On 10 August, a conference was held in Yerevan to mark the 100th anniversary of the Treaty of Sevres. In his address to scholars attending the conference Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan described the treaty signed in a Parisian suburb as “a historical fact”.

“Just as the Treaty of Versailles established peace in Europe, in the same way, the Treaty of Sevres was meant to bring peace to the former Western Asian territories of the Ottoman Empire. It put an end to the war-driven sufferings and deprivations experienced by the peoples of our region. It heralded the end of the ‘cursed years’,” he said. “The Treaty of Sevres reaffirmed our nation’s indisputable historical association with the Armenian Highland, wherein the Armenian people had originated, lived, developed their statehood and culture for millennia,” he added.

Pashinyan’s statements prompted a quick reaction from the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, calling the contents of the treaty as “disgraceful blueprints of invasion and destruction.” The Turkish MFA also stressed that Armenia hopes for help from this document, noting “it is not surprising to see that those who opt for drawing animosity instead of a lesson from history after the lapse of a century.” “Today, after 100 years, the dare of an administration that is unable to feed even its own population, to bring forward the Sèvres document which the Turkish Nation tore up, is preposterous,” the statement emphasized.

The spokesperson of the Armenian MFA Anna Naghdalyan responded to this statement. „While evading to face its past and urging others to “take lessons from history instead of animosity”, Turkey continues its traditional policy of justifying the Armenian Genocide and threatening the Armenian people with new atrocities. Only the reconsideration of such policy and the capacity to face the past by Turkey will pave a way for genuine reconciliation between the peoples in our region,“ she said.

The Treaty of Sevres was signed in 1920. The US President Woodrow Wilson proposed that the Ottoman vilayets of Erzurum, Bitlis, and Van, which once had Armenian populations of varying sizes to be incorporated into the First Republic of Armenia, but the United States Senate rejected the mandate for Armenia. The outbreak of the Turkish War of Independence in the same year led to the Ottoman Empire not ratifying the Treaty of Sèvres. Later in the same year, the Turkish–Armenian War broke out. Armenia was defeated and signed the Treaty of Alexandropol  renouncing its territorial integrity under the Sèvres Treaty. The final Turkish and Armenian borders were internationally agreed upon in the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 which replaced the generally unratified and unimplemented Sèvres Treaty.