Genocide Denial Robs us of our Humanity

Mayıs 15, 2008
Haber: Politika

The recent debate on Toronto District School Board’s (TDSB) decision to develop a Grade 11 ‘Genocide: Historical and Contemporary Implications’ curriculum, which has been approved by the Minister of Education in Ontario, unleashed a sophisticated and deceptive campaign to discredit the curriculum and the TDSB. Any rational, responsible person would applaud the teaching of our students the catastrophic effects of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. That Turkish Government agents and lobbyists are campaigning to deter TDSB from introducing this extremely valuable course is dismaying, but not surprising. The well-funded and aggressive efforts by Turkey to deny the Armenian Genocide have been so prevalent in Turkey and around the world that they have become infamously known as “an industry of denial.” The motives and methods of these history-distorting efforts are well documented and studied by Holocaust and Genocide scholars, historians, educators and psychologists.

The Turkish denial machine employes falsehoods, innuendo, unsubstantiated accusations and revisionist historical discourse to promote its version of history.

What happened during the TDSB Program and Services Committee’s meeting in Toronto on January 16 is another demonstration of the extent the Turkish nationalists will go to silence anyone who does nor share their revisionist narrative of history. The Turkish representatives tried to intimidate and to silence such prominent Canadians as Prof. Frank Chalk, director of the Montréal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies; David Warner, former Speaker of the Ontario Legislative Assembly; Leo Adler, prominent criminal lawyer and human rights advocate; and Hon. Jim Karygiannis, MP, who attended the meeting to show their strong support for the curriculum and the inclusion of the Armenian Genocide in the Grade 11 history course.

To try to curtail freedom of expression of any Canadian and to taunt them with abuses and profanities is shameful and a threat to democracy. The scene was reminiscent of the trials of many righteous Turkish individuals who in recent years have challenged the Turkish Government for its denial of the Armenian Genocide and who have been silenced under Article 301 of the Turkish penal code.

It looks like The Turkish nationalists are trying to import that anti-democratic modus operandi to Canada.

Since it would take volumes to categorically reply to Turkish lobbyists’ falsehoods, I would like to address some of their revisionist historical discourse. We will note their false suggestions and then offer the factual corrections.

Introduction of the curriculum would incite hatred against Turkish children.

It is claimed that if such a curriculum is introduced it would “create hatred against Turkish children.”

Despite Turkish lobbyists’ allegations, there’s absolutely no shred of evidence from any authority–government or educational–that Turkish school children have been bullied by their Armenian classmates in Canada. Raising fears that mentioning the Genocide of Armenians would result in the persecution of Turks is a red herring intended to plant fear among educational institutions in Canada.

Most Armenians and Turks overwhelmingly distinguish between the perpetrators of the genocide in the Ottoman Empire in 1915 and people of Turkish descent today, wherever the latter may live. The January 19 commemoration of the first anniversary of the assassination Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in Ottawa by a group of Armenians and Turks, who are members of the Turkish-Armenian Dialogue Group of Ottawa, is the best illustration of this attitude. Mr. Dink was assassinated in front of his Istanbul office by a member of a nationalist Turkish political group.

It is also possible to teach that genocide is wrong without teaching hatred of the perpetrators. One can explain their motivations and why they were wrong. One can explain the destruction and the suffering they caused. This is being done successfully in our current educational system where the Holocaust is taught without blaming contemporary Germany or Germans.

After a decade of teaching about the Armenian Genocide in schools in 12 American states (New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Ohio, Rhode Island, Virginia, and California), there has not been a single registered or documented incident of “bullying, hate, and racism” against Turkish children.

Many righteous Turks during the Armenian Genocide risked their lives to save their Armenian neighbours, friends, and business associates. Furthermore, we value the many Turkish intellectuals, historians, journalists and over 12,000 German-Turks who, despite death threats, persecution, and prosecution challenged the official narrative of the Turkish government on the Armenian Genocide and asked the Turkish government to come to terms with this sad chapter of its history.

Here is what the German Turks wrote:

“What we have learned at school (Turkish) is a forgery of history.” They asked the Turkish Government to repent for the crime of Genocide which “we feel morally obliged to end their (Armenians) disillusions and agony”. Furthermore, the association asked for “international condemnation of the crimes committed against the Armenians, Assyrians and Pontian-Greeks.”

