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Turkey should apologise for genocide in Armenia

What happened in 1915, when hundreds of thousands of Armenians were murdered or died of starvation, was one of the 20th century’s bloodiest atrocities. It is also one of the most contentious, and keenly-felt, and there is still disagreement over how many died and, more particularly, whether their deaths can be defined as genocide. The official position of the Armenian government is that the Turkish government must acknowledge that 1.5 million ethnic Armenians were systematically killed under Ottoman rule in Turkey.

To date, 20 countries have officially recognised the massacres as genocide - but Turkey is not one of them. Was the Turks' treatment of the Armernians a premeditated attempt to eradicate an entire people, or simply a mass deportation gone horribly wrong?