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ISTANBUL, TURKEY - Opposition to a conference
about mass killings of Armenians moved from Turkish
courtrooms to the street over the weekend as
scholars discussed the World War I massacres
publicly for the first time on Turkish soil.
Turkish nationalists, who back the official line
that there was no Armenian genocide, sought to make
their views embarrassingly plain by hurling eggs and
tomatoes outside Istanbul Bilgi University, a
back-up venue used to skirt a court order Thursday
that sought to shut down the conference at another
location.
But participants cast the event as a breakthrough
for expanding civil society - a key issue as Turkey
prepares to open talks Oct. 3 over accession to the
European Union. "The most important thing is that
this [conference] is happening at all," said Cengiz
Candar, a prominent columnist for Bugun newspaper,
who was hit by an egg as he spoke outside the
conference. "It will help to recoup some of Turkey's
negative image and, more fundamentally, its
commitment to the EU and democracy."
Potential EU membership has prompted a raft of
democratic changes in recent years - including more
freedom of expression. EU officials say they view
the conference as a benchmark for tolerance, warning
after the court ruling of a "provocation" that could
hurt Turkey's case.
Armenians say that 1.5 million Armenians (historians
often count 1 million) died in the first systematic
genocide of the 20th century, at the hands of
Ottoman Turkish forces.
In Turkey, the official version holds that some
300,000 Armenians died as they took up arms to push
for independence and sided with invading Russian
armies. The partisan conflict, Turkey has argued,
took just as many Turkish Muslim lives.
Questioning that version can lead to prosecution of
people considered traitors, the term used by
nationalist lawyers who petitioned for the
conference closure. Well-known novelist Orhan Pamuk
faces trial in December for "denigrating" the
Turkish state by mentioning an Armenian and Kurdish
death toll during an interview.
Last May, the justice minister said the conference
was a "stab in the Turkish nation's back," prompting
it to be postponed, and tapping into hard-line
elements.
"Laws change during a war, and when some of your
citizens, on your soil, hit you in the back, then
any nation on earth would punish them," says Volkan
Ekiz, a protester whose group lobbed eggs and
tomatoes this weekend as police looked on.
"It's not a scientific conference. It's the Turkish
war of independence, and nobody can say that it's
genocide," said Uckun Gerai, a central committee
member of the nationalist Worker's Party of Turkey,
outside the conference. "Turkey has a problem with
the US and EU, but it's a political problem."
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and
Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, keenly aware of the
challenges ahead in EU talks, spoke forcefully in
favor of the conference after the Thursday court
decision. Mr. Erdogan said he wants a Turkey "where
liberties are practiced to the full."
Halil Berktay, coordinator of the history department
at Sabanci University, says the opposition was not
surprising. "This is a country of more than 70
million, with a strong nationalist past; there are
strong forces opposed to the European Union, to
democracy and opening up," he says.
But, he adds, "the question of what happened in
1915-1916 is not a mystery, it's not like we know
just 5 percent. We know 85 percent, so the question
is not finding more evidence. The question is
liberating scholarship from the nationalist
taboos...."
Finding the balance between modernizing Turkey - the
eastern anchor of the NATO alliance - and dealing
with its staunchly statist history has not been
easy. A further challenge is overcoming reluctance
in the EU to accepting a Muslim state.
"Turkey has to confront its history, and the fact of
the violence of 1915 and 1916, and lack of
accountability, sanctioned more [state] violence,"
says Fatma Muge Gocek, a sociologist at the
University of Michigan and a conference adviser.
"The discourse is not new; the fact that it is said
in Turkey is what matters," says Ms. Gocek. "They
are great developments."
Candar shares the optimism. "The judiciary is one of
the most reactionary and backward institutions in
Turkey, and the illegal [court] verdict reflects the
inherent problems," he charges. "But the fact that
we are discussing this is ample evidence to be
optimistic."
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