A wide range of politicians, artists, musicians, athletes, and religious figures have visited Tsitsernakaberd, the official memorial to the Armenian genocide victims in Yerevan, Armenia. It was opened in 1967 following the mass demonstrations that took place in Yerevan on April 24, 1965, on the 50th anniversary of the deportation of hundreds of Armenian intellectuals from Constantinople that marked the beginning of the genocide. After Armenia's independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, the memorial became a part of official ceremonies. Since then, almost every foreign official who visited Armenia included a visit to the memorial to pay tribute to the victims of the genocide. A visit to Tsitsernakaberd often includes a tour in the nearby museum. Some notable visitors have planted trees at the memorial.
The most notable ones visitors include Presidents of Russia (Boris Yeltsin, Vladimir Putin, Dmitry Medvedev), France (Jacques Chirac, Nicolas Sarkozy, François Hollande), Ukraine, Czech Republic, Poland, Greece, Georgia, Iran, Belarus, Romania, Lebanon, Croatia, Serbia, and Prime Ministers of Bulgaria, Czech Republic and other countries. Foreign Ministers of many countries (including US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and several high-ranking officials of the European Union — including José Manuel Barroso and Herman Van Rompuy) — have honored the victims by visiting Tsitsernakaberd. Other visitors include Pope John Paul II in 2001, Pope Francis in 2016, the Chief Rabbi of Israel Yona Metzger, the Primate of All England Rowan Williams, the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Kirill I of Moscow, World Chess champion Vladimir Kramnik, World football champion Youri Djorkaeff, English rock star Ian Gillan, Serbian filmmaker Emir Kusturica, French actors Gérard Depardieu and Alain Delon, Nobel Prize winner in Physics Zhores Alferov.
No current Turkish state official has visited Tsitsernakaberd.
Significance and controversies Armenian genocide recognition is one of the most important foreign policy issues of Armenia, and is the number one goal of the diaspora Armenian organizations. Many Armenians look at these visits as a sign of recognition of the genocide.
Pope John Paul II's visit in 2001 Pope John Paul II arrived in Yerevan on September 25, 2001, to participate in the celebrations of 1,700th anniversary of the adoption of Christianity as the national religion of Armenia. The Pope visited the memorial the next day after meeting with President Robert Kocharyan. He laid a wreath for the victims of the genocide, made a short speech, and read a prayer. The Pope used the term Metz Yeghern (the Armenian word for genocide, which literally translates as "Great Crime") in his prayer, causing a controversy regarding whether he recognized the events of 1915 as a genocide or not. Nevertheless, it aroused a wave of discontent in Turkey.
Hillary Clinton's visit in 2010 U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Yerevan on July 4, 2010, on America's independence day, thus becoming the highest-ranked American official to visit the country. Her visit was considered "to be symbolic but nonetheless significant" and her possible visit to Tsitsernakaberd became a subject of much discussion in the Armenian media. The United States had not yet recognized the Armenian Genocide officially and by visiting the genocide memorial, many thought that by her visit, the United States sent a clear political message to Turkey. She visited the memorial on July 5, before leaving for Tbilisi. The wreath that Clinton laid at the memorial read "From Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton" although it was first announced that her visit would be non-official.
UN GA President, 2022 Abdulla Shahid, President of the United Nations General Assembly, visited the memorial and the museum on July 27, 2022, and posted pictures of the visit to Twitter, where he laid a wreath at the monument and thanked the manager of the Armenian Genocide Museum Institute for organizing the tour. However, he later deleted the post due to pressure from Turkey. Turkey's Foreign Ministry then charged that Shahid's visit "has been exploited with the purpose of exposing one-sided Armenian claims and it is in that context that he paid a visit to the so-called genocide memorial."
JD Vance, 2026 U.S. Vice President JD Vance visited the memorial in February 2026 with his wife Usha Vance. Shortly thereafter his social media post about the visit was deleted. The Trump administration has not recognized the Armenian genocide. Vance's office said the post was made in error by staff who were not part of the delegation.
Refusals Turkish President Abdullah Gül visited Armenia in September 2008 to attend a football match between the Armenian and Turkish national teams in Yerevan. Since the Turkish government denies the fact of genocide, he did not visit the memorial. Other presidents who opted not to pay a visit to Tsitsernakaberd were Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Iranian Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. They refused to visit the memorial so as not to compromise their bilateral relationship with neighboring Turkey.
