APOLOGY CAMPAIGN TRIGGERS FIERCE DEBATE
Today’s Zaman
Dec 18 2008
Turkey
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has objected to a campaign
initiated by a group of intellectuals to apologize for the events of
1915, saying the campaign is wrong and is "messing things up."
Some Turkish intellectuals collected signatures for a statement that
contained a personal apology for the events of 1915, which the Armenian
claims of genocide are based on.
"My conscience does not accept the insensitivity showed to and the
denial of the Great Catastrophe that Ottoman Armenians were subjected
to in 1915. I reject this injustice and for my part, I empathize with
the feelings and pain of my Armenian brothers. I apologize to them,"
the statement said.
When asked yesterday about the campaign, Erdogan claimed that those
who committed crimes apologize but that the state and the nation do
not have such a problem.
"We cannot accept this just because some writers launched a campaign,"
Erdogan said. "I don’t accept such a campaign, I don’t support this
campaign, I don’t take part in it. We did not commit crimes, so we
don’t need to apologize."
He underlined that he had some difficulty understanding the
intellectuals because this campaign serves to "mess things up."
"Some positive steps were taken. Such initiatives reverse these steps,"
he said.
"Such campaigns are wrong initiatives. To approach the issues with
goodwill is something else. To apologize is something else. I think
to apologize is illogical."
Erdogan recalled that they restored the Ahdamar church in Van and
opened it to visitors. "Also, our president’s recent visit to Armenia
is another sign of these positive steps," he said.
Gul visited Yerevan in September at the invitation of his Armenian
counterpart, Serzh Sarksyan, to watch the World Cup qualifying game
between the two countries’ national soccer teams.
Gul was also asked about the campaign yesterday. He said that Turkey
is a country in which freedom of expression is alive and well.
"As a state, our attitude is to bring our relations with our neighbors
to their best points," Gul said. "We believe in solution by dialogue
with our neighbors with which we have problems. Continuing the problems
is not useful to anyone."
Meanwhile, Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesperson Burak Ozugergin said
yesterday that Turkey is an open society in which everything can be
discussed but that Turkey’s foreign policy is not as fragile as it
may change from today to tomorrow.
Ozugergin also asked about the initiative of the retired diplomats who
opposed the apologizing campaign in a separate statement. "We neither
guided this move nor do we have any intentions to comment on that,"
Ozugergin said. "Our attitude about 1915 is known by everybody,"
The State Minister Cemil Cicek said that the best answer to the
campaign is given by the retired diplomats.
The apologizing campaign on the Internet collected 6,500 signatures
within three days. Another campaign, which started yesterday under
the name of "We are expecting an apology" drew approximately 300
signatures.
The "We are expecting an apology" Web site is designed with the same
colors and shapes as the "apologizing campaign" and includes pictures
of Turks killed at Hocalı in February 1992 during the Nagorno-Karabakh
war. The counter-campaign also has a short statement:
"I think that all Armenians and their supporters should apologize for
the savageness of Armenians towards the Ottoman people. I am stating
that I will not close my eyes to this savagery and expecting apology
in the name of the whole Turkish word and grandchildren of Ottomans."
A group of retired diplomats, which includes former Foreign Ministry
undersecretaries Korkmaz Haktanır, Å~^ukru Elekdag and Onur Oymen,
in a counter-declaration stressed that the move was a "disrespectful
act toward Turkish history and its martyrs."
"Such a wrong and unilateral initiative is disrespectful to our
history and also to our people who lost their lives in violent
terrorist attacks during the history of the republic and during the
last years of the Ottoman Empire," the declaration stated.
The diplomats’ declaration made a point of mentioning the Armenian
Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA), which in various
attacks in the late ’70s and early ’80s killed 70 people, including
five ambassadors, four consul generals and 34 public workers, and
injured 574 people.
Ozugergin added that the Foreign Ministry is very sensitive about
the issue, as can be understood from the name of the room in which
regular ministry news conferences are held. The meeting room named
after Taha Carım, who killed by ASALA in 1977 when he was ambassador
to the Vatican.
–Boundary_(ID_eIt0ocu2blU7flXWLA8cqQ)–
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
