Sir, - Kevin Myers's version of Turkish history (An Irishman's Diary, August 21st) is at best highly selective and at worst constitutes revisionism gone mad. He laments the demise of Ottoman rule in Europe, attributing the break-up of the Ottoman Empire to a "vastly cynical land-grab by the British and the French". Nowhere do we hear of the atrocities perpetuated by the Ottoman state on the civilian populations of Bulgaria and Macedonia.
These events, including the destruction of many villages and the deliberate burning to death of a large number of civilians, sickened public opinion in Britain and France (Turkey's allies) as well as leading Russia to declare war on Turkey. Turkey's defeat, and the ensuing loss of most of its European territory at the Treaty of San Stefano (1878), represented a welcome liberation for several European nations. By this time, Serbia, Mentenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Bulgaria were in open revolt against Turkish rule.
Mr Myers would have us believe that the Ottoman Empire, and the Turkish Republic which succeeded it, shine through history as an example of amiable tolerance. His extensive study of history has unaccountably neglected the genocidal massacre of one million Armenians by the Ottoman state in 1915 (still shamefully denied by the government of the Turkish Republic). The treatment of the Greek minority in the new Turkish Republic and the ongoing repression of the Kurds have likewise escaped his attention. Whatever about the multinational character of modern Turkey, he will be lucky to meet a member of the ageing Greek community in Istanbul - I doubt that there are as many as 2,000 left. If he does, however, what he will hear will surely force him to adjust his rose-tinted perception of 20th-century Turkish history.
Finally, could Mr Myers possibly be unaware that his chosen role in society as an outspoken and provocative journalistic gadfly, which in Ireland provokes nothing worse than irate letters to the newspaper, in Turkey could well lead to his imprisonment or death? - Yours, etc.,
Dara Connolly, Drayton Close, Monkstown, Co Dublin.