From the speech of the deputy Giancarlo Palyarini at a meeting of the Parliament of Italy April 3, 2000 on the recognition of the Armenian Genocide 1915-1923

Turks and Armenians eight centuries lived side by side in mutual tolerance and balance. The Ottoman Empire gave the Christian minorities the freedom of belief and language. However, in the Ottoman Empire all “infidels, ie, Christians and other non-Muslims are considered second-class citizens, unable to bear arms, had little rights and were obliged to pay special taxes.

1914 – The Ottoman Empire entered the First World War ally of Austria and Germany.Armenians living in the Caucasus region of the Ottoman Empire, were between two fronts. In 1914 and 1915 the Turkish army in the Caucasus, under Marigamishem suffered a crushing defeat and the whole weight of it laid on the Armenians, accusing them of treason.

February 25, 1915 the Ottoman general staff ordered the disarmament of all Armenians.

At night, April 24, 1915 all resident in Constantinople, the Armenians were arrested. The massacre and Western states know about it.

27 May 1915 a law was passed which provided for the forcible deportation of all suspicious persons. This law gave the power of military commanders to forcibly deport people suspected of treason and espionage. This law allows intentionally and deliberately to kill or deport the entire nation. There are numerous indications that we are dealing with a systematic and organized process of destruction.

Those who were not killed, a system driven in the direction of Syria, the desert Der Dzor.Zastavlyali go until until everyone died.

That, unfortunately, history. But the details of the recent past, you need to know. At the beginning of the century in Turkey, lived 1.8 million Armenians. About 700 000 of them were killed in their homes and about 600,000 died during the deportation. 200,000 fled to the Caucasus. 150 000 managed to escape to Europe. In Turkey, there are less than 150,000 Armenians. 70 percent of people who lived in Anatolia 3,000 years, was destroyed.

These are the statistics of the Armenian Genocide. This happened not so long ago, at the beginning of XX century. Even the Nazis came to power, and many Jews living peacefully in Germany and Italy. Before the invasion of Poland Hitler August 22, 1939 at Obersalzberg during a regular meeting, stated that “those who, after all that happened, said the destruction of the Armenians.”

No evidence of this black page of history is very, very much. In addition to the tragic pictures German Armin Wegner, there are many documents. Here are three of them.

“The way the deportation proves that the government intended to destroy the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire.” This is a letter from the Ambassador of Germany in Turkey, Hans von Wangenheim, dated July 7, 1915.

“It’s no secret that the program has provided for the destruction of the Armenians as a nation.”This certificate is the U.S. Consul in Anatolia, Leslie Davis, dated July 24, 1915.

“We are accused that we do not see the difference between guilty and innocent Armenians, it is absolutely impossible, because today’s innocent, may become tomorrow’s guilty.” Such an order issued by the Minister of Internal Affairs Talaat Pasha, Turkey in 1915.

I know that in 1919, after the First World War, when the Young Turk government falls, the military court of the new government of Turkey has been sentenced to death three of the organizers of the massacres. The court in 1919, charge them in the massacre, but not genocide. In the future, Turkey has consistently denied that the genocide. The official version is that the forced deportation was undertaken in order to prevent the uprising. This thesis is hard to accept another reason that the deportation was carried out in the direction of the Syrian desert Der Dzor, where few survived and where it would be pointless to assume that people can survive without food and water in a desert devoid of vegetation.

The European Parliament argues that Turkey has rejected the genocide of 1915, to this day deprived and continues to deprive the Armenian people the right to their own history.