Armenian organisations across northern Syria held events for the 109th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire in 1915, atrocities that remain unrecognised by the Turkish state.
Armenian associations in Aleppo called for “an international recognition of the Armenian Genocide and urged adherence to international law in supporting the Armenian people’s rights and seeking justice” and marched through the city to the cemeteries of genocide victims, holding candles and banners.
In Heseke, northeastern Syria, candlelit speeches were held. A seminar in the town was led by the Armenian Women’s Union, which held its first congress two years ago.
Yeghnik Garbo, co-chair of the Armenian Social Council in Qamishlo, demanded “that Turkey acknowledges and claims responsibility for this [Armenian] genocide.” The seminar in Qamishlo was led by the Armenian Social Council, which was established on 24th April 2020 to address the issues of Armenian people in the region.
A public meeting led by the Nubar Ozanyan Cultural Centre and the Shahid Nubar Ozanyan Brigade took place to discuss the historical consequences of the genocide. Commemoration activities, in Arabic and Armenian languages, were held across four villages with Armenian populations.
The Cultural Centre and Brigade commanders underlined how the Turkish state’s position on Armenians and all oppressed groups has not changed, with the invasion of Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) and attacks against Kurdistan evidencing this policy. The commanders emphasised the importance of self-organisation for the Armenian people and warned of the continued threat of genocide in Armenian areas. They also recognised the Israeli state attack against Palestine as an ongoing genocide.
Lusin Erdimyan, a representative of the Cultural Centre, said it was vital these events take place where the descendants of survivors live. All Armenians in the region must unify for their own benefit and for the building of community amongst all peoples, Erdimyan said.
Armenian fighters in the Syrian Democratic Forces’ (SDF) Shahid Nubar Ozanian Battalion held a military ceremony to commemorate victims of the Armenian Genocide.
The Cultural Centre published a newspaper, Baykar, following an 1980s publication of the same name by the revolutionary Nubar Yalimyan. Born in Silopi and organised with the left in Turkey, Yalimyan was exiled to the Netherlands, and assassinated by the Turkish intelligence (MIT) in 1982.
In Lebanon, the Universal Syriac Union Party held a commemorative event, attended by religious and political leaders in Beirut to remember the Assyrian people who were simultaneously expelled from their homeland and massacred.
Beginning in the 19th century, the massacres and forced Islamisation of hundreds of thousands of Armenians and Christians of the Ottoman Empire culminated during 1915 in the systemic genocide of up to 1.5 million people and the expropriation of land. Those massacred were mostly Armenian, but also included Syriacs and Orthodox Greeks. The Ottoman forces exiled, massacred, and violently assimilated the Armenian populations across Anatolia, especially from Erzurum, Van, Bitlis, Sivas, Harput, and Diyarbakır, where Kurdish tribes were enlisted to assist the Ottoman soldiers.
Hundreds of thousands of Armenians – the majority of whom were women and children – were sent on months-long death marches through ravines and desert, across what is now modern Turkey and Syria, many ending in Deir-ez-Zor. Around twenty death camps held those who did not die from exposure, malnutrition, or roadside execution on the way. Hundreds of thousands of Armenian women and children who survived the village expulsions and death march were sold to Turkish, Arab, Kurdish, and other families to undergo forced Islamisation and cultural assimilation.
Bones can still be found in the desert sands from the unburied and unmarked resting places of those who were killed.
The Armenian Genocide Memorial was opened in Deir-ez-Zor in 1991 as a church, museum, monument, archive and exhibition hall. Every year, on 24th April, thousands of Armenians from all over the world travel to commemorate the victims of the genocide. The memorial church, alongside many other ancient and sacred sites, was destroyed by ISIS in September 2014.
Kohar Khajadourian, co-chair of the Armenian Social Council in Qamishlo, speaks in a 2022 interview about the effects of war and repeated brutality by ISIS. The number of Armenians in northeastern Syria has drastically fallen: “Before 2011, around three thousand families, from Deir ez-Zor to the city of Derik, but it is now around four hundred families.”
Armenians face a repetition of genocide in Nagorno-Karabakh. The Azerbaijani government is supported foremost by the Turkish state in the military occupation and political suppression of the region. More than half a million people have been displaced, and a ten-month siege against the population between 2022-23 forced vulnerable residents to forego necessary medical care and severely limited food and energy resources. The Armenian population faced extrajudicial killings and abductions, illegal military incursions, blockades, and bombings, resulting in the forced exodus of more than 100,000 from the enclave. The de facto republic dissolved in 2024 and was reclaimed by Azerbaijan.
Armenian and international leaders have also condemned the unlawful eviction on 3 April by the Israeli police on the premises of the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem. No court orders or permits were presented. The Christian population in the old city has declined from 25 percent a century ago to just 1 percent.
Despite almost universal recognition and condemnation of the 1915 genocide, Turkey refutes its existence, and in the 2000s, set up a government task force (ASIMKK) to counter efforts towards recognition through propagating genocide denial amongst the population. This was enacted under the National Security Council, now chaired by President Erdoğan. Public remembrance events for the victims of the genocide are banned by the İstanbul Governor’s Office. Military training and equipment are provided to the occupation in Nagorno-Karabakh, and the same politics of ethnic cleansing and assimilation threaten the minorities.
