24 APRIL 1915
"97th Anniversary of Genocide and the Tradition of Unsolved Murders”
At the 97th anniversary of 1915 Armenian Genocide a commemoration event organized at Taksim Square yesterday evening at 19:15. 500 people came together in front of the tram stop at Taksim Square; Rakel Dink, Orhan Dink, Arat Dink, artist Metin Kahraman, Prof. Dr. Gencay Gürsoy, BDP parliamentarians Sabahat Tuncel and Sırrı Süreyya Önder, journalist author Oral Çalışlar, Prof. Dr. Baskın Oran, artist Ferhat Tunç and the family of Sevag Balıkçı were among them.
Participation in this year's commemoration event was much more crowded than the previous two years.
30 people from People's Liberation Party protested the commemoration of the Armenian Genocide 20 meters behind the area of the commemoration event.
They shouted slogans like "Armenian genocide is a lie of imperialism" and "Damn with American Imperialism!". Policemen had intensive security measures in between two groups.
"April 24th is the beginning of the unsolved murders tradition"
Armenian folk songs were played at the commemoration event and the Armenian intellectuals who were taken from their houses and arrested on the night of April 23 were commemorated.
Revolutionary Socialist Workers' Party (DSİP) spokesman Şenol Karakaş told that "1,5 Armenian people were killed on April 24th and this is both the beginning of the Armenian Genocide and the tradition of unsolved murders."
Karakaş mentioned that leading people in Armenian community were arrested on the night of April 23th and it was an effort to silence Armenian people and break their power of resistance.
"An unforgotten history is the guarantee of the future"
Zişan Tokaç read the press release on behalf of the Say Stop To Racism And Nationalism organization at the commemoration event.
"Around 250 Armenian intellectuals were taken from their houses on 24 April 1915 and sent to Çankırı and Ayaş, to a road of no return and those people were the voice of Armenian community.
"Those people believed in the free and equal days after Constitutionalism. Their dreams were lost at the roads of no return just as themselves."
" The Armenian people were deported in convoys to the deserts. Men were killed; churches and schools went to rack and ruin. Their possession changed hands. Only banned whispers were left at the end of the genocide from the possessions of Armenians."
"The things happened are not forgotten in silence and denial. On the contrary, the wound turned into inflammation, the deadlocks became stronger. Many fair Muslims tried to rescue their Armenian neighbors however the conditions in these lands couldn't get better any more."
"The people defending to forget the past are in fact the ones that are afraid of the future. An unforgotten history is the guarantee of the future." said Hrant Dink. (EKN)