Lawmakers Want to Rename Turkish Border Crossing after Talaat Pasha

A new bill introduced in the Turkish parliament recently calls for the renaming the Turkish crossing to the Armenian border after Talaat Pasha, the mastermind and executor of the Armenian Genocide.

More than two dozen lawmakers from the Turkish opposition and national “Good” party introduced the bill to rename the Alijan border crossing after the genocidal Ottoman leader.

“The fact that the border crossing point ‘Alijan’ will be named after Talaat Pasha will not be a simple change of the sign. It will become a powerful declaration of the national will of the Turks, testifying that our people are ready to defend their history, heroes and their own memory,” the “Good” Party leader Musavat Dervishoglu said, according to the Turkish NTV channel.

The Toronto-based Zoryan Institute condemned the proposed legislation in an open letter published on Thursday.

“Naming a place of passage and potential reconciliation after a figure so closely associated with the organized mass killing of a people is not only profoundly insensitive—it is an affront to the values of human dignity, historical truth, and moral accountability. Such an act risks legitimizing the crimes of the past, further deepening wounds that have never fully healed,” the open letter said.

“As Minister of the Interior of the Ottoman Empire, Talat Pasha played a leading role in orchestrating the planned extermination of over 1.5 million Armenians, alongside the destruction of more than 2,000 churches, the erasure of entire communities, and the forced displacement of millions from their ancestral homeland,” the open letter outlined, proposing that in the name of normalizing relation, the crossing be named after slain Armenian journalist, Hrant Dink.