Hopes for sculptural diplomacy between Turkey and Armenia are turning into dust as workers on April 18 began demolition of a giant monument near Turkey's border with Armenia meant to promote friendship between the two feuding states.
And now, after months of opposition from liberal voices at home and angry reactions from Armenia, a touch of crime has been added to the struggle over the statue. The monument's Turkish sculptor, Bedri Baykam, and a companion were stabbed yesterday in Istanbul in an attack that Turkish media linked to the statue's destruction. Baykam, who had described the demolition plans as “artistic murder,” had planned to lead a march to the nearby city of Kars to stop the sculpture's destruction.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in January ordered the demolition of the 30-meter-high concrete statue, calling the structure a “monstrosity."
World leaders nudged Armenia and Turkey into signing a road map to reconciliation in 2009, but the two, still scarred by a near-century-year-old massacre and differing views on the Nagorno-Karabakh independence bid, soon became locked in a you-go-first style of bargaining that eventually brought the two sides back to square one.
Felling the monument, ugly as it may be, is likely to help keep them there, critics fear.
Giorgi Lomsadze is a journalist based in Tbilisi, and author of Tamada Tales.
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