Armenian genocide recognition
Armenian genocide recognition is the formal acceptance that the systematic massacres and forced deportation of Armenians committed by the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1923, during and after the First World War, constituted genocide.
Most historians outside Turkey recognize the fact that the Ottoman persecution of Armenians was a genocide.[1][2][3] However, despite the recognition of the genocidal character of the massacre of Armenians in scholarship as well as in civil society, some governments have been reticent to officially acknowledge the killings as genocide because of political concerns about their relations with the government of Turkey.[4]
As of 2023, governments and parliaments of 34 countries, including Argentina, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Sweden and the United States, have formally recognized the Armenian genocide. Three countries — Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Pakistan — deny that there was an Armenian genocide.
Opinion polls[edit]
In 2015, the Foundation for the Memory of the Shoah and Fondapol surveyed 31,172 people between the ages of 16 and 29 living in 31 countries, asking, "In your view, can we talk about genocide in relation to the massacre of the Armenians, by the Turks, in 1915?" 77% of respondents answered in the affirmative. The highest percentage was for France with 93% agreeing and the lowest percentage was for Turkey, with 33% agreeing.[5][6]
: In 2007 the Parliament of the State of New South Wales passed a motion condemning the genocide and called on the Australian Federal Government to do the same.[131]
New South Wales
: In March 2009 the Parliament of South Australia passed a similar motion to that passed in New South Wales in 2007.[132]
South Australia
: On May 11, 2023, the House Assembly of the State of Tasmania unanimously passed a motion recognizing and condemning the Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian Genocides of 1915.[133]
Tasmania
Recent developments[edit]
Since 2000[edit]
On March 29, 2000, the Swedish parliament approved a report recognizing the Armenian genocide and calling for Turkey's greater openness and an "unbiased independent and international research on the genocide committed against the Armenian people".[426] On June 12, 2008, the Swedish parliament voted by 245 to 37 (with 1 abstention, 66 absences) to reject a call for recognition of the 1915 genocide of the Ottoman Empire. On June 11 a long debate took place in the Swedish Parliament in regard to the Foreign Committee report on Human Rights, including five motions calling upon the Swedish Government and Parliament to officially recognize the genocide.[427]
The MPs adhered to the recommendation by the Swedish Foreign Ministry and Foreign Committee, arguing that there are "disagreements among scholars" in regard to the nature of the World War I events in Turkey, the non-retroactive nature of the UN Genocide Convention, and that the issue "should be left to historians". However, the Foreign Committee report stated that "the Committee understands that what happened to Armenians, Assyrians/Syriacs and Chaldeans during the Ottoman Empire's reign would probably be regarded as genocide according to the 1948 convention, if it had been in power at the time of the event".[428] Three days prior to the debate in the Parliament, a petition, signed by over 60 renowned genocide scholars, was published, calling on politicians in general, and Swedish parliamentarians in particular, not to abuse the name of science in denying a historic fact.[429] On March 11, 2010, the Swedish parliament recognized the genocide.[430]
In 2001, Abd al-Qadir Qaddura, speaker of the Syrian Parliament, became the first high-ranking Syrian official to acknowledge the Armenian genocide when he wrote in the Book of Remembrance of the Armenian Genocide Monument and Museum in Yerevan: "As we visit the Memorial and Museum of the Genocide that the Armenian nation suffered in 1915, we stand in full admiration and respect in front of those heroes that faced death with courage and heroism. Their children and grandchildren continued after them to immortalize their courage and struggle. … With great respect we bow our heads in memory of the martyrs of the Armenian nation — our friends — and hail their ability for resoluteness and triumph. We will work together to liberate every human being from aggression and oppression."
In 2014 Syrian President Bashar al-Assad became the first Syrian head of state to acknowledge the mass murders of Armenians and identify the perpetrator as Ottoman Turkey, stating, "The degree of savagery and inhumanity that the terrorists have reached reminds us of what happened in the Middle Ages in Europe over 500 years ago. In more recent modern times, it reminds us of the massacres perpetrated by the Ottomans against the Armenians, when they killed a million and a half Armenians and half a million Orthodox Syriacs in Syria and in Turkish territory." Although Assad did not use the world genocide, two days after Assad's statement, Bashar Jaafari, Syria's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, stated, "How about the Armenian genocide where 1.5 million people were killed?"[417]
On September 9, 2004, President Mohammad Khatami of Iran visited the Armenian Genocide Memorial at Tsitsernakaberd in Yerevan.[431]
On June 15, 2005, the German Bundestag passed a resolution that "honors and commemorates the victims of violence, murder and expulsion among the Armenian people before and during the First World War". The German resolution also states:
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