Agence France Presse
April 24, 2010 Saturday 6:21 PM GMT

Turks, in first, commemorate massacre of Armenians

istanbul, April 24 2010

Hundreds of rights activists and artists in Istanbul commemorated the
1915-17 massacres of Armenians by Ottoman Turks for the first time
Saturday, breaking a near century-old Turkish taboo.

The biggest rally was in Taksim Square, in the heart of modern
Istanbul, where several hundred people staged a sit-in, holding red
carnations and candles and listening to recordings of Armenian music.

Police in riot gear guarded the event and kept at bay a group of
counter-demonstrators, AFP journalists saw.

Earlier the Istanbul branch of the IHD human rights association
organised a rally attended by about 100 people on the steps of the
Haydarpasa train station from where the first convoy of 220 deported
Armenians left on April 24, 1915.

Under the slogan "Never Again" and, again, the watchful eye of the
police, demonstrators carried black and white photos of some of the
deportees, most of whom never returned.

Counter-protesters also gathered near the IHD demo, including former
diplomats waving the Turkish flag. Forty-two Turkish diplomats were
killed by the extremist Armenian Asala organisation in the 1970s and
1980s.

Turkish intellectuals and artists signed a petition calling on "those
who feel the great pain" to show their sorrow.

Avoiding an open confrontation over the term genocide — which the
Turkish government fiercely rejects — the petition speaks of the
"Great Catastrophe" of the massacres.

"The genie is out of the bottle," Cengiz Aktar, an Istanbul academic
who backs the petition, told AFP.

"These broken taboos concern not just Armenia, but also other hidden
subjects" such as the rights of minority Kurds, he added.

He said that despite the police presence, organisers feared a backlash
from people opposed to the demonstration.

The Istanbul rallies came as tens of thousands of Armenians marked the
95th anniversary of the mass killings in the Armenian capital Yerevan,
amid fresh tensions with Turkey over the collapse of reconciliation
efforts.

The dispute about the genocide label has poisoned relations between
the two neighbours for decades.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan welcomed a statement by US
President Barack Obama on Saturday which avoided the use of the term
and instead referred to "one of the worst atrocities of the 20th
century".

"President Obama has made a statement which takes into account the
sensibilities of Turkey," Erdogan was quoted as saying by the Anatolia
news agency.

Armenians say up to 1.5 million of their kin were systematically
killed between 1915 and 1917 as the Ottoman Empire, the predecessor of
modern Turkey, was falling apart.

ba-ms/dk/ach