220 ARMENIAN INTELLECTUALS EXILED IN 1915 COMMEMORATED
AZG Armenian Daily
01/05/2009
Armenian Genocide
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.
The Human Rights Association’s (Ä°HD) Committee against Racism and
Discrimination commemorated 24 April 1915, the day that Armenians
worldwide recognize 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 Cankırı and AyaÅ~_ in central Anatolia. They were
then killed.
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.
The commemorative event started with a concert of the KardeÅ~_
Turkuler 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 Agrı 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."
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 Lapcinyan) 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 Gul Altınay and lawyer and IHD branch head Gulseren
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." (BC/AG)