TURKISH HISTORIAN WANTS JOINT RESEARCH WITH ARMENIA INTO MASSACRES

Agence France Presse — English
March 16, 2006 Thursday 2:53 PM GMT

Istanbul

The leading Turkish historian who contests the definition of
controversial World War I massacres of Armenians as genocide, on
Thursday proposed to carry out joint research with an Armenian on
the issue.

“Let’s carry out a project together, dig up common graves if there
are some, to put an end to numerous demagogical arguments,” said Yusuf
Halacoglu, president of the Turkish History Society, to Ara Sarafian,
a British historian of Armenian origin.

Sarafian, a researcher at the Gomidas Institute in London, England,
told AFP that he was interested in accepting the offer.

“I will definitely consider this offer. I don’t want to show skepticism
about this proposal,” he said.

Some 70 Turkish and foreign academics are in Turkey until Friday for
a three-day conference to discuss whether controversial massacres of
Armenians during World War I amounted to genocide or not.

The Turkish gathering, in a rare move, offered the floor to academics
of all convictions, although it was largely dominated by historians
and officials who defend Turkey’s official position on the 1915-1917
killings.

Turkey categorically denies that Armenian subjects under its
predecessor, the Ottoman Empire, were victims of a genocide, but
acknowledges that at least 300,000 Armenians and as many Turks died
in civil strife during the last years of the empire.

Armenians claim up to 1.5 million of their kin were slaughtered in
orchestrated killings.