Word: armenians
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...action, Berktay believes, has strangled a growing dialogue between historians in Turkey and abroad. He himself speaks from painful experience after having been the target of what he describes as a McCarthyite witch-hunt after an interview in which he expressed the "open secret" that Turkish irregular units attacked Armenian civilians as they were forcibly evacuated from their homes...
...Armenian compatriots are for the most part prosperous; they go to the best clubs and have their island summer houses ... You'd expect them to take the Turkish side against Europe. So why have they remained silent?" wrote Emin Colasan, right-wing columnist in the mass-circulating "Hürriyet" newspaper, whose logo includes the words "Turkey for the Turks...
...Some Turkish bureaucrats privately fear that admission of any sort of guilt would open the country up to the three Rs - recognition, reparations, and perhaps even the restitution of territory. Emotions, too, play a part. Senior foreign ministry officials remember all too vividly the terrorist attacks mounted by radical Armenian groups during the 1970s and 1980s. Among the 71 killed were 34 diplomats...
Some Turkish politicians accuse critics of double standards. Why, they ask, is the West concerned with one people's historical suffering when others are suffering now. "Some 20% of Azerbaijan is currently under Armenian occupation," said Ismail Cem, the Turkish foreign minister in a recent briefing to foreign journalists, voicing the concern that Europe is eager to look at events in 1915 but has turned a blind eye to the recent conflict that has produced one million Azerbaijani refugees...
...most part, Turks believe that the Armenian lobby is wilfully misrepresenting history. The version taught in Turkish schools is that Armenians allowed themselves to be caught up in Great Power politics in an attempt to create their own state during World War I. Pro-Turkish historians dispute that 1.5 million Armenians died, but even they admit that between 300,00 and 600,000 perished. However Turks also died as the result of Armenian atrocities committed behind the lines of the advancing Russian army...