Turkish Forum

Category: Armenian Question

“The great Turk is governing in peace twenty nations from different religions. Turks have taught to Christians how to be moderate in peace and gentle in victory.”Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary

  • Chicago Armenians Demonstrate Against Denial

    Chicago Armenians Demonstrate Against Denial

    CHICAGO, Ill.—On Wed., April 24, more than 100 demonstrators from Chicago’s Armenian, Greek, Assyrian, and Cypriot communities joined a protest organized by the Chicago “Ararat” Chapter of the Armenian Youth Federation (AYF) against Turkey’s ongoing and aggressive campaign of denial of the Armenian Genocide.

    chicago-pic-1

    Turkish demonstrators chanting, ‘You deserved it! You deserved it!’

    The demonstrators gathered in front of Chicago’s NBC Tower, the new home of the Turkish Consulate, around 11 a.m. waving Armenian and American flags, holding signs, and chanting such phrases as “Recognize the Genocide,” “Turkey is a liar,” and “Turkey run, Turkey hide, Turkey is guilt of Genocide.” Soon after, small groups of Turkish and Azeri counter-demonstrators exited the building, presumably from the Turkish Consulate offices, to take up positions on the opposite side of the street from the Armenian picket lines.

    The Turkish counter-demonstrators began shouting slogans and cursing in Turkish at the protestors as Turkish Consul General Fatih Yildiz looked on. At one point, the Turkish group began shouting, “You deserved it! You deserved it!” and “Talat was right!” referencing genocide-mastermind Talat Pasha and essentially admitting to Turkey’s culpability in the genocides of the Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks during and after World War I.

    Despite repeated attempts by the Turks to intimidate and provoke the protestors even as Chicago police looked on, the AYF-led group maintained their discipline and continued with their picket for two hours. The protest concluded with the singing of “Mer Hairenik” and ‘Haratch Nahadag.”

    via Chicago Armenians Demonstrate Against Denial | Armenian Weekly.

  • Turkey’s 2015 Plan: Avoid Word ‘Genocide’ at All Costs

    Turkey’s 2015 Plan: Avoid Word ‘Genocide’ at All Costs

    Armenian protesters shout slogans against Turkey during a demonstation near the Turkish Embassy in central Athens, April 24, 2013. (photo by REUTERS/Yannis Behrakis)

    By: Orhan Kemal Cengiz for Al-Monitor Turkey Pulse Posted on April 30.

    The groups that call the 1915 events in Turkey “genocide” filled Istanbul Taksim Square on April 24, along with Armenians who came from abroad to remember millions of Armenians who lost their lives and suffered untold agony on this land. Only five or six years ago, it was unthinkable that such an observance could be held in Turkey. These developments encourage optimism, but even as democratic and forward-looking Turkish faces were displayed in Istanbul, we also noticed that the Turkish Foreign Ministry was still repeating the clichés of the last 98 years that we all know so well.

    About This Article

    Summary :

    Turkey is preparing a diplomatic offensive to prevent the US and European countries from recognizing the events of 1915 as genocide, writes Orhan Kemal Cengiz.

    Original Title:

    Turkey 2015: Avoid ‘’Genocide’’ Word At All Costs

    Author: Orhan Kemal Cengiz

    Translated by: Timur Goksel

    Categories : Originals Turkey

    The Foreign Ministry criticized the April 24 statement of US President Barack Obama with a tone bordering on condemnation: “We find this statement that ignores historic realities troubling in all its aspects, and regret it.” What led to this critical tone was Obama’s saying that the Armenians were mercilessly massacred and forced on a death march in the last days of the Ottoman Empire.

    On one hand, Turkey has erased a yearslong taboo and is now debating 1915 freely as never before. In addition to the April 24 observances, people are openly expressing their views by referring to 1915 as “genocide” in print and visual media.

    But on the other hand, looking at the official reactions of the Turkish government, you can’t find the slightest change. Why? Why is Turkey is trying to keep the world from debating an issue that is freely discussed in Turkey itself? Why was Obama’s statement received with such a stiff reaction, even though there was no mention of genocide? Why is Turkey, while taking serious steps to solve major questions such as the Kurdish issue, still repeating its century-old clichés on the Armenian issue?

    All these appear to be part of Turkey’s strategy for 2015. While Armenia and the Armenian diaspora promote 2015 as a milestone for global recognition of genocide, the Turkish state, mobilized by defensive instincts, continues denying everything, just as it has been doing all these years.

