Record label Young Turks has changed its name to avoid links with the mass killings of Armenians (Armenian Genocide) during World War One, BBC reports.
Boss Caius Pawson said he named the label after a Rod Stewart song that evoked “the solidarity of youth.”
However, he said they had since learned how the name was a source of “hurt and confusion” for many people.
The Young Turk regime ruled the Ottoman Empire from 1908 and during the war.
“Armenia says 1.5 million people were killed in 1915-16 in an effort to wipe out the ethnic group. They regard it as genocide, and many historians and governments agree the killings were orchestrated,” BBC writes.
Pawson said that a closer look at the company’s name reveals that it is offensive to hundreds of thousands of people, and added that it would now simply be called Young.
“April 24 is the day of commemoration of the 1915 Armenian Genocide. In memory of those who were killed and those who survived, we have made a donation to the @armenianinstitute, London, a cultural charity that explores contemporary Armenian diasporan life in all its global diversity through research and the arts,” wrote Pawson on the label’s renamed Instagram page.
