Seminar on Turkish Genocide of Assyrians to Be Held in Stockholm
GMT 9-22-2005 20:56:59
Assyrian International News Agency
Translated from Swedish by Nahrin Akguc
The Armenian researcher Ara Sarafian is invited to give a lecture during the Seyfo Seminar taking place at the University of Stockholm on September, 24th. {Below are some excerpts from an interview}
[...]
Even today, where there is an Assyrian minority in Armenia, there is no information on their language, culture or history in the general Armenian society. One exception of which I remember is William Saroyan, who wrote about Assyrians in one of his short stories. And that was the first time I thought of Assyrians as a modern people. I was touched already as early as then, because they were like us Armenians, however living under worse conditions.
[...]
I became an historian during the 1980's, because I wanted to find out the truth about the Armenians. I was privileged enough to make that decisions. At that time I lived in Turkey, where I found some good friends, and came to realize how close Armenians and Turks stood to each other. After that I went to the USA and the University of Michigan where I started to study Ottoman-Turkish and Armenian history, and that led me unavoidably to the question of the genocide. [...].
[...]
I think that Turkey will recognize the genocide and other injustices that Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians, Kurds and others have suffered from, mainly because more and more Turks are becoming interested in those questions and they do not want to carry the burden from that time on their shoulders, as little as they want to lie about such questions. I hope that even we act in a way that invites them to go through this phase. Establishing individual contacts with the Modern Turkey and working for a democratisation of that country, will help this development.
Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.
Assyrian International News Agency
Translated from Swedish by Nahrin Akguc
The Armenian researcher Ara Sarafian is invited to give a lecture during the Seyfo Seminar taking place at the University of Stockholm on September, 24th. {Below are some excerpts from an interview}
[...]
Even today, where there is an Assyrian minority in Armenia, there is no information on their language, culture or history in the general Armenian society. One exception of which I remember is William Saroyan, who wrote about Assyrians in one of his short stories. And that was the first time I thought of Assyrians as a modern people. I was touched already as early as then, because they were like us Armenians, however living under worse conditions.
[...]
I became an historian during the 1980's, because I wanted to find out the truth about the Armenians. I was privileged enough to make that decisions. At that time I lived in Turkey, where I found some good friends, and came to realize how close Armenians and Turks stood to each other. After that I went to the USA and the University of Michigan where I started to study Ottoman-Turkish and Armenian history, and that led me unavoidably to the question of the genocide. [...].
[...]
I think that Turkey will recognize the genocide and other injustices that Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians, Kurds and others have suffered from, mainly because more and more Turks are becoming interested in those questions and they do not want to carry the burden from that time on their shoulders, as little as they want to lie about such questions. I hope that even we act in a way that invites them to go through this phase. Establishing individual contacts with the Modern Turkey and working for a democratisation of that country, will help this development.
Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.
posted by Vahe Balabanian at 12:31 PM
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