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About 50 people gather to protest event featuring Turkish Ambassador to US

Discontent over USC’s decision to host Hasan Murat Mercan had been brewing for days.

By KEVIN GRAMLING, VICTORIA LEE & JENNIFER NEHRER
(Jordan Renville / Daily Trojan)
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About 50 people gathered outside of Annenberg Hall Friday morning to protest the University’s decision to host an event featuring Turkish Ambassador to the United States Hasan Murat Mercan. Multiple Department of Public Safety officers were on the scene.

The protest began with an Armenian student standing up from the audience, holding an Armenian flag in the air and demanding the event be stopped. Police escorted him outside; others soon joined, chanting “shame on USC” and “1915 happening again,” in reference to the Armenian Genocide and the recent defeat of the Republic of Artsakh, a breakaway Armenian-majority state in the Caucasus, following renewed attacks by Azerbaijan.

Discontent with USC’s decision to host the event had been brewing for days. On Tuesday, USC’s Armenian Students Association posted a statement on Instagram that said Mercan “is known for directly upholding Turkey’s policy of Armenian Genocide denial.”

“Genocidal policy has no place in foreign policy — or on a college campus,” the ASA wrote.

(Jordan Renville / Daily Trojan)
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