    It was known that the Turkish Foreign Ministry was preparing to counter the Armenian diaspora’s 2015 strategy.

    Haberturk, in a report by Sibel Hurtas in September 2011, titled ‘’Foreign Ministry sends coded message to raise 2015 alarm,” said that in a secret message to Turkish embassies worldwide, Turkish diplomats were asked to monitor and prevent Armenian activities related to 2015.

    In an incident in Denmark in December 2012, we noted that the secret message had served its purpose and Turkish ambassadors were acting in accordance with the official strategy. In response to an Armenian genocide exhibit at Copenhagen University in December 2012, the Turkish Embassy immediately opened an alternative exhibit. As you can easily surmise, according to the Turkish Embassy exhibit, the Armenian genocide never happened.

    Barcin Yinanc of Hurriyet Daily News wrote on April 23, probably on information provided by the Foreign Ministry, that Turkey will not stop at developing counter arguments to Armenian genocide claims, but will also make efforts to normalize relations with Armenia before 2015.

    Keeping all this in mind and rereading Turkey’s reaction to Obama’s message, it could be understood that Turkey’s message was not for today, but rather forward looking. It appears that Turkey, by reacting strongly today, was trying to ensure that the US president will not mention genocide in 2015.

    Why is Turkey so worried by the use of this word? Because Ankara thinks that there could be legal ramifications of the US and European countries recognizing genocide.

    From the international-law angle, whether Turkey’s acknowledgement of genocide has legally binding implications is open to debate. Even organizations such as the Elie Wiesel Foundation, which persistently says what happened in 1915 was unquestionably genocide, are saying that international conventions cannot be retroactive, and that is why there cannot be demands for land or compensation from Turkey. But while it looks difficult for the Armenians to win in international courts, that doesn’t rule out the possibility of individual countries taking legal action on their own.

    For example, the cases brought against German insurance company Munich Re in California in 2003 within the framework of the 2000 Poochigan law should make one think. Pursuant to this law, German insurance companies that had insured Armenians in 1915 but did not pay damages were sued in California. The cases were dismissed because a federal appeals court in San Francisco abrogated the law. But the court’s opinion on Movsesian v. Victorai Versicherung AG may make it easier to understand why Turkey is fighting so desperately. The court, while abrogating the law, mentioned that Obama had refrained from using the term “Armenian genocide” and indicated that the law might not be in harmony with US foreign policy. This conceivably could mean that should Obama and the US administration label the events of 1915 as genocide, the judicial system could change its mind accordingly.

    We see that the Turkish government, fearing future sanctions, is continuing with the policy of denial, and this will not change before 2015. Whether Turkey will develop humane and rational policies once the fear of 2015 is past remains to be seen.

    Orhan Kemal Cengiz is a human rights lawyer, columnist and former president of the Human Rights Agenda Association, a Turkish NGO that works on human-rights issues ranging from the prevention of torture to the rights of the mentally disabled.

     

     

    Read more: https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2013/04/turkey-diplomatic-campaign-stop-genocide-recognition.html#ixzz2S1wXDbeH

  • Is Turkey Overcoming The Armenian Taboo?

    Is Turkey Overcoming The Armenian Taboo?

    Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan (L) shakes hands with Archbishop Nourhan Manougian, patriarchal vicar of the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem, during an international conference on the Arab awakening and peace in the Middle East in Istanbul, Sept. 7, 2012. (photo by REUTERS/Murad Sezer)

    Turkey's Prime Minister Erdogan shakes hands with Archbishop Manougian, Patriarchal Vicar of the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem, in Istanbul

     

    By: Orhan Kemal Cengiz for Al-Monitor Turkey Pulse Posted on April 22.

    Until recently, the Armenian question was a dreadful taboo that couldn’t be spoken about in Turkey. If you talked about it, you could be prosecuted, receive endless threats and even be physically assaulted.

    About This Article

    Summary :

    Turkey is changing from a country where the phrase “Armenian question” was never mentioned to one where groups are marching in the street using the term “Armenian genocide,” writes Orhan Kemal Cengiz.

    Original Title:

    Is Turkey Overcoming the Armenian Taboo?

    Author: Orhan Kemal Cengiz

    Translated by: Timur Goksel

    Categories : Originals Turkey

    It was impossible to carry out a reasonable debate that went beyond the official state narrative — that the Armenians were deported in 1915 because of the circumstances of World War I.

