KANALTURK TO AIR ARMENIAN FILM
Hurriyet, Turkey
April 13 2006
A private television station in Turkey, Kanalturk, will broadcast a
movie on the massacre of Armenians during World War I this week. The
subject is a controversial one with nationalists feelings running
high on the issue. Kanalturk has decided to show “Ararat” by Canadian
director Atom Egoyan, an ethnic Armenian, following a survey of
viewers which revealed that 72% of the participants wanted to see
the film.”We will show the movie with no cuts or censoring,”said a
spokesman on the issue.
The film’s showing, at prime time on Thursday, will be followed by
a roundtable discussion by Turkish and Armenian intellectuals and
historians on the killings during the last years of the Ottoman Empire,
the predecessor of Turkey.
Even though the Turkish government gave the go-ahead for the showing of
the film, which was released in 2002, an Istanbul company was forced in
2004 to drop plans to screen the movie because of potential protests
that would have required police presence in theatres. Turks have only
recently begun to discuss the Armenian massacres between 1915 and 1917,
one of the most controversial episodes in Turkish history.
Egoyan’s film deals with the estranged members of a contemporary
Armenian family, who are faced with both Turkey’s denial of genocide
and their own individual plight.