University opens competition to mark ‘genocide committed by Armenians against Turks’

A university in Ankara has opened a controversial poster competition to mark the 100th anniversary of the 1915 incidents from an unexpected perspective - “to remember the genocide committed by Armenians against Turks.”

The competition, titled “While Everybody was Fast Asleep: Armenian Atrocities from Anatolia to Caucasia,” will be hosted by the Fine Arts Faculty of Ankara’s Gazi University, and will be open to everybody, according to a statement from the organizers.

An exhibition will take place after the competition and the winners will be admitted to shows held in both Turkey and Azerbaijan, the statement added.

The aim of the competition is described by its organizers as being “to remind people of the genocide committed by Armenians against Turks, to halt the claims of so-called Armenian genocide and the smear campaigns, to contribute to the struggle of those who resist injustice against the Turkish nation, to make the resisters feel that they are not alone, to share the pain, and to raise consciousness and spread it to the masses.”

The statement announcing the competition was also accompanied by a lengthy interpretation of the years leading up to 1915, claiming that the Armenians experienced their history’s “Golden Age” under Ottoman rule, particularly between the 15th and 19th centuries

“During the reign of Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror, they were granted maximum freedom of thought and faith. The Armenian Patriarchate was established to manage the religious and social activities of the Armenian community. The period up until the 19th century - when they lived alongside Turks - has been recorded in history as the ‘Golden Age of Armenians,’” it said, adding that circumstances changed “with...