Tag: Armenian Question

Letter to Mr. Sassounian from Kufi Seydali, our Advisory Board Member

Land of the Rising Sun: Fertile Ground for Armenians

https://www.turkishnews.com/en/content/2013/11/07/land-of-the-rising-sun-fertile-ground-for-armenians/

Mr. Sassounian!

I must say, you continue to surprise and shock me at the same time!

You are fossil, or better said, a living sample of a rare germ against which no Japanese mask would help. You continue to spread the disease of hate and death.

When I first read the title of your essay and the entering paragraphs, I thought; look here, the old Sassounian is filling a gap in his general knowledge by visiting Japan, instead of constantly attacking the Turks.

However, my joy was short lived as I read about the true purpose of your visit!

I bet, your Japanese hosts were too polite to tell you the truth, but I guess they didn’t believe a word about the bit regarding “peaceful- conflict- resolution”.

You, Sir, who after 100 years, are still looking for more blood and laying the foundations of future conflict and war, have no right to lecture on peaceful resolution of conflicts. How did you justify the illegal occupation of Karabag? How did you explain the continued suffering Armenian forces together with the Russian army have inflicted upon the Azeris? Hundreds of thousands dead and millions displaced!

Indeed I was amused by your claim to have met Japanese CEOs in order to discuss business and investments in Armenia! I am sure the Armenian Ambassador was equally amused.

The only positive lesson to be derived from your report, is that both the Turks of Turkey and Azerbaijan will need to take your damaging activities much more seriously. Thank you Mr. Sassounian for your valuable lesson.

Regards

Kufi Seydali

Kent, UK.

November 13, 2013
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)

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

April 30, 2013
A Turkish Awakening on Armenian, Kurdish Issues?

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

April 29, 2013
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.

April 26, 2013
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

April 26, 2013
Names of Lost Armenian Villages Read in Istanbul’s Sultanahmet Square

Names of destroyed Armenian villages

BY AYSE GUNAYSU
From The Armenian Weekly

ISTANBUL—It’s April 24, 2013. In Sultanahmet Square in Istanbul. People have gathered in front of the Turkish-Islamic Arts Museum which, in 1915, served as the Central Prison that held Armenian intellectuals kept before they were sent to their deaths. But something very unusual is happening. From a loudspeaker, people hear some Armenian names of places. The names of lost Armenian villages. The voice says: “Vaspuragan province… Avants… Lezk… Shahbaghi… Akhzia… Shoushants… Kouroubash… Gentanants… Pertag… Dzevestan… Ardamed… Tarman… Vosgepag…”

There are big panels on the wall, showing these names and the provinces or districts they are connected to. People come and take photographs. I recognize some of them; Armenians from abroad with a delegation are visiting Istanbul for the commemoration activities, taking photographs of these names from a certain province. I guess these are the provinces of their ancestors.

Eren Keskin starts to speak as the volume of the sound and voices goes down.

“These names you are hearing now are the names of the Armenian villages in Asia Minor before 1915, together with the provinces and districts they belong to—a total of 2,300 settlements. In fact, they are more in number. The work to compile the names of all the Armenian settlements before the genocide is still under way. Our guest, Historian Ara Sarafian, the director of the Gomidas Institute based in London, will give more details of this work.

Commemoration in Taksim

“The names you listen to now, constitute the solid proof of the genocide. The Armenian communities living in these villages were annihilated. They changed the names. Some of them were wiped off the map altogether; some became the home of others. “We wanted our ears to hear these names. We wanted them to penetrate deep into our souls. Here, on these panels, you can see them. You can come closer and read them one by one. These are lost Armenian communities. We want the Turkish people to remember and never forget these names.”

Then the volume rises again, and we listen to the names of the lost villages for another five minutes.

When death becomes a salvation
Keskin continues, “The genocide put an end to the social existence of Armenians and other Christian peoples of what is now Turkey by exterminating not only their lives but also their institutions, cultural and social organizations, their historical heritage, their civilizations, even the traces of their mere existence.

“Genocide is not only the massacres. Genocide is also dehumanizing people by putting them in circumstances where death becomes a salvation, something they crave to put an end to their suffering. But genocide is not only condemning people to inhuman conditions. It as also an enormous plunder, a wide-scale robbery of the wealth created by generations through skillful and hard work.

“And the Genocide still goes on. It continues through its denial. It goes on with the audacious, shameless lies told to people’s faces. It continues with the hatred and hostility that targets Armenians and other non-Muslims in Turkey. It continues by terrorizing Armenians in Samatya with brutal attacks on old Armenian women, the children of genocide survivors. It continues through an environment that doesn’t allow Armenians to feel safe in Turkey. This fact was dramatically demonstrated with what happened to Sevag Şahin Balıkçı, who was shot dead in Batman, Turkey, while he was serving the Turkish Armed Forces, on April 24, 2011, the day of the commemoration of the Armenian Genocide, and the day the court ruled that his death was an accident.

