Countries must be willing to accept the darker sides to their past  No country is whiter than white, and often the creation of a country is a bloody event that involves mistakes, tragedy’s and outright massacres. While it is wrong to cover up and not apologise when mistakes are made or horrifying acts are committed the results of this action are likely to have consequences. These events may well be a sour point with neighbouring countries or even just those who feel that the country is not being honest about its past.  Turkey is an excellent example of this. Almost everyone would agree that Atatürk was a great leader and most would not consider that his habits make any difference to this. Nor are they likely to judge Turkey on the basis of the foibles of a long dead leader. However during the period just before Atatürk became president the Armenian Genocide occurred (1915-23) which stains Turkey’s foreign relations to this day, France has supported a law criminalising its denial, [1] the US congress has several times had bills proposed highlighting the genocide [2] and so damaging Turkey’s relations with the U.S. [3] and of course helping to freeze relations with Armenia itself. [4]  [1] Montjoye, Clementine de, ‘France’s Armenian genocide law’, Free Speech Debate, 29 June 2012,   [2] United States Senate, S.Res.399 - Affirmation of the United States Record on the Armenian Genocide Resolution, OpenCongress for the 112th United States Congress, 19th March 2012,   [3] Kinzer, Stephen, ‘Genocide vote harms US-Turkey ties’, guardian.co.uk, 5 March 2010,   [4] SAĞIR, CELİL, ‘Hopes dim for normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations’, Today’s Zaman, 7 May 2012,