Associated Press Worldstream
September 25, 2005 Sunday
Turkish scholars find support in Turkey for open look at massacres of
Armenians
BENJAMIN HARVEY; Associated Press Writer
ISTANBUL, Turkey
Scholars attending a conference that addresses the mass killings of
Armenians by Ottoman Turks said Sunday that, after decades of
opposition, public opinion in Turkey was moving in favor of an open
discussion.
The Turkish media and top government officials expressed support for
the two-day conference, which started Saturday. But for a second day
nationalist protesters hurled eggs and rotten tomatoes at arriving
speakers they accused of treason, showing deep resistance to
addressing claims that Turks committed genocide.
Turkey aspires to join the European Union, and the EU said it would
view the conference as a test of freedom of expression.
A headline in Turkey’s largest newspaper, Hurriyet, on Sunday
welcomed an open discussion, saying: “Not for Europe but for
ourselves.”
Another headline in Radikal newspaper read: “The world is still
spinning and Turkey remains in its place.”
“I suppose more and more people are getting to realize that the old
positions are untenable,” said Murat Belge, a member of the committee
that organized the conference. “I mean the smoke over the question,
the policy of denial.”
The conference faced heavy opposition from the outset and was
canceled twice – including on Thursday by an Istanbul court that
demanded to know the academic qualifications of the speakers – before
beginning Saturday at Istanbul Bilgi University.
“Especially after that absurd court decision three days ago …
looking at the press the next day, at the magnitude of the public
reaction, I knew this was going to be a success,” said Halil Berktay,
a historian and member of the organizing committee. “The old clich’s
of official, conventional, denialist ideology are dead.”
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan expressed support for the
conference and criticized the court order, which organizers skirted
by changing the venue.
Participants at the conference – including Turks and ethnic Armenians
– were mostly careful to avoid emotional language. On Saturday,
historians discussed the events leading up to and following the
massacres in 1915-1923, going through them year by year. On Sunday,
they dealt with broader issues, including “The Armenian problem and
Turkish democracy” and “Press Freedom and the Armenian problem.”
Delegates to the conference had no plans to issue a declaration on
whether genocide occurred, Berktay said, but were using the gathering
as a forum to openly examine the historical experience of Armenians
around the time of the Ottoman collapse. Many of the panelists have
previously said the killings constituted genocide. A number of them
have received death threats in Turkey for doing so.
Turkey vehemently denies that a genocide was carried out on Armenians
as the Ottoman Empire collapsed around the time of World War I,
saying that Armenians who rose in rebellion and sided with Russian
invaders were killed along with Turks in intercommunal fighting.
Armenians say that 1.5 million of their ancestors were killed by
Ottoman Turks in a vicious policy of extermination.
Turkey had never permitted the issue to be discussed in public until
this conference.
“A lot of people now understand that, if a certain society says only
one thing about a question, that is not a sign of strength, but the
opposite,” Belge said. “The atmosphere in the media has changed
overnight, and that’s going to influence public opinion.”
Turkey is under intense pressure to improve its performance on issues
of freedom of expression and human rights as it moves toward
negotiations beginning Oct. 3 for EU membership.