The Turkish Columnist about the Armenian Conference

The Istanbul-based Marmara online newspaper published on its website in Armenian (www.normarmara.com) on Aug. 26, 2005, a brief about the ironic article written in "Aksam" (Aksham) Turkish newspaper by the columnist Engin Ardich (?) on the conference dedicated to the "Armenian issue" to be held in Istanbul in this month.
The following is my translation of the brief from Armenian:

The author of the article takes attitude against the official "point of view" and rebukes the insistence of Turkish officials, who get down to business even by forging the number of "deportation" victims. Ardich notes that the issue of this conference is to set if "there was a genocide or not". The author criticizes the Turkish government's position, which, from one side opposes the conference, and from the other side it wants the conference to be held to say to the Europeans that freedom exists in Turkey. This conference will be held because on Oct. 3 the negotiations with EU will begin. Ardich says:
"Do you know who will make the open speech? The open speech will make Abdullah Gul, the FM of the government that opposes this conference. Definitely this would be a formal speech, but it would have high political meaning, because on Oct. 3 we would be able to say to the Europeans: See here that we permitted the conference, what are you further expecting from us?".
And because "liberals" would participate in this conference, the government is afraid that the conference would say genocide took place. For this reason, a question was raised asking why those who say "genocide did not happen" were not invited to the conference. This people from one side find it easy to run away by saying: "Let's leave this matter to the historians", but from the other side they were afraid of leaving this matter to the historians, as they, in fact, did not have the courage to say what they wished to say: "Let's leave the matter to the historians, but to those who are in accord with us and not the others".
Not only historians will participate in this conference, but also sociologists and writers. So, it wouldn't be hard to run away from the matter by insisting that these people aren't historians and can't get the matter!!
Ardich says that from now he is confident what the conference will conclude: "A massacre took place, but not genocide". This "point of view" will have a heavy weight. So, they will bargain on the number of deaths. Some Armenians insist on the number 15 million (may be he means 1.5 million). More "serious" people found the number 1.200 thousand (?) more realistic, the officials say 300 thousand. But the matter is quite different from whether it was genocide or not. It is a matter of money, because Turkey is afraid of huge reparations it may pay. The first signs of this matter appeared in Cyprus. Oh, if we ever know that any Armenian would not demand one "ghurush" (penny), then we would throw the ball at the Ottomans and put an end to this matter. The "Ashrafs" (grandees) of Anatolia suddenly became rich and afterwards they began with great enthusiasm to support Ankara's government, and their grandsons are reverberating why their grandfathers greatly supported the leader party. This situation lasted till 1945. Then the cow died and the partnership ended, because the people had become rich and there was no need for the protection of bureaucrats. They also were confident that no account would be required from them.
Engin Ardich concludes his article by saying:
"I ever say, we never need to be afraid of so-called genocide committed by the Ottoman-era parties. Let the Ittihadis think about". He continues:
"I don't know how many people understood my last statement, but the PM understood"!!