National Public Radio (NPR)
SHOW: All Things Considered 8:00 AM EST NPR
April 26, 2005 Tuesday

Turkey’s entry into the European Union could hinge on whether it
accepts responsibility for Ottoman Empire’s treatment of Armenians 90
years ago

ANCHORS: ROBERT SIEGEL

REPORTERS: IVAN WATSON

ROBERT SIEGEL, host:

It has been 90 years since the Ottoman Empire’s mass deportation and
massacre of ethnic Armenians during World War I. Armenians marked the
anniversary over the weekend of what they call a genocide. They say
one and a half million of their people were killed. That’s a charge
that modern-day Turkey has long denied. And now that it is on the
verge of beginning negotiations to join the European Union, Turkey
once again finds itself on the defensive in this historical
controversy. NPR’s Ivan Watson reports from Istanbul.

IVAN WATSON reporting:

On a day when Armenians held solemn ceremonies of remembrance in
Yerevan, Paris and New York, in Turkey, the day honoring Armenian
victims was virtually ignored. Nearly a century after the fact, the
official Armenian and Turkish versions of what took place in the
final years of the Ottoman Empire are still miles apart. Ilter Turan
is a professor at Istanbul’s Yildiz University.

Professor ILTER TURAN (Yildiz University): What happened in 1915 and
during that period was a mutual battle between poorly organized
people trying to retain territory as a multinational empire was
crumbling.

WATSON: The Turkish government contends that a half-million Turkish
Muslims were killed after Armenians revolted against the Ottoman
Empire during World War I. Armenians reject this claim. Karan
Karakoshlai(ph) is a founder of the Augos Armenian newspaper in
Istanbul.

Ms. KARAN KARAKOSHLAI (Founder, Augos): In summary, what happened was
that a great nation of 4,000 years was exterminated, was cut off the
roots.

WATSON: Both sides agree that the Ottomans forcibly deported huge
numbers of Armenians from what is now eastern Turkey. And today
Turkey’s Armenian Christian community has dwindled to just 60,000
people. Though Turkey has offered to conduct a joint historical probe
with neighboring Armenia, many Turks continue to be defensive about
what they call `the Armenian issue.’ This year nationalists filed
lawsuits against Turkey’s most famous author when he told a Swiss
newspaper, quote, “One million Armenians were murdered here, and no
one dares to mention that.’ Professor Turan, a former member of a
Turkish-Armenian Reconciliation Commission, says until recently the
subject was taboo here.

Prof. TURAN: The Turkish educational system for a long time
concentrated on nation-building. And the arguments or ideas that were
thought to undermine it were not discussed in primary or high school
curriculums.

WATSON: But there are signs that the taboo is beginning to break
down. Only a few Armenians are left in the southeastern Turkish city
of Diyarbakir, where schoolchildren play in the ruins of a large
Armenian cathedral that stands as an unofficial monument to what was
once a thriving community.

(Soundbite of banging noises)

WATSON: Younger generations here, mostly ethnic Kurds, are beginning
to talk about their great-grandparents’ role in the massacres.

Unidentified Man: They were Muslim Kurdish people, Muslim. And they
killed Armenian people.

WATSON: At a university, a Kurdish student named Zoloh(ph) and
several classmates recounted stories passed down by long-dead
relatives of atrocities against their Armenian neighbors. This
Kurdish woman, who preferred not to give her name, said some of her
ancestors were, in fact, Armenians who had been forced to convert to
Islam.

Unidentified Woman: (Through Translator) We couldn’t admit to our
neighbors that my great-grandmother was Armenian and that was she was
forced to marry my great-grandfather. At school they didn’t tell us
about the genocide, but I heard the stories, some from my relatives
at home. And I always had one question: Why did they kill the
Armenians? What did they do?

WATSON: International pressure is building on Turkey on this issue.
Over the past year the European Parliament and France have joined
Armenian diaspora groups demanding that Turkey accept responsibility
for the genocide before it can become a member of the European Union.
But Karan Karakoshlai of the Armenian Augos newspaper says blocking
Turkey’s EU bid would be a step backwards for Turkey and the
Armenians still living here.

Ms. KARAKOSHLAI: This is a genocide again to the ancestors a second
time because a tragic historical pain is used as a political
material.

WATSON: Ivan Watson, NPR News, Istanbul.