Saturday Mothers commemorate Armenian intellectuals
Relatives attended the gathering carrying photographs of the disappeared and carnations, accompanied by numerous human rights defenders. This time, the focus was on the remembrance day of the Armenian genocide and the deportation of the Armenian elite in Istanbul—an event regarded as the beginning of the genocide. The statement was read by lawyer Eren Keskin from the Human Rights Association (IHD).
On the night of April 24 to 25, 1915, the Young Turk regime under Interior Minister Talat Pasha ordered the arrest of numerous Armenian intellectuals in Istanbul. The arrests were carried out on the basis of prepared lists. Police units went to the homes of those concerned and claimed that they were to be taken for short interrogations. The detainees, including members of parliament, writers, doctors, journalists, and academics, were first taken to police stations and then transferred to the central prison of Sultanahmet. They were among the leading figures of Armenian society.
On April 25, the detainees were deported by special train toward Ayaş and Çankırı in central Anatolia. In the following days, the wave of arrests expanded; in total, around 250 Armenian intellectuals were detained. For many of them, this path ended in death: the majority were murdered in the following months, and many remain missing to this day. In official records, their fates were often later obscured with entries such as “escaped” or “released.”
As part of the vigil, Haçadur Malumyan (Agnuni), one of the founders of the Armenian newspaper “Azadamard,” was also commemorated. He was arrested on the night of April 24 and initially deported to Ayaş. From there, he sent a telegram to Talat Pasha demanding his release, but without success.
On June 2, 1915, Malumyan, together with five other intellectuals, was transferred under the pretext of being brought before a court in Amed (tr. Diyarbakır). On the way, near Siverek, the group was murdered by an armed unit linked to the Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa, a paramilitary apparatus of the Ottoman Empire. Their deaths were also later concealed.
In the press statement, Keskin described the deportation of Armenian intellectuals as the beginning of a “great catastrophe” and at the same time drew a connection to the present. “Failing to confront the past nourishes today’s lawlessness and the culture of impunity,” Keskin said. Even after 1,100 weeks, the Saturday Mothers maintain their demand for truth and justice, adding: “No matter how many years pass, we will not forget our disappeared. Against forgetting, we defend memory; against denial, the truth.”
At the end, Saturday Mother Hanife Yıldız spoke about the ongoing search for the disappeared. “These weeks may be easy to say, but what we have experienced, how we have been burned, continues,” she said, accusing those responsible of still “not wanting to hear.”
