YEREVAN, APRIL 19, ARMENPRESS: Turkey eclipses the centenary of the Armenian massacre by moving Gallipoli memorial. Armenpress reports that the correspondent of the British the Guardian Constanze Letsch wrote an article about it. The journalist reminds that the anniversary of the 1915 military operations on the Gallipoli peninsula has always been marked on 25 April, the day after commemorations of the massacre of more than 1 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. “This is a very indecent political maneuver,” said Ohannes Kılıçdağı, a researcher and writer for Agos, an Armenian weekly. “It’s cheap politics to try to dissolve the pressure on Turkey in the year of the centennial by organizing this event. Everybody knows that the two memorials around Gallipoli have been held on 18 March and 25 April every year”.

Letsch writes that Prince Charles, Prince Harry, Tony Abbott, the Australian prime minister, and John Key, New Zealand’s prime minister, have confirmed they will attend events at Gallipoli. At the same time, hundreds will gather on Istanbul’s Taksim Square, where a commemoration of the Armenian genocide has been held since 2010. Another rally will be held in the eastern city of Diyarbakir, an important centre from where the state governor oversaw the mass killings in 1915. The main event will be held in Yerevan, capital of Armenia, with a number of foreign dignitaries from Russia, France, the UK and elsewhere.

The Guardian correspondent states that the Turkish government’s efforts to divert international attention from the commemoration of the massacre have been called “disgraceful” by Armenians. Turkey refuses to accept responsibility for the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. The plot thickened on Thursday when it was announced that a senior Turkish government adviser, Etyen Mahçupyan, had stepped down just months after he took on the job – and days after he too used the word “genocide”. Officials said he had retired because he had turned 65.

There are as many as 100,000 Armenians living in Turkey today, but many are too wary of local hostilities to openly project their ethnicity, still less confess their Christian faith.

Orhan Kemal Cengiz, a Turkish journalist and human rights activist, said the forthcoming parliamentary elections made any meaningful concessions by the ruling Justice and Development party impossible.

“They are trying to rally more nationalist votes. Erdoğan is a very pragmatic politician, who is very conscious of political advantages he can gain by any move he makes,” Cengiz said. “But the Armenian issue is a matter of conscience and of morality, which is why Erdoğan is not the leader who will solve it.”