    In 2005, when Bogazici University attempted to organize a Conference on Armenians to debate the official narrative, the country shook. For days, Turkish nationalists organized angry protests in front of the university. The minister of justice of the time, Cemil Cicek, referred to organizers of the conference when he said, “They are stabbing us in the back.” When a group protesting the conference took the matter to the court, the conference was banned. The organizers were forced to hold the conference in a tense atmosphere at Bilgi University, a private institution, instead of at a state university as originally planned.

    Also that year, Orhan Pamuk, Turkey’s only Nobel Prize-winning novelist, told the Swiss periodical Das Magazin: “On this soil, 30,000 Kurds and one million Armenians were killed.” He was threatened with charges based on article 301 of the Penal Code, which bans denigrating Turkism. A short time later, largely because of the court case and threats he received, Pamuk left the country.

    Another world-famous Turkish novelist, Elif Safak, was also prosecuted under article 301 following a dialogue on the Armenian question in her novel Baba ve Pic [“Father and Bastard”]. In 2006 and 2007, many intellectuals were investigated for their views on the Armenian question, all under the notorious penal code article. One of those trials ended with a tragedy. Hrant Dink, the editor-in-chief of the Armenian-Turkish weekly Agos was tried under article 301 because of his articles on the Armenian question. That trial made him a target of Turkish nationalists, and on Jan. 19, 2007, he was shot and killed in front of the Agos offices in Istanbul.

    Those who filed complaints against intellectuals were the same people who congregated in front of the courts to insult the defendants when the cases were brought to trial. Many of these people were eventually detained and imprisoned, starting in 2008 with the Ergenekon case that tried those accused of planning coups against the government. Prosecutors charge that these people collaborated with military personnel planning coups. Although the Ergenekon trials are heavily criticized, it is generally agreed that threats and assaults have declined against religious minorities and intellectuals who express views challenging official narratives.

    Three factors have contributed to ending the Armenian taboo and ushering Turkey into its current environment of free debate. The first was the serious blow inflicted on “deep state” structures with military personnel at their cores. The second was the emotional rupture caused by Dink’s murder. Protests with hundreds of thousands of marchers carrying placards reading “We are all Armenians” illustrated that a sizable segment of the population didn’t subscribe to official state narratives. The third important factor was the government decision in 2008 to amend the infamous article 301 of the Penal Code, to require permission from the Ministry of Justice for court cases under this article. This “filter” has made it difficult to try people under that article.

    Because of these changes, the serious taboo on the Armenian issue no longer exists, and changes that were impossible to dream of a decade ago have become a reality. Since 2010, on each April 24, those who lost their lives in Turkey in 1915 are remembered in public meetings held in the streets and halls.

    The change of language of the announcement used by the Dur De [“Say Stop to Racism and Nationalism”] initiative, which organizes these meetings, helps demonstrate the gradual erasing of the Armenian taboo in Turkey. In 2010, the announcement of the commemorative events began with the words, “This pain is our pain.” In the text, the events of 1915 were described as “the great disaster,” the Turkish equivalent of the phrase “Meds Yegem” used by Armenians. Cengiz Algan, spokesman for Dur De, says they received many threatening messages despite that “soft terminology.” The language became “clearer” over the years, and the number of threats declined. On the 2011 announcement, the title said only “April 24, 1915.” The text read, “This is the date when the extermination of the Armenians began.” The title of last year’s announcement read, “This is a pain of all of us,” while the text spoke of the tragedy of the Armenian people at length. The text of this year’s announcement is even more daring. It begins, “We are remembering the victims of genocide,” and it continues, “With the campaign of extermination that began on April 24, 1915, the Armenian people were eradicated en masse.”

    Algan provides interesting statistics about these commemorative meetings. In 2010, the only meeting was in Istanbul, and between 700 and 800 people participated. In 2011, meetings were also organized in Ankara and Izmir, and roughly 2000 people participated in the Istanbul meeting. Last year, Bodrum and Diyarbakir were added as locations, and the number of participants in Istanbul rose to 3000. Algan notes that initially Armenians living in Istanbul were reluctant to participate, but they are increasingly coming. Every year, these meetings are protested by right-wing and left-wing nationalists. Algan says this year they expect an even larger attendance at the meeting, including participation of Armenians from abroad, and they expect the usual protests. The police will provide a human buffer between the protestors and participants in the meeting. Algan says each year his organization gets in touch with state officials during their planning process, and every year they get a better reception.

