2005 began just two weeks after Fatih Akın, a German director of immigrant background, received the European Film Award for Best Film for Head-On.
In the same year, EU accession negotiations with Turkey kicked off.
The country also shed one of its past burdens by removing the six zeros that inflation had added to its currency.
However, another burden remained.
It was the denial of the mass eradication of Armenians in Anatolia, which had occurred exactly 90 years earlier.
It was the weight of a pain that remains unchanged, regardless of what it is called, and the challenge of confronting and memorialising that suffering.
While Hrant Dink faced trial and was sentenced to six months imprisonment under the notorious Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code for an article, he wrote in Agos about the Armenian diaspora, those seeking to address this historical burden were multiplying and taking action.
The conference on Ottoman Armenians initially planned at Boğaziçi University, had to be postponed due to remarks by then Minister of Justice Cemil Çiçek, who said, “They are stabbing the nation in the back,” and an administrative court decision. Despite these obstacles, the conference was not cancelled and eventually occurred at Bilgi University.
In that same year, the Heinrich Böll Stiftung Istanbul office supported a pioneering memorialisation project, Sireli Yeğpayrıs/Sevgili Kardeşim (My Dear Brother), which aimed to bring attention to a forgotten and neglected history.
1 – One of the postcards featured in the exhibition: Kozluk, the Armenian neighborhood of Izmit. The image shows the Izmit Clock Tower, designed by architect Mihram Azaryan, with the Hunting Pavilion visible in the background. (BBC) 2 – Hrant Dink’s flight ticket to the 2006 meeting on State, Nation, Minorities: A Comparison of Political Systems of EU Member States and Turkey organized by hbs in Brussels. A connecting flight through Paris. (hbs) 3 – A boarding pass of Çiğdem Mater, currently imprisoned in Bakırköy Prison following the unfair Gezi trial, for the trip to Kars on the Contribution of Cultural Activities to the Resolution of Disputes. (hbs) 4 – Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, then Prime Minister, responded to the growing demand for justice following the deaths of 34 people, including 17 children, in Roboski due to a Turkish Armed Forces airstrike, saying angrily, “You constantly speak of Uludere. Every abortion is an Uludere.“ Women took to the streets in protest. But more was yet to come. (DSIP) 5 – Author Orhan Pamuk, who was a speaker at the first hbs event in Turkey, receiving the Nobel Prize in Sweden. (NTV) 6 – 25 May 2005: Our new colleague, Saynur Gürçay (in the green jumper), with Semahat Sevim and Aylin Örnek (in the background) at the feminist march. (hbs)