While official Turkey denies its responsibility for the Armenian Genocide, Turkish intellectual Taner Akçam wrote in the Turkish newspaper Yeni Binyil (October 1, 2000):

“The manner in which the Armenian question is being discussed is in itself indicative as to what is the main problem of our country. We do not possess the culture affording open debate about mass murders. We are devoid of the moral foundations which enable us to damn such crimes. One needs to have a sense of sorrow in order to be able to speak of the great human tragedies; but we do not possess such a sense of morality. Look at the things that have been written about this topic. In them you don’t find a single sentence, a single word that recognizes the tragedy.”

When Turkish children learn about these righteous Turks, they can be proud of the way these people acted. They will be absolved of any responsibility. As renowned writer Ahmet Altan stated in May 2005: “I have nothing in common with the terrible sin of the past Ittihadists [the government of the day]… instead of justifying and arguing on behalf of the murderers, why don’t we praise and defend the rescuers’ compassion, honesty, and courage?”

Historians are disputing the Armenian Genocide.

After 92 years and numerous history books, government documents (British, French, United States, and even then-Turkish allies Germany and Austria), photographs by war correspondents, massive coverage by Western journalists, missionaries and NGOs, and documentary films, we maintain that it’s redundant to try to prove what has been proven countless times. After all, would anyone demand that a historians’ committee be formed to question whether the Holocaust took place?

The Turkish Government agents cite the same half-dozen historians and writers to back their allegations. Practically everyone listed has taught history at institutions where their chair has been funded by the Turkish government. These historians have close relationships with the government of Turkey; have privileged access to Turkish historic archives and are provided with frequent all-expense paid trips to Turkey. The publication of their books are often funded by the government of Turkey.

Many genocide scholars have questioned the credibility of these half-dozen historians.

Colin Imber, in the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, called Justin McCarthy’s work: “Junk food, junk bonds and now junk history … This is a cruel description, but one which is perfectly appropriate for a book which is carelessly written, is often misinformed, and shamelessly follows a Turkish nationalist agenda.”

Ton Zwaan, in de Volkskrant (Dutch newspaper) wrote: “Among bona fide historians McCarthy is known as one of the professional deniers, subsidized by the Turkish government.” Zwaan continued: “In a groundless, hazy and disorderly argumentation replete with half-truths and complete untruths, McCarthy attempts to persuade his readers that an Armenian genocide never transpired in the Ottoman Empire in 1915 and 1916.”

Many Turkish historians, among them Taner Akcam and Muge Gocek, also questioned McCarthy’s research and trustworthiness.

Guenter Lewy is a well know revisionist. His work–from the killing of Roma Gypsies in the Second World War to the Vietnam War–is well documented. This is what the Journal of Genocide Research wrote: “Lewy’s . . . book which seeks not only to exclude the Nazis’ Romani victims from the Holocaust-which is not anything new-but goes a step further to say that they were not even the targets of attempted genocide. . . ‘The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies’ is a dangerous book.”

After reading Lewy’s biased article on the Armenian Genocide, Prof. Gregory H. Stanton, said: “I am appalled. It is such a blatant denial article . . . As you know, the evidence for the Armenian genocide does not just rest upon the three sources Guenter Lewy attempts to discredit. (He doesn’t even do a good job of discrediting those sources.) It also rests on literally thousands of eye-witness testimonies, eyewitness reports by diplomats and missionaries, and a mountain of other data. Lewy’s article is directly contrary to the official opinion of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, passed by unanimous resolution, declaring that the Armenian massacres were genocide, and that attempts to deny that fact have no basis in sound scholarship.”

Norman M. Naimark from Stanford University recently reviewed Guenter Lewy’s latest book for the jounral Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Naimark concluded that “… if Lewy wishes to maintain his claims to historical objectivity by using accepted judicial definitions of genocide, then the difficulty of finding direct evidence for the Young Turks’ premeditated planning of mass murder should not prevent him from concluding that genocide took place. At its core, then Lewy’s argument is illogical.”

The International Association of Genocide Scholars, in a letter to the Turkish Prime Minister labelled such historians as “scholars who advise your government and who are affiliated in other ways with your state-controlled institutions are not impartial. Such so-called “scholars” work to serve the agenda of historical and moral obfuscation when they advise you and the Turkish Parliament on how to deny the Armenian Genocide.”

