The Istanbul Governor’s office banned gatherings to mark the Armenian Genocide memorial day, scheduled for Sunday evening, Armenian newspaper Agos reported.
The Armenian community holds memorials on April 24, when in 1915 the first order was signed under Ottoman rule to exile more than 2,200 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders. By the end of the following May, the mass exile of Ottoman Armenians went into full effect.
The memorial in Istanbul was organised by the April 24 Commemoration Platform, a group of activists focusing on genocide recognition. The group has been holding memorials since 2010, with the exception of 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Since 2010, we have been organising events in a square in Istanbul every April 24 at 19.00 to commemorate the Armenians who lost their lives following bloody events that started on April 24, 1915,” the platform said in a statement.
The governor’s office said the memorial was “not appropriate”, according to the organisers.
“Once again, we call on the governor and political decision makers to reconsider the ban,” the group said.
The death of some 1.5 million Armenians is widely recognised as genocide among scholars and historians, however, Turkey maintains that the Ottoman state’s aims in ordering the mass exile stemmed from wartime conditions, and that deaths occurred at a much smaller scale, without deliberate intent.
Ahval