Ambassador of Turkiye:Murat Ersavci protested South Australian Attorney-General Michael Atkinson...

Turkish anger at holocaust remark
Jamie Walker April 11, 2009
Article from: The Australian

TURKEY has officially complained to Canberra that a state Labor minister tried to lever one of the most sensitive episodes in that country's modern history into votes for the ALP.

What began as a seemingly unremarkable speech by South Australian Attorney-General Michael Atkinson to 40 people at a Greek community function has so angered Ankara that its ambassador to Australia, Murat Ersavci, protested to Foreign Minister Stephen Smith about the "defamation" of his country.

"I feel our relations are too important to be used in these self-serving, petty local politics," Mr Ersavci told The Weekend Australian.
The Turks are see thing over remarks Mr Atkinson made about the role of one of the country's towering figures, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, in the tragedy that engulfed its Pontian or Black Sea Greek minority between 1915 and 1922.

Kemal was the commander who broke the hearts of the Anzacs at Gallipoli and then held out a hand to Australia by declaring its fallen soldiers would forever be sons of Turkey. He is revered in his homeland as the founder of the modern Turkish republic.

After doing the honours at the launch of a plaque commemorating what he called the "genocide" of Pontian Greeks by Turkish nationalists led by Kemal's forces -- a contention flatly rejected by Ankara -- Mr Atkinson poured petrol on the flames by declaring that anyone who disputed this version of history was practising a form of "holocaust denial".
When his account was challenged in federal parliament last month by the Deputy President of the Senate, Alan Ferguson, it was the expatriate Greek community's turn to be outraged. The veteran Liberal senator has since apologised for any offence he might have caused.
Mr Atkinson, seizing on this, had Senator Ferguson's speech to parliament translated into Greek and mailed out to thousands of voters from Greek, Assyrian, Syrian Orthodox and Armenian backgrounds in eight state seats in Adelaide.
Other state Labor MPs followed up with letters urging them to remember Senator Ferguson's speech "supporting the Turkish version of history" at next year's state election.
Mr Atkinson denied that he had used the issue as a political wedge against the state Liberals.
"I have an intellectual interest in this ... if there were no Greeks in my electorate, only Armenians and Turks, I would take the same position," he said.
For the record, Mr Atkinson said he knew of 12 ethnically Turkish constituents in his inner Adelaide seat of Croydon, against some 900 of Greek extraction. There were two Armenians.
The 2006 census found that 365,200 Australians described themselves as being of Greek descent, and 59,400 as Turkish.
Mr Ersavci said he had received "thousands of letters" from Turkish Australians concerned that they could face discrimination because of the "defamation situation" in South Australia.
Referring to Mr Atkinson's speech to the Pontian Brotherhood of South Australia last December, the ambassador said: "He seemed to be completely unaware of what is going on in the world. Politicians should not rewrite history, especially when talking about the Black Sea Greeks."
Mr Ersavci, who will attend Anzac Day commemorations with Mr Smith at Gallipoli in a fortnight, said he had asked the Foreign Minister to look into the Turkish Government's concerns. "He said he would do it," Mr Ersavci said.
Mr Smith's office said he had written to South Australian Premier Mike Rann outlining the federal Government's position "on these historical events" in Turkey at the time the remnants of the once mighty Ottoman Empire gave way to the new republic.
Australia believed "dialogue between the governments and communities of the countries concerned" was best and would not seek to intervene in the historical dispute.
Mr Atkinson said he backed independent research findings, contested by Turkey, that 1.5million ethnic Armenians and 350,000 Pontian Greeks were massacred during and after World War I.
Mr Ersavci said Turkey acknowledged that a "war within a war" had taken place, but not on the scale purported. The toll among Pontian Greeks cited by Mr Atkinson was "simply preposterous".
Sticking to his guns, Mr Atkinson said: "To say that is a non-existent event is equivalent to holocaust denial."
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,25318887-2702,00.html