Antakya (AsiaNews) – "For Turkey, acknowledging the Armenian genocide would be an important step on the way of full democratisation and would increase the country's international prestige," this according to Ghagik Bagdassarian, Armenian Ambassador to Italy, who like all Armenians after so many decades still insists that the world not forget and that Turkey admit its responsibilities in the extermination of countless Armenians.

April 24 marks the 90th anniversary of the start of the mass slaughter that led to the death of up to 1.5 million Armenians between 1915 and 1923.

Turkey has always rejected that claim, arguing instead that 300,000 Armenians and thousands of Turks died in a 'civilian uprising' during the First World War when the former rebelled against Ottoman rule.

Any accusations of ethnic cleansing are for the Turkish government "an invention that weakens the nation".

The obstinate negationist camp in Turkey is less solid than it once was; an 'Armenian question' has become a public issue.

In view of Turkey's application to join the European Union, many national parliaments in France, Canada and Switzerland have urged Ankara to officially acknowledge that genocide did take place.

Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyp Erdogan has responded recently by urging historians to examine the country's archives in order to establish the truth.

"Teams of historians from both sides should conduct studies in these archives," he said, adding that "[w]e do not want future generations to have a difficult life because of hatred and resentment."

In the meantime, the issue has become highly controversial in Turkey because the local press has given space to voices trying to convince public opinion that Europe is behind the proposed historical investigation, which for them amounts to blackmail to satisfy unfounded Armenian claims and demands.

However, a small group of Turkish intellectuals have started to raise doubts about the official view of what happened and in doing so have raised a hornet's nest for themselves. For example, Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk has received death threats after admitting to a German publication that "a million Armenians were killed in Turkey".

For Ambassador Bagdassarian, any historical judgement must "be limited to those who were effectively responsible for the extermination" (i.e. Turkish leaders of the time). He also noted that Armenians have no intention of "blaming the Turkish people".

Armenians, especially the 80,000 who still call Turkey home, only want the genocide inflicted on their people stop being treated as a "nameless crime", and be instead acknowledged as a deep scar on the whole of humanity.

As some survivors point out, "90 years are just a short period of time if we haven't learnt any lesson from it, if that genocide was but a rehearsal of other massacres, other holocausts".

Those years "are nothing if today people still try to forget or place economic or political interests before truth and justice. The sacrifice of those martyrs would be worthless if nothing is written about them in history books, if the anniversary is just another day, if what happened is justified and if we become accomplices with the criminals of those years."