One of the historians Turks often cite to buttress their denialist arguments is Bernard Lewis. Mr. Lewis has been convicted in French court for denying the Armenian Genocide. His flip-flopping on the Armenian Genocide is well documented. In an earlier version of his book, “The Emergence of Modern Turkey,” Lewis wrote: “A struggle between two nations for the possession of single homeland, that ended with the terrible holocaust of 1915, where a million and half Armenians perished.”

I have no intention to enter into a “my historian is more credible than your historian” contest here, although the number of international historians who acknowledge the truth of the Genocide of Armenians exceeds the names cited by Turkish lobbyists by a hundred fold. To mention just one group of 126 Holocaust scholars, among them Elie Wiesel, Yehuda Bauer, Israel Charny, Steven Katz, Steven Jacobs, and Irving L. Horowitz, who on March 9, 2000, issued a statement declaring that “The World War I Armenian Genocide is an incontestable historical fact and accordingly urge the governments of the Western democracies to likewise recognize it as such.”

The Turkish archives are open. Armenians refuse dialogue

One of the most disingenuous Turkish arguments is that Turkish archives are open and that Armenian archives are closed on the genocide issue. They use this argument to mislead and to divert attention from the real issue, the crime of Genocide. Furthermore, they try to imply that Armenians have something to hide and do not want to open their archives for inspection or to enter into a dialogue with Turks.

What is the truth?

In regard to the Armenian Genocide, there are four main Turkish sources of archives:

1–The Prime Ministerial Archives

2–The Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) [the governing party in 1915] Archives

3–The Special Organization [the organization which carried out the Genocide] Archives

4–The Interior Ministry Archives.

According to the Istanbul Military Tribunal (1919 - 1921), which was established to try Turkish Government leaders who had ordered the implementation of the Armenian Genocide, most of the documents related to the latter three organizations have been either “stolen or destroyed.” During the trial, the Turkish persecutor in his indictment, stated: “Investigation of what had occurred reveals that important documents pertaining to this office [Special Organizations] …have been purloined.”

In the same indictment, he also stated that “all of the documents and ledgers of the Central Committee [CUP] have been purloined.” Furthermore, many witnesses during the trials testified that the documents of CUP had been removed by Central Committee member Dr. Nazim.

In regard to the Interior Ministry Archives, Aziz Bey (former director of General Security), revealed that Talât Pasha, the interior minister, prior to fleeing the country, took suitcases of documents, information and reports, and burned them.

The only archives which are open are the Prime Ministerial Archives. These archives are limited to a small group of selected historians who a priori have demonstrated their support of Turkish government’s genocide denialist narrative. Furthermore, researchers are allowed only 25 documents per day, which severely limits the ability to work there.

Recently, Mehmet Sait Uluisik, a German citizen of Turkish origin, was banned from entering Turkey to carry research in the Prime Minister’s Ottoman archives on the role of Circassians in the Armenian Genocide. The Circassians were armed and funded by the government of Turkey.

Thus to claim Turkish archives are open to scholars is inaccurate. The critical archives pertaining to the Armenian Genocide are not in the archives, while the available ones are of limited access.

The accusation that Armenians refuse to dialogue with Turks is another myth.

Numerous attempts have been made by the Armenian Government and the Armenian Diaspora to dialogue with Turks. These attempts have failed because of the Turkish Government’s intransigent and unreasonable conditions. The Turkish Armenian Reconciliation Commission (TARC) is a prime example. Turkish and Armenian members of TARC agreed to submit the arbitration of the Armenian Genocide issue to a third party–the International Centre for Transitional Justice (ICTJ). When ICTJ’s report concluded that what happened to the Armenians in Ottoman Turkey was a classic case of genocide and fulfilled four out of five conditions set by the UN Genocide Convention, the Turkish government pulled the plug on TARC by asking its Turkish members to withdraw from the commission.

In response to the Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s letter to the President of Armenia, to establish a “joint group of historians… to study … the events of 1915,” Robert Kocharian, the President of Armenia, on April 25, 2005, replied by saying: “Your [Erdogan[ suggestion to address the past cannot be effective if it deflects from addressing the present and future, in order to engage in a useful dialogue, we need to create the appropriate and conducive political environment..in that context, an intergovernmental commission can meet to discuss any and all outstanding issues between our two nations.”

