As Turkey and Armenia take steps to normalize their relations ,century old bitter memories around killings of hundred of thousands of Armenians by the Ottoman Troops in 1915 World War I continues to haunt the process of normalization..
Armenians have all along been struggling to get these largescale killings recognized internationally as genocide and more than 20 countries have done so. But Turkey though admitting that many Armenians were killed,denies any genocide holding that these were part of widespread fighting during the World War .Armenians on the other hand claim these deaths as genocide since they were deported en masse from eastern Anatolia to the Syrian desert and elsewhere and died from starvation or disease as well as killed by the troops.
The agreement envisaging the process of normalization was signed in Zurich, Switzerland on 11 October 2009 after months of Swiss-mediated talks in a ceremony attended by US Secretary of Statae Hillary Clinton,Russian and French Foreign Ministers and Javier Solana from the European Union.The agreement that still needs parliamentary approval in Turkey and Armenia,also calls for a joint commission of independent historians to study the genocide issue.
Several thousand people protested in Armenian capital Yerevan,saying that Turkey should recognize the 1915 killingsas genocide before ties are restored with Vahan Hovanissyan,a member of Parliament contending that “ The international recognition of the Armenian genocide will be hindered by this signature or ratification’.
Another aspect of this agreement allows the opening of the shared border between he two countries that was closed by Turkey in 1993 because of its war with Azerbaijan over the disputed region of Nagorno- Karabakh and the Armenians seem to feel their country has been too isolated since the Turkish border closed in 1993 and are therefore ready for it to reopen. Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's commented that "We want all the borders to be opened at the same time..., but as long as Armenia has not withdrawn from Azerbaijani territory that it is occupying, Turkey cannot have a positive attitude on this subject."
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