Armenian youth protesting against Turkish foreign minister's Yerevan visit
YEREVAN. Dec 12 (Interfax) - Around 100 people are staging a protest outside the Armenia Marriott hotel in the center of Yerevan against Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu's visit to Armenia.
Representatives of the youth wings of the Hunchakian Social Democratic Party, the Dashnaktsutyun Armenian Revolutionary Federation and the Heritage Party are holding banners calling on Turkey to recognize the Armenian Genocide by the Ottoman Empire in 1915 and to stop its anti-Armenian policies, an Interfax correspondent reported.
"We are protesting against Davutoglu's visit to Yerevan. We also demand that Turkey's current leaders and current generation recognize the Armenian Genocide. We also demand compensation because Turkey seized our territories," one of the demonstrators said.
The area where the rally is taking place has been cordoned off by police.
Davutoglu is currently in Yerevan to attend a meeting of foreign ministers from the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Organization (BSEC) member states.
The Armenian president's press secretary Arman Sagatelian said on December 11 that President Serzh Sargsyan would not meet with the Turkish foreign minister in Yerevan.
"No arrangements have been made for a meeting between the president of Armenia and the foreign minister of Turkey during the latter's visit to Yerevan. Such a meeting will not take place," Sagatelian said on his Twitter page.
Turkey and Armenia have no diplomatic relations, and the two countries' border was closed in 1993 at Ankara's initiative due to the absence of a solution to the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh.
The Armenian and Turkish foreign ministers signed a protocol on the establishment of diplomatic relations and a protocol to promote bilateral ties in Zurich in October 2009. The two countries' parliaments, however, refused to ratify the documents, prompting the Armenian president to sign a decree in April 2010 that suspended the process of ratifying the Armenian-Turkish protocols.
Sargsyan said in January 2013 that Turkey and Azerbaijan would not be able to secure unilateral concessions from Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict "despite the continuing blockade of Armenia."
Sargsyan also said that recognition by Ankara of the 1915 Armenian Genocide by the Ottoman Empire was "Turkey's duty before the victims of the genocide, their descendants, mankind and the Turkish people."
