EU-hopeful Turkey pressured by its past

Agence France Presse — English
April 20, 2005 Wednesday 4:42 AM GMT

ANKARA April 20 — Amid international pressure to recognise the 1915
Armenian massacres as genocide, Turkey finds itself struggling between
growing calls at home for the country to face the past and unease at
giving in over a delicate issue it fears may cloud its bid to join
the European Union.

In an unprecedented move, Turkish historians and intellectuals have
increasingly started to question the official line on the once-taboo
subject as Armenians prepare to mark the 90th anniversary of the
killings.

“Turkey is going through a very important phase,” Etyen Mahcupyan, a
Turkish columnist of Armenian descent, told AFP. “Despite the state’s
resistance, the people and the intellectual elite want officialdom
to face the past and come up with a prudent policy.”

Armenians say up to 1.5 million Armenians perished in orchestrated
killings between 1915 and 1917 as the Ottoman Empire, the predecessor
of modern Turkey, was falling apart.

Ankara argues that 300,000 Armenians and at least as many Turks died
in what was civil strife during World War I when the Armenians rose
against their Ottoman rulers and sided with invading Russian troops,
resulting in an order to deport them en masse from their homelands.

But, in a challenge to the official line, award-winning Turkish
novelist Orhan Pamuk told a Swiss newspaper in February that “one
million Armenians were killed in Turkey”, which caused an uproar and
resulted in a controversial order by the sub-governor of a small town
for the author’s books to be destroyed.

Shortly afterwards, historian Halil Berktay openly told a leading
Turkish newspaper that the Ottoman treatment of its Armenian subjects
during World War I amounted to genocide, triggering angry letters
from the paper’s readership.

In a bid to counter domestic and international pressure, state
institutions have rushed out with documents they claim prove there
was no genocide; the state archive over the weekend issued a list of
more than 500,000 Turks it said were killed in systematic massacres
by the Armenians.

“This is an attack by the state on its own society. The state fears
society and imposes its view on them,” Hrant Dink, editor of the
Armenian-language weekly Agos, told AFP.

“But Turks are now saying the time has come to face the issue and if
we want a solution, it can come only through internal dynamics and
not through foreign pressure,” Dink said.

Much to Ankara’s anger, the killings have already been acknowledged
as genocide by a number of countries, including France, Canada and
Switzerland.

Turkey now faces pressure from within the EU to address the genocide
claims in what Ankara sees as a politically motivated campaign to
hurt its membership bid as it prepares to begin accession talks with
the bloc on October 3.

In a bid to blunt the Armenian campaign, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan last week suggested to Armenian President Robert Kocharian
the creation of a joint commission to study the genocide allegations,
saying Turkey has nothing to fear from its past.

But according to Mahcupyan, the real damage will come if Ankara
insists on its refusal to re-evaluate the past.

“Every threat is an opportunity,” he said. “If Turkey can catch up
with and pursue what has already begun in society, it would increase
its prestige and ensure good relations with the EU.”

Reconciliation with the past could also help Turkey patch up ties
with neighbouring Armenia, with whom it refuses to etablish diplomatic
ties and open its borders, mainly because of the genocide claims.

Turkey also fears that acknowledging the massacres as genocide will
lead to compensation claims from Armenians and some politicians have
suggested that Yerevan may even claim territory from Ankara.

“Turkey would likely face compensation claims if it acknowledged the
genocide because Armenian properties were seized by the Ottomans, but
to even consider the possibility of territorial claims is paranoid,”
Mahcupyan said.