EylemDaş/JINHA

ISTANBUL – With the hundred-year anniversary of the Armenian genocide approaching on April 24, Armenians say the hate crimes that continue today in Turkey are a continuation of the genocide.

There has still been no justice in the case of a string of attacks against elderly Armenian women in Istanbul, which echoed the genocide in important ways—including the attempt to seize the women's property rights. Armenians today are demanding that the Turkish state reckon with the past, with the genocide, and with the property seizure in the wake of the genocide that formed the basis of many Turkish fortunes in the 20th century.

Since the European Parliament recently urged Turkey to recognize the Armenian genocide, Turkish President RecepTayyipErdoğan's announcement that the country will continue to deny the genocide (which Turkey claims was a mutual clash between Armenians and Turks) is seen by many Armenians in Turkey as a continuation of the hate speech that brands Armenians as "traitors" and "infidels."

While the assassination of Armenian journalistHrant Dink in Istanbul is known around the world, hate crimes against Armenians continue in Turkey—many of them eerily echoing the genocide itself.

The killing of Hrant Dink in front of the office of hisnewspaper Agoson January 19, 2007 was a turning point in this history. Thousands took to the streets declaring "we are all Hrant Dink" and demanding justice for the murdered journalist, who had previously been tried in Turkey for "insulting Turkishness."

The state opened a case against a number of suspects, charged with being members of an armed group coordinating the assassination, in the case of the Hrant Dink murder, but the case ended in acquittal in 2012. Several suspects were eventually convicted after the outrage at the acquittal, but a separate case against security officers accused of ignoring the assassination has seen even less justice. Many accused security and intelligence officers have been promoted since the murder.

In recent years, hate crimes against Armenian women in the Istanbul neighborhood of Samatya reopened the raw wounds of the hate crimes. The Istanbul Armenian community says there is still no justice in the hate crimes.

On November 28, 2012, 84-year-old Armenian woman TurfandaAşık was found beaten nearly to death in her home, where she lived alone. Nothing was taken from the home.Turfanda struggled to stay alive in urgent care for weeks and lost an eye.

Exactly one month later, on December 28, 87-year-old Maritsa Küçük—like Turfanda, an elderly Armenian woman living alone in Samatya—was found knifed to death in her home, her body mutilated with cuts in the shape of a cross. Another month later, on January 22, the attack was repeated against yet another elderly Armenian woman living in similar circumstances. She had to have surgery and again, lost an eye.

DirenCevahirŞen, of Armenian radio station Nor radio, said there has still been no justice in the string of attacks, which she and other members of the Istanbul Armenian community have followed closely.

"The families of the victims told us that they were already being watched and threatened by unknown people in a systematic way," she said. The threats included the taking of the property rights to the homes. For Armenians whose property rights were systematically plundered during the 1915 genocide and still have not been returned, the message was clear.

"We don't see a different between the attacks on the three women in Samatya and the events in Adana prior to 1915, when thousands of people were massacred and displaced from their homes," she said. "Now it's 2015, but what we experience today is another form of that genocide."

Diren, noting that the attacks on Armenians and their forced conversion to Islam resemble the assimilation politics against Alevis in Turkey, pointed to the state's promotion of a Turkish-Muslim-masculine identity as the factor behind the hate crimes. The perpetrators and profiteers of the genocide are still celebrated as "heroes" in Turkey's textbooks. Uncounted numbers of Turkish citizens profited from the the property seizures of "deported" Armenians.

Armenian ceramic artist KayuşCalıkmanrecalled a day when she got into a taxi with her friend.

"The taxi driver thought we were Cypriots, and he told us about a house that had been given to his father in Tokat [in inner Anatolia] during Atatürk's time, saying it was a house that belonged to the Armenians fleeing Tokat," she said. "When we asked, 'well, why did they flee?' he said 'we killed them, and let them come again; we'll kill them again.' The fact that he can feel no shame about something like this is terrible." She called the lack of shame a symptom of the politics of hate around the genocide.

"If you look at the richest people in every city where Armenians once lived, you can see that they are also the people continuing the hate speech against Armenian," said DirenCevahirŞen.

Armenian peace activist FlorUlukBenli said that because the direct perpetrators of the genocide have passed away, people see it as impossible to bring justice to the genocide. But those who made their family fortunes from the genocide by seizing immense amounts of Armenian property and land are alive and well in Turkey. She said it was necessary for the state to return the property forcefully seized from Armenians—which is not simply in the possession of a few taxi drivers.

It is difficult for Armenians to pursue this demand, given that the Turkish government keeps the Ottoman documents that would indicate the killers and profiteers of the genocide confidential. While the European Parliament has called on Turkey to open the archives related to the genocide, the state shows no sign of doing so.

Floralso noted the importance of opening the border with Armenian, which the Turkish government unilaterally closed in 1993. This demand is part of the election platform of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), with whom Flor is running as a candidate in an election that, if Armenian candidates win, could bring the number of Armenian members of the Turkish Parliament to a record high. Although the mainstream party CHP is running an Armenian woman candidate, the party itself recently signed onto a declaration declaring its resistance to the European Parliament resolution and its commit to refusing the term "genocide."

"The lost and the dead do not just have a material value," said DirenCevahirŞen, saying the current politics of hate in Turkey keep Armenians "locked away" and make it difficult for them to live freely. "This is a people who are afraid to look out the windows of their own homes.

"Armenians just want to be able to exist in public like other groups," she said. "They want to be accepted."

(gc/fk/cm)