    Turkey is changing from a country where the very term “the Armenian question” couldn’t be uttered, to a country where groups are marching in the streets referring to the “Armenian genocide.” We’ll have to wait to see whether these changes will radically alter the state’s official policies — for example, resulting in an apology and compensation to the Armenians for 1915. But until then, it will be interesting to observe the commemorative meeting on April 24 in Istanbul.

    Orhan Kemal Cengiz is a human-rights lawyer, columnist and former president of the Human Rights Agenda Association, a Turkish NGO that works on human-rights issues ranging from the prevention of torture to the rights of the mentally disabled.

     

     

    Read more: https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2013/04/armenian-genocide-taboo-turkey-anniversary.html#ixzz2Rurv6DMy

  • A Turkish Awakening on Armenian, Kurdish Issues?

    A Turkish Awakening on Armenian, Kurdish Issues?

    Human rights activists sit behind pictures of Armenian victims at Taksim square in central Istanbul

    Human rights activists sit behind pictures of Armenian victims at Taksim square in central Istanbul, April 24, 2013. (photo by REUTERS/Osman Orsal)

     

    By: Cengiz Çandar for Al-Monitor Turkey Pulse Posted on April 28.

    It was a frenetic week for Turkey marked primarily by the sharp curve in the Kurdish issue. The much awaited Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) announcement that it is withdrawing its forces out of Turkey was finally made at its Kandil Mountain headquarters on the Iraq-Iran border on April 25.

    About This Article

    Summary :

    The Armenian Day observances in Turkey on April 24 could be as significant as the PKK decision to withdraw from Turkey, writes Cengiz Candar.

    Original Title:

    For Turkey, Impossible is not Possible

    Author: Cengiz Çandar

    Translated by: Timur Goksel

    Categories : Originals Turkey

    The outside world may wonder what the fuss was all about. After all, it was already known that Murat Karayilan, recognized as the second most authoritative name in the PKK after the imprisoned leader Abdullah Ocalan, was going to make this declaration at the Kandil Mountain base. Unchallenged leader Ocalan had already reached an agreement with a state delegation which was meeting with him on behalf of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Nobody doubted that Karayilan whose loyalty to Ocalan is beyond dispute and the PKK organization would carry out Ocalan’s decisions.

    Nevertheless, Karayilan’s announcement was an extraordinary development just as Ocalan’s Newroz message that was read to one a half million people in Diyarbakir on March 21.

    First of all, the announcement that the PKK has agreed to withdraw from Turkey could well be the beginning of the end of the PKK’s 30-year armed struggle in Turkey. Most likely it is, and that is why it is an extraordinary development.

    Second, the Turkish media with more than 100 writers and reporters launched a Kandil expedition. Erbil hotels were overbooked. Turkey’s semi-official Anatolian news agency, which only a year and half ago reported that Karayilan was captured and arrested by Iran, was represented by a powerful team of its Turkish-Kurdish-Arabic services at Karayilan’s press conference.

    As April 25 approached, people known as the “PKK hawks,” but whose photos had never appeared in Turkish newspapers, gave private interviews to Turkish journalists. They all emphasized peace.

    Descending on the Kandil Mountain like grasshoppers, Turkish journalists and cameramen turned the area into a media jamboree. So much so that there were humorous news items of Karayilan being almost crushed by excessive interest of the Turkish media when he showed up.

    No doubt that such wide coverage in Turkish newspapers and on TV was a grand and unprecedented public relations happening for the PKK. That is why it overshadowed another wondrous development, the April 24 Armenian genocide commemorations.

    For the past three years, Turkey has been holding, without much fanfare, Armenian massacre [1915] observations at Taksim Square in the center of Istanbul. The first year such an observance was held, a group of Turkish Armenians accompanied by a small group of Turks in solidarity with them went to the Haydarpasa Station — which marks the beginning of Asia in Istanbul — and held a symbolic observance there. This train station was the starting point of Istanbul’s Armenian intellectuals on their trips of no return. The same night the group also organized an observance at Taksim Square.

    For anyone anywhere in the world interested in this issue, this was indeed an incredible affair and those who participated in it were truly courageous people. The observance was repeated in 2012 and attended by an even larger crowd. The participants first met during the day in Istanbul’s famous Sultanahmet tourism area, because the building known today as the Islamic Arts Museum was the place where Armenian intellectuals and politicians were first assembled and then detained in 1915.

    This year, the dimensions of April 24, 1915, suddenly changed. The observances spread to Turkey’s most important political center of Diyarbakir and to Dersim in the north, the mountainous region where Kurdish Alevis were brutally massacred.

