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Turks protest at Armenian forum

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  • #1

    Turks protest at Armenian forum

    Hundreds of Turkish nationalists have been
    protesting outside a controversial conference
    on the mass killings of Armenians under Ottoman rule.

    Resistance to a free debate on
    the issue is still strong in Turkey

    They chanted slogans and booed delegates entering Istanbul's Bilgi University for the two-day event.
    The conference had been due to open on Friday, at another venue, but was stopped from doing so by a court order.
    Debate of the killings has been taboo in Turkey but there is outside pressure for greater freedom of speech.
    "Treason will not go unpunished" and "This is Turkey, love it or leave it," shouted the demonstrators.
    "The Armenian genocide is an international lie," read a huge banner carried by members of the minor left-wing Workers' Party.

    Taped mouths

    Armenians worldwide have been campaigning for decades for the deaths - thought to have been more than a million, around the time of WWI - to be recognised universally as genocide.
    The conference discussing the issue was due to be held at Istanbul's Bosphorus University, but it was banned by an Istanbul court after complaints by nationalists that the historians behind it were "traitors".
    The historians challenge official Turkish accounts of the killings, which give a much smaller death toll and link Armenian losses to civil strife in which many Turks also died.
    The court ruling brought emotionally charged scenes on the Bosphorus campus on Friday, said the BBC's Sarah Rainsford in Istanbul.
    Students, angry that the conference was cancelled, taped their mouths while small groups of nationalists gathered to condemn plans for the forum.

    EU condemnation

    Bilgi University stepped in "in the name of freedom of expression and thought", said its president, Aydin Ugur.
    Government leaders regretted the court ruling which "cast a shadow on the process of democratisation and freedoms", according to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
    "If we have confidence in our own beliefs, we should not fear freedom of thought," he told separate gathering of academics on Saturday.
    EU enlargement commissioner Krisztina Nagy said Brussels strongly deplored the court's "attempt to prevent the Turkish society from discussing its history".
    Turkey begins talks on joining the EU in two weeks' time.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk.edgesuite.net/1/hi/world/europe/4277262.stm
    Tags: None
  • #2
    Turkey muzzles speech

    Turkey muzzles speech

    The Globe and Mail, Canada

    Sept 26 2005

    Editorial

    It is still a crime to speak freely about the past in Turkey. Earlier
    this month a Turkish prosecutor charged leading novelist Orhan Pamuk
    with denigrating the Turkish identity, for having said, in an
    interview with a Swiss newspaper, that the genocidal killing of
    Armenians in 1915 is a historical fact. Then on Thursday, a Turkish
    court tried to ban an academic conference on the events of 90 years
    ago. It also made an outrageous demand to review the credentials of
    each participant at the conference.

    The freedom to think loses meaning if a person can't speak his
    thoughts and share them with others. Mr. Pamuk is sometimes mentioned
    as a possible Nobel laureate. His most recent novel, Snow, was lauded
    by Margaret Atwood in a front-page New York Times Book Review last
    year. Speaking up, as he has done, may shape the thoughts of others.
    Those others may in turn have something to say. The freedom to
    inquire into a nation's past is closely linked to the freedom to
    think.

    The genocide is, as Mr. Pamuk says, a historical fact,
    well-established in diplomatic reports and news dispatches at the
    time (Canadians were so distressed they made an exception to their
    discriminatory immigration rules and took in 100 Armenian orphans in
    the 1920s) and affirmed since then by independent historians.

    Mr. Pamuk's willingness to challenge the official truth is one
    encouraging sign of change. Another is that the academics that the
    court wished to silence said they would go ahead anyway at a
    different venue. As Turkey presses on with its bid to join the
    European Union, it will find that the country is increasingly
    buffeted by currents of thought it cannot control.

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    Page not found

    Comment

    • #3
      http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2005/WORLD/europe/09/24/turkey.armenians.reut/story.turkeyprotest.ap.jpg

      ISTANBUL, Turkey (Reuters) -- Hundreds of Turkish nationalists chanting slogans and waving flags protested on Saturday against a controversial academic conference on the World War One massacre of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey.

      The conference had been due to open on Friday at two universities in Istanbul but a last-minute court order blocked it, causing acute embarrassment to the Turkish government just days before the start of its European Union membership talks.

      Organizers circumvented the court ban by moving the conference on Saturday to a third university in the city.