The Turkish Government did not respond to the Armenian Government’s positive approach to solve this issue. On April 11, 2006, the Foreign Minister of Armenia Vartan Oskanian, reminded the Turkish Government and the international community that “we remain amazed that a letter sent by president Kocharian to Prime Minister Erdogan… remains simply ignored because the Turkish authorities did not like the response contained therein, and do not wish to broaden the scope of dialogue beyond histology.”

More recently, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Armenian Parliament organized a conference in the Armenian Parliament on Turkish Armenian relations. Among the invitees were Turkish professor Yusuf Halacoglu (president of Turkish Historical Society), Sedat Laciner (director of International Strategic Research Institute), former Turkish Ambassador Omer Engin Lutem (head of the Armenian Studies Institute of the Eurasian Strategic Research Center), Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ali Babacan, and Dr. Can Paker (Turkey’s special representative for relations with the European Union). None of the Turkish invitees attended this important and unique conference. The Turkish side missed a golden opportunity to meet Armenian politicians, historians and scholars to discuss relations between the two neighboring nations.

The Speaker of the Armenian Parliament, Tigran Torosian, voiced his concern that Turkey’s decision not to participate in the discussions would not contribute to dialogue between the two nations.

The above examples clearly show that Turkish government’s manipulative offer of dialogue with Armenians is akin to the neo-Nazis’ suggestion of an independent, objective historical commission to determine whether the Holocaust took place or the Flat Earth Society’s offer to hold an academic dialogue with National Geographic about the true shape of the earth.

If the Turkish Government does not allow its citizens, historians and intellectuals to freely discuss the issue of the Armenian Genocide in Turkey, and prosecutes them under article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code, how can one take its offer of dialogue with Armenians and the creation of “historians commission” seriously?

The Canadian Armenian community does not bear any animosity towards the Canadian Turkish community. On the contrary, we sympathize with the members of the Turkish-Canadian community and Turks in general, particularly when they have been mislead for too long and denied their own history, by the Turkish Government.

We are hopeful the Turkish Government halts its campaign of falsification of history and focuses on the Genocide issue without hysteria, racism, nationalistic fanaticism and that the Turkish people will acknowledge the misdeeds of their predecessors and extend a hand of friendship to the Armenian people.

Ardash Amroyan

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.

Turkic countries issue false statements on Armenian Genocide

20.11.2007
PanARMENIAN.Net

The summit of friendship, fraternity and cooperation of Turkic countries issued a Baku Statement on the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire in 1915-1923. The statement says in part that “attempts of parliamentarians of some states to express an erroneous attitude about historical events are nothing but a preconceived approach to the entire Turkic world.”

Turkic states claim that statements about the Armenian Genocide do not base on the historical truth. “Armenia did not respond to Turkey’s official proposal to open archives and form a joint Turkish-Armenian commission of historians,” the document says.

The authors furnish absolutely false data as regards the Armenian population in Turkey in the early 20th century. “Some 150 thousand of Armenians lived on the Turkish territory at that period. Historical facts, documents and evidence of witnesses prove that the events taken place in 1915-1918 were conditioned by hostilities between the Turkish army and Armenian armed unites, which yielding to Russia and some western states stabbed Turkey in the back… Armenians brutally killed over 2 million of Turks.”

Concluding the statement, the authors emphasize that “bringing these facts to the notion of the international community, we once again state that investigation in historical disputes is the business of historians but not politicians,” Bakinsky Rabochy newspaper reports.

According to the data of the Constantinople Patriarchate of the Armenian Apostolic Church about 2.5 million if Armenians lived in six vilayets of Western Armenia. 1.5 million of Armenians lived in Istanbul, Izmir and other major cities. In February 1915 the Young Turks triumvirate adopted a secret directive on deportation and slaughter of the Armenian population of Turkey. Over 1.5 million of Armenians were killed, many died of starvation and diseases.

! Reproduction in full or in part is prohibited without reference to «PanARMENIAN.Net».

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.

Experts respond to Turkey's Prime Minister on the Armenian genocide question

Nov 06, 2007
Medill Reports Washington
by Mrinalini Reddy

Erdogan below presents the refinement of Genocide denial. No one is fooled Erdogan. It is just a shame to the conscience of this world that it lets Turkey bully this world carying a gun on its belt. Where is justice in this world?

