Let's Pin Down the Headline at the Neighbour's! April 2015 - Turkey

A group of 10 journalists, 9 from Armenia and 1 from Iran visited Turkey from April 20th to April 26th 2015 as part of the Turkey-Armenia Journalists’ Dialogue Programme, organised by the Hrant Dink Foundation with the support of the MyMedia Programme of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark. In the seventh year of the programme, which aims at strengthening ties between journalists from Turkey and Armenia and helping to establish direct means of exchanging news sources, 10 participants from Armenia and Iran were selected out of 40 applicants and were invited to take part in a one-week programme in Istanbul and Diyarbakır to gain a better understanding of Turkey and the Armenian community in the country.

Journalists and reporters from H1 Public TV of Armenia, ALIK, ALT TV, Goris Press Club, CivilNet, HETQ, Hraparak Daily, Kentron TV, Public Radio of Armenia, Shoghakat TV and Yerkir TV visited Turkey and found out about the current media and journalism landscape in the country.

On their first day, the group of journalists visited AGOS and the Hrant Dink Foundation. During the week, the journalists entered the newsrooms of media outlets such as CNN Türk and Cumhuriyet and had the chance to meet their colleagues and discuss bilateral relations as well as the state of media. They paid a visit to the Human Rights Association of Turkey and Memory Center, and learnt about the preparations for the April 24th Armenian Genocide commemoration events taking place in Istanbul in the centenary of the Genocide. In this way, they also received first-hand information about the changes in the perception of Turkey’s civil society towards the Genocide from past to present.

As part of the one-week programme, the group also visited Aras Publishing, Getronagan High School, and joined the Armenian cultural heritage memory tour in Istanbul. They had a meeting with Archbishop Aram Ateşyan - the Acting Patriarch of the Armenian Patriarchate in Istanbul. These visits helped the journalists to meet and learn about the Armenian citizens of Turkey.

The group also learnt about the mandate of the Permanent Representation of Republic of Armenia to BSEC - Black Sea Economic Cooperation in Istanbul from the Head of the Mission Michael Vardanian.

Thanks to their meeting with Garo Paylon, the Istanbul candidate of the People’s Democratic Party (HDP) in the parliamentary elections, the journalists had a conversation about the upcoming parliamentary elections in Turkey, the centenary of the 1915 Armenian Genocide as well as the sealed Turkey-Armenia border.

The participating journalists travelled to Diyarbakır, met leading figures in the region and took part in the Armenian Genocide commemoration events in the city. In their meeting with Tahir Elçi, the president of Diyarbakır Bar Association, they got a deeper insight into the Kurdish political movement in Turkey and its approach to the mass killings and deportations in 1915. They had the chance to visit Surp Giragos and Surp Sarkis Armenian Churches and were invited to the concert of Raffi Bedrosyan at Surp Giragos Church.

On April 24th, on the Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, the journalists could witness the commemoration event in Istanbul’s Taksim Square in the centenary of the Genocide. They could report their audience in Armenia right from the ground.

The group also attended the conference ‘‘The Armenian Genocide: Concepts and Comparative Perspectives’’ in Istanbul on April 26th, 2015 organised by the History Foundation from Turkey and UCLA from the US in cooperation with Boğaziçi University.

During the week, they also had the chance to meet and hear the experiences of the Armenian fellows who currently live in Istanbul as part of the Foundation’s Turkey-Armenia Fellowship Scheme financed by the European Union.