The Armenian residents of Turkey’s Dersim region have started learning Armenian as part of a recently announced cooperation initiative with the Alevis.

The Istanbul-based Armenian publication Hye Tert reports that the two communities have already launched an association to realize joint projects.

“An important concern for the Dersim-Armenians is that they have forgotten their language. To bridge that gap, our first task was to organize courses. Tigran Lokmagyozyan, an Istanbul-Armenian currently residing in Armenia, has now come to Dersim for that reason. We have 15 students for the starting period,” Serkan Meriatash, the association’s founder, told the publication.

He unveiled plans for conducting different events in April, ahead of the Armenian Genocide centenary. Meriatash said that a delegation of Dersim village mayors is now considering a possible visit to Armenia from April 16 to 20 for organizing a public screening of movies.