WASHINGTON -- Turkey’s Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan was in Washington Monday to meet with President Bush to discuss mounting tensions between the Turks and Kurdish rebel factions in Northern Iraq.

Also on the agenda was the Armenian genocide resolution which passed in the House Foreign Affairs Committee last month. The Medill News Service spoke with two experts who have challenged Turkey’s position on the Armenian question and asked them to respond to Erdogan’s comments.

Turkish scholar Taner Akçam, author of “A Shameful Act : The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility,” is one of the first Turkish academics to acknowledge and discuss openly the killings of Armenians by the Ottoman Turkish government in 1915.

Edward Alexander is a retired U.S. Foreign Service officer and author, born in New York to Armenian parents who fled Turkey.

Erdogan: "Our documents indicate that there is no genocide that has taken place. Those who claim it must prove it. Having simple lobbying activities and trying to achieve a result in this way is unacceptable to Turkey. "

Alexander: "The evidence is overwhelming and to many Armenians, it is utterly preposterous for anyone, especially the Turkish government, to deny what is historical truth. For my research, one of my sources was the German press. My other source was the cables that were sent to Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, the U.S. ambassador in Turkey at the time of the genocide. These are documents that cannot be refuted. In addition, I did research eye-witness reports in Merseburg, Germany."

Akçam: "Our Prime Minister is wrong because we can prove the genocidal intent without any problems. One set of documentation are the trials in Istanbul between 1919 and 1921. These are the indictments, verdicts, hand-written testimonies and eye-witness accounts which were recorded during that time. There is a lot of evidence here showing the killing of the Armenians. The originals of these documents are not known. We assume that they have been destroyed after Turkish nationalists took over Istanbul. [Turkish officials] only trust the documents in prime ministerial archive today in Istanbul. I can show very easily, based on prime ministerial archives, the genocidal intent of Ottoman Turkey. I will publish a book in the Turkish language in 2008 where I am presenting more than 500 documents from prime ministerial archives in Istanbul."

Erdogan: "What took place was called deportation because that was a very difficult time....Given the context of the time and the events that took place, there was provocation by some other countries and the Armenians became part of the rebellion in those years."

Alexander: "One of the newer arguments that they are raising now is that it was the Armenians who attacked the Turks. This is ridiculous. How the Armenians would have done this, having been disarmed, calls for a great stretch of the imagination."

Akçam: "The argument says there were Armenian uprisings. It is simply a lie. The deportations were taking place before any Armenian uprising. There was only one incident in April 1915 and the deportation decree occurred at the end of March. They were individual Armenian deserters and even Armenians were against them. Not only were Armenians deported from eastern Anatolia, they were deported from the entire Anatolia, despite being totally integrated into the Turkish life."

Erdogan: "I wrote a letter to President Kocharian [Republic of Armenia] in 2005. We have suggested the establishment of a joint historical commission and we said that we would make available all documents in our archives…. We aim to reach a common understanding of this painful period in our history, but I still, to date, have not received a response to my letter in 2005."

Alexander: "The position of the Armenian government has always been that they want to have diplomatic relations with Turkey, with no pre-existing conditions. However, the Turkish government did not accept this and laid down its own conditions: 1) the Armenian Diaspora should stop talking about the genocide 2) Armenia and the Azerbijani government should declare peace."

Akçam: "It is a good suggestion. If there is a problem you cannot solve, you have to find ways to talk to each other. First, you need diplomatic relations. How can you establish a commission without even talking? Turkey has pre-conditions for diplomatic relations, which Armenia does not want."

Erdogan: "It is my sincere wish that the US Congress does not keep this resolution and does away with the discussion of this resolution altogether."

Alexander: "This doesn’t surprise me. There is a very strong feeling in the Congress that this may not be the best time to bring up the resolution because of the Iraq/Kurdish situation. The main thing is that it should not be shelved. You have scholars at the International Association of Genocide Scholars come up with the same conclusion. It is simply a move on the part of Turkey to delay the resolution in the hope that eventually those who are true survivors will have died and their offspring, like myself, will be so elderly. I am 87. Turks are hoping that time will weaken the arguments and memory."

