NOBEL LAUREATES’ LETTER CALLS FOR TURKISH-ARMENIAN COOPERATION

Newsday, NY
April 9 2007

NEW YORK (AP) _ Fifty-three Nobel laureates called for Turks and
Armenians to open their border, improve official contacts and resolve
differences over the mass killings of Armenians by Turks in the early
20th century.

In a letter released Monday by the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity,
the Nobel laureates urged Turkey to end discrimination against ethnic
and religious minorities and to abolish Article 301 of its penal code,
which makes it a criminal offense to denigrate Turkishness. They said
Armenia should "reverse its own authoritarian course, allow free and
fair elections and respect human rights."

The letter, which was released to the Turkish and Armenian media,
referred to the Jan. 19 slaying of Hrant Dink, an Armenian journalist
who had made enemies among nationalist Turks by labeling as genocide
the mass killings of Armenians toward the end of the Ottoman Empire.

The laureates said that the best tribute to Dink would be "through
service to his life’s work safeguarding freedom of expression and
fostering reconciliation between Turks and Armenians."

Besides Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor and 1986 winner of the Nobel
peace prize, the signers include J.M. Coetzee, the 2003 winner in
literature; Mairead Corrigan Maguire and Betty Williams, the 1976
peace prize winners; and Wole Soyinka, the 1986 winner in literature.

"We do feel strongly that Turks and Armenians need to interact with
each other," said David L. Phillips, executive director of the Wiesel
Foundation. "The more they engage and trade personal stories, the
deeper will be their understanding."

Telephone calls by The Associated Press to the Turkish mission
to the United Nations and to the Republic of Armenia’s permanent
representative to the United Nations seeking comment were not
immediately returned Monday.

Democratic and Republican lawmakers introduced a resolution in Congress
earlier this year urging the U.S. government to recognize as genocide
the deaths of 1.5 million Armenians at the end of World War I.

Turkey has denied claims by scholars that its predecessor state,
the Ottoman government, caused the deaths in a genocide. The Turkish
government has said the toll is wildly inflated and Armenians were
killed or displaced in civil unrest during the disarray surrounding
the empire’s collapse.