Ankara backtracks on freedom to commemorate Armenian murders
The 2018 commemoration of the Armenian massacres was memorable for the ban on using the word "genocide" and a big drop in attendance.
p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px 'Bookman Old Style'; -webkit-text-stroke: #000000} span.s1 {font-kerning: none} Turkish liberals commemorated the Armenian massacres this week but, for the first time, had to contend with a big drop in turnout and the police banning the word “genocide”.
“I can no longer [utter] ‘Armenian genocide’ in public, and that is a big step backwards,” said Nicolas Tavitian, director of the Brussels-based Armenian General Benevolent Union Europe. He was on his sixth visit to Istanbul to mark the day in 1915 when the Ottoman police arrested 250 of the city’s Armenian doctors, engineers and lawyers in what is considered the start of the genocide.
