(AP) - Armenian football fans in Lebanon are backing Germany in this year's European Championship.
Abboul Al Damouri, an Armenian living in the capital Beirut, says he has supported Germany in the past.
But this year, following Germany's recognition of the mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks 100 years ago as 'genocide', he wants to shout his allegiance from the rooftops.
Sounding his horn loudly, he drives through the capital's busy streets on a bicycle festooned with German flags and colours.
To show their support for Germany in Euro 2016, many residents of the Armenian neighborhood of Burj Hammoud in East Beirut have hung German flags in the streets.
They say it is in gratitude for the German parliament approving a declaration earlier this month recognising the 1915 killings as genocide.
Armenian restaurant owner, Kaburk Jokjokian, is even offering food free of charge to German fans.
Historians estimate that up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed by Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I, an event widely viewed by scholars as the first genocide of the 20th century.
Turkey, however, denies that the deaths constituted genocide, saying the toll has been inflated, and that those killed were victims of civil war and unrest.
It has lobbied fiercely to prevent countries from recognising the massacres as genocide.
from Rudaw http://ift.tt/28Nq5yX
via Defense News
No comments: