AKI, Italy
May 27 2005
TURKEY: ARMENIAN GENOCIDE CONFERENCE IS POSTPONED
Istanbul, 27 May (AKI) – A conference questioning Turkey’s official
policy that the 1915-21 mass killing of Armenians under Ottoman rule
never took place has been postponed following pressure from the
government. The conference, initially slated to be held at the
Bhosphorus University on Wednesday, provoked outrage among
nationalists, after participants said they would challenge the
commonly held view in Turkey that the deaths of an estimated 1.5
million Armenians was due to the epidemics and other hardships
suffered during deportations after separatist Armenian militants
joined sides with Turkey’s World War I enemy Russia and started
killing Turkish civillians.
`How can this be a scientific conference? Some of the participants
are even not historians’ wrote Ruhat Mengi in the daily Vatan,
apparently refering to one of the conference organisers, Prof. Murat
Belge, Head of the Literature Department at Bilgi University, the
only Turk who has joined the 90th anniversary commemorations of the
genocide in the Armenian capital Yerevan on 24 April.
But the strongest criticism came from the Turkish justice minister
and government spokesman, Cemil Cicek.
`The conference would be tantamount to stabbing Turkey in the back,’
he said.
After Cicek’s remarks the Bosphorus University announced that the
conference had been postponed.
The decision was welcomed by officials and others who refuse to even
consider the Armenian allegations, but liberal columnists, conference
participants and pro-democracy activists slammed the government’s
reaction.
“I am very sad and disappointed. It would have been a forum that
showed that democracy worked in Turkey and that different voices can
be heard” said Muge Gocek, a Turkish professor of sociology at
Michigan University who traveled to Istanbul for the conference.
`The biggest mistake is criticising the conference as being
one-sided. People like Cicek think that they have the authority to
decide what is in the `national interest’ and they shape the society
according to their decisions’, Belge wrote in his column in the
Radikal daily on Friday.
The liberal paper’s headline on Thursday read: `Zero tolerance on
thought’
The Human Rights Association (IHD) was also critical of Cicek.
“We strongly condemn the politicians and especially the justice
minister who prevented the Armenian conference from taking place
through pressure, threats and statements that make [organisers]
targets” the IHD said in a statement on Wednesday.
Hans Jorg Kretschmer, the European Union Commission’s representative
to Turkey said that the government’s did not fit in with ideas of
democracy.
Organisers have said they intend to hold the conference, however a
date has yet to be specified.