More than one million Armenians were expected to gather in their landlocked nation’s capital on Friday to commemorate the centenary of the mass killings that most scholars consider to be the first genocide of the 20th century.
Under overcast skies, more than a dozen world leaders including Russian President Vladimir Putin and his French counterpart François Hollande, came to pay respects and held a minute’s silence for the estimated 1.5 million Armenians who were slaughtered as the Ottoman Empire crumbled in 1915.
Delegates walked along the imposing genocide memorial on the Tsitsernakaberd plateau, overlooking Yerevan, depositing a single yellow rose in the center of a wreath resembling a forget-me-not flower; the symbol of the commemoration.
Yerevan has sought to use the anniversary to win broader international recognition that the 1915 massacres amounted to genocide, securing recognition from Pope Francis and several European capitals.
That shift has drawn angry reactions from Turkey, which still vehemently disputes suggestions Ottoman forces committed genocide and says the deaths occurred as part of war in which Turks were also killed by Armenians.
Standing next to the bunker-like eternal flame built to honor those slain a century ago, President Serzh Sargsyan said world-wide recognition of the massacres as genocide would help prevent a repetition of mass atrocities.
“For 100 years, we remember and we demand… The Armenian people will always stand by those who suffer crimes against humanity,” the president said.
The centenary of the killings has come against a backdrop of weeks of feverish and fractious diplomacy that has underscored the issue’s continued sensitivity.
Turkey on Wednesday withdrew its ambassador to Vienna and vowed “permanent damage” to bilateral relations after Austria’s parliament defined the 1915 killings as genocide.
Turkey—which has no formal diplomatic relations with Armenia—sent no representation to the commemorations but Ankara’s presence loomed large; Turkish territory is clearly visible from the hilltop memorial, beyond a sealed border.
For Armenia—a tiny former-Soviet nation of 3 million—the centenary commemorations have spotlighted how the country’s identity and political future are umbilically-linked to the bloody events of a century ago. The preservation of historical memory is presented as a sacred duty for all, whether in modern day Armenia or the country’s far-flung diaspora.
“I carry the stories about the genocide in my blood,” said Annahit Antonyan, one of the estimated 1.5 million ethnic Armenians living in Russia, who traveled here to commemorate ancestors that fled Ottoman forces in 1915. “I grew up with these stories and now it became part of my soul so it’s crucial to be here,” she said.
The scale and importance of the centenary to Armenia has seen the country suspend its normal rhythm. Schools and businesses have been closed and sections of the city center sealed off to complete preparations.
Billboards emblazoned with slogans like ‘remember and recognize’ have been erected across town and at prominent intersections. One huge poster displayed on the city’s airport highway features an outline of Hitler’s toothbrush mustache next to an Ottoman Fez.
Even Armenia’s TV diet has been upended, with the regular schedule dominated by cheeky soap operas replaced by somber documentaries about impacts of 1915.
Ahead of the political commemorations, thousands gathered Thursday in the Holy city of Echmiadzin, headquarters of the Armenian Apostolic Church, for a moving ’mass canonization’ ceremony that elevated the victims of 1915 to sainthood. The service, broadcast on big screens marked the first time the church had canonized anyone for 400 years. When the two-hour ceremony ended at the symbolic time of 19.15, bells rang out 100 times, an action to be repeated at Armenian churches around the world.
Patriarch Karekin II, cloaked in purple robes and flanked by bishops from a dozen ordinations, spoke of the sanctification of the “blood of martyrdom” and the “spiritual rebirth” of Armenians.
Later that evening, tens of thousands squeezed into Yerevan’s Republic Square to watch Armenian American metal band System of a Down play a free concert.
Diaspora Armenians that didn’t travel to Yerevan were slated to gather for commemoration events in a clutch of cities including Los Angeles, Moscow, Paris and Beirut.
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