    The crowds at the daytime meeting and the nighttime observance at Taksim Square were the largest yet, but there were other events that marked Armenian Remembrance Day.

    Behind these new events that spread outside of Istanbul is an interesting Armenian intellectual, Ara Sarafian of Britain. Sarafian is a historian and also the head of the London-based Gomidas Institute. Gomidas was a great Armenian musician deported from Istanbul on April 24, 1915. Sarafian who heads the institute named after the musician is very different from the Turk-hating traditional figures of the Armenian Diaspora. Instead of being part of the diaspora and making a name for himself with anti-Turk and anti-Turkey activities, he comes to Turkey frequently and debates the issue with people there.

    This year, he remembered a name even most Turks do not know. Faik Ali Ozansoy, a Turkish bureaucrat who was in charge of the town of Kutahya, which is today a provincial city in western Turkey, in 1915. Ozansoy sternly resisted the deportation of the Armenians and did not carry out the exile orders.

    On April 24, as the first order of the day, Sarafian, accompanied by representatives of the Human Rights Association of Turkey and anti-racist Turkish and European organizations, visited the grave of Ozansoy in Istanbul and held an observance.

    A few days earlier, he had appeared as a guest lecturer of the Diyarbakir Bar Association in Diyarbakir. Encouraged by Sarafian, the people of Diyarbakir, a town known as the civilian center of political movement directed by the PKK, and the city’s popular mayor Osman Baydemir went to the Euphrates River and threw flowers into the water where 635 Armenians on their way to exile in Mosul were killed in 1915.

    Hrant Dink, editor-in-chief of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian newspaper Agos, whose assassination in 2007 had shaken the country, reported the event under the headline “Diyarbakir Remembers Armenians.’’

    In 1915, about 56,000 Armenians lived in Diyarbakir and made up the largest population segment of this cosmopolitan city. In 1917, 97% of Armenians in Diyarbakir had disappeared. Today, Diyarbakir’s Kurdish notables, while loudly demanding Kurdish identity rights from the Ankara government, are also debating the role of the Kurds on what was done to Armenians in 1915. In Turkey, they are one of the groups that lead the discussion on the Armenian genocide.

    In Dersim, where people are either Kurds or Alevis, researches have revealed that many Armenians had changed their religion and identity to save their lives. This is why the Dersim Armenian Association suddenly appeared this year and organized its own 1915 remembrance observances and placed themselves on the map.

    The events of 1915 were not only observed in Istanbul and Diyarbakir but also in cities such as Adana, Izmir, Urfa and Malatya.

    As in previous years, the events of 1915 were reported by the Turkish media. Each year, the Turkish media focuses on whether the US president will use the ”g word” [genocide] in his statement. This year, they relaxed when US President Barack Obama used the Armenian words “Medz Yeghern,” [ the “Great Disaster”]. Nevertheless, the Turkish Foreign Ministry, just as the White House’s template statements, undusted its annual statement and criticized the United States for being prejudiced about 1915.

    They are not important anymore. The Turkish public is becoming increasingly involved in observing the “victims of genocide,” not “Medz Yeghern.” An extraordinary development this year was the participation of Armenians in the diaspora, especially those from France, at the 1915 observances in Turkey.

    Sali Ghazarian who is based in Los Angeles and heads the Civilitas Foundation in Yerevan — established by former Minister of Foreign Affairs Vartan Oskanian [of Aleppo] — was also in Istanbul. His sister, thinking that he had lost his marbles for going to Turkey to observe April 24, could not believe the images she saw on TV of the observances in Istanbul, and sent a message saying: ”Next year I will be in Turkey too.”

    As the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide approaches in 2015, could there be a totally unexpected development on the Armenian issue in Turkey? Will this affect Turkish-Armenian relations and change the geopolitics of the Caucasia?

    That is a question to ponder as 2015 nears.

    The answer might not be all that difficult if one looks at the developments on the Kurdish issue in 2013 and the recent observances of the 1915 disaster defined as genocide that fell upon the Armenians. The impossible is impossible in Turkey.

    Cengiz Çandar is a contributing writer for Al-Monitor’s Turkey Pulse. A journalist since 1976, he is the author of seven books in the Turkish language, mainly on Middle East issues, including the best-seller Mesopotamia Express: A Journey in History.

