The İstanbul Governor’s Office has for the fourth consecutive year denied permission to hold a ceremony marking April 24, Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, the Agos daily reported.
The April 24 Commemoration Platform had applied to organize a memorial ceremony at the Süreyya Opera House in İstanbul’s Kadıköy district on April 24. As in the previous three years the governor’s office denied permission without providing any justification.
In a statement the platform reminded that commemorations had been held uninterrupted between 2010 and 2019 but said authorities began denying permission following the COVID-19 pandemic.
The platform said organizing a commemoration is a democratic right and protested the ban, calling on the officials to reconsider their decision.
The arrest and subsequent deportation of 2,234 members of İstanbul’s Armenian community on April 24, 1915, is widely regarded by the Armenians as the beginning of the genocide.
The Armenians, supported by a majority of historians and scholars, say 1.5 million of their people died in a genocide committed by the Union and Progress government of the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Turkey acknowledges that large numbers of Armenians and Turks died in the conflict but firmly rejects the characterization of the deaths as genocide.
