Turk nationalists rally outside Armenian conference

Sat Sep 24, 2005 5:23 AM ET
Reuters
By Jon Hemming

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Hundreds of Turkish nationalists chanting slogans and waving flags protested on Saturday against a controversial academic conference devoted to 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.

Organizers then 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.
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Turkey is under pressure to change its stance if it is to become the first Muslim country to join the European Union.
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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.
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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.
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