Iğdır Genocide Memorial and Museum

Iğdır Genocide Memorial and Museum

Iğdır Genocide Memorial and Museum (Turkish: Iğdır Soykırım Anıt-Müzesi) is a memorial-museum complex in Iğdır, Turkey. It is known for denial of the Armenian genocide.

The stated aim of the memorial is to "commemorate massacres and persecution committed by Armenians in Iğdır Province" during World War I and the Turkish–Armenian War.[1] The memorial was built to further deny the Armenian genocide through an untrue claim that Armenians massacred Turks, rather than vice versa, during World War I.[2] French journalists Laure Marchand and Guillaume Perrier call the monument "the ultimate caricature of the Turkish government's policy of denying the 1915 genocide by rewriting history and transforming victims into guilty parties".[3] Bilgin Ayata on Armenian Weekly criticized the memorial as "aggressive, nationalistic, and outright hostile".[4] The European Armenian Federation for Justice and Democracy announced that the memorial is designed to deny the Armenian genocide and demanded its closure.[5]

The construction for the memorial started on 1 August 1997 and it was dedicated on 5 October 1999 in Iğdır, Turkey. Its height is 43.5 metres (143 ft), making it the tallest monument in Turkey.[6] In an address at the monument's opening ceremony, Minister of State Ramazan Mirzaoğlu claimed that Armenians killed almost 80,000 people in Iğdır between 1915 and 1920; the Turkish president Süleyman Demirel was also present.[7][8]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Iğdır Soykirim Aniti". Türkiye Kültür Portalı. Retrieved 3 May 2022.
  2. ^ Özbek, Egemen (2018). "The Destruction of the Monument to Humanity: Historical Conflict and Monumentalization". International Public History. 1 (2). doi:10.1515/iph-2018-0011. S2CID 166208121. the Iğdır Memorial and Museum of Martyred Turks Massacred by Armenians was built to support the Turkish narrative of genocide denial, arguing that it was the Armenians who massacred Turks and Muslims, not the other way around.
  3. ^ Marchand, Laure; Perrier, Guillaume; Blythe, Debbie (2015). Turkey and the Armenian Ghost: On the Trail of the Genocide. McGill-Queen's Press. pp. 111–112. ISBN 978-0773597204.
  4. ^ Bilgin Ayata, "Critical Interventions: Kurdish Intellectuals Confronting the Armenian Genocide", Armenian Weekly, 29 April 2009.
  5. ^ European Armenian Federation for Justice and Democracy. "4 Questions regarding Turkey and the Armenian Genocide" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2019-01-14.
  6. ^ Iğdır "Soykırım" Anıt-Müzesi Archived 2015-03-30 at the Wayback Machine, Governorate of Iğdır
  7. ^ Hofmann, Tessa (October 2002). "Armenians in Turkey Today: A Critical Assessment of the Armenian Minority in the Turkish Republic". Forum of Armenian Associations in Europe: 32.
  8. ^ "Türk-Ermeni İlişkileri Uluslararası Sempozyumu ve "Iğdır Soykırım Anıtı ve Müzesinin" Açılış" (in Turkish). Archived from the original on 2014-06-16. Retrieved 3 May 2015. "1915–1920 yılları arasında Iğdır'da yaklaşık 80 bin kişinin Ermeniler tarafından hunharca katledildiği..."