This photo was taken in Germany in November 2014. It is a photo of well-known French-Armenian opera singer Adam Barro (Mourad Amirkhanian) and famous Turkish film director Fatih Akın, who directed the highly controversial film The Cut.

A hundred years after the Armenian Genocide, Armenians and Turks are saying “Recognize the Armenian Genocide” and are joining the popular movement on the Internet.

To recognize means to confront history-something that the Turks avoid doing. However, there are Turks who are able to come to grips with the past, like German-based film director Fatih Akın, who recognized his “past” when he was 18-20 years old. “When I found out, I started conducting research. I would read everything related to the topic, be it a book, a document, or a story. There are quite a lot of important stories that haven’t been published. Everyone has to know about them.”

Years later, he directed the film The Cut, the message of which is to Recognize…According to the film director, the film is first and foremost for the Turks so that “we watch, examine and recognize our past. We Turks have to know our “yesterday” so that we can move forward, even though many Turks don’t want to know about their past.”

That’s why that “yesterday” is still not only the past, but will continue to be the present and the future as long as there are still people around the world who say “Recognize the Armenian Genocide”, regardless of their nationality.

Lusine Abrahamyan