Turk PM calls 20th-century expulsion policies ‘facist’

Erdogan comment suggests new willingness to discuss previously taboo past events

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan addresses the ruling AKP deputies during a meeting at the Turkish parliament in Ankara on January 6. Last weekend, Erdogan criticized the way Turkey had expelled ethnic Greeks in the last century.

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's criticism of the 20th-century expulsion of ethnic Greeks from Turkey points to a new attempt to deal with the country's troubled past, newspapers said yesterday.

Erdogan said over the weekend that state policies that led to the expulsion of tens of thousands of Christian ethnic Greeks in the last century were «fascist.»

Such criticism of one of modern Turkey's darkest chapters is rare in predominantly Muslim Turkey. But the easing of curbs on freedom of expression as a result of Ankara's drive to meet European Union membership standards has opened up debate in areas that were previously taboo.

«For years, those of different identities have been kicked out of our country... This was not done with common sense. This was done with a fascist approach,» Erdogan said on Saturday during a speech in northwestern Turkey.

The comments were the first of its kind by a prime minister.

«For the first time, you have a prime minister who wants to admit that mistakes were made in the treatment of religious minorities. This is historic,» said Sami Kohen, a commentator at liberal daily newspaper Milliyet. «But whether this rhetoric will be followed by deeds remains to be seen. In particular, the Greeks, they have real problems,» he said.

Other mainstream newspapers made similar comments.

Erdogan's comments appeared to refer to the events of 1955, when thousands of Greeks who lived in Turkey's largest city, Istanbul, were forced to leave following a pogrom on ethnic Greek businesses and homes. It was unclear though whether Erdogan was also referring to the population exchange of 1923 when more than 1.5 million ethnic Greeks were expelled from Turkey to Greece and more than 500,000 mainly Turks were driven from Greece in the aftermath of a war between the two neighbors.

That population exchange was carried out under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who later the same year went on to found the secular Republic of Turkey. Criticizing Ataturk is still illegal in Turkey.

Turkey has been under renewed pressure since a visit by US President Barack Obama earlier this year to open up a Greek Orthodox theological seminary on an island near Istanbul.