Elle Turkey Does Turkish Fashion Shoot in Ruined Armenian City
The Armenian city of Ani, home to 200,000 people in 1064 AD, was laid siege to by Turkish armies who were ordered to destroy the city and kill everyone they found. In 2011, Elle Turkey is using the well-preserved ruins for a fashion shoot. This seems like kind of a provocative move, especially given the modern-day Turkish state's highly contentious relationship with Armenia.
The Ottoman genocide against Armenians in World War I is still a contentious subject in Turkey, which does not officially accept that the deportations, forced marches and massacres that killed around 1-1.5 million Armenians were in fact genocide. Yet today, Ani lies within Turkish territory, very close to the Armenian border. The setting, ruined as it is, is very beautiful, and does make an intriguing background for a fashion shoot.