Turkish authorities banned the commemoration of the 1915 Armenian Genocide for the second year running Monday in a decision condemned as “unacceptable” by organizers.
The blocking of a memorial event in Istanbul came as issues affecting Turkey’s minorities took hold ahead of next month’s elections, following opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu’s declaration of his Alevi faith last week. The April 24 Commemoration Platform condemned the move in a statement. “There is no reasonable justification for banning our commemoration this year, as it was last year,” it said.
Monday marks the 108th anniversary of the deportation and killing of hundreds of Armenian community leaders and intellectuals from Istanbul in a prelude to the mass killing of Armenians across Anatolia. An estimated 1.5 million people were killed in the events that are widely viewed by scholars at the first genocide of the 20th century. Turkey denies that the deaths constituted genocide, saying the toll has been inflated and that those killed were victims of civil war and unrest in the Ottoman Empire during World War I.
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