People attend a commemoration ceremony to mark the centenary of the mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks at the Tsitsernakaberd Memorial Complex in Yerevan, Armenia, April 24, 2015. REUTERS/David Mdzinarishvili

ishtartv.com- NRT

27 Apr, 2015

DUHOK -- Dozens of Iraqi Armenians on Friday marked the centenary of a mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks with a church mass and a photo exhibition, urging the world to press Turkey to recognize the massacre as genocide.

Turkey denies the killing of up to 1.5 million Armenians in 1915, at the height of World War I, constitutes genocide and relations with Armenia are still blighted by the dispute.

At the Armenian Apostolic Church in Iraq's northern Kurdish city of Duhok, a collection of harrowing photos from the massacre was put on display in the garden.

The black-and-white photos documented the suffering of the Armenian people, with some showing bodies lying in the streets and bones and severed heads placed on shelves.

An Armenian member of the Kurdish parliament , Derwan Amin Yar said he had introduced a draft bill on the subject.

"We, the Armenians, call on all the world's countries to recognize the massacre, which was committed by the Ottoman Empire. [The world] has to recognize it and I, in my capacity as a member of Kurdistan's parliament, have presented a draft bill on the recognition of the Armenian massacre," he said.

Germany's parliament, Turkey's biggest trade partner in the European Union, risked a diplomatic rupture with Ankara and upsetting many of its own ethnic Turkish residents by joining Western scholars and two dozen countries to use the word.

Armenian school teacher Mariam Hanna echoed the same sentiment.

"We call on the world's countries to recognize the Armenian massacre and to press the Ottomans, or the Turks to recognize this massacre," she said.

People at the service released doves and dozens of violet balloons, some carrying flags of Armenia and the Kurdish region.

Similarly, hundreds of Armenians gathered in a church in the city of Erbil to pay respect for the Armenians killed.

A garland of flowers was laid at a monument representing the victims of the massacre.

"We have gathered to show solidarity with the world public opinion to urge the international community to take a move and practice pressure on Turkey to recognize massacres they perpetrated against the Armenian people," said Akob Serob , an Armenian man who lives in Erbil.

The European Parliament also refers to the killing in 1915 as genocide, as did Pope Francis this month, prompting Turkey to summon the Vatican's envoy and recall its own.

Other countries, including the United States, have refrained from doing so.

Predominantly Muslim Turkey, which has no diplomatic ties with Armenia, says many Christian Armenians were killed in partisan fighting during the war but denies it amounted to genocide.

It says there was no organized campaign to wipe out Armenians and no evidence of any such orders from the Ottoman authorities.