More than 70 representatives of Turkish intelligentsia issued a appeal on Tuesday urging their fellow countrymen to gather in a central square in Istanbul on April 24 evening to commemorate and pay tribute to the victims of what they described as the “Great Catastrophe” of 1915.

On April 24 every year Armenians around the world remember as the Genocide the World War I-era killings and deportations of more than 1.5 million of their ancestors in Ottoman Turkey. This year marks the 95th anniversary of the start of the genocidal campaign against Armenians in the Ottoman Empire.

The statement placed on www.buacihepimizin.org which starts and ends with the phrase “This is OUR pain. This is mourning for ALL OF US”, reads that “in 1915, when we had a population of only 13 million people, there were 1.5 to 2 million Armenians living on this land… They were all our friends, our next-door neighbors and our companions in bad times.

“On April 24th, 1915 they were ‘rounded up’. We lost them. They are not here anymore. A great majority of them do not exist anymore. Nor do their graveyards. There EXISTS the overwhelming ‘Great Pain’ that was laid upon the qualms of our conscience by the ‘Great Catastrophe’. It’s getting deeper and deeper for the last 95 years,” says the statement (available in Turkish, English and French).

The authors of the statement call upon “all people of Turkey who share this heartfelt pain to commemorate and pay tribute to the victims of 1915. In black, in silence. With candles and flowers... For this is OUR pain. This is a mourning for ALL OF US.”

Among the authors of the appeal are popular writer and Member of Prime Ministry’s Consultative Committee on Human Rights Baskin Oran, human rights activist Fethiye Cetin, well-known historian Selim Deringil and others.

This is not the first time that Turkish scholars raise the issue of the Armenian Genocide.

In December 2008, about 200 Turkish intellectuals, journalists, public and cultural figures initiated an “Armenians, Forgive Us” online petition to which about 30,000 people subscribed only within the first ten days of the campaign.

The petition offered Turks to sign a statement saying: “My conscience does not accept the insensitivity showed to and the denial of the Great Catastrophe that the Ottoman Armenians were subjected to in 1915. I reject this injustice and for my share, I empathize with the feelings and pain of my Armenian brothers and sisters. I apologize to them.”

A majority of those who joined the action, as its initiator Baskin Oran says, were Turks from within Turkey.

“That action proceeded with lots of difficulties. We had hired seven different providers, however hacker attacks were frequent and the website would be hacked every now and then. We also paid particular attention to the authenticity of the signatures and erased about 6,500 signatures that were fake,” professor Oran told ArmeniaNow.

Oran, 65, is a rare intellectual in Turkey who doesn’t deny the fact of the Armenian Genocide. Furthermore, he fights for its recognition and finds such initiatives important.

“Such steps are very important, because we, Turks, have heard a different story throughout our life and are not ready to perceive the dark pages of our history. That’s why people should learn. Their ears have heard a different thing since the day they were born and it is not easy to change opinions,” says Oran.

Meanwhile, the life of those who break the Genocide taboo in Turkey is not easy either.

In his native city Oran goes around with a state-provided bodyguard and has found a lot of letters in his mailbox containing murder threats.

The initiative “This is our pain. This is a mourning for all of us” has not yet elicited a wide response in Turkey, however based on the experience of the previous action Oran is bracing up for more letters with threats. He says he expects to be again called a traitor and an agent.

“The life of trailblazers is always difficult, but this trail must eventually be blazed for the sake of human rights and justice,” Oran told ArmeniaNow.