AsiaNews.it, Italy
Sept 22 2005
Turkish court blocks a conference on the Armenian genocide
This is the second time the meeting has been called off: among
participants are several academics critical of the official
government version about what happened in World War I.
Ankara (AsiaNews) – An Istanbul court yesterday ordered that a
university conference about the Armenian massacre during the Ottoman
era be cancelled. At the meeting, which should have been held today
in Istanbul, scholars and academics discussing the delicate question
were expected to criticize the official government version of events.
Between 1915 and 1923, more than one and a half million Armenians
were killed. Turkey does not accept the definition of `genocide’: the
Ankara version is that 300,000 Armenians and thousands of Turks were
killed in a `civil revolt’ during the World War I, when the Armenians
rebelled against Ottoman rule. Accusations of ethnic cleansing are
defined by the Turkish government as `an invention to weaken the
nation’.
According to some western diplomats, forces within the state opposed
to Turkey’s membership in the European Union were probably behind the
ruling. Negotiations over Turkey’s entry in the EU are scheduled to
start on 3 October. Yesterday’s verdict was an embarrassment for the
Turkish government. Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, condemned
the court ruling and said the decision did not conform to what he
called freedom and modernity in Turkey. He said the right to free
speech was an essential part of democracy.
The conference entitled “Ottoman Armenians of an Empire in Decline”
was to have opened today at the Bosporus University in Istanbul. It
was originally scheduled to take place in May but it was postponed
after the Turkish Justice Minister said its purpose was to stab
Turkey in the back.
The case to halt the conference was brought by the Turkish Lawyers
Union and other lawyers. However, the details of their complaint have
not been made clear. The conference participants have declared they
will launch an appeal and they are determined to go ahead with their
work in the coming days.
The Armenian massacre has long been a taboo subject in Turkey: until
recently, even talking about it was illegal. Recently, a small circle
of Turk scholars started to cast doubt on the government version, an
unwelcome move in the eyes of many.
The internationally acclaimed Turkish author, Orhan Pamuk, is due to
appear in an Istanbul court on December 16 to defend himself against
serious charges of `insulting Turkey’s national dignity’ by telling a
Swiss newspaper that `one million Armenians and 30,000 Kurds had been
killed in Turkey’. If found guilty, he faces three years in prison.
EU enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn warned Turkey earlier this
month that the legal persecution of Pamuk raised `serious
preoccupations’ about negotiations with Turkey.
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