The new appointment by Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul and a member of Turkey’s main opposition force, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), has stirred uproar in the pro-government press. This was reported by Ermenihaber.am.
Imamoglu has appointed as an advisor to the municipality Zeynep Tanbay, known for her sharp criticisms of the government on various issues and a recognizer of the Armenian Genocide. A number of pro-government or right-leaning media outlets have described this appointment as “provocative” and have presented some of Tanbay’s past sharp criticisms directed at the authorities on various issues.
In particular, the website of the “Sabah” newspaper, considered a mouthpiece for Erdogan, recalled that Tanbay joined events dedicated to the memory of the victims of the Armenian Genocide in Istanbul in 2016 and quoted a post she had made on social media on that occasion.
“The state must apologize, provide compensation, return the nationalized properties belonging to Armenians, and grant them citizenship.”
The source also recalled that on one occasion Tanbay had said that no one could force her to repeat the slogan bequeathed by the founder of the Republic of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk: “Happy is the one who says, ‘I am a Turk’.”
Tanbay has also repeatedly voiced sharp criticisms of the policies pursued by Turkey’s authorities towards the Kurds.
It should be noted that Zeynep Tanbay, a dancer by profession, is the wife of the well-known Turkish political figure and former deputy Ufuk Uras. Uras participated in the “We Apologize” campaign organized by a number of Turkish intellectuals in Turkey, during which they apologized in Armenian for the fact that “the Great Disaster that Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire were subjected to in 1915 meets with indifference and denial.”
Uras, who has visited Armenia and Artsakh, has been included in the “black list” of Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs because he “went to Karabakh without obtaining permission from the Azerbaijani authorities.”
