(AFP) – Hundreds of people symbolically honored Friday in Istanbul memory of the victims of the massacres of Armenians in 1915, the Turkish authorities for the first time honored at a Mass but continuing to reject any “genocide” .
Gathered at the call of a group of Turkish and international NGOs, the demonstrators gathered in succession to the former prison, now Museum of Islamic Art, which were held the first Armenians arrested April 24, 1915 and Haydarpasa train station, where they were later deported.
Under the eye of the police, they exhibited portraits of the victims killed in 1915 and placards “Recognize Genocide”, Turkish, Armenian and English.
“I wanted to come here in the middle of the Turkish people to commemorate this common cause,” he told AFP Satenik Baghdasaryan, an Armenian activist came specially for the occasion of Yerevan. “It’s my way of showing my appreciation for the work they do here (…) to push their state to recognize what has happened,” she added.
Turkish Minister participated Friday for the first time, a Mass in honor of the victims of the Armenian Patriarchate in Istanbul.
“We respect the suffering of our Armenian brothers. We are aware of their ordeal, that’s why we came to attend the ceremony, “said Minister for European Affairs, Volkan Bozkir.
In a message read at the Mass, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reiterated his “condolences” to the Armenian victims of the 1915-1917 killings. “I say that our hearts are open to descendants of Ottoman Armenians around the world,” also wrote the strongman of the country as a message.
espite this gesture of openness, the Turkish Islamic-conservative leaders have deemed “unfounded” genocide qualification massacres of hundreds of thousands of Armenians committed by the Ottoman Empire in 1915, denouncing a “smear campaign against Turkey “.
“We expect the Turkish state recognition of the genocide, he stops to Holocaust denial at the heart of its education, its diplomacy, its politics, its ideology,” said Benjamin Abtan, the European Anti-Racist Movement ( Egam), who participated in the rallies of the day.
Brief scuffles finally between students of the Technical University of Istanbul that deployed on campus banners calling for the recognition of the Armenian Genocide in the private security and police officers, reported the news agency Dogan.
Other rallies in memory of the victims of the 1915 massacres were reported in Turkey, especially in Diyarbakir (south-east), according to media.