Turkish denial expert Halacoglu seeks Armenian Genocide `probe’

Reuters
January 12, 2005

By Gareth Jones (gareth.jones.reuters.com@reuters.net)

ANKARA, Jan 12 (Reuters) – As Armenians prepare to mark the 90th
anniversary of the alleged “genocide” of their people by Ottoman Turkish
forces, a leading Turkish historian has called for a multi-national inquiry
into what really happened.

Armenia says 1.5 million of its people died between 1915 and 1923 on
Ottoman territory in a systematic genocide and says the decision to
carry it
out was taken by the political party then in power in Istanbul, popularly
known as the Young Turks.

Turkey denies genocide, saying the Armenians were victims of a partisan
war during World War One which also claimed many Muslim Turkish lives.
Turkey accuses Armenians of carrying out massacres while siding with
invading Russian troops.

“I think we historians, Turkish, American, French, British and Armenian,
must come together and form a commission to investigate this issue
objectively,” Yusuf Halacoglu, head of the Turkish Historical Society, told
Reuters on Wednesday.

Halacoglu, who endorses the mainstream Turkish view of the events and
rejects the genocide claims, said setting scholars to work together was all
the more important for his country because the “genocide” issue threatened
to complicate Turkey’s entry talks with the European Union.

The European Parliament and France, home to Europe’s largest Armenian
community, have both urged Turkey to recognise the killings of Armenians
between 1915 and 1923 as genocide. Armenians this year mark the 90th
anniversary of the events on April 24 and Turkey is to start EU entry talks
on Oct. 3, 2005.

Halacoglu said the commission would ideally work under the auspices of
the United Nations or another international body to help ensure
impartiality
and to encourage all states concerned to open up their archives to the
panel.

He was due to discuss his research on the period on Wednesday with
Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul and said he hoped for official Turkish
backing
for a commission.

TURKEY “PASSIVE”

Halacoglu said Turkey had been too “passive” in the past, allowing
Armenian nationalists, especially in the well-organised diaspora in North
America and Europe, to dominate the debate.

As a result, parliaments in many countries from Canada to Switzerland had
approved resolutions recognising the “genocide” as fact, despite a lack of
documented evidence, he said.

Halacoglu said he and other Turkish historians had conducted detailed
work on the period in question over the last three years through access to
national archives in Britain, France, the United States, Russia and
Austria.

“We wanted to establish what really happened and the conclusion we
reached is that there had been no genocide. The Armenians suffered terrible
losses but equally some 500,000 to 600,000 Muslims (Turks, Kurds, Arabs)
were killed,” he said.

He put the number of Armenians who perished during that period at around
300,000 and said the main cause of death was disease, also a major killer
among the armies of the period.

As evidence that the Ottoman authorities were not bent on the destruction
of an entire people, as Nazi Germany was against the Jews, Halacoglu cited
the fact that Armenians in Istanbul and western Turkey were largely
untouched by the violence.

He also quoted documents showing that Ottoman authorities allowed some
Armenians to remain in those cities and towns affected by population
transfers and that many others were allowed to return after World War One
ended.

(Editing by Charles Dick; Reuters Messaging:
gareth.jones.reuters.com@reuters.net; Ankara newsroom, +90 312 292 7012)