Editorial: Ambivalent Turkey
EU bid entangled in Armenian dispute

Published 2:15 am PDT Friday, September 16, 2005

A nearly century-old debate over what some call the “Armenian
genocide” and most Turks call a human tragedy brought on by the chaos
of World War I has become enmeshed in Turkey’s faltering effort to
join the European Union. How the conflict turns out is important – for
Turkish-Armenian relations and for the future of Turkey, a country
that straddles Europe and the Middle East.

Turkish officialdom has always denied that forces of the collapsing
Ottoman Empire sought to exterminate Turkish Armenians starting in
1915, when ethnic Armenians say the Turks killed as many as 1 million
Armenians over eight years. Turkish officials agree that hundreds of
thousands of Armenians died, but say that disease, famine and exposure
as well as fighting caused by Armenian guerrilla raids against
retreating Turkish troops were the primary causes.

There matters stood until last spring, when Turkish Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdogan invited foreign scholars to study Ottoman
archives to determine what really happened.

That encouraging gesture has had little hopeful result. Scholars have
run afoul of Turkish officials and military leaders, who forced
cancellation of a conference. An ethnic Armenian publisher has been
accused of defaming Turkey by calling himself “an Armenian of Turkey,”
and a prominent novelist faces a similar charge for saying in an
interview that Turks killed 1 million Armenians and, more recently,
30,000 Turkish Kurds in a guerrilla war, and that “no one but me dares
to talk about it.”

The timing of these charges – just weeks before negotiations are to
begin on Turkey’s application to join the EU – has raised suspicion,
and charges that some nationalist elements, already angered by growing
European opposition to Turkish EU membership, are trying to sabotage
the process. The criminal charges fly in the face of extensive changes
in Turkish law, including abolition of the death penalty and ending a
ban on speaking Kurdish, to satisfy EU requirements for
membership. France opposes Turkey joining, and if the Christian
Democrats win Germany’s election, another prominent negative voice
would be added.

What’s at stake goes well beyond the Armenian issue, coming as
millions of Europeans – even in such liberal bastions as the
Netherlands – are rethinking their traditional welcome to
immigrants. And Muslims rank highest in this reassessment.

Turkey, with an overwhelmingly Muslim population but a staunchly
secular political system, is seen by many as a bridge between the
Christian West and the Muslim East. But as Europe’s welcome mat is
pulled away, many Turks resent what they see as rising European
religious and cultural bigotry. Although it’s hard to envision
Turkey’s secular leaders rejecting the West and embracing Islamic
tradition, the roadblocks in the path of Armenian-Turkish
reconciliation raise again the question of whether Turkey and Europe
can ever share a common home.

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