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Reuters, UK
Sept 24 2005
Turk nationalists rally outside Armenian conference
Sat Sep 24, 2005 7:26 AM ET
By Jon Hemming
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Hundreds of Turkish nationalists chanting
slogans and waving flags protested on Saturday against a
controversial academic conference on the World War One massacre of
Armenians in Ottoman Turkey.
The conference had been due to open on Friday at two universities in
Istanbul but a last-minute court order blocked it, causing acute
embarrassment to the Turkish government just days before the start of
its European Union membership talks.
Organisers circumvented the court ban by moving the conference on
Saturday to a third university in the city.
"This conference is an insult to our republic and to the memory of
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk," Erkal Onsel, head of the Istanbul branch of
the leftwing but nationalist Workers' Party, told protesters gathered
outside the private Bilgi University.
Ataturk is the revered founder of the modern Turkish Republic on the
ashes of the Ottoman Empire in 1923.
The demonstrators chanted slogans such as "Treason will not go
unpunished" and "This is Turkey, love it or leave it".
The issue of the Armenian massacres is highly sensitive in Turkey.
Armenia and its supporters around the world say some 1.5 million
Armenians perished in a systematic genocide committed by Ottoman
Turkish forces between 1915 and 1923.
Ankara accepts many Armenians were killed on Turkish soil during and
after World War One, but says they were victims of a partisan
conflict that claimed even more Turkish Muslim lives as the Ottoman
Empire was collapsing. It denies any genocide.
But in a bid to defuse the issue, the government has opened up
Turkey's archives to scholars, saying it has nothing to hide, and has
urged Armenia and other nations to do likewise.
The academic conference was originally scheduled for May but was
canceled after Justice Minister Cemil Cicek accused those backing the
genocide claims of "stabbing Turkey in the back".
This time, with a nervous eye on Brussels as the clock ticks toward
the start of its long-delayed EU entry talks on October 3, the
government has strongly backed the conference.
The court banning order, announced on Thursday evening just before
the conference was due to start, drew swift condemnation from Prime
Minister Tayyip Erdogan as well as from the European Commission,
which spoke of a "provocation" by anti-EU elements.
"If we have confidence in our own beliefs, we should not fear freedom
of thought," Erdogan told a separate gathering of academics in
Istanbul on Saturday.
"I want to live in a Turkey where all freedoms are guaranteed," the
prime minister said.
Lawyers behind the original court ban condemned Bilgi University's
decision on Saturday to host the event regardless.
"We will file a legal complaint against all of those people behind
this conference," lawyer Kemal Kerincsiz told Reuters.
The court blocked the conference pending information on the
qualifications of the speakers and also wanted to know who was
participating and who was paying for it.
Despite a flurry of EU-inspired liberal reforms in recent years,
promoting certain interpretations of Turkish history can still be
deemed a criminal offence under the revised penal code.
The protesters said the organisers of the conference were not really
upholding freedom of speech.
"They don't let us inside... they don't give us a chance to put our
case. They forget those of the Turkish nation killed by Armenians,"
said Kemal Ermetin, who runs a nationalist magazine.
The protesters displayed photographs of what they said were Azeris
killed by Armenians in the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh
during fighting in the early 1990s.
Turkey closed its border and cut diplomatic ties with tiny ex-Soviet
Armenia in 1993 to protest against Armenian occupation of
Nagorno-Karabakh, part of the territory of Azerbaijan, a regional
Turkic-speaking ally of Ankara.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
Sept 24 2005
Turk nationalists rally outside Armenian conference
Sat Sep 24, 2005 7:26 AM ET
By Jon Hemming
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Hundreds of Turkish nationalists chanting
slogans and waving flags protested on Saturday against a
controversial academic conference on the World War One massacre of
Armenians in Ottoman Turkey.
The conference had been due to open on Friday at two universities in
Istanbul but a last-minute court order blocked it, causing acute
embarrassment to the Turkish government just days before the start of
its European Union membership talks.
Organisers circumvented the court ban by moving the conference on
Saturday to a third university in the city.
"This conference is an insult to our republic and to the memory of
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk," Erkal Onsel, head of the Istanbul branch of
the leftwing but nationalist Workers' Party, told protesters gathered
outside the private Bilgi University.
Ataturk is the revered founder of the modern Turkish Republic on the
ashes of the Ottoman Empire in 1923.
The demonstrators chanted slogans such as "Treason will not go
unpunished" and "This is Turkey, love it or leave it".
The issue of the Armenian massacres is highly sensitive in Turkey.
Armenia and its supporters around the world say some 1.5 million
Armenians perished in a systematic genocide committed by Ottoman
Turkish forces between 1915 and 1923.
Ankara accepts many Armenians were killed on Turkish soil during and
after World War One, but says they were victims of a partisan
conflict that claimed even more Turkish Muslim lives as the Ottoman
Empire was collapsing. It denies any genocide.
But in a bid to defuse the issue, the government has opened up
Turkey's archives to scholars, saying it has nothing to hide, and has
urged Armenia and other nations to do likewise.
The academic conference was originally scheduled for May but was
canceled after Justice Minister Cemil Cicek accused those backing the
genocide claims of "stabbing Turkey in the back".
This time, with a nervous eye on Brussels as the clock ticks toward
the start of its long-delayed EU entry talks on October 3, the
government has strongly backed the conference.
The court banning order, announced on Thursday evening just before
the conference was due to start, drew swift condemnation from Prime
Minister Tayyip Erdogan as well as from the European Commission,
which spoke of a "provocation" by anti-EU elements.
"If we have confidence in our own beliefs, we should not fear freedom
of thought," Erdogan told a separate gathering of academics in
Istanbul on Saturday.
"I want to live in a Turkey where all freedoms are guaranteed," the
prime minister said.
Lawyers behind the original court ban condemned Bilgi University's
decision on Saturday to host the event regardless.
"We will file a legal complaint against all of those people behind
this conference," lawyer Kemal Kerincsiz told Reuters.
The court blocked the conference pending information on the
qualifications of the speakers and also wanted to know who was
participating and who was paying for it.
Despite a flurry of EU-inspired liberal reforms in recent years,
promoting certain interpretations of Turkish history can still be
deemed a criminal offence under the revised penal code.
The protesters said the organisers of the conference were not really
upholding freedom of speech.
"They don't let us inside... they don't give us a chance to put our
case. They forget those of the Turkish nation killed by Armenians,"
said Kemal Ermetin, who runs a nationalist magazine.
The protesters displayed photographs of what they said were Azeris
killed by Armenians in the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh
during fighting in the early 1990s.
Turkey closed its border and cut diplomatic ties with tiny ex-Soviet
Armenia in 1993 to protest against Armenian occupation of
Nagorno-Karabakh, part of the territory of Azerbaijan, a regional
Turkic-speaking ally of Ankara.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress