In 2011, Erdoğan ordered the tearing-down of the Statue of Humanity, a Turkish–Armenian friendship monument in Kars, which was commissioned in 2006 and represented a metaphor of the rapprochement of the two countries after many years of dispute over the events of 1915. Erdoğan justified the removal by stating that the monument was offensively close to the tomb of an 11th-century Islamic scholar, and that its shadow ruined the view of that site, while Kars municipality officials said it was illegally erected in a protected area. However, the former mayor of Kars who approved the original construction of the monument said the municipality was destroying not just a "monument to humanity" but "humanity itself". The demolition was not unopposed; among its detractors were several Turkish artists. Two of them, the painter Bedri Baykam and his associate, Pyramid Art Gallery general coordinator Tugba Kurtulmus, were stabbed after a meeting with other artists at the Istanbul Akatlar cultural center.