EXPERT FLIES INTO A ROW OVER DEATHS
Michael Blackley
The Scotsman, UK
Nov 23 2006
A TURKISH professor has made a 3500-mile round-trip to Edinburgh
to criticise the city council for getting involved in a historical
argument concerning his home country.
Last year, the city council passed a motion regarding the deaths
of up to 1.5 million Armenians during the First World War that said
"it was indeed genocide".
But the topic has been the subject of international debate and the
Turkish prime minister recently called for an impartial inquiry into
the deaths.
Now Turkkaya Ataov, a professor of international relations at the
University of Ankara in Turkey, has travelled to Edinburgh for a
10-minute appearance at the City Chambers to tell councillors they
were wrong to pass the motion.
Professor Ataov, a recipient of the golden honorary medal from
Austria-based peace group the International Progress Organization last
year, said: "If a representative political body passes judgements on
the basis of one-sided and perpetrated Armenian arguments, not only is
such a pursuit beyond its expertise, but also such prejudiced arguments
may well be unsustainable in the light of objective scholarship.
"The only appropriate alternative is to leave the matter to the free
discussion of academics, who possess adequate expertise in related
disciplines."
Last August, the council passed a motion put forward by then city
leader Donald Anderson recognising that the Turkish campaign against
the Armenians in 1915 "was indeed genocide".