CONFERENCE ON ARMENIANS CONCLUDES
NTV MSNBC, Turkey
Sept 26 2005
A conference discussing Armenians in the declining years of the
Ottoman Empire found there was strong evidence that massacres and
widespread deportations had been carried out, but stopped short of
describing the acts as genocide.
Guncelleme: 04:29 ET 26 Eylul 2005 PazartesiISTANBUL – Turkey could
not be held responsible for the actions of a state that no longer
existed, Professor Oran said.
The conference, dealing with what has been described as the last taboo
in Turkey, concluded in Istanbul Sunday, despite delegates having to
run the gauntlet of nationalist protestors throwing eggs and tomatoes
at them as they entered the conference hall at Bilgi University.
The conference was staged even though on Friday an Istanbul court
had imposed a ban on its being held. After the ruling by the court,
deans of many of Turkey’s universities said they would opposed the
decision, saying it threatened the autonomy of their institutions.
Addressing the conference on Sunday Professor Baskin Oran of Ankara
University’s Political Sciences Department said that the event had
broken down the last taboo in Turkey. “Concept of class, criticisms
of Ataturk, Cyprus, socialism, communism and Kurdistan are no more
taboos in Turkey,” he said. “There was only one taboo left, and it
was Armenian issue. Now, it is no more a taboo.”
According to Associate Professor Taner Akcam, the leaders of the Party
of Union and Progress had decided to remove those non Turkish-ethnic
groups not of Turkish in the part of the Ottoman Empire that is
now Turkey.
“The Ittihat and Terakki Party (Party of Union & Progress) had a plan
to purify whole Anatolia of the non-Turks, starting from the Aegean
Region, before the World War I, and this plan was carried out in entire
Anatolia during the years of the war,” Taner told the conference.
“Ottoman documents indicate that the decision to relocate the Armenians
was made to end a deeper problem defined as the ‘eastern problem’
and to end the dissolution process of the Ottoman Empire.
This decision was not a result of a need that erupted during the war.
There are many documents in hand with respect to the destruction
of Armenians.”
However, Dr Ahmet Kuyas of Galatasaray University said that the policy
of relocation, decided upon by four of the leading figures in the
Ittihat and Terakki Party, had had a darker side, with a series of
massacres also taking place. Those responsible for these acts were
the Minister of War Enver Pasa, Talat Pasa, Dr Bahattin Sakir and Dr
Nazim, he said.
A surprise speaker in the conference was Cevdet Aykan, formerly a
minister from the long defunct right wing Justice Party (AP), who
spoke on the Armenian community in the Tokat region in eastern Turkey,
which he had covered in his published memoirs. According to Aykan,
out of Tokat’s population of 28,000 in the early years of the 20th
century, 8,800 were Armenian. He said that in the census of 1924 the
Armenian population was down to about 700.
“It was not a good thing,” he said “Thousands of Armenians lost their
houses, country, homeland and some cases their lives,” he said. Aykan
said he had chosen to take part in the conference to repay debt
of conscience. The events of 1915 were interpreted differently by
different parliaments and that Turkey should not see the civilised
world and those that run it as enemies, he said.
Another delegate at the two day conference, Professor Dr Ilhan
Cuhadaroglu, said that he felt a feeling of mourning at the conference
that almost moved him to tears.
“I feel like asking was I in Bulgaria or Greece,” he said.