The Turkish government has long disputed that a genocide occurred, asserting that Armenia peddles false history.
Turkish officials say World War I was a dark time when many ethnic Armenians tragically died in the upheaval caused by the fighting. But they say there was no methodical campaign to kill them and they emphasize that many ethnic Turks died during that period as well.
Historians have generally said that Turkey’s claims are not credible.
broken PROMISES
Armenia has sought to persuade other countries to recognize the genocide and the US has often been drawn into the fray.
As a candidate, US President Barack Obama said he would acknowledge it. However, last month, apparently concerned about offending Turkey, an important US ally, the White House released a statement on Armenian Remembrance Day that paid tribute to those who died but did not explicitly use the word genocide.
The intense feelings of people at Khor Virap show how difficult it will be to heal divisions in this strategically important yet volatile region.
Besides its troubled relationship with Turkey, Armenia has a closed border with another Muslim neighbor, Azerbaijan, also a former Soviet republic. Soon after the two countries became independent after the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, they went to war over the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Turkey, which has strong ethnic and political ties to Azerbaijan, shut its border with Armenia in 1993 in solidarity with Azerbaijan.
The discord between Turkey and Armenia then grew far worse, as Armenia and influential Armenian immigrant groups around the world pressed the issue of the World War I killings.
Armenia’s only open borders are with Georgia, to the north, and Iran to the south.
The hostility in Armenia toward the Turkish government does not necessarily extend to its people. In fact, Shmavonyan, who keeps the flock of doves at the monastery, said he worked for a decade in Istanbul, the Turkish capital, as a textile trader.
“They treated us very well,” he said. “They know that Armenians are very good and hardworking people.”
Still, he and others were not hopeful that the rift would end soon. And they conceded that their insistence that Turkey acknowledge the genocide before the border was opened carried bittersweet overtones.
“Our land is there,” said David Arakelyan, 50, who runs a picnic area for visitors to the monastery. “We want to go over there and walk around and see how our grandparents lived. I want to go over there and see their graves.”
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