Epress.am News from Armenia
On January 19, a Hrant Dink Foundation fellow from Turkey and a group of Armenians organized a silent march on the 8th anniversary of Hrant Dink’s assassination, the first public event in Yerevan since Dink’s assassination in Istanbul on January 19, 2007. The march began from the Tsitsernakaberd Genocide Memorial and headed to Liberty Square near the Opera building. It was decided to organize the march approximately two days before.
The march was to somewhat be modeled after the one that annually takes place in Istanbul every January 19. The first ten minutes of the march, while walking down from the Genocide memorial to the Hrazdan stadium, were silent. According to the organizers, the silence was for remembering Hrant Dink and what his memory and legacy meant to the individual participant.
The approximately 25 people that had gathered at Tsitsernakaberd were escorted by police down to the Opera Square. The participants were all given placards in Armenian, Turkish, and English, reading “For Hrant, For Justice,” “We will never Forget,” “Never Again,” Closed Borders, Open Minds,” “We will never Forgive.” One participant, from Turkey, even carried the flag of Nor Zartonk, a leftist Armenian-based organization in Turkey dealing with Armenian and minority issues. The participants were almost all informed about the march via Facebook.
The 25 person turnout, many of whom were involved in journalism, was not expected due to the tardiness of the event’s organization. A small group of diasporan Armenians hailing from Lebanon, Turkey, France and the U.S also attended, as well as Kurds from Turkey, showing their solidarity to the man who openly spoke and supported Kurdish human rights. The participants were a near equal mix of non-Armenians, diasporan Armenians, and Armenians.
Once the march entered the busy Mashtots Avenue, some citizens began paying attention to the march and asked questions. One female vegetable vendor asked what all the signs were saying and when answered with “Hrant Dink,” the women claimed to have got chills on her arm and called Dink a hero and martyr of the Armenian people.
One of the organizers, Suzan Meryem Rosita Aljadeeah, who is a genocide scholar and current Hrant Dink Foundation fellow in Gyumri, felt a sort of responsibility to organize the march and had a close personal relationship with Dink while attending university. Mkrtich Tonoyan, who supported Rosita's idea, claimed that due to the fact that such a march in honor of Hrant Dink was taking place in Armenia for the first time, with all its deficiencies in PR, the turnout was definitely praiseworthy. Tonoyan indirectly implied that this was just the first of more annual marches to come.
A French-Armenian with roots from Turkey stated that once he heard Dink’s name in relation to the march, he immediately felt a responsibility to attend because he was “Bolsahye” (Istanbul-Armenian), and that Dink was a person who symbolized peace in Turkey, a concept he admires and is in line with.
The march reached Liberty Square and the organizers asked for a moment of silence among the participants. After the event finished, participants lingered around, conversing with each other. During the march, news of six-month old Seryozha Avetisyan’s death, the 7th murdered member of the Avetisyan family, had spread among the participants, and a candle vigil had already started to begin in Liberty Square when the march ended. The police presence was already secured near the Opera steps, while the candles had not even arrived or been lit for the memory of the infant victim.
Earlier in the day, before the march left from Tsitsernakaberd, people had gathered at the memorial complex in order to place flowers on the grave of Armenian Independence movement activist Movses Gorgisyan, who died on January 19, 1990 defending his village on the Nakhichevan border.
The significance of the three losses (Avetisyan, Dink, and Gorgisyan) commemorated on January 19th is more than noteworthy, however, this small march represented a start of possibly something a bit larger. While Armenian-Turkish relations increase on a small societal scale within certain institutions, academia, or friendly cliques, its effect on new standards, like holding a Hrant Dink march every year for like-minded people in Armenia, may very well hold. One must wait until 2016 to see what effect this small admirable event has on people in Armenia.
Manuk Avedikyan