Kanalturk to air Armenian film
Güncelleme Tarihi:
A private television station in Turkey, Kanalturk, will broadcast a movie on the massacre of Armenians during World War I this week. The subject is a controversial one with nationalists feelings running high on the issue. Kanalturk has decided to show "Ararat" by Canadian director Atom Egoyan, an ethnic Armenian, following a survey of viewers which revealed that 72% of the participants wanted to see the film."We will show the movie with no cuts or censoring,"said a spokesman on the issue.
The film's showing, at prime time on Thursday, will be followed by a roundtable discussion by Turkish and Armenian intellectuals and historians on the killings during the last years of the Ottoman Empire, the predecessor of Turkey.
Even though the Turkish government gave the go-ahead for the showing of the film, which was released in 2002, an Istanbul company was forced in 2004 to drop plans to screen the movie because of potential protests that would have required police presence in theatres. Turks have only recently begun to discuss the Armenian massacres between 1915 and 1917, one of the most controversial episodes in Turkish history.
Egoyan's film deals with the estranged members of a contemporary Armenian family, who are faced with both Turkey's denial of genocide and their own individual plight.