Visiting US academic Justin McCarthy paints himself as an unassuming historian just doing his job.
But his presence in Australia on a brief speaking tour has enraged the Armenian community and landed him in the middle of a row between the NSW Parliament and leading politicians in Turkey.
He has had the doors of the Art Gallery slammed in his face and the welcome mat pulled from beneath his feet by the University of Melbourne.
Prof Justin McCarthy
Renown American Historian Professor Justin McCarthy visited Australia to hold a number of seminars in Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra in November 2014.
Prof McCarthy who is a professor of history at the University of Louisville, in Louisville, Kentucky, McCarthy said both sides lost thousands of lives but the events can not be classified as a genocide as because the killings were not ordered by the Government and more people lost their lives from the Turkish side during that time.
French President Hollande (left) visits Turkey. Welcomed by President Gul (right)
French President Francois Hollande was welcomed by the Turkish President Abdullah Gul on 27th January 2014, during the first official visit from a French head of state to Turkey since 1992.
The two presidents also exchanged views on various issues including potential attempt to ban denial that the 1915 massacres of Ottoman Armenians constituted genocide through a legal proposal at the French Parliament. President Gül said they discussed the issue in a very sincere and open way and emphasized the need for a joint study of the 1915 events by historians and with participation of third parties.
This term refers to a well defined crime, the definition of which has been given in an international convention made after the Second World War: “the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide” , approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations in its resolution of December 9, 1948 and which went into effect on January 11, 1951, a convention which Turkey signed and ratified.