The assassination of Turkish journalist Hrant Dink has forced Turks to face their past. Mr. Dink was killed because he had called the mass killings of Armenians in the early 20th century a genocide. While his rhetoric angered many Turks, his death appears to have prompted many more of them to think twice about the dangers of unbridled nationalism. Mr. Dink's murder has given Turkey the opportunity to examine its past and heal the wounds that continue to poison relations with its Armenian minority.
The exact number of Armenians that died between 1915 and 1917 is unknown: Estimates range from 300,000 to 1.5 million, out of a population reckoned to be over 2 million before 1914. Whatever the exact figure, the scale is immense. Even more hotly disputed is the cause of those deaths. The official Turkish government narrative is that they were the result of ethnic strife, disease and famine, the tragic but inevitable product of the chaos and confusion of World War I.
Armenians counter that the deaths were the result of a deliberate policy of the Ottoman Empire, an attempt to cleanse the territory of a group of citizens that were not Turks. They demand that the killings be recognized as the first case of genocide in the 20th century. Historians are deeply divided, but a growing number accept the argument that genocide is an apt description for what happened.