“We, the human rights defenders, repeat one more time: Officially recognize the genocide! This is a call to the government of the Republic of Turkey, as well as the Turkish public. Return the property seized during and after the genocide to the descendants of the owners. Compensate all of the material and immaterial damage done. Recognize the rights of Armenians scattered all around the world—their legitimate right to their homeland.

“Without recognition of the genocide, without confronting the crimes committed, no peace, no real democracy, no justice can ever be attained in this country.

“Refusal to recognize the genocide is a confirmation of the possibility of new genocides.

Therefore we once more demand that the Turkish authorities put an end to the denial of genocide! We want JUSTICE to be served!”

Ara Sarafian then speaks in Armenian, with simultaneous translation to Turkish by a young Armenian, a member of the Nor Zartonk socialist Armenian group. He talks about the futility of denialism in the face of bare facts, about the growth in the number of people joining the genocide commemoration events in Turkey, about his visit to Diyarbakir and his interviews with the local people—how truthful many of them were about the genocide, how one of them talked about his grandfather who participated in the massacres.

‘Sayfo’ commemorated publicly for first time
It was the first time that Sayfo, the Assyrian Genocide, was mentioned in the commemorations in Turkey, and that an Assyrian, a representative of the Sweden Assyrian Youth Federation, gave a speech, too. Referring to the ongoing “peace process” in Turkey to put an end to the war between the Turkish Army and the PKK, he said: “To our dismay, these crimes against humanity committed against the ancient peoples of Anatolia have always been denied by all governments to this day. It is clear that the pursuit of peace at the present will be futile without facing the past. A state of peace based on faith and religion will hang like Damocles’ sword on different peoples, just as in the events of the past. Truly establishing peace in these lands will be possible not by the denial of the crimes against humanity committed against the ancient peoples of Anatolia, but by facing them. The establishment of peace will have meaning when it is built not on common faith but on human values.” His speech was translated to the Assyrian language by his colleague. It was the first time the Assyrian language was heard by the people gathered for a commemoration of the genocide.

The co-chair of the Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party’s Istanbul Organization then gave a speech, recognizing the Kurds’ involvement in the genocide. “I, as a Kurd and a Kurdish politician, apologize again and again to Armenians and Assyrians for the role played by the Kurds in the genocide,” he said.

After a speech by another Kurd, the owner of the Peri Publishing House, which published a book about Antranig Pasha, said he condemned those Kurds who cooperated with the central government and took part in the massacres and the plunder of Armenian property.

Nor Zartonk’s press statement was also read aloud by a young Armenian, a member of the group.

An international delegation had also come to Istanbul this year within the framework of the program jointly developed by the Turkish group “Say Stop to Racism and Nationalism” (DurDe), the European Grassroots Anti-Racist Movement (EGAM), and the Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU). The president of EGAM, Benjamin Abtan gave a short speech expressing the group’s solidarity in the struggle against denialism in Turkey.

Following the commemoration, the delegation and the participants of the event visited the Sisli Armenian Cemetery and the grave of Sevag Şahin Balıkçı.

Before the commemoration at the Sultanahmet Square, Ara Sarafian, accompanied by others, had visited the grave of Ali Faik Bey (Ozansoy), the governor of Kütahya who had refused to obey the central government’s deportation orders and had protected the Armenian community there.

At 6:30 p.m., DurDe’s commemoration took place in Taksim Square. The crowd was bigger in Taksim—numbering about 1,000—as compared to Sultanahment, where there were about 200. Armenian music played throughout the event, excerpts were read from the memoirs of a number of Armenian intellectuals who were arrested on April 24, 1915, and a press release was read out condemning the genocide.

Commemoration in Diyarbakir
Diyarbakir is the only city in Turkey that officially and publicly recognizes the Armenian Genocide. “Both the conference hosted by the Diyarbakir Bar Association and the commemoration organized by the municipality under the leadership of Mayor Osman Baydemir were very impressive and fruitful,” said Sarafian. The commemoration took place on the bridge over the Tigris River where the Diyarbakir Armenians were massacred. Participants threw flowers into the river in the memory of the victims. Sarafian was deeply moved not only by the sincere willingness of the municipality, first and foremost Mayor Baydemir, but also by the readiness local Kurds to accept the truth. “We should not take for granted Osman Baydemir’s promise of wide open doors to Armenians, and should develop new ways of strengthening these ties with Diyarbakir and turn this potential into reality,” he said.

April 26, 2013