Agence France Presse
More than 2,000 Armenians marched through the streets of Yerevan late Sunday on the eve of the 91st anniversary of the 1915 genocide carried out under the Ottoman Empire.The demonstrators set light to a Turkish flag to protest against the Turkish government's refusal to recognize the killings as genocide. Yerevan claims 1.5 million people died in 1915, while Turkey puts the death toll at between 300,000 and 500,000.
The demonstrators, most of them young, also carried the flags of those countries that recognize the Armenian genocide, among them most European nations. They marched towards the town centre monument built to commemorate the victims of the 1915 genocide.
The protest is organized every year by the youth wing of the nationalist Dashnaktsutyun party. "We have to continue our struggle," said Dashnaktsutyun MP Armen Rustamian, who demanded that Ankara recognize the massacres as genocide.
(Photolur photo)