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EU-Turkey: MPs to attend trial of top
author
1.12.2005
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Istanbul, 30 Nov.
(AKI) - A delegation of observers from the European
Parliament will attend the upcoming trial of Turkish
writer Orhan Pamuk, due to start on 16 December, the
European Peoples Party in Strasbourg said in a
statement. The delegation will be headed by Dutch
Euro-MP Camiel Eurlieng. Pamuk, one of Turkey's best
known authors, faces three years in jail for making
controversial comments about his country's killing
of Armenians and Kurds.
Orhan Pamuk has been charged with insulting Turkey's
national character by telling a Swiss newspaper that
one million Armenians and 30,000 Kurds were killed
in Turkey but that nobody dared to say so.
"We will observe the court proceedings in the same
ways as another European Parliamentary team did at
the trial of [Kurdish activist] Lleyla Zana and
others in 2003 and 2004," said Eurlieng.
She added that the team would "verify the
implementation of constitutional reforms and
evaluate their compatibility with EU norms on human
rights."
"Freedom of expression is one of the fundamental
rights which Turkey must respect. It is essential
for Turkey's eventual membership of the EU," she
said.
Most historians contend that the death of an
estimated 1.5 million Armenians, the destruction of
their villages, and confiscation of their land under
Ottoman Empire and Turkish rule during the period
1915 – 1923 amounts to genocide, a plan to
exterminate the ethnic Christian minority -
considered a threat by Istanbul's Islamic masters –
and empty out its traditional lands for occupation
by Turks.
The official Turkish version of the story is that
during World War I the Armenians living under
Ottoman rule collaborated with the Empire's Russian
enemies and formed military groups who attacked and
killed thousands of Turkish civilians in the
Empire's eastern provinces. For security reasons,
the Armenian population was moved from Turkey's
Anatolia to Syria and the region of Mesopotamia.
Many Armenians died during this trek, but this was
due to diseases and natural factors, rather than a
mass extermination campaign.
Turkish politicians, academics and military
officials still defend this stance and also argue
that recognising the genocide claims would encourage
Armenians, backed by the EU and the United States,
to achieve their "hidden" aims – state compensation
for the "so-called" victims, including handing over
land now part of modern-day Turkey to Armenia.
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