The centuries of bitterness that divide Christian Armenians and Muslim Turks have spilled onto many battlefields, and it seems strange that they should now be played out in the murmuring corridors and committee rooms of the US House of Representatives.
Turks demonstrate in Ankara against the vote by a US congressional panel to accusing Turkey of genocide in 1915, 5 March 2010
But there is no doubt that the proceedings of the House Foreign Relations Committee in Washington have become the most important modern theatre of conflict in an ancient dispute.
At issue is a single word - genocide - and the question of whether or not the United States should use it to characterise the deaths of the hundreds of thousands of Armenians who perished as the Ottoman Empire began to implode under the pressures of war in 1915.
To Turks the gravity of the charge is not softened by the passage of the years.
This is a deeply emotional question of national honour, and a charge which threatens to put their nation on the wrong side of history.
To Armenians it is much more that a matter of historical fact - recognition of their suffering represents an important step towards establishing their identity as a nation in the eyes of the world.
Source : http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8552970.stm
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