Financial Times, UK
June 9 2005
Turkey pulls plug on ‘traitorous’ genocide debate
By Vincent Boland
Published: June 9 2005 03:00 | Last updated: June 9 2005 03:00
While French and Dutch voters were rejecting the European Union
constitution – with opposition to enlargement in the forefront of
their minds – Turkey was handing its army of critics another reason
to object to its membership credentials.
Amid allegations of treason and following an extraordinary
intervention by a senior minister, Bosphorus University in Istanbul
postponed a conference of Turkish historians which was to discuss the
fate of the Ottoman Empire’s Armenian inhabitants in 1915 and 1916.
The university’s decision caused an outcry in Turkey and dismayed
diplomats in Ankara, who say the suppression of the views expected to
be aired at the conference raises questions about Turkey’s commitment
to academic freedom and open debate on Turkish history.
The views would have deviated from the official Turkish position on
Armenian claims of genocide during the first world war but would not
necessarily have endorsed those claims, say participating historians.
Armenia claims that in a deliberate act of genocide Ottoman soldiers
killed up to 1.5m Armenian inhabitants of the disintegrating empire.
Turkey denies genocide. It counters that the Armenian death toll was
about 600,000, most of them as a result of civil war, hunger and
deportation, and that the controversy ignores the deaths of hundreds
of thousands of Turks at the same time.
Although the issue has not arisen in its negotiations to join the EU,
scheduled to begin in earnest in October, Turkey will have to address
the controversy, if only because Brussels demands that Turkey
normalise ties with Armenia, with which it has no diplomatic
relations.
France, home to a large part of the Armenian diaspora, has repeatedly
called on Turkey to “reflect” on its historical record.
The EU believes better Turkish-Armenian ties would improve security
in the region and help defuse the dispute over the enclave of
Nagorno-Karabakh between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Turkey’s “brother
nation”.
But Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital, which believes its oil riches will
eventually give it the muscle to win the territory back, insists that
Turkey keep Armenia isolated.
Opponents of the conference, led by senior officials in the
opposition People’s Republican party (CHP) and at the Turkish
Historical Society and supported by the ruling Justice and
Development party (AKP), had two main objections. One, that it would
not have a speaker to deliver the official Turkish version of the
Armenian controversy; the other, that since Bosphorus University is a
state institution, its decision to host the conference was a betrayal
of the state.
The university buckled when Cemil Cicek, justice minister, attacked
the conference and criticised “traitors . . . preparing to stab
Turkey in the back”.
Mr Cicek, who was red-faced and banged his fist on the podium as he
spoke, stood by his statement. But other ministers, rattled by the
controversy, said he was speaking personally, even though he is the
government spokesman and delivered his comments in the parliament.
A European diplomat said Mr Cicek’s speech was “the worst statement I
have heard in my years here in Turkey”.
Diplomats say the forced postponement of a conference on an issue
that Turkey has struggled to come to terms with may yet cost it
support in the EU, and among Turkish liberals, who may not even be
sensitive to the Armenian case.
“This is a really sad incident,” says Ayhan Aktar, professor of
sociology at Marmara University. “It will make Turkish diplomacy pay
a heavy price.”
The pressure to cancel or postpone the conference was “intolerable”,
he says, after Mr Cicek’s remarks and the prospect that hundreds of
nationalist students from other universities, mobilised by its
opponents, would converge on Bosphorus University to disrupt
proceedings.
Prof Aktar says those who shut the conference down misunderstood, or
perhaps misrepresented, its agenda. “They tried to brand this
conference as one that would support the genocide allegation, which
was absolutely not the case.” Additional reporting by Daniel Dombey
in Brussels
* US President George W. Bush yesterday praised Turkey as an example
of democracy after talks with Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime
minister, that covered the rule of law, terrorism and Cyprus,
Bloomberg reports from Washington.
“Turkey’s democracy is an important example for the people in the
broader Middle East,” Mr Bush said.