Saturday, January 28, 2006

Dashnaks Insist On Territorial Claims To Turkey

Friday 27, January 2006
Armenia Liberty

By Ruzanna Khachatrian

Armenia does not recognize Turkey’s territorial integrity and may in the future lay claim to lands that were populated by Armenians before the 1915 genocide, a senior member of the governing Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun) claimed on Friday.
[...]
Recognition of Turkey’s current borders has been one of Ankara’s preconditions for normalizing relations with Armenia. Official Yerevan says it recognizes the existing Turkish-Armenian border which was set by the Treaty of Kars signed in 1921 following the country’s takeover by Bolshevik Russia. The government of the then Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic was among the treaty’s signatories.
[...]
“Genocide recognition by Turkey will not lead to legal consequences for territorial claims,” Kocharian said at the time. “The problem is that those events have taken place in Turkey, and the Republic of Armenia did not exist at that time, and today's Republic of Armenia is not the heir to those lands,” he added.

David Phillips, a U.S. scholar who chaired the Turkish-Armenian Reconciliation Commission, wrote in a 2005 book that Kocharian’s interview “helped mollify [Turkish] concerns about Armenia’s intentions.”

But according to Manoyan, the Armenian leader simply stated that “there is no such issue on the agenda of Armenian foreign policy today.” “The president also said genocide recognition would not automatically result in territorial claims,” he said, denying any disagreements on the issue between Kocharian and Dashnaktsutyun.

Manoyan revealed last summer that the party, which also has chapters in major Armenian communities abroad, plans a major shift in its long-running campaign for international recognition of the Armenian genocide. He said Dashnaktsutyun will strive to force Turkey to pay reparations.
[...]

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.

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