ANCHORS: ROBERT SIEGEL

REPORTERS: IVAN WATSON

ROBERT SIEGEL, host:

It has been 90 years since the Ottoman Empire's mass deportation and massacre of ethnic Armenians during World War I. Armenians marked the anniversary over the weekend of what they call a genocide. They say one and a half million of their people were killed. That's a charge that modern-day Turkey has long denied. And now that it is on the verge of beginning negotiations to join the European Union, Turkey once again finds itself on the defensive in this historical controversy. NPR's Ivan Watson reports from Istanbul.

IVAN WATSON reporting:

On a day when Armenians held solemn ceremonies of remembrance in Yerevan, Paris and New York, in Turkey, the day honoring Armenian victims was virtually ignored. Nearly a century after the fact, the official Armenian and Turkish versions of what took place in the final years of the Ottoman Empire are still miles apart. Ilter Turan is a professor at Istanbul's Yildiz University.

Professor ILTER TURAN (Yildiz University): What happened in 1915 and during that period was a mutual battle between poorly organized people trying to retain territory as a multinational empire was crumbling.

WATSON: The Turkish government contends that a half-million Turkish Muslims were killed after Armenians revolted against the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Armenians reject this claim. Karan
Karakoshlai(ph) is a founder of the Augos Armenian newspaper in Istanbul.

Ms. KARAN KARAKOSHLAI (Founder, Augos): In summary, what happened was that a great nation of 4,000 years was exterminated, was cut off the roots.

WATSON: Both sides agree that the Ottomans forcibly deported huge numbers of Armenians from what is now eastern Turkey. And today Turkey's Armenian Christian community has dwindled to just 60,000 people. Though Turkey has offered to conduct a joint historical probe with neighboring Armenia, many Turks continue to be defensive about what they call `the Armenian issue.' This year nationalists filed lawsuits against Turkey's most famous author when he told a Swiss newspaper, quote, "One million Armenians were murdered here, and no one dares to mention that.' Professor Turan, a former member of a Turkish-Armenian Reconciliation Commission, says until recently the subject was taboo here.

Prof. TURAN: The Turkish educational system for a long time concentrated on nation-building. And the arguments or ideas that were thought to undermine it were not discussed in primary or high school curriculums.

WATSON: But there are signs that the taboo is beginning to break down. Only a few Armenians are left in the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir, where schoolchildren play in the ruins of a large Armenian cathedral that stands as an unofficial monument to what was once a thriving community.

(Soundbite of banging noises)

WATSON: Younger generations here, mostly ethnic Kurds, are beginning to talk about their great-grandparents' role in the massacres.

Unidentified Man: They were Muslim Kurdish people, Muslim. And they killed Armenian people.

WATSON: At a university, a Kurdish student named Zoloh(ph) and several classmates recounted stories passed down by long-dead relatives of atrocities against their Armenian neighbors. This Kurdish woman, who preferred not to give her name, said some of her ancestors were, in fact, Armenians who had been forced to convert to Islam.

Unidentified Woman: (Through Translator) We couldn't admit to our neighbors that my great-grandmother was Armenian and that was she was forced to marry my great-grandfather. At school they didn't tell us about the genocide, but I heard the stories, some from my relatives at home. And I always had one question: Why did they kill the Armenians? What did they do?

WATSON: International pressure is building on Turkey on this issue. Over the past year the European Parliament and France have joined Armenian diaspora groups demanding that Turkey accept responsibility for the genocide before it can become a member of the European Union. But Karan Karakoshlai of the Armenian Augos newspaper says blocking Turkey's EU bid would be a step backwards for Turkey and the Armenians still living here.

Ms. KARAKOSHLAI: This is a genocide again to the ancestors a second time because a tragic historical pain is used as a political material.

WATSON: Ivan Watson, NPR News, Istanbul.