Iğdır Genocide Memorial and Museum

The Iğdır Genocide Memorial and Museum (Turkish: Iğdır Soykırım Anıt-Müzesi) is a memorial-museum complex in Iğdır, Turkey. It is known for its denial of the Armenian genocide.

The stated aim of the memorial is to "commemorate massacres and persecution committed by Armenians in Iğdır Province" during World War I and the Turkish–Armenian War.

Purpose in rewriting history

The memorial was built to further deny the Armenian genocide through the claim that Armenians massacred Turks, rather than vice versa, during World War I, which is generally accepted by scholars as being untrue. French journalists Laure Marchand and Guillaume Perrier call the monument "the ultimate caricature of the Turkish government's policy of denying the 1915 genocide by rewriting history and transforming victims into guilty parties". Bilgin Ayata on Armenian Weekly criticized the memorial as "aggressive, nationalistic, and outright hostile". The European Armenian Federation for Justice and Democracy announced that the memorial is designed to deny the Armenian genocide and demanded its closure.

Construction and opening

The construction for the memorial started on 1 August 1997 and it was dedicated on 5 October 1999 in Iğdır. Its height is 43.5 metres (143 ft), making it the tallest monument in Turkey. In an address at the monument's opening ceremony, Minister of State Ramazan Mirzaoğlu claimed that Armenians killed almost 80,000 people in Iğdır between 1915 and 1920; the Turkish president Süleyman Demirel was also present.