Turkish Protest Over Genocide Conference

Turkey avoided a damaging row with the EU on free speech at the weekend when a conference on the Armenian genocide was finally held in Istanbul after the organisers circumvented a court ban.

With a week to go until Turkey opens formal membership talks with the EU, academics broke new ground by discussing the extent of the killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turkish troops from 1915-23.

Nationalists threw eggs and tomatoes at participants as they arrived at the city's Bilgi University. Waving Turkish flags and chanting slogans, they accused academics at the conference of betraying the nation by discussing claims that Ottoman Turkish troops were responsible for the genocide of 1.5 million Armenians.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, agrees with the nationalists' claim that Turkish forces were not responsible for genocide in the dying years of the Ottoman empire. But he was delighted the conference took place - avoiding a row about free speech with the EU before membership talks next Monday. The European commission accused the Turkish judiciary of a "provocation" on Friday after an Istanbul court prevented the conference from opening. Ankara's opponents in the EU, who are this week likely to offer reluctant support for a framework for the membership talks, would have been strengthened if the ban had succeeded.

But the conference organisers, who postponed the event in May after a government minister declared that claims of genocide amounted to treason, circumvented the ban by moving to a new venue.

The Turkish media welcomed the successful staging of the conference. "Another taboo is destroyed. The conference began but the day of judgment did not come," said the Milliyet daily.

Turkey's supporters in the EU will be relieved that the Turkish government opposed the court order and was prepared to defend free speech. But Abdullah Gul, the foreign minister, stood by the the official explanation that many citizens of the Ottoman empire suffered terribly during the war. Claims of an Armenian genocide were false, he insisted. "The Turkish people are at peace with themselves and with their history," Mr Gul was quoted by Reuters as saying.