TORONTO, Canada—On Jan. 19, the Toronto Armenian community gathered
to commemorate the 7th anniversary of the assassination of Hrant Dink.
More than 500 people filled the Armenian General Benevolent Union Centre
to capacity, with standing room only. The keynote speaker was renowned
Turkish journalist and author Hasan Cemal, who also happens to be the
grandson of Cemal Pasha, one of the three leaders of the Committee of
Union and Progress (Ittihat ve Terakki), which planned and perpetrated
the Armenian Genocide in 1915.
Cemal (L) and Bedrosyan
Mgrditch Mgrditchian was the master of ceremonies. After a beautiful rendition of
Sari Aghchig and
Cilicia
by young soprano Lynn Anoush Isnar, Raffi Bedrosyan, one of Hrant’s
friends, introduced Hasan Cemal. Bedrosyan explained that Hasan Cemal
worked for many years (until 1992) as the editor-in-chief of the
Cumhuriyet daily, the official mouthpiece of the Kemalist state and the
defender of the denialist official version of history related to the
1915 events. Hasan Cemal then moved on to Sabah newspaper, the newspaper
with the largest circulation at the time, as editor (until 1998), and
then to Milliyet until March 2013, when he had to resign under pressure
from Prime Minister Erdogan for criticizing the anti-democratic policies
of the government. In recent years, Hasan Cemal got influenced by the
writings of journalist Hrant Dink and historian Taner Akcam, and started
questioning the veracity of the state version of history. As a result,
he went through a gradual intellectual transformation, until he reached
the conclusion that those events were indeed a genocide. In 2008, the
year after Hrant Dink was assassinated, he went to Armenia and visited
the Genocide Memorial, placing flowers there for Hrant and all the past
genocide victims, sharing their pain. In 2012, he wrote a book titled
1915: Armenian Genocide in Turkish. The book, explaining his personal evolution, became a bestseller.
In his speech, Hasan Cemal stressed the need to separate personal
family history from general history. He gave examples as to how he had
to distinguish between his grandfather’s actions versus his stand
against the genocide, and his dramatic meeting in Yerevan with the
grandson of one of the planners of Cemal Pasha’s assassination in
Tbilisi in 1922. Hasan Cemal also explained the long journey he had to
go through from having a “captive” mind, based on the state version of
history, to an “emancipated” or “liberated” mind, after seeking and
finding the facts and truth about the 1915 events. Cemal stated that a
small but fast increasing segment of the Turkish civil society has
already started to acknowledge the truth about the genocide, and urged
the Turkish state also to face its past and acknowledge and apologize
for the 1915 events.
After his speech, there was a short discussion session among Hasan
Cemal and two Zoryan Institute representatives, president Kurken
Sarkissian and Executive Director George Shirinian, moderated by Raffi
Bedrosyan, about the significance of building a “common body of
knowledge” regarding the historic facts of 1915, in order to be able to
have meaningful and constructive dialogue toward reconciliation between
Turks and Armenians.
The Toronto commemoration was another proof that Hrant Dink’s legacy
lives on and gains more momentum every year, both within Turkey and in
all four corners of the world, with demands of truth and justice to
prevail for the 1.5 million Armenians plus one
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