“I think we are in a new world from April 25,” said British journalist Thomas de Waal, who is also a senior associate at the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment, specializing primarily in the South Caucasus region.

De Waal expressed such a view at the Reddit social networking and news website, and in response to a query on Armenian Genocide and Armenian-Turkish relations.

“The LA Armenian columnist Harut Sassounian has already written ‘We need to turn the page on genocide recognition and concentrate on legal claims’. Well, we will see how that goes but that is an interesting statement.

“As I said before, I think the main action is now in Turkey itself and if Turkey opens up more to its past and to its minority populations, that will have a really positive effect on the Armenian issue. That means that the really important players here are the Kurds and the Kurdish party HDP.

“They’ve reached out to the Armenians, issued an apology, restored churches, some of them use the genocide word. If the HDP gets 10 percent of the vote in the June general election in Turkey, it will be a force inside parliament, and a spokesman not just for Kurdish rights but for other minorities as well. If it doesn’t get into parliament that will be a big setback for this vision in Turkey,” the analyst noted. 

And to a question as to why, being an expert on the Caucasus,  he decided to study the Armenian Genocide, Thomas de Waal responded: “When you go to Armenia, on some days you look up and suddenly Mount Ararat is up there filling the whole horizon. On other days it’s misty or it’s out of sight, but it’s still there. As someone who does the Caucasus, I suppose I realized at some point that the Armenian Genocide of 1915 and then the whole bloody history up until 1921 is like Mount Ararat, you can’t ignore it.”