Akçam: "The U.S. resolution does and does not matter. It doesn’t matter because it will be a psychological victory, but won’t really solve anything. It does matter because Turkey must understand that threatening with its political strategic power will not solve its list of problems. For instance, Turkey cannot become a member of the European Union if talking about history is a crime."

Erdogan: "This is a problem of the Armenian Diaspora. They are looking for a way to create some sort of benefit for itself and this is what they have found. If this works, then they look to achieve some gains from it. If not, the world will have lost a lot of time."

Alexander: "I don’t know what the gains would be. We are asking only for justice."

Akçam: "It is a stupid distinction to think that there is a difference between Armenians and Armenians in the Diaspora. They are all asking that the perpetrator must face their history."

The distinction is only in the mind of Turkey trying to pit Armenia against its Diaspora while it is blockading Armenia. What a low game to play. Turkey's attitude towards Armenians has not changed which in effect proves that the genocide has been committed and still continues.

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.

Genocide and Holocaust Deniers Must be Condemned, Not Honored

Nov. 8, 2007
Sassounian's column
By Harut Sassounian
Publisher, The California Courier

It goes without saying that those who deny any genocide must be condemned, not honored. There should be no exceptions and no double standards. Yet, periodically, one comes across bizarre situations when those who engage in genocide denial are rewarded rather than ostracized by none other than those who condemn Holocaust denial.

Last month, the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, traveled to Armenia to discuss bilateral trade and review major projects being undertaken by the two countries. After meeting with Armenia’s leaders, the Iranian President visited Yerevan State University (YSU) where he gave a brief talk to students and answered their questions. He carefully sidestepped the issue of the Armenian Genocide, by simply stating that Iran condemns all crimes against humanity. Following the established protocol for all visiting heads of state, YSU officials dutifully handed Ahmadinejad an honorary doctorate and a gold medal. Apparently, no one at the University bothered to make an independent assessment of whether the visiting dignitary deserved to be honored or not. In October 2006, when the President of Romania visited Yerevan, he too was presented an honorary doctorate and a gold medal by YSU, even after he told university students that he was not prepared to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide in order not to ruin his country’s friendly relations with Turkey.

Last month, after YSU hosted Ahmadinejad, various Jewish groups condemned the Armenian University for honoring the Iranian President, a notorious Holocaust denier.
Rima Varzhapetyan, the President of the Jewish community of Armenia, was the first to criticize YSU. Contrary to some American Jewish groups, she is fully entitled to do so, as she does not practice a double standard. Indeed, Ms. Varzhapetyan properly and even-handedly condemns all genocide and Holocaust deniers. Hence, she has earned the moral right to criticize such wrongdoing by her Armenian countrymen.

Other Jewish groups, however, have abdicated that right. Both the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) issued statements last week condemning YSU for honoring Ahmadinejad. It is highly improper and unethical for the AJC to criticize YSU, given AJC’s refusal to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide and its collaboration with Turkey’s denialist regime. This is an egregious example of a double standard. Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones at others. AJC’s leaders have lost the moral standing to lecture anyone else about the denial of the Holocaust. Therefore, their criticism of YSU cannot be taken seriously.

Even more dubious is the position of Abraham Foxman, ADL’s National Director. After refusing to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide for many years, Foxman was recently forced by influential and righteous Boston-area Jewish leaders to issue a statement that included a reference to the Armenian Genocide. Even more surprising is the fact that Foxman dared to criticize YSU for honoring Ahmadinejad, yet he himself presented Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Prime Minister of Turkey and a denier of the Armenian Genocide, ADL’s "Courage to Care Award" back in 2005 at the organization’s headquarters in New York.

It is noteworthy that some members of the Jewish community were quick to criticize Foxman’s actions. Molly Freeman, a reader from Berkeley, California, sent a letter to the editor of The Forward, harshly condemned the ADL for presenting an award to Erdogan.

In her letter titled, “ADL acts hypocritically in honoring Turkish PM," Freeman wrote: "So egregious is the ADL award to a head of a state that denies responsibility for the annihilation of 1.5 million of its own Armenian citizens that I believe the ADL is contributing to antisemitism. What could be more hypocritical and useful to anti-Jewish bigotry than honoring a denier of genocide? The ADL is not making the world safe for Jews; rather it is contributing to our insecurity and to the discontinuity of our moral tradition. I wish that the ADL would take seriously the words of Hillel: What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. This is the whole Torah; all the rest is commentary. In the case of the award to Erdogan, the ADL is actually denying a cornerstone of rabbinic law as it dishonors its neighbors, the Armenians. By rewarding Erdogan, it is doing something it never would countenance to be done to Jews."

