The “Yerkir” Union and the Caucasus Institute will jointly hold an international conference on Building Awareness of Turkish Society Regarding the Armenian Genocide on March 15, 2011. Speakers will be Turkish experts and initiators of the “I Apologize” campaign in Turkey, Cengiz Aktar and Ali Bayramoğlu, and prominent Armenian experts on Turkey and Armenia-Turkey relations. Participants will discuss prospects for the recognition of the Armenian Genocide by the Turkish public. Presentation topics will include Genocide recognition trends vs. denial policies in Turkey, and the fate of Turkey’s Armenian community and Armenian cultural heritage. The Armenian translation of A Call to Forgive (L'Appel au Pardon), a book by Cengiz Aktar, will also be presented within the framework of the conference. The “I Apologize” campaign was launched in December 2008 by a group of Turkish intellectuals; it gave people in Turkey who wanted to personally apologize for the 1915 Armenian Genocide the option to sign an online petition. In a few days, over 10,000 people signed the petition. Although Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code is still in force, allowing the government to charge anyone qualifying the 1915-1918 deportations and massacres of Armenians as genocide with “publicly insulting the Turkish nation,” the Genocide issue has entered the Turkish public discourse, and studies in this field have been published in the Turkish language. The goal of this conference is to take this issue to a new level, shaping the environment for a meaningful and honest Armenian-Turkish dialogue.

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