Turkey enlists US scholar to fight genocide claims
By Gareth Jones
Reuters
03/24/05 17:42 ET
ANKARA, March 24 (Reuters) – Turkey enlisted the help of a U.S.
historian on Thursday as part of its campaign to counter damaging,
decades-old claims that Armenians suffered genocide at Ottoman Turkish
hands during and after World War One.
Turkey is worried that the 90th anniversary of the alleged genocide
on April 24 will trigger a fresh outpouring of sympathy for the
Armenians which could harm its image and even derail the planned
start of European Union entry talks in October.
Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan went on the offensive earlier this month,
calling for an impartial study of the genocide claims and declaring
Turkey’s archives open to all scholars.
Invited to address the Ankara parliament on Thursday, Justin McCarthy,
an expert on the Ottoman period, argued that a complex historical
tragedy had been manipulated for ideological reasons, becoming a
vehicle for anti-Muslim, anti-Turkish prejudice.
“The Armenian question has from the start been a political
campaign… Yes, many Armenians were killed by Turks at this time and
many Turks were killed by Armenians, but this was war, not genocide,”
McCarthy said.
“Many politicians use the Armenian genocide not so much because
they believe it but because they see it as a means to prevent Turkey
joining the European Union,” said McCarthy.
Armenia says 1.5 million of its people died between 1915 and 1923
on Ottoman territory in a systematic genocide and says the decision
to carry it out was taken by the political party then in power in
Istanbul, popularly known as the Young Turks.
Turkey denies genocide, saying the Armenians were victims of a
partisan war during World War One which claimed even more Turkish
Muslim lives. Turkey accuses Armenians of carrying out massacres
while siding with invading Russian troops.
TRANSLATIONS
McCarthy urged Turkey to fund translations from Turkish into English
and other European languages of historical records and books providing
documentary evidence that there was no genocide.
Foreign diplomats said Turkey’s support for an impartial study of
the genocide issue, possibly under the aegis of the United Nations,
was a positive development.
But they said inviting an opponent of the genocide claims to address
lawmakers who largely shared his views would merely reconfirm, not
challenge, people’s firmly held views.
It would have been more fruitful to invite people of differing opinions
on the subject to the parliament, said one.
“They are still very timid,” the diplomat said.
Armenia, a tiny ex-Soviet republic which has no diplomatic relations
with Turkey, has rejected Erdogan’s proposal for an impartial
investigation, saying scholars had already established the genocide
as indisputable fact.
The European Parliament and several national assemblies from France to
Canada have also backed the claims in recent years, passing resolutions
urging Turkey to accept its past misdeeds.
Some EU politicians, notably in France, home to Europe’s largest
community in the Armenian diaspora, say Turkey must accept the genocide
claims before it can start talks to join the wealthy bloc.