NRC HANDELSBLAD
14 April 2005
Turkey: research together with Armenia
By our correspondent
NICOSIA, 14 APRIL. Turkey wants an official Turkish Armenian commission to
tackle the massacres of Armenians at the end of the Ottoman Empire,
according to Turkish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Abdullah Gül, yesterday
in the parliament in Ankara. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has sent a
letter on this matter to the Armenian president Robert Kocharian.
With this letter Turkey undertakes another attempt to remove the Armenian
file from the agenda. During the massacres, which started in full violence
in 1915, according to historians possibly more than one million Armenians
were killed. Turkey does not deny that a large number of Armenians died, but
objects that it is out of the question that there was a planned genocide.
³Turkey has peace with her history and is proud of it”, minister Gül said
yesterday.
It is still unclear if Armenia will comply with the request. Some time ago
Yerevan disregarded a call by prime minister Erdogan to leave the question
to a history research. According to the Armenian government such a research
has already been done a long time ago and it is indisputably certain that
there was a genocide.
The Turkish proposal comes some weeks for the commemoration of the genocide,
on April 24. Ankara is more and more worried that the American Congress will
adopt a resolution on the genocide. Moreover a large number of European
politicians puts pressure on Ankara to straighten out the Ottoman past. In
October the process of negotiations between Ankara and Brussels will start
on the Turkish membership of the European Union. Gül explained yesterday in
the parliament that Turkey had never adequately reacted to the Armenian
accusations. ³And this has leaded to the false picture that Turkey is hiding
something.¹¹