      "This conference is an insult to our republic and to the memory of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk," Erkal Onsel, head of the Istanbul branch of the left wing but nationalist Workers' Party, told protesters gathered outside the private Bilgi University.

      Ataturk is the revered founder of the modern Turkish Republic on the ashes of the Ottoman Empire in 1923.

      The demonstrators chanted slogans such as "Treason will not go unpunished" and "This is Turkey, love it or leave it".

      The issue of the Armenian massacres is highly sensitive in Turkey. Armenia and its supporters around the world say some 1.5 million Armenians perished in a systematic genocide committed by Ottoman Turkish forces between 1915 and 1923.

      Ankara accepts many Armenians were killed on Turkish soil during and after World War One, but says they were victims of a partisan conflict that claimed even more Turkish Muslim lives as the Ottoman Empire was collapsing. It denies any genocide.

      But in a bid to defuse the issue, the government has opened up Turkey's archives to scholars, saying it has nothing to hide, and has urged Armenia and other nations to do likewise.

      The academic conference was originally scheduled for May but was cancelled after Justice Minister Cemil Cicek accused those backing the genocide claims of "stabbing Turkey in the back".

      EU pressure
      This time, with a nervous eye on Brussels as the clock ticks towards the start of its long-delayed EU entry talks on October 3, the government has strongly backed the conference.

      The court banning order, announced Thursday evening just before the conference was due to start, drew swift condemnation from Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan as well as from the European Commission, which spoke of a "provocation" by anti-EU elements.

      "If we have confidence in our own beliefs, we should not fear freedom of thought," Erdogan told a separate gathering of academics in Istanbul on Saturday.

      "I want to live in a Turkey where all freedoms are guaranteed," the prime minister said.

      Lawyers behind the original court ban condemned Bilgi University's decision on Saturday to host the event regardless.

      "We will file a legal complaint against all of those people behind this conference," lawyer Kemal Kerincsiz told Reuters.

      The court blocked the conference pending information on the qualifications of the speakers and also wanted to know who was participating and who was paying for it.

      Despite a flurry of EU-inspired liberal reforms in recent years, promoting certain interpretations of Turkish history can still be deemed a criminal offence under the revised penal code.

      The protesters said the organizers of the conference were not really upholding freedom of speech.

      "They don't let us inside... they don't give us a chance to put our case. They forget those of the Turkish nation killed by Armenians," said Kemal Ermetin, who runs a nationalist magazine.

      The protesters displayed photographs of what they said were Azeris killed by Armenians in the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh during fighting in the early 1990s.

      Turkey closed its border and cut diplomatic ties with tiny ex-Soviet Armenia in 1993 to protest against Armenian occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh, part of the territory of Azerbaijan, a regional Turkic-speaking ally of Ankara.

      Comment

      • #4
        Massacres Of Armenians In 1915 Nothing But Genocide, Turkish Historian Considers

        MASSACRES OF ARMENIANS IN 1915 NOTHING BUT GENOCIDE, TURKISH HISTORIAN CONSIDERS

        Pan Armenian News
        26.09.2005 04:24

        /PanARMENIAN.Net/ Scientific conference titled "Ottoman Armenians
        During the Decline of the Empire: Issues of Scientific Responsibility
        and Democracy" was held in the Bilgi University last week. In the
        opinion of many exerts, it can give start to the discussion of the
        Armenian issue by the Turkish society. "We should try to realize what
        happened in 1915", well known Turkish historian Halil Bektay stated
        adding that at the beginning of the World War I the leaders of the
        Ottoman Empire announced the hunting season against Armenians. In his
        turn historian Fikret Adanir stated that the carnages of Armenians at
        the beginning of the 20-th century are nothing but genocide. "It is my
        personal opinion", he said. "This conference will surprise Armenians
        all over the world. Now some of them will have the courage to start
        dialogue with Turks", Los Angeles Times writes citing editor-in-chief
        of Akos Armenian newspaper published in Istanbul. To remind, the
        conference has been twice postponed, last time on Thursday, September
        22 by a resolution of a Turkish court. It should be also noted that
        Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned the court
        resolution and called it incompatible with the norms of democracy
        and civilized society.

        Spokesperson for the EU Commissioner for Enlargement Krisztina Nagy
        characterized the court decision as a "recurrent provocation".

        Comment

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