, part of them destroyed. In 1991 Turkish archeologists started excavation in Ani, a medieval Armenian capital, which [...] is carried out unprofessionally resulting in further destruction of its monuments.
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Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.