OPEN LETTER REKINDLES TURKISH DEBATE ON ARMENIAN MASSACRE

The Irish Times
December 24, 2008

ANGRY DEBATES fuelled by an online initiative inviting individual
Turks to apologise for the ethnic cleansing of Armenians during the
first World War showed no signs of fading this week, as Turkey’s
president took an opposition deputy to court for an alleged racial
slur, writes NICHOLAS BIRCH in Istanbul.

Lawyers for Abdullah Gul announced on Monday that he was seeking
symbolic compensation from Canan Aritman after she hinted his mother
had Armenian roots.

"Gul should be president of the entire Turkish nation, not just of
those sharing his ethnicity," Ms Aritman said on December 17th. "Look
into Gul’s roots on his mother’s side, and you’ll see."

Her outburst followed Mr Gul’s description of the initiative, which
has attracted 20,000 signatures since it was launched on December 15th,
as compatible with a democratic society.

"My conscience does not accept the denial of the Great Catastrophe
that the Ottoman Armenians were subjected to in 1915," the open letter
reads. "I reject this injustice . . . and empathise with the feelings
and pain of my Armenian brothers. I apologise to them."

Mr Gul’s doveish tone was characteristic of a man who, in September,
became the first Turkish statesman to visit Armenia, triggering hopes
of a rapprochement between the two countries after nearly a century
of enmity.

Turkey and Armenia remain at loggerheads over what exactly happened
in 1915.

Turkey accepts that many Armenians were killed during the collapse
of the Ottoman Empire, but insists they were victims of interethnic
conflicts that claimed more Muslim victims.

For Armenians, and most western historians, the ethnic cleansing that
killed at least 600,000 Armenians amounted to genocide.

Ten years ago, openly debating 1915 in Turkey was all but
impossible. Today, universities organise conferences on the issue,
and bookshops sell books by western and Armenian historians, alongside
texts defending the official Turkish thesis.

Journalist Semin Gumusel ascribes the new openness to a general change
in attitudes in Turkey. "In the past, Turks used to listen to the
big men and nod their heads obediently," she says.

"But the days of blind obedience are over. People ask questions now."

Others attribute the initiative to the shock that followed the murder
of the Armenian-Turkish editor Hrant Dink. A leading advocate of a
more humane debate on the Armenian issue, Dink was gunned down by a
nationalist teenager in January 2007.

"When he died, it was as if a veil had been torn from the eyes of
the democratic-minded citizens of this country," says Nil Mutluer,
a feminist activist who signed the letter. "People realised there
was no time to be lost."

The road ahead looks hard. The chief organisers of the 1915 massacres
continue to be commemorated in street names across the country.

Ms Aritman has not been the only public figure to criticise the
open letter.

Senior generals said it damaged the country. Prime minister Tayyip
Erdogan was contemptuous: "[The signatories] must have committed
genocide themselves since they are apologising," he said last
Friday. "The Turkish Republic does not have such a problem."

Met with nothing worse than a mild slap on the wrist from her party,
meanwhile, Ms Aritman upped the ante on Monday.

"These days, scientists use DNA tests, not family trees, to identify
ethnic identity," she said, referring to Mr Gul’s insistence he was
of Turkish stock.

"My slogan is ‘happy is he who says I am a Turk’," she added, using
a well-known slogan of the founder of modern Turkey, Kemal Ataturk.

Managing editor of Radikal , a liberal daily, Erdal Guven describes
Ms Aritman’s party’s failure to sack her as "a disgrace".

"It is a pity too that Gul didn’t make it more clear that it would
have made no difference if his granny had been an Armenian."