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Turk nationalists rally outside Armenian conference

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  • Turk nationalists rally outside Armenian conference

    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
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