| 8 March 2008 - Sabrina Tavernise - NY Times Istanbul Bureau Chief - According to a long-hidden document that belonged to the Interior Minister of the Ottoman Empire, 972,000 Ottoman Armenians disappeared from official population records from 1915 through 1916.
In Turkey, any discussion of what happened to the Ottoman Armenians can bring a storm of public outrage. But since its publication in a book in January, the number--and its Ottoman source--has gone virtually unmentioned. Newspapers hardly wrote about it. Television shows have not discussed it.
“Nothing,” said Murat Bardakci, the Turkish author and columnist who compiled the book.
The silence can mean only one thing, he said: “My numbers are too high for ordinary people. Maybe people aren't ready to talk about it yet.”
For generations, most Turks knew nothing of the details of the Armenian genocide of 1915 to 1918, when more than a million Armenians were killed as the Ottoman Turk government purged the population. Turkey locked the ugliest parts of its past out of sight, Soviet-style, keeping any mention of the events out of schoolbooks and official narratives in an aggressive campaign of forgetting.
But in the past 10 years, as civil society has flourished here, some parts of Turkish society are now openly questioning the state's version of events. In December, a group of intellectuals circulated a petition that apologised for the denial of the massacres. Some 29,000 people have signed it.
With his book, “The Remaining Documents of Talat Pasha,” Mr. Bardakci (pronounced bard-AK-chuh) has become, rather unwillingly, part of this ferment. The book is a collection of documents and records that once belonged to Mehmed Talat, known as Talat Pasha, the primary architect of the Armenian deportations.
The documents, given to Mr. Bardakci by Mr. Talat's widow, Hayriye, before she died in 1983, include lists of population figures. Before 1915, 1,256,000 Armenians lived in the Ottoman Empire, according to the documents. The number plunged to 284,157 two years later, Mr. Bardakci said.
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| Gibrahayer Nicosia - Sunday, March 8 - Eight members of a Cypriot family were finally laid to rest on Sunday, 35 years after they were executed in cold blood, during the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus.
Members of the Liasis family were laid to rest in a highly emotional funeral ceremony, held in the presence of two surviving family members, Yiorgos and Yiannoula. The youngest member of the killed was a two year old boy. Their remains were found in a mass grave and identified by DNA matching.
In his speech at the funeral, Interior Minister Neoklis Sylikiotis said: “today’s funeral is testimony to the murder of civilians during the Turkish invasion.
“Cyprus continues to live with open wounds from the 1974 invasion and the government of Demetris Christofias is working very hard to close these wounds."
He added that the humanitarian issue of missing persons in Cyprus is separate from the political question. The relatives of missing persons, he said, have the right to be informed about the fate of their loved ones.
“Turkey has yet to open its archives, as demanded by the European Court of Human Rights, to help investigations into the fate of those missing,” the minister said. |
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