ArmInfo. Chairman of the National Council (Parliament) of Slovakia, Andrei Danko, condemned the Armenian Genocide in the early 20th century in the Ottoman Empire. The corresponding statement for journalists, as TASS reported referring to the Slovak radio, he made on Monday after a meeting in Bratislava with his counterpart from Armenia Ara Babloyan, who is in the republic on a visit.
"Armenians survived the genocide, they were the target of attacks and suffered a lot, because they were an island of Christianity [in the Ottoman Empire]," the head of the Slovak parliament emphasized. "I do not hide that I am a person with tremendous respect and respect for the values of Christianity. with Islamization and were persecuted, Millions of Armenians were repressed. " According to him, Armenians became the first people in modern history to survive the genocide. Danko recalled that the Ottoman Empire from the second half of the XVI century and almost until the end of the XVII century enslaved much of the Slovak territory. "Our ancestors described in the domestic literature the suffering of our people, the Slovaks very well understand what the Armenians had to endure," the speaker said.
Speakers discussed prospects for the development of the Slovak-Armenian interparliamentary cooperation. In 1915, according to various estimates, 600 thousand to 1.5 million Armenians perished in the Ottoman Empire as a result of deportation and systematic killings. The Turkish government recognizes the mass death of Armenians, but opposes the use of the term "genocide" and considers the number of victims, which the Armenian side insists, is too high. According to Ankara, the death of Armenians was not the result of a purposeful government policy, but a consequence of the civil war in the Ottoman Empire, of which the Turks were also victims.