Turkish society is indeed changing as it is showing more openness to discuss the Armenian Genocide. Now a group of Turkish inteligencia gathers in Istanbul and calls the pogroms of 1915 as the Armenian genocide because not only 1.5 million Armenians were murdered but also their culture, churches and the land hit by destruction.
Washington Times reports on Armenian Genocide commemoration in Istanbul.
A group of Istanbul's liberal intelligentsia clustered outside the Tutun Deposu gallery, an old tobacco warehouse in a working-class neighborhood of Istanbul to mark the anniversary of a 1915 pogrom.
Inside the renovated building, an all-female choir performed a selection of folk songs from the musical traditions of minorities persecuted during the last spasms of the Ottoman Empire.
"The reason we call what happened a genocide," said Eren Keskin, a Turkish lawyer with a history of challenging the state, "is because the destruction wreaked on these lands was not just to the Armenians, but to their culture, too. Buildings, churches and cemeteries were razed."
One of the most emotional issues bedeviling Turkish society today is what exactly happened in 1915 to Turkey's Armenian minority. The Ottoman Empire was collapsing as a new republic emerged. Newly released files of Ottoman official Enver Pasha reveal the disappearance of almost a million ethnic Armenians from population records between 1915 and 1916.
The Istanbul-based think tank European Stability Initiative issued a report on the eve of the April 24 anniversary criticizing the Turkish government for spending considerable political capital on fighting pro-genocide campaigns. "This is a battle Turkey cannot win," the report said.
You can read the entire story about the Armenian genocide and Turkish commemoration in Istanbul in today's Washington Times.
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