Armenian journalists added in murder list

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Vercihan Ziflioğlu

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

The Turkish Journalists Association (TGC) has decided to include the names of Armenian journalists killed during the events of 1915 in its list of “murdered journalists,” mimicking recent actions of the Contemporary Journalists’ Association (ÇGD.) A special section of the Press Museum will be dedicated to the murdered Armenian journalists.

“What is important for us is that they are our colleagues; their religion, language and race are irrelevant,” Ahmet Özdemir, TGC’s deputy secretary-general, told the Hürriyet Daily News in a phone interview.

ÇGD added the names of 10 murdered Armenian journalists to its list in recent months. The TGC, however, plans to add only two names: Diran Kelekyan, an editor of the daily Sabah and Cihan journals, as well as a writer and an academic; and Krikor Zohrab, a legal expert, writer, journalist and three-time deputy in the Ottoman Parliament.

“We took journalism as the criterion. Persons who published poems and discursions on newspapers do not carry significance for us in terms of journalistic criteria,” Özdemir said, adding that Zohrab and Kelekyan were murdered for their professional journalistic activities.

Zohrab and Kelekyan were sent into exile from Istanbul alongside 250 other Armenian intellectuals on the eve of April 24, 1915, the date regarded as the anniversary of the tragic events of 1915. The two journalists never returned from their forced exile.

The names of Zohrab and Kelekyan will be added to the TGC’s list and the Press Museum during the coming week following a public announcement.

“The persons we included in our list may have published discursions or poems, as they are also prominent representatives of western Armenian literature, but at the same time they [were] also journalists in every sense of the word,” ÇGD’s Ahmet Abakay told the Hürriyet Daily News in a phone interview.

TGC’s move is significant, although the organization still needs to push on with such efforts, Abakay said, adding that reviewing the criteria for journalism was necessary.

“I would prefer not to get involved in the [internal affairs] of another organization, but I would especially like to underscore this point that in our country, left-wing journals were once not counted as newspapers,” Abakay said.

“We would like to make space for more Armenian journalists as the ÇGD. We also came in very late, but we had neither any documents nor any information. Official history concealed the truth from us. It constitutes a crime to conceal from society the names of these individuals who labored for the Turkish press. We are going to continue waging this struggle.”