On the 100th anniversary of the Genocide, a mausoleum in memory of Armenal Bakırcıyan, a leading member of TİKKO, the Liberation Army of the Workers and Peasants of Turkey, has been unveiled in the Nazımiye District of Dersim.
The unveiling ceremony held on April 26, Saturday, of the mausoleum built in the Xarik Village of the Nazımiye District was attended by HDP Dersim parliamentary candidates Alican Önlü and Edibe Şahin, Dersim Co-Mayor Nurhayat Altun and representatives of various associations, political parties and organizations including HDP, DBP, DHF, EMEP, ESP, DERADOST and Partizan. Members of the Diaspora from Greece and France were also present at the ceremony.
The group held a march to the mausoleum constructed on the shore of the Pembelik Dam Reservoir on the Perisuyu River in the Nazımiye District, and carried banners featuring the sentences, ‘We condemn the Armenian Genocide, we commemorate Armenak Bakırcıyan’ and ‘From Hrant to Sevag; the Armenian Genocide continues in its 100th year’.
There was brief tension during the march between the gendarmerie officers and the attendees because of the unfurling of a banner.
Following the march, Bakırcıyan’s mausoleum was unveiled. A minute of silence was observed during the ceremony for the victims of the Armenian Genocide, and red carnations were laid at Bakırcıyan’s grave.
The gravestone features the epigraph, “In memory of Armenak Bakırcıyan, Hrant Dink, Manuel Demir, Nubar Yalımyan, Kevork Çavuş, Monte Melkonian, Antranik Uzunyan… and all heroes without names, without graves”.
Central committee member of TKP-ML (Communist Party of Turkey-Marxist Leninist) TİKKO, Armenak Bakırcıyan was killed in a clash with the gendarmerie in Elazığ, Karakoçan, on 13 May 1980.
