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„Revealing
Chauvinism“: Turkey refuses the deceased Armenian artist Aram Tigran a
last resting-place
SOCIETY
FOR THREATENED PEOPLES
PRESS RELEASE Göttingen, 18th August 2009
„Revealing Chauvinism“: Turkey refuses the deceased Armenian artist Aram
Tigran a last resting-place
Turkey’s refusal to allow the Armenian singer Aram Tigran to be buried in
the Kurdish metropole of Diyarbakir has been described by the Society for
Threatened Peoples (GfbV) as “revealing chauvinism”. “We recommend
German politicians of all parties to defy political correcstness and to
distance themselves from a Turkish nationalism of this kind, whether it
shows itself in Ankara or in the German community of Turkish descent”,
said the GfbV chairperson, Tilman Zülch, on Tuesday in Göttingen.
Aram Tigran, who died in Athens at the age of 75, was buried on Monday in
Brussels. The Kurdish mayor of Diyarbakir, Osman Baydemir, had earth from
his city transported to Belgium to fulfil the last wish of the artist. Kurds
had saved the life of his father during the genocide against the Armenians
in Turkey in 1915. He fled with them to Syria and settled in the town of
Qamischli, which was inhabited mainly by Kurds. There his son Aram Tigran
was born in 1934.
Aram Tigran was an outstanding interpreter of contemporary Kurdish music and
sang mainly in Kurmanci Kurdish, but also in Armenian, Aramaic, Greek and
Arab. The musician emigrated in the 60s to then Soviet republic of Armenia
and lived from the beginning of the 90s mainly in Greece and Belgium. It was
only shortly before his death that he was able for the first time to visit
the province of Diyarbakir, the old homeland of his forebears.
“In Germany too the chairperson of the Turkish community in Germany, Kenan
Kolat, would evidently like to make sure that the young German generation
does not discover what happened in 1915 in eastern Anatolia”, commented Zülch.
For Kolat recently said that the guidelines for teachers in Brandenburg
schools presented a psychological burden for Turkish school-children and
were therefore a danger for inner peace. The guidelines deal with the
genocide in the Osman Empire of 1915/16, to which about 1.5 million
Armenians and about 500,000 Christian Assyrian Arameans fell victim. Many
Kurdish Agas took part in the crime, who were organised in the paramilitary
so-called Hamidiye militia (today’s village guardians).
The following rule of Kemal Atatürk resulted in the murder of at least
200,000 Christians in the region around the port of Smyrna, today’s Izmir,
and in eastern Thrace in the European part of Turkey. Other estimates bring
the figure up to 350,000 Christians murdered. At least two million Greek
Orthodox, but also Armenian and Assyrian Aramean Christians from Pontos,
Cappadocia and Ionia and Arab Christians from the region around
Alexandrette, today’s Iskenderun, were driven out at this time. The number
of Christians in the total population of today’s Turkey fell within 50
years
from 20 percent to about 0.1 Percent.
Tilman Zülch can be reached at tel. ++49 (0) 551 499 06 18.
>>>>>>>>>>>>> Für Menschenrechte.
Weltweit. <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Gesellschaft für bedrohte Völker / Society for Threatened Peoples
P.O. Box 20 24 - D-37010 Göttingen/Germany
Nahostreferat/ Middle East Desk
Dr. Kamal Sido - Tel: +49 (0) 551 49906-18 - Fax: +49 (0) 551 58028
E-Mail: nahost@gfbv.de
- www.gfbv.de
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