A football match September between Turkey and Armenia has become theunlucky impetus for hopes of reconciliation between the two countries. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians died in 1915 during forced removalsfrom what is now Eastern Turkey, but Turkey denies this was"genocide". Caught in the middle is Turkey's surviving Armenianminority, but possiblerapprochement is giving hope of a brighter future.
The recent World Cup qualifier between Armenia and Turkey was not just any football match.
Itwas a landmark in the troubled history of relations between Turkey andArmenia, bringing together their two leaders for the first time innearly 100 years.
"It was very courageous of thepresident of Armenia to invite the president of Turkey to a footballgame, and it was very courageous for the president of Turkey to acceptthe invitation," said Ergemen Bagis, the Turkish prime minister'sforeign affairs adviser. "There were security implications, domesticpolicy implications. There was opposition from the opposing parties. But now the two presidents very publicly are talking to each other andtrying to find ways to cooperate.
That meeting has sparkedhopes of thawing relations between Turkey and Armenia. Nowhere arethose hopes higher than among Turkey's mainly Christian Armenianminority.
There are about 70,000 Armenians in Turkey. Basedmainly in Istanbul, the Armenian Orthodox Church is at the center oftheir cultural lives. Its leader, Patriarch Mesrop Mutafian, saysTurkish Armenians walk a fine line between their two identities.
"Imyself was born in Istanbul and one could not divide oneself fromArmenian and Turkish," he said. "It is sort of together. So any timeTurkey has problems, I feel myself a part of it. But sometimes thereis bitterness, which comes from history. Bitterness problems whichhave not been created by our generations."
The word bitternessis carefully chosen. What the patriarch is referring to is the mostcontentious point in Turkish history - the mass killing of Armenians byOttoman Turks during World War I.
"The Armenian officialposition is that up to 1.5 million Armenian's were massacred or somehow or other removed from their homes," said Professor Selim Deringilof Istanbul's Bosphorus University. "The Turkish official position isthat there was a civil war in which the Armenians sided with theTurkish enemy, Russia, and sort of acted as a fifth column for theRussians - and these two opposite camps, these two opposite views arenot in a state of dialogue."
Even today just saying that agenocide took place can land you in court in Turkey on the charge ofinsulting the Turkish state. But an online petition by a group ofTurkish academics and artists has sparked a national debate.
Thepetition apologizes for what it says is the silence of Turks over thegreat catastrophe suffered by Armenians in 1915. Several thousandpeople have signed up. Professor Cengiz Aktar is one of the petitionorganizers.
"It is not normal that all those people do not existwhere they used to live," he said. "There is untold history or untoldstories and we are not able to talk about them for the past 90 plusyears."
Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan criticized the petition saying Turkey has nothing to apologize for.
Whileleaders of the main opposition parties supported Erdogan's stance,President Abdullah Gul said it is an exercise in freedom ofexpression. A heated debate is being waged in the media.
Theeditor of Turkish-Armenian newspaper , Etyen Mahcupiyan, said suchpassion is an indication that many in Turkish society perceive thecountry's small Christian minorities as a threat.
Mahcupiyan'spredecessor, Hrant Dink, was gunned down outside the newspaper's officelast year. His murder happened after he was convicted for insultingTurkey for writing an article on the genocide controversy.
Mahcupyan says the new Armenian-Turkish dialogue offers a way of breaking this mistrust of Christians.
"Peopledo not know each [other] and it is much easier to be afraid ofsomething you do not know, especially if there is a official ideologythat tells you that you have to feeling afraid and so on," he said."Especially if there is a history which is told to you, which say thatthose Armenian and Greeks behaved in an improper way."