BIA Magazine, Turkey
April 25 2009

220 Armenian Intellectuals Exiled in 1915 Commemorated

On 24 April 1915, over 200 Armenian intellectuals were exiled and then
killed. The Human Rights Association commemorated this loss to
Armenian, Ottoman and Turkish society.

Bawer Ã?AKIR bawer@bianet.org Istanbul – BÄ°A News Center
24 April 2009, Friday

The Human Rights Association’s (Ä°HD) Committee against Racism
and Discrimination commemorated 24 April 1915, the day that Armenians
worldwide recognise as the beginning of the forced exile of Armenians
from the Ottoman Empire, with an event in the Tobacco Depot in
Istanbul.

On that day, 139 Armenian intellectuals were arrested in Istanbul and
forcibly taken to Ã?ankırı and AyaÅ? in
central Anatolia. They were then killed.

A loss for all of society, then and today

Lawyer Eren Keskin spoke at the event entitled `24 April 1915 and
Armenian Intellectuals: They were arrested, they were evicted, they
did not even get a grave stone.’

She said that the death of these intellectuals represented a loss not
only for the Armenian language, culture, thought and science world,
but also for the Ottoman society of the time and for `the world of all
of us today.’

An exhibition displayed stories and pictures from a book entitled
`Memory of 11 April’, written by Teotig in 1919 and dealing with the
deaths of the intellectuals.

Music eliminating borders

The commemorative event started with a concert of the KardeÅ?
Türküler folk group which performed songs in Armenian,
Kurdish, Suryani, Arabic and Turkish.

The group members said that they had fulfilled a wish of murdered
Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in December, when they had
organised a tour in Armenia together with the Turkey-based Armenian
choir Sayat Nova.

`We saw that the Ararat mountain embraces Yerevan just as much as it
does AÄ?rı province.’

Keskin said, `We, who believed what we were told, and who stayed quiet
even if we did not believe it¦we are all guilty.’

Stories of lives cut short

Publisher Ragıp Zarakol and members of the Bosphorus
Performance Arts Society (BGST) theatre department read life stories
and poems of and by Rupen Sevag, Siamanto (Atom Yerjeyan), Taniel
Varujan, Teotig (Teotoros Lapçinyan) and Krikor Zohrab, all of
them killed in 1915.

Around 100 people attended the event, among them Hrant Dink’s widow
Rakel Dink and his brother Orhan Dink, journalist Sarkis Saropyan,
academic AyÅ?e Gül Altınay and lawyer and IHD
branch head Gülseren Yoleri.

After Zarakol recounted the life of Armenian musician Gomidas, Keskin
ended the commemoration with a quote from the musician:

`It was spring, but here it was snowing.’ (BÃ?/AG)

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