     

     

    Read more: https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2013/04/pkk-withdrawal-armenian-genocide-day.html#ixzz2RpMuhwZ5

  • Turkey’s Muslim Armenians come out of hiding

    Turkey’s Muslim Armenians come out of hiding

    TUNCELI, TURKEY – They dropped their language and religion to survive after the 1915 genocide, but close to 100 years later, Turkey’s “hidden Armenians” want to take pride in their identity.

    Some genocide survivors adopted Islam and blended in with the Kurds in eastern Turkey’s Dersim Mountains to avoid further persecution.

    Several generations down the road, the town of Tunceli hosted a landmark ceremony Wednesday for Genocide Remembrance Day, something that has only ever happened in Istanbul and the large city of Diyarbakir.

    The massacre and deportation of Ottoman Armenians during World War I, which Armenians claim left around 1.5 million dead, is described by many countries as genocide, though the Turkish government continues to reject the term.

    Speaking in front of the ruins of Ergen church — one of the few remnants of Christian Armenian heritage in the region — Miran Pirginc Gultekin, president of the Dersim Armenian Association, explained it is still rare to declare oneself openly as Armenian in Turkey.

    “We decided that we had to get back to our true nature, that this way of living was not satisfactory, that it was not fair to live with another’s identity and another’s faith,” he said.

    Despite converting to Alevism, a heterodox sect of Islam, and taking Turkish names, the ethnic Armenians who stayed on their ancestral land suffered from continued discrimination and the elders often struggle to summon their memories.

    “My mother told me how her family was deported. She was a baby at the time and her mother considered drowning her in despair,” said Tahire Aslanpencesi, an octogenarian from the village of Danaburan. “My mother used to say all the misery that came after would have been avoided had her mother drowned her.”.

    After converting to Islam, many of the “crypto-Armenians” said they still face unfair treatment: Their land has been confiscated, the men humiliated with “circumcision checks” in the army and some have been tortured.

    Hidir Boztas’ grandfather converted to Islam, gave his son a Turkish name and the clan intermarried with a Kurdish community in Alanyazi. “We feel Armenian nonetheless and in any case the others always remind us of where we come from. No matter how many of their daughters we marry, and how many of ours we give them, they will continue to call us Armenians,” he said.

    The Armenian community shared the Kurds’ suffering when the regime cracked down on Kurdish rebellions, from the 1938 revolt to the insurrection started by the PKK group in 1984.

    For a long time, only those who had left the ancestral homestead dared to make their Armenian roots known.

    Human rights campaigners gathered Wednesday in downtown Istanbul carrying portraits of genocide victims.

    They were only a handful, but they argued that the simple fact that such an event was authorized and groups such as theirs invited proved that attitudes were changing. “Ten years ago, such an event was impossible in Turkey,” said Benjamin Abtan,” a European activist.

    via Turkey’s Muslim Armenians come out of hiding – The Japan Times.

  • Armenians stage angry protest against Turkey in Beirut

    Armenians stage angry protest against Turkey in Beirut

    ARMENIAN GENOCIDE, LEBANON, PROTEST, TURKEY

    Armenians marched from Bourj Hammoud to downtown Beirut’s Martyrs’ Square on Wednesday to mark the 98th anniversary of the genocide of their kin by Ottoman Turks during World War I.

    Armenians say up to 1.5 million people were killed during World War I as theOttoman Empire was falling apart, a claim supported by several other countries.

    Turkey argues 300,000 to 500,000 Armenians and at least as many Turks died in civil strife when Armenians rose up against their Ottoman rulers and sided with invading Russian troops.

    Over 20 countries have so far recognized the massacres as genocide.

    The protesters held a rally at the square with speeches made by the leaders of several Armenian parties.

    The families of nine Lebanese Shiite pilgrims kidnapped in Syria joined them over what they said was a common cause.

    The relatives of the nine men have been holding daily sit-ins near the Turkish Airlines offices not far from Martyrs’ Square and have called for boycotting Turkish products.

    They blame the Turkish government for the failure to release the pilgrims who are held hostage by Syrian rebels near the Turkish border in Aleppo district since May 2012.

    Ankara is a staunch supporter of the rebel Free Syrian Army that is fighting regime troops.

    On the 98th anniversary of the genocide, Armenian Catholicos of Cilicia Aram I slammed Turkey for turning churches into mosques.

    “How could Turkey which considers itself a pioneer in coexistence deny the genocide and transform churches into mosques?” he wondered in a statement.

    Turkey should give compensations to the Armenian people and restore its rights, he said.

    Naharnet