A similarly shameful double standard was exhibited by yet another Jewish group, the American Jewish Congress, which honored Erdogan in 2004 with its "Profiles in Courage" award in New York.

Two Armenian American newspapers, the Armenian Weekly and the Armenian Reporter, in their editorials last week rightly criticized YSU for giving an award to Ahmadinejad. However, both newspapers should have also condemned the ADL and the American Jewish Congress for honoring Turkey’s denialist Prime Minister.

Condemning the denial of the Holocaust should not be a one-way street. There should not be a double standard. The Armenian Weekly’s editorial correctly pointed out that Ahmadinejad and Erdogan have made similar calls for more research to find out whether these atrocities have in fact occurred – a call that is shamefully supported by the ADL and others in the case of the Armenian Genocide, but not the Holocaust. Just as Armenian-American organizations never question the Holocaust, Jewish groups should never question the facts of the Armenian Genocide.

Jews and Armenians and everyone else should apply the same standard in dealing with genocide and Holocaust denial. No one should get away with denying either tragedy and no group should honor anyone who dishonors the memory of the victims of such crimes against humanity.

Jews, Armenians : « Solidarity for the befallen »

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9Pv89pykC0

Commentaries: Editorial: Anger in Ankara, the Israeli Lobby to the Rescue

Monday, October 22, 2007
greek_news
By George Gregoriou

The whole world knows it was genocide but are tiptoeing around Turkey for fear of offending their national ego. How long will this last? George says "This rewarding of Turkish arrogance and denial of the genocide, in the service of US imperial interests, cannot be sustained at the expense of a long list of victims who happened to be in the strategic pathways of controlling the oil resources of the world and the global economy."

The wolves are showing their teeth. Why the anger? It is only a non-binding vote in the Foreign Relations Committee. It is not a recognition that genocide was committed against the Armenians in 1915. The New YorkTimes, for the first time, referred to the Armenian genocide of 1915 to 1918! That was a few days {years?} ago. Today, 10/13/07, there was more on the 1915 genocide. How about the genocide from the 1870s to 1920s? But, there is no need to worry. There is no chance of its being voted in the U.S. Congress. The most powerful lobby in the United States, the Israel lobby, will not allow it. This lobby is so powerful, anyone running for office, for the presidency or Congress, must have the seal of approval from the Jewish lobby or that person is politically finished. Remember how Hilary embraced Mrs. Arafat and the two-state solution and then had to re-embrace the agenda of the Israeli government? These zigzags are the real policies, just opportunism. The principles are for the voters.

[...]

These troubles are just the beginning. This axis of denial (Ankara, Washington, Jerusalem, and London) cannot carry on forever. The chickens are coming home to roost. This axis is already unraveling, in Iraq, the Middle East, and the Islamic world. It will continue to unravel because the policies will remain the same, and anti-Americanism {wilol increase} throughout the world.

[...]

**George Gregoriou
Professor, Critical Theory and Geopolitics

***Special Note: Professor Gregoriou is part of a team of writers researching and writing a manuscript on the genocide in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey. The contribution already submitted is on “The Genocide of the Greeks in Anatolia and the Politics of Turkish Denial.” This manuscript is being prepared for publication in Europe in the near future.

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.

Genocide Deniers

Oct 21, 2007
History News Network, WA -
By Scott Jaschik

Mr. Jaschik is one of the three founders of Inside Higher Ed, where this piece first appeared. With Doug Lederman, he leads the editorial operations of Inside Higher Ed, overseeing news content, opinion pieces, resources, and interactive features. Scott is a leading voice on higher education issues, quoted regularly in publications nationwide, and publishing articles on colleges in publications such as The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, Salon, and elsewhere.

In the buildup to the vote by a House of Representatives committee officially calling for U.S. foreign policy to recognize that a genocide of Armenians took place during World War I, at the behest of the “Young Turk” government of the Ottoman Empire, a flurry of advertising in American newspapers appeared from Turkey.

