YEREVAN: The leaders of France and Russia on Friday joined ceremonies marking the centenary of the massacre of some 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman forces, a hugely emotional event that remains a diplomatic minefield.

During a commemoration at a hilltop memorial in the Armenian capital Yerevan, French President Francois Hollande urged modern day Turkey to recognise the massacre as genocide, saying he bowed in memory of the victims.

“Important words have already been said in Turkey, but others are still expected, so that shared grief can become shared destiny,” Hollande told an audience that also included the leaders of Cyprus and Serbia and delegates from some 60 countries.

President Vladimir Putin said Russia stood shoulder to shoulder with ex-Soviet Armenia, one of Moscow’s closest allies.

“There... cannot be justification for mass murder of people,” said Putin, who also described the killings as “genocide” in remarks that drew ire from Ankara.

Muslim Turkey, which was born out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire, has refused to call the slaughter of Christian Armenians genocide.

Ankara concedes that up to 500,000 people were killed, but says this was mostly due to fighting and starvation during World War I, when Armenians rose up against their Ottoman rulers and sided with invading Russian troops.In a first for a Turkish government official, European affairs minister Volkan Bozkir attended a mass at an Armenian church in Istanbul to mark the 1915 massacres.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also repeated his “condolences” to the victims’ descendants as around 100 people staged a rally in Istanbul, demanding the government recognise the killings as genocide.

Published in Dawn, April 26th, 2015

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