In 2010, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, the Turkish President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), refused to visit the memorial stating, "it is my own decision. I respect your opinion and you should respect mine."
Politicians Monarchs King Abdullah II of Jordan (2020)
Presidents
Carlos Menem (1998) Emil Constantinescu (1998) Petar Stoyanov (1999) Konstantinos Stephanopoulos (1999) Émile Lahoud (2001) Ion Iliescu (2001) Eduard Shevardnadze (2001) Aleksander Kwaśniewski (2001) Askar Akayev (1997, 2002) Leonid Kuchma (2002) Boris Yeltsin (2002) as former President Rolandas Paksas (2003) Mohammad Khatami (2004) Arnold Rüütel (2004) Tarja Halonen (2005) Traian Băsescu (2006) Jacques Chirac (2006) Stjepan Mesić (2009) Mikheil Saakashvili (2009) Demetris Christofias (2009) Boris Tadić (2009) Valdis Zatlers (2009) Dmitry Medvedev (2008, 2010) Danilo Türk (2010) Micheline Calmy-Rey (2011) Dalia Grybauskaitė (2011) Nicolas Sarkozy (2011) Bronisław Komorowski (2011) Michel Suleiman (2011) Heinz Fischer (2012) Alexander Lukashenko (2013) Karolos Papoulias (2007, 2014) Giorgi Margvelashvili (2014) Didier Burkhalter (2014) Nicos Anastasiades (2015) Tomislav Nikolić (2014, 2015) François Hollande (2014, 2015) Vladimir Putin (2001, 2013, 2015) Miloš Zeman (2016)Czech Republic President visits Armenian Genocide memorial, June 8, 2016 Emomali Rahmon (2003, 2017) Rumen Radev (2018) Michel Aoun (2018) Sergio Mattarella (2018) Emmanuel Macron (2018, 2026) Salome Zurabishvili (2019) Prokopis Pavlopoulos (2019) Gitanas Nausėda (2022) Milo Đukanović (2022) Abdul Latif Rashid (2023) Andrzej Duda (2024) Frank-Walter Steinmeier (2025) Mikheil Kavelashvili (2025) Edgars Rinkēvičs (2026)
Vice-Presidents Bhairon Singh Shekhawat (2005) Danilo Astori (2014) Mohammad Hamid Ansari (2017) JD Vance (2026)
Prime Ministers
Pierre Trudeau (1984) as former Prime Minister Rafic Hariri (1997) Issam Fares (2001) Mikhail Kasyanov (2002) Sergei Sidorsky (2006) Zurab Nogaideli (2007) Sergey Stanishev (2007) Viktor Zubkov (2008) Jan Fischer (2010) Donald Tusk (2010) Boyko Borisov (2012) Bidzina Ivanishvili (2013) Irakli Garibashvili (2014, 2021) Dmitry Medvedev (2016) Giorgi Kvirikashvili (2016) Angela Merkel (2018) Mamuka Bakhtadze (2018) Charles Michel (2018) Justin Trudeau (2018) Charlot Salwai (2018) Lee Hsien Loong (2019) Giorgi Gakharia (2019) Ingrida Šimonytė (2023) Irakli Kobakhidze (2024)
Robert Fico (2025)
Speakers
Gennadiy Seleznyov (1996) Christian Poncelet (1999) Abdul Qadir Qaddura (2001) Antje Vollmer (2001) Artūras Paulauskas (2005) Ingrīda Ūdre (2005) Vladimir Konoplyov (2005) Anne-Marie Lizin (2005) Herman De Croo (2005) Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel (2006) Bogdan Borusewicz (2006) Georgi Pirinski (2006) Christian Poncelet (2006) Jean-Louis Debré (2006) Přemysl Sobotka (2008) David Bakradze (2009) Armand De Decker (2009) Boris Gryzlov (2010) Luka Bebić (2011) László Kövér (2011) Volodymyr Lytvyn (2011) Nabih Berri (2011) Hon Jae Hyon (2012) Jorge Orrico (2012) Norbert Lammert (2013) Vangelis Meimarakis (2014) Yiannakis Omirou (2014) David Usupashvili (2015) Mohammad Jihad al-Laham (2015) Zoe Konstantopoulou (2015) Sergey Naryshkin (2012, 2015, 2016) Jan Hamáček (2015) Maja Gojković (2016) Nancy Pelosi (2022) Urška Klakočar Zupančič (2023)