The ads discouraged the vote by House members, and called instead for historians to figure out what happened in 1915. The ads quoted such figures as Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, as saying: “These historical circumstances require a very detailed and sober look from historians.” And State Department officials made similar statements, saying as the vote was about to take place: “We think that the determination of whether the events that happened to ethnic Armenians at the end of the Ottoman Empire should be a matter for historical inquiry.”

Turkey’s government also has been quick to identify American scholars (there are only a handful, but Turkey knows them all) who back its view that the right approach to 1915 is not to call it genocide, but to figure out what to call it, and what actually took place.

Normally, you might expect historians to welcome the interest of governments in convening scholars to explore questions of scholarship. But in this case, scholars who study the period say that the leaders of Turkey and the United States — along with that handful of scholars — are engaged in a profoundly anti-historical mission: trying to pretend that the Armenian genocide remains a matter of debate instead of being a long settled question. Much of the public discussion of the Congressional resolution has focused on geopolitics: If the full House passes the resolution, will Turkey end its help for U.S. military activities in Iraq?

But there are also some questions about the role of history and historians in the debate. To those scholars of the period who accept the widely held view that a genocide did take place, it’s a matter of some frustration that top government officials suggest that these matters are open for debate and that this effort is wrapped around a value espoused by most historians: free and open debate.

“Ultimately this is politics, not scholarship,” said Simon Payaslian, who holds an endowed chair in Armenian history and literature at Boston University. Turkey’s strategy, which for the first 60-70 years after the mass slaughter was to pretend that it didn’t take place, “has become far more sophisticated than before” and is explicitly appealing to academic values, he said.

“They have focused on the idea of objectivity, the idea of ‘on the one hand and the other hand,’ ” he said. “That’s very attractive on campuses to say that you should hear both sides of the story.” While Payaslian is quick to add that he doesn’t favor censoring anyone or firing anyone for their views, he believes that it is irresponsible to pretend that the history of the period is uncertain. And he thinks it is important to expose “the collaboration between the Turkish Embassy and scholars cooperating to promote this denialist argument.”

To many scholars, an added irony is that all of these calls for debating whether a genocide took place are coming at a time when emerging new scholarship on the period — based on unprecedented access to Ottoman archives — provides even more solid evidence of the intent of the Turkish authorities to slaughter the Armenians. This new scholarship is seen as the ultimate smoking gun as it is based on the records of those who committed the genocide — which counters the arguments of Turkey over the years that the genocide view relies too much on the views of Armenian survivors.

Even further, some of the most significant new scholarship is being done by scholars who are Turkish, not Armenian, directly refuting the claim by some denial scholars that only Armenian professors believe a genocide took place. In some cases, these scholars have faced death threats as well as indictments by prosecutors in Turkey.

Those who question the genocide, however, say that what is taking place in American history departments is a form of political correctness. “There is no debate and that’s the real problem. We’re stuck and the reality is that we need a debate,” said David C. Cuthell, executive director of the Institute for Turkish Studies, a center created by Turkey’s government to award grants and fellowships to scholars in the United States. (The center is housed at Georgetown University, but run independently.)

The action in Congress is designed “to stifle debate,” Cuthell said, and so is anti-history. “There are reasonable doubts in terms of whether this is a genocide,” he said.

The term “genocide” was coined in 1944 by Raphael Lemkin, a Jewish-Polish lawyer who was seeking to distinguish what Hitler was doing to the Jews from the sadly routine displacement and killing of civilians in wartime. He spoke of “a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves.” Others have defined the term in different ways, but common elements are generally an intentional attack on a specific group.

While the term was created well after 1915 and with the Holocaust in mind, scholars of genocide (many of them focused on the Holocaust) have broadly endorsed applying the term to what happened to Armenians in 1915, and many refer to that tragedy as the first genocide of the 20th century. When in 2005 Turkey started talking about the idea of convening historians to study whether a genocide took place, the International Association of Genocide Scholars issued a letter in which it said that the “overwhelming opinion” of hundreds of experts on genocide from countries around the world was that a genocide had taken place.

Specifically it referred to a consensus around this view: “On April 24, 1915, under cover of World War I, the Young Turk government of the Ottoman Empire began a systematic genocide of its Armenian citizens — an unarmed Christian minority