“The doors to Diyarbakir are open to all former residents who wish to return,” the mayor claimed, noting that the municipality was seeing to it that all requisite conditions be created to welcome people back.
On that day, in the city of Van, Kurdish women took to the streets to protest the killing of their children by Turkish law enforcement. They held photos of the dead and staged a sit-in on one of the city’s major thoroughfares.
Calling the losses of 1915 a great tragedy, Mayor Baydemir said that the young generation isn’t informed but that they must be able to confront those facts directly.
Renovations at the Armenian St. Giragos Armenian Apostolic Church in Diyarbekir are in full swing and the grand official reopening of the massive 15th century structure is scheduled for the fall of this year.
Probably the most striking feature of Harran, the village, are the beehive type structures built of mud and hay. Some people still live in these structures, though many have been converted into stables. Some are on the verge of collapsing.
Today, there are 135 Armenians living in Vakif. The young people leave for Istanbul to study, to get married. They don’t return.
Renita Horoz (Hergenyan) is the only Armenian in the choir. She can’t speak Armenian and can hardly understand it. But she had no trouble when I asked her if there were Armenians in the choir –"Yes, me", she quickly blurted out.
Figures as to these Crypto-Armenians remaining in Adana vary as widely as those figures for Turkey as a whole. Some say there might be up to 2,000 such families in Adana today.
It is one of the three churches situated on the grounds of the Istanbul Armenian Apostolic Patriarchate located in the city’s Kum Kapi neighbourhood.