Cabinet ministers
Ministers of Foreign Affairs
Ioannis Kasoulidis (1998) Eduard Kukan (2000) Indulis Bērziņš (2001) Toomas Hendrik Ilves (2001) Anatoliy Zlenko (2001) Dimitrij Rupel (2002) Joschka Fischer (2004) Per Stig Møller (2004) Philippe Douste-Blazy (2006) Micheline Calmy-Rey (2006) Frank-Walter Steinmeier (2007) Anna Fotyga (2007) Artis Pabriks (2007) Kinga Göncz (2008) Grigol Vashadze (2009) Urmas Paet (2009) Jorge Taiana (2010) Michael Spindelegger (2010) Hillary Clinton (2010) Peter Maurer (2010) Radosław Sikorski (2010) Kostyantyn Gryshchenko (2011) Yang Jiechi (2011) Carl Bildt (2011) Jonas Gahr Støre (2011) Guido Westerwelle (2012) Erato Kozakou-Marcoullis (2012) Erkki Tuomioja (2012) Audronius Ažubalis (2012) Sergei Martynov (2012) Luis Almagro (2012) Jean Asselborn (2012) Edgars Rinkēvičs (2012) Miroslav Lajčák (2013) Igor Lukšić (2013) Hoshyar Zebari (2013) Karel Schwarzenberg (2008, 2013) Ivan Mrkić (2014) Sebastian Kurz (2014) Frank-Walter Steinmeier (2014) Linas Linkevičius (2014) Sergey Lavrov (2007, 2012, 2014, 2021) Gebran Bassil (2015) Héctor Marcos Timerman (2012, 2015) Didier Reynders (2015) Lubomír Zaorálek (2015) Margot Wallström (2016) Mikheil Janelidze (2016) Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan (2017) Aloysio Nunes (2017) Henry Rabary-Njaka (2018) Louise Mushikiwabo (2018) Régis Immongault Tatangani (2018) Taro Kono (2018) Stef Blok (2020) Nikos Dendias (2020) Ivan Korčok (2021) Gabrielius Landsbergis (2021) S. Jaishankar (2021) Alexander Schallenberg (2022) Luigi Di Maio (2022) Anniken Huitfeldt (2022) Catherine Colonna (2023) Mélanie Joly (2023) Annalena Baerbock (2023) Margus Tsahkna (2023) Giorgos Gerapetritis (2024) Constantinos Kombos (2024) Xavier Bettel (2024)Luxembourg’s Foreign Minister pays tribute to the memory of Armenian Genocide victims Maka Botchorishvili (2025) Jean-Noël Barrot (2025)https://armenpress.am/en/article/1220664
Other ministers
Živadin Jovanović, Deputy Foreign Minister (1995) Igor Sergeyev, Minister of Defence (1998) Georgy Boos, Minister of Taxes and Levies (1999) Nawaf Massalha, Deputy Foreign Minister (2000) Sebouh Hovnanian, Minister of Youth and Culture (2001) Gediminas Kirkilas, Minister of National Defense (2005) Joe Hockey, Minister for Human Services (2005) Sergey Ivanov, Minister of Defence (2006) Christian Estrosi, Territorial Minister (2007) Teodor Meleşcanu, Defense Minister (2007) Alexander Radkov, Minister of Education (2007) Andrei Fursenko, Minister of Education and Science (2007) Abdujabbor Rahmanov, Minister of Education (2007) Juozas Olekas, Minister of National Defense (2007) Štefan Harabin, Minister of Justice (2008) Pavel Grachev, former Defence Minister (2008) Ghia Nodia, Minister of Education and Science (2008) Vladimir Matvichuk, Minister of Culture (2008) Marek Maďarič, Minister of Culture (2008) Bogdan Klich, National Defense Minister (2009) Patrick Devedjian, Minister of the Implementation of the Recovery Plan (2010) Dimitri Shashkini, Minister of Education and Science (2010) Henri de Raincourt, Minister of Co-operation (2011) Orit Noked, Minister of Agriculture (2012) Cornelia Pieper, Minister of State (2012) Rasa Juknevičienė, Minister of National Defense (2012) Yuli-Yoel Edelstein, Diaspora Affairs Minister (2012)