WORLD_ TURKEY_ Where Friendship Goes To Die: Turkey's Razed Statue Of Humanity

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Where Friendship Goes To Die: Turkey's Razed Statue Of Humanity

October 25, 2016
Amos Chapple



The two heads of the Statue Of Humanity lie in a municipal dump on the outskirts of Kars.


It was intended as a gesture of friendship. But in 2011, a Turkish statue symbolizing reconciliation with Armenia was labeled a "monstrosity" by then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and torn down. Today, a visit by RFE/RL to the eastern Turkish city of Kars reveals the statue dismantled and dumped among rusting vehicles 50 kilometers from the closed border with Armenia.

In 2011, when the 30-meter statue stood mostly completed on a hilltop above Kars, there was fragile hope that Turkey and Armenia were on a path to reconciliation. The two had been hostile neighbors since mass killings that began in 1915 under the Ottoman authorities. Armenia and dozens of other governments and parliaments refer to the well-documented massacre, in which more than 1 million Armenians were killed, as genocide. Turkey, however, dismisses the word and stresses the turmoil within the Ottoman Empire during World War I, in which "people of all religions and ethnicities lost their lives." In 2008, Erdogan made Turkey's official stance bluntly clear when he announced, "We did not commit a crime, therefore we do not need to apologize."

But there was some cause for optimism. In 2005, an Armenian church in the Turkish city of Van was restored. Then, in 2009, Armenia's president attended a soccer match in Turkey. They were small but emblematic steps for two bitter neighbors whose closed border has stifled trade in one of the poorest regions of Turkey.



A photo from 2011 shows the doomed statue on a hill above Kars


READ MORE: http://www.rferl.org/a/turkey-armenia-razed-statue-of-humanity/28074181.html

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