Memorial of shoes honoring Srebrenica opens in Ankara

To commemorate the victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, 8,372 shoes -- the total number of deaths in the massacre – including those of the prime minister, the foreign affairs minister and several artists have been collected and displayed at a square in Ankara. Funded and supported by the Ankara-based Association of Young Bosnians and Ankara's Kecioren Municipality, the 8,372 Srebrenica shoe memorial in Aliya Izzetbegovic Park in Ankara was introduced to the public with an inaugural ceremony on Sunday attended by Kecioren Municipality Mayor Mustafa Ak, the Bosnia and Herzegovina Embassy Undersecretary Sabri Subasi, Young Bosnians Association President Enisa Kezo and several others. Speaking during the ceremony, Ak said the tragedy in Bosnia should never be forgotten. "What happened in Bosnia in 1995 was a massacre and Turkey has shared and will always share Bosnia's pain. Bosnian people are Turkish people's brothers. And to show our respect for our brothers' tragedy, we decided on the 16th anniversary of the massacre last year to collect 8,372 shoes and to display those shoes at Aliya Izzetbegovic Park." Also speaking at the event, Subasi expressed his hopes that such a tragedy would never occur again, while Kezo said he is grateful to Turks who are very sensitive to the Bosnian people's pains. "These shoes, some of which belong to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Foreign Affairs Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, other ministers, deputies, artists and the Turkish public, are both symbols of humanity's opposition to such tragic incidents and also the symbols of our sorrow for the deaths. These demonstrations of our sorrow and opposition will continue as long as humanity exists," Kezo said. Also during the ceremony, blue butterfly brooches were sold and the money earned from the purchases will be sent to Bosnia to be used to build of new residential complexes. By the end of the war in 1995, over 60 percent of houses in Bosnia had been destroyed and the Association of Young Bosnians aims to build houses for thousands of people whose houses were destroyed.