Atatürk Culture Park (Van Metropolitan Municipality)

 amusement park, cemetery, destroyed, green area

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ARMENIAN CEMETERY TURNED INTO "ATATÜRK CULTURE PARK"

Armenian cemetery at east of Van (Armenian: Վան-Քաղաքամիջօյ գերեզմանատուն). Up to 1915 Armenian genocide this was a huge Armenian cemetery counting thousands crosstones, just like in Old Julfa and Noratus khachkar fields. Fully deprived of Armenians in 1923 this cemetery (alike to Armenian cemetery in Old Julfa) suffered to systematic destructions by Turks. After the whole cemetery was annihilated, Van's authorities decided to level to ground cemetery side and turn it to a park named Ataturk Culture Park (Turkish: Atatürk kültür parkı). But one of the crosstones of the cemetery has an interesting fate. It was decided to preserve it and even more to place in Historical Museum of Van. The matter is, there were elder, Urartian cuneiform inscriptions, below the cross and Armenian inscriptions. Interesting fact, Armenian inscriptions were obliterated before exhibiting at the museum. But much more interesting is a name of the exponate: "Christian vandalism". During the century followed after the Armenian genocide, Turkish government lead a policy of systematic destruction of all traces Armenians left during millenia at Eastern Half of present-day Turkey, widely known as Western Armenia (Armenian: Արևմտյան Հայաստան) up to 1920, and known presently as East Anatolia (Turkish: Doğu Anadolu). Today approximately 95% of that cultural level is annihilated without even marked by UNESCO that diligently enroll numerous turkish mosques in Western Armenia at its heritage list. Whereas from about 4,000 Armenian churches and monasteries that were in same area in 1914 none of them were included in the heritage list of this organization. So Turkish government considers now, the time has come to deny even fact of historical presence of the Armenians at their historical cradle. That's why, after deleting the Armenian inscription, the cross-stone is presented as a "Christian" not as Armenian, for no contradictions to official, Turkish "version" of a history. After all, the "non-existent" people could not be subjected to genocide.