“I did not say, we Turks killed this many Armenians. I did not use the word ‘genocide.’”
— Orhan Pamuk, swiftly backtracking after he allegedly commented to a Swiss newspaper that “30,000 Kurds and 1 million Armenians were killed in these lands and nobody but me dares to talk about it,” referring to the contested Turkish killings of Armenians in 1915.  Pamuk faces trial and up to three years in prison for his remarks.  

Turkish and Armenian historians differ in their accounts of what happened in 1915. It is a fact that Armenians were driven out of eastern Anatolia, their ancestral homeland. It is also a fact that many Armenians died during this forced march out of Anatolia. The unresolved question is whether this incident — what amounted to a death march for the Armenians — was planned and orchestrated by the Ottoman government. The traditional Turkish answer to the Armenian accusations of state-sponsored massacre has been that the Armenians, with the backing of czarist Russia, rebelled against Ottoman rule. The deaths that resulted from the resultant conflict in 1915 must be placed in their appropriate historical context of World War I and the twilight years of the soon-to-be-abolished Ottoman Empire.

As Turkey looks towards the EU for prized membership in the European club, so too will the EU be looking towards Turkey and at Pamuk’s trial to determine the nation’s suitability for the EU.  
  

Mimi Hanaoka