Saturday, April 24 2021 10:45

ArmInfo.  Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan delivered a message on the occasion of the 106th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide The  message reads:

"Dear compatriots, Today, as for decades, we commemorate the innocent  victims of the Armenian Genocide. We pay tribute to the 1.5 million  martyrs who were victims of the criminal policy of the Ottoman  authorities during the First World War.

106 years ago, the first genocide of the 20th century was carried out  by the hands and on the idea of the Young Turk government in the  Ottoman Empire. The great powers in those days called the incident a  crime against humanity and human civilization. Even if thousands of  years pass, we Armenians will continue to remember and will not let  the world forget that on April 24, 1915, the most prominent  representatives of the Western Armenian intelligentsia were arrested  and sentenced to death. The intellectual, spiritual and cultural  elite of the people was beheaded. The Armenian people were deprived  of the right to live in the cradle of their history. He was subjected  to mass murder, was expelled from his homeland, suffered inhumane  suffering and unprecedented losses. It is impossible to assess the  damage caused to the cultural and religious heritage of our people.

Together with us, the Pontic Greeks, Assyrians and Yazidis lost their  homeland. These fraternal peoples for us, the Armenians, were also  destroyed, deprived of the right to live in their native places. Who  was guilty of those terrible crimes, who is responsible for  responsibility for them? The answer is unequivocal: the Young Turk  government of the Ottoman Empire with its ideology of Turkism and  pan-Turkism, one of the key goals of which was the creation of a  mono-ethnic and expansionist Turkey, which, in turn, gave birth to  the idea of Armenophobia and liberation from national and religious  minorities.

During the Second World War, a genocide of the Jewish people was  carried out under the leadership of the Nazi Party of Germany. Six  million Jews were victims of the Holocaust. After the war, the  perpetrators were brought to justice and suffered the punishment they  deserved. The ideology that guided the perpetrators of the genocide  was also condemned. Nazism was rightly branded as a criminal  ideology, and today no one in the world dares to say anything in its  defense.

However, due to historical circumstances, this did not happen in the  case of the Armenian Genocide. First, in the first half of the last  century, the mechanisms of justice that would bring to justice such  monstrous crimes committed by the State had not yet been developed.   Even the term genocide did not exist.  Moreover, the Armenian people  were deprived of the opportunity to seek justice. In the first  decades after the genocide, the voice of the diaspora was not  sufficiently heard: it was just healing its wounds and building  national structures. And Soviet Armenia, until the end of the Great  Patriotic War, was generally deprived of the opportunity to deal with  this issue.

The Armenian Diaspora was able to raise the issue of recognition of  the Armenian Genocide only in the decades following the Second World  War. However, in the era when the world was bipolar, pan-Turkism was  considered a historical past. The Armenian Genocide and the ideology  that gave rise to it went unpunished. And the crimes that go  unpunished, and the ideologies that fuel them, have a habit of  repeating themselves and reappearing.

The Second Karabakh War, the Azerbaijani-Turkish aggression aimed at  the destruction of the Armenian people in Artsakh, Turkey's  expansionist foreign policy, and territorial claims against Armenia  are evidence of the revival of the genocide ideology. Armenophobia is  the essence of pan-Turkism, and today we see its most disgusting  manifestations in Azerbaijan in the execution of the authorities of  this country.  What should be our response to this neo-Adventurist  threat? Only and only a strong, modern Armenia with strong allies,  which will be based on the principles of democracy and the rule of  law. At the same time, it is impossible to deny that only the  condemnation of a crime stops new crimes in the future, and we highly  appreciate the recognition of the Armenian Genocide by various  countries of the world.

This, however, cannot be interpreted as a rejection of regional  dialogue. We are ready for this. However, the dialogue that we  imagine cannot be conducted from a position of strength. It can only  take place on the principle of equality. We will never question the  fact of the Armenian Genocide, and let no one think that any  Armenian, any political movement in Armenia or the Diaspora will  betray the memory of our innocent victims and become an accomplice to  the Armenian Genocide. It is the recognition and condemnation of the  genocide that should stop new atrocities.

Dear compatriots, April 24 is the most suitable moment for reflection  on the past and future of our nation, our people, the most suitable  occasion for self-knowledge, assessment of their strength and further  steps. The most important conclusion that can be drawn from this is  the following: The challenges that our people faced at the beginning  of the last century still exist today. The Second Karabakh War is a  clear proof of this. Only Armenia with a leading economy, a modern  security system and a political system that will unite all Armenians  around it can withstand these challenges."