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  • Turkish anger at holocaust remark

    Weekend Australian
    April 11, 2009 Saturday
    2 - All-round First Edition


    Turkish anger at holocaust remark

    Jamie Walker



    TURKEY has officially complained to Canberra that a state Labor
    minister tried to lever one of the most sensitive episodes in that
    country's modern history into votes for the ALP.

    What began as a seemingly unremarkable speech by South Australian
    Attorney-General Michael Atkinson to 40 people at a Greek community
    function has so angered Ankara that its ambassador to Australia, Murat
    Ersavci, protested to Foreign Minister Stephen Smith about the
    ``defamation'' of his country.

    ``I feel our relations are too important to be used in these
    self-serving, petty local politics,'' Mr Ersavci told The Weekend
    Australian. The Turks are seething over remarks Mr Atkinson made about
    the role of one of the country's towering figures, Mustafa Kemal
    Ataturk, in the tragedy that engulfed its Pontian or Black Sea Greek
    minority between 1915 and 1922.

    Kemal was the commander who broke the hearts of the Anzacs at
    Gallipoli and then held out a hand to Australia by declaring its
    fallen soldiers would forever be sons of Turkey. He is revered in his
    homeland as the founder of the modern Turkish republic.

    After doing the honours at the launch of a plaque commemorating what
    he called the ``genocide'' of Pontian Greeks by Turkish nationalists
    led by Kemal's forces -- a contention flatly rejected by Ankara -- Mr
    Atkinson poured petrol on the flames by declaring that anyone who
    disputed this version of history was practising a form of ``holocaust
    denial''.

    When his account was challenged in federal parliament last month by
    the Deputy President of the Senate, Alan Ferguson, it was the
    expatriate Greek community's turn to be outraged. The veteran Liberal
    senator has since apologised for any offence he might have caused.

    Mr Atkinson, seizing on this, had Senator Ferguson's speech to
    parliament translated into Greek and mailed out to thousands of voters
    from Greek, Assyrian, Syrian Orthodox and Armenian backgrounds in
    eight state seats in Adelaide.

    Other state Labor MPs followed up with letters urging them to remember
    Senator Ferguson's speech ``supporting the Turkish version of
    history'' at next year's state election.

    Mr Atkinson denied that he had used the issue as a political wedge
    against the state Liberals.

    ``I have an intellectual interest in this ... if there were no Greeks
    in my electorate, only Armenians and Turks, I would take the same
    position,'' he said.

    For the record, Mr Atkinson said he knew of 12 ethnically Turkish
    constituents in his inner Adelaide seat of Croydon, against some 900
    of Greek extraction. There were two Armenians.

    The 2006 census found that 365,200 Australians described themselves as
    being of Greek descent, and 59,400 as Turkish.

    Mr Ersavci said he had received ``thousands of letters'' from Turkish
    Australians concerned that they could face discrimination because of
    the ``defamation situation'' in South Australia.

    Referring to Mr Atkinson's speech to the Pontian Brotherhood of South
    Australia last December, the ambassador said: ``He seemed to be
    completely unaware of what is going on in the world. Politicians
    should not rewrite history, especially when talking about the Black
    Sea Greeks.''

    Mr Ersavci, who will attend Anzac Day commemorations with Mr Smith at
    Gallipoli in a fortnight, said he had asked the Foreign Minister to
    look into the Turkish Government's concerns. ``He said he would do
    it,'' Mr Ersavci said.

    Mr Smith's office said he had written to South Australian Premier Mike
    Rann outlining the federal Government's position ``on these historical
    events'' in Turkey at the time the remnants of the once mighty Ottoman
    Empire gave way to the new republic.

    Australia believed ``dialogue between the governments and communities
    of the countries concerned'' was best and would not seek to intervene
    in the historical dispute.

    Mr Atkinson said he backed independent research findings, contested by
    Turkey, that 1.5million ethnic Armenians and 350,000 Pontian Greeks
    were massacred during and after World War I.

    Mr Ersavci said Turkey acknowledged that a ``war within a war'' had
    taken place, but not on the scale purported. The toll among Pontian
    Greeks cited by Mr Atkinson was ``simply preposterous''.

    Sticking to his guns, Mr Atkinson said: ``To say that is a
    non-existent event is equivalent to holocaust denial.''
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