In a lengthy interview last week with Agence France Presse (AFP) on the tragic situation in Syria, President Bashar al-Assad made an unexpected reference to the massacres of 1.5 million Armenians. This is the first time a Syrian head of state has recognized the mass killings of Armenians and identified the author as Ottoman Turkey.

During the interview, President Assad compared the Armenian Genocide of 1915 to the brutal killing of civilians by foreign fighters in Syria today: “The degree of savagery and inhumanity that terrorists have reached reminds us that happened in the Middle Ages in Europe there are more than 500 years. In the most recent modern times, it reminds us of the massacres perpetrated by the Turks against the Armenians when they killed a million and a half Armenian and half a million Syriac Orthodox in Syria and the Turkish territory. “