Turks and Armenians, who have had often bitter relations over the past century, struggled to find common ground at a meeting Tuesday between influential members of the two communities.
High-ranking former politicians and noted academics and members of both groups abroad wrapped up three days of discussion in Geneva on Tuesday, agreeing to set up a reconciliation commission aimed at overcoming years of painful disputes.
The commission will “seek to promote mutual understanding and goodwill between Turks and Armenians and to encourage improved relations between Armenia and Turkey,” the 10-member group said in a statement.
The group members, none of whom are official delegates from their governments, first met in Vienna in March, and have been in regular e-mail contact since then.
The meeting was hosted by the Henry Dunant Center for Humanitarian Dialogue. The center has also hosted talks promoting reconciliation in Burundi, Indonesia’s Aceh province, and Myanmar, or Burma.
“This is not the first time Turks and Armenians have come together, but it’s the first time there’s been a structured dialogue,” said Ilter Turkmen, a former Turkish foreign minister. Relations between the two peoples were at a “turning point,” he said.
Links between Turkey and Armenia have been poor since the Armenians won independence during the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Armenia fought a war which ended in 1994 against Azerbaijan — a Turkish ally.
But the toughest dispute is over events some 80 years ago.
Armenians say 1.5 million of their people died in an Ottoman Empire campaign to force them from eastern Turkey between 1915 and 1923. Turkey says the death count is inflated, and that Armenians were killed or displaced as the Ottoman Empire tried to quell civil unrest.
Armenia’s government has asked Turkey to apologize as a condition for establishing diplomatic relations. Turkey insists the killings did not amount to genocide, a term used for the systematic annihilation of a racial, political or cultural group.
“The Armenian genocide is fundamental to who we are,” said Van Z. Krikorian, chairman of the Armenian Assembly of America.
“Armenians and Turks continue to be divided … but whatever the divisions, they were clearly compounded by the lack of dialogue and direct contact,” he said. “What we have to do is listen, and try to understand what the divisions are.”
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