On 24 April 1915, Ottoman authorities arrested and deported hundreds of Armenian intellectuals, community leaders, and clergymen from Constantinople. It was the beginning of the systematic extermination of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire. By the time the killing was done, between one and one and a half million Armenians had died — murdered, starved, or driven to death on forced marches through the Syrian desert. The genocide is recognized as such by historians, by dozens of national governments, and by the International Association of Genocide Scholars. Four years after those arrests, in 1919, Armenian survivors gathered in Istanbul to mark the anniversary and to build something: a memorial, called in Armenian a hushardzan, on the grounds of the Pangaltı Armenian Cemetery. It may have been the first monument in the world dedicated to the victims of the genocide. It stood for three years before it was destroyed.
The memorial was erected at a moment of precarious possibility. World War I had ended in Ottoman defeat, and the Allied powers — Britain, France, and others — occupied parts of the former empire. The British held Constantinople and the Bosphorus. In that brief window, Armenian survivors organized. On 24 April 1919, the fourth anniversary of the deportations, they gathered at the Holy Trinity Armenian Church in Istanbul for the first formal commemoration of the genocide. Many prominent figures in the Armenian community participated.
The monument was placed on the grounds of the Pangaltı Armenian Cemetery, a site that carried its own sorrows — a place where Istanbul's Armenian community had buried its dead for generations. Building a hushardzan there was an act of insistence: that the dead would be named, that what had happened to them would be recorded in stone, that the living who remained in the city would bear witness. The annual date of commemoration established that year — 24 April — remains Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day to this day.
The monument stood from 1919 to 1922. In 1922, during the resurgence of the Turkish National Movement — the political and military force that would establish the Republic of Turkey — it was dismantled. What became of it is not known with certainty. Historian Kevork Pamukçuyan documented that the monument's base was last seen in the gardens of the Harbiye Military Barracks, the building that now houses the Istanbul Military Museum. Beyond that, the physical record ends.
The site itself was transformed. The Pangaltı Armenian Cemetery, on whose grounds the memorial stood, was eventually cleared. Where the graves and the hushardzan once were, Gezi Park was later built — the same park that became the center of the 2013 Istanbul protests. The layers of erasure accumulated quietly, one generation at a time, until the ground held no visible trace of what it had once been.
The primary visual evidence for the memorial comes from a single source: a 1919 book titled Huşartsan (a variant spelling of hushardzan), written by Teotig — the pen name of Teotoros Lapçınciyan, a prominent Armenian writer and publisher in Constantinople. The book was dedicated to the memory of genocide victims, and its cover featured a photograph of a monument.
For many years, this photograph was taken as documentation of the Istanbul memorial. In December 2025, however, a researcher named Garen Kazanc published an article in The Armenian Weekly arguing that the photograph on Teotig's cover actually depicts the Rice and Isenberg Monument in Lihue Cemetery on Kauai, Hawaii — not the Istanbul hushardzan at all. Kazanc concluded that no photograph or report has been found that definitively proves the Istanbul memorial was built. The question remains open. Whether or not the monument was constructed exactly as described, the commemoration of 1919 was documented and real. The loss those survivors were marking was not in doubt.
The story of the Istanbul Armenian Genocide memorial is, in miniature, the story of how genocide is remembered — or prevented from being remembered. A community builds a monument. The political order changes. The monument is taken away. The site is built over. Decades pass. Scholars argue about whether a photograph is evidence.
What is not in dispute: in the spring of 1915, Ottoman authorities systematically rounded up, deported, and killed Armenians across the empire. It was not a tragedy of war or famine. It was organized extermination, carried out by government order. The Armenians who built a hushardzan in 1919 understood this. They had lived through it, or lost family members to it, or both. Their act of building a memorial — fragile and brief as that memorial turned out to be — was a refusal to let the dead be unnamed. Today, 24 April is still observed by Armenians around the world. The date does not change.
The memorial's location — the former Pangaltı Armenian Cemetery, now within or near Gezi Park — sits in the Taksim district of Istanbul, on the European side of the city at approximately 41.042°N, 28.988°E. Taksim Square is one of the most recognizable open spaces in Istanbul, visible from altitude as a broad plaza at the top of the pedestrianized İstiklal Avenue. The Bosphorus and the Golden Horn are clear from above; Taksim sits north of the Golden Horn, in what was once the Pera district, the city's historically cosmopolitan and multi-ethnic quarter. Nearest airport: LTFM (Istanbul Airport), approximately 35 km northwest on the European shore.
The site of the Istanbul Armenian Genocide memorial — the former Pangaltı Armenian Cemetery, now near Gezi Park — is located at approximately 41.042°N, 28.988°E in the Taksim district of Istanbul. From altitude, Taksim Square is identifiable as a large open plaza north of the old city, near the top of İstiklal Avenue. The Bosphorus and the Golden Horn are visible landmarks. Nearest airport: LTFM (Istanbul Airport) on the European shore, approximately 35 km northwest. The Galata Tower, visible from approach, marks the beginning of the historic Beyoğlu-Taksim corridor.