During his speech at the “News Exchange” international conference in Istanbul on Friday November 3, Turkish Prime Minister Rejeb Erdogan said that there hasn’t been an Armenian Genocide. Armenian delegate and secretary of the Armenian National Assembly ARF faction Gegham Manukyan objected and said that Istanbul is the city where the arrest of Armenian intellectuals on April 24, 1915 signaled the start of the Armenian Genocide. Then he raised a poster with the words “Turkey must be brave enough to recognize the Armenian Genocide” on it. G. Manukyan told “Azatutyun” radio that the reaction of the Turkish Prime Minister “was horrible, he was mad and surprised”. Turk journalists, according to Manukyan, showed a lot of interest, “but after a couple of hours, they were expressing extremely objective views about the event on the news programs and in the reports.” “When they were off-camera, they would gather and talk. They were a little worried, giving warnings, saying ‘Be aware of the police, there won’t be a huge problem, but in any case be aware’. There was a sense of fear,” said G. Manukyan. The police did the right thing. “It was a very significant international conference. The only problem was that each side had the desire to have private talks and take their own police with them. But taking into consideration the fact that there were representatives of nearly 5,000 foreign media gathered at the conference (as a matter of fact, many media representatives claimed that “they were only going to go to the police”), they simply refrained from taking other measures,” said the ARF deputy to “Azatutyun” radio. Manukyan also mentioned that “the situation is tense in Istanbul and in Turkey, for that matter, what with the decision of the French Senate”. “The Turkish Prime Minister refuted the Armenian Genocide once again during an extremely significant international conference and this is something to worry about,” said Manukyan in closing.
