The Gariwo Foundation in Milan, which runs the Garden of the Righteous Worldwide, has announced that this year’s Righteous Award will go to Turkish journalist and author Hasan Cemal as part of the events marking the annual Day of the Righteous on March 6.
The Gariwo Foundation is a civil society organization established in 2003 to honor people who take personal risks to stand against genocide, persecution, and human rights violations. Through a tree planted and a commemorative stone installed in the garden for each honoree, their stories are preserved and passed on to future generations.
They said Cemal was selected in recognition of his personal and intellectual stance. The Gariwo Foundation argues Hasan Cemal, as the grandson of Cemal Pasha, one of the key figures responsible for the Armenian Genocide, has chosen because he confronts his own family history and challenges official Turkish narratives. They say he, through his journalism, writings, and public engagement, has contributed to the recognition of the Armenian Genocide and to dialogue between Turkish and Armenian communities.
Gariwo also highlights Cemal’s relationship with Hrant Dink, the founder of our newspaper, and his determination to carry forward Dink’s legacy following his assassination in 2007. Hasan Cemal embodies precisely the moral courage and sense of individual responsibility that Gariwo seeks to honor. Hrant Dink himself was recognized in the Garden of the Righteous in Milan in 2009. They say they believe that commemorating Hasan Cemal in the same garden creates a profoundly meaningful connection between their two stories.
Cemal and Dink
Hasan Cemal, the recipient of the 2026 Righteous Award, was profiled on the Gariwo Foundation’s website in an article which describes him as the grandson of Ahmed Cemal Pasha, a prominent member of the Young Turks, is a figure who has recognized the Armenian Genocide, taken a moral stand on the issue, and spoken out about the truth. He wrote a book, 1915: The Armenian Genocide, published in 2012 and dedicated to Hrant Dink, in which Hasan Cemal listens to the voices of the past while also listening to the voices of contemporary Turkey, which remains burdened by nationalism and denial surrounding the Armenian question.
The statement says:
“He fights the lie of rewriting history for political purposes, a lie constructed in 1915 that continues to obscure the truth to this day and hinders the emergence of a free, dialogical and democratic coexistence between Turks and Armenians, as well as among all the minorities that survived the destruction of the multicultural reality of the Ottoman Empire.
With courage, he has raised his voice and given prominence to many other voices within Turkish civil society, which is today in great ferment: journalists, writers and human rights activists who are fighting state denialism in Turkey and defending human rights, democracy and, above all, peace. He wrote a book that also seeks to continue the commitment undertaken by his friend Hrant Dink, an Armenian from Turkey who was assassinated in Istanbul in 2007 on the doorstep of his newspaper and honoured in 2009 at the Garden of the Righteous in Milan.
For Hasan Cemal, proclaiming the truth about the Armenian genocide was the outcome of a journey, a process of learning and a search for justice aimed at “returning” to the Armenian people what had been taken from them for a century: the right to memory and the possibility of healing their wounds. “I wonder whether Armenians would want to share their pain with the grandson of Cemal Pasha.” the author asks himself as he sets out to write this important book, which has achieved widespread circulation in Turkey."
Hasan Cemal, a journalist and author, served as editor-in-chief of the daily Cumhuriyet from 1981 to 1992 before writing columns for Milliyet and Sabah. He resigned from Milliyet in 2013 following pressure from then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan after conducting an interview with PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan.
Born in Istanbul in 1944 to a family of Turkish and Circassian origin, Cemal graduated from the Faculty of Political Sciences in Ankara in 1965. In addition to his journalism, he became known in Turkey and internationally for acknowledging the Armenian Genocide, in which his grandfather, Cemal Pasha, played a role.
In his book, Hasan Cemal writes:
“I remembered that dawn of morning when the sun in Yerevan rose painting the sky crimson amidst the fog. As I laid three white carnations by the Armenian genocide memorial I had mumbled to myself: “Dear Hrant your sufferings brought me here; I am trying to feel your sufferings and those of your ancestors in my heart and I share them. Rest in peace my brother.”
