Interview
The conference addressed the consequences of the conflict, including the forced displacement of Armenians and the destruction of their heritage.
During the conference, Garo Paylan, a visiting scholar with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who is a prominent opposition figure and human rights advocate from Turkey, spoke on the continuum of cultural destruction in Armenian history.
He served as a member of the Turkish Parliament from 2015 to June 2023, where he gained international recognition for defending minority rights, promoting democracy, and advocating for peace in the South Caucasus.
In a video interview, Paylan addresses how to heal the wounds in Armenia—and why people are not ready to even recognize those wounds.
“We are turning a blind eye to so many human rights violations,” he says. “This is the age of shamelessness so we have to stop it.”
Paylan also addressed the fact that the world has many institutions for addressing human rights violations—but they are currently not working.
“This is the struggle we need to do in this generation,” he says.
Final statement of the Armenian Heritage Conference
More WCC video interviews from the Armenian Heritage Conference
