The Kurdish community in Armenia's capital Yerevan commemorated the Martyrs of May. The Council of Martyrs’ Families had invited people to the garden of the Mala Gel (People's House), which was decorated with pictures of comrades of Abdullah Öcalan. The meeting began with a minute of silence. Speeches followed in which the importance of the martyrs for the Kurdistan freedom movement was emphasized.

Since the very beginning of the Kurdish liberation movement, May has been considered a month of martyrs, as many founding cadres of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) as well as leading revolutionaries of leftist movements in Turkey lost their lives in a May. At its founding party congress on November 27, 1978, in the village of Fis near Lice district in Amed (Diyarbakir), the PKK additionally proclaimed May 18 as "Day of Martyrs."

Among those present at the commemoration was Member of Parliament Kinyas Hasanov (also known as Kinyazê Hemîd), who is also chairman of the Kurdish community in Armenia. Hasanov described the gathering as a "significant moment" dedicated to the memory of those through whose sacrifice Kurdish existence was preserved. "If today we can claim to be gaining strength every day despite ongoing attacks, we owe it to the selfless efforts of the martyrs, our heroines and heroes," Hasanov said. However, he said, it is necessary to expand the struggle in order to do justice to the sacrifices of the martyrs.