!�="justify">I was one of the persons taking part in a symposium held on the Armenian problem at City Hall in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, on Oct. 24. Last May the Armenians had held their own meeting there.

  I was one of the persons taking part in a symposium held on the Armenian problem at City Hall in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, on Oct. 24. Last May the Armenians had held their own meeting there. Just when the council, influenced by that meeting, was about to pass a resolution recognizing the “Armenian genocide,” the Turks applied to the council, saying, “Hear us out as well!” In the past the council used to reject such moves; however, this time it accepted the demand.

  Prior to the meeting we visited council leader Donald Anderson together with a group of Turks living in Britain. He is well acquainted with Turkey. In fact, we were told that he spends his vacations regularly in Turgutreis, in Bodrum, with his family. However, during the visit he gave us the impression that they had already promised the Armenians that a resolution recognizing the “genocide” would be passed.

  When the symposium began, I focused -- as I generally do on such occasions -- mainly on the legal aspects of the issue. With the boldness that probably comes from being a Scotsman himself, Professor Norman Stone of Koc University bitterly criticized the council for making the mistake of attempting to make a decision on this issue although they are uninformed on its complexities.

  The real surprise came during the question-and-answer section of the meeting. A large group of people of Turkish origin, most of whom had taken the long trip to Edinburgh from London, began to deny -- rather than asking questions -- the Armenian claims, speaking in fluent English. They had obviously studied the topic well. They did not merely say that the Armenian claims were groundless. They went on to vigorously criticize the Edinburgh City Council for tackling issues that are clearly outside the scope of council duties. One of them even said, in a somewhat threatening style, that the Muslim community in Britain was closely following the behavior of the council.

  However, it was a Scotsman who studied Ottoman literature at university who sprang the real surprise. Just as the previous speakers, he criticized the council and then touched on the main issue. Noting that the attire of the members of the audience showed they were fully integrated into British society, he pointed out that integration would not solve the problems when the “Armenian genocide” is the issue -- since, in the final analysis, the council members would support the Armenians because the latter are Christians. Speaking excitedly, he said the council members harbored a profound racist hatred towards the Muslims.

  At the end of the meeting Anderson briefly replied to criticism. However, the impression he created was that they might reconsider the promise they had made to the Armenians. His initial mood of determination was gone. I have attended meetings of this kind with the Turkish community over the years. I saw that the Edinburgh meeting was quite “different,” just as a meeting held in Cologne early this year had been. It is as if the Turkish community in Europe has changed all of a sudden this year. They now seem much more self-confident despite the fact that the Armenians have covered so much ground by now.

  They have learned to become better organized in their own ranks. The Turkish community abroad had become all too fragmented, especially during the post-Sept. 12 (1980) period. Now they manage to come together to wage a common struggle, at least on the Armenian issue. This is an extraordinary development. In the past, despite all the efforts made by our diplomatic missions, it had proved impossible to bring together the members of the different segments of the Turkish society living abroad. The secularist Kemalists, the pious believers (not counting the various groups and cults among these believers), the leftists, the educated, the uneducated, the groups of people who had come from the same provinces in Turkey, etc., all seemed to be hostile towards one another. The tendency to come together, triggered by the way the European Union bullied Turkey, has obviously gained great momentum due to the Armenian issue.

  In order to attend the meeting, more than a hundred Turks living in other parts of Britain stayed away from work for a full day, traveling all those miles, bringing with them hundreds of documents. They were well prepared and explained the issues fluently, courageously speaking their own mind in public. They were not afraid to put pressure on high-ranking officials of the host country. Their behavior clearly shows who the real defenders of these issues are now. This is a highly promising development.

  The EU's anti-Turkey stance on the Cyprus, Kurdish and Armenian issues has thus triggered a struggle for identity rather than a primitive, violence-oriented kind of nationalism as expected by certain types in Turkey. But that will not be the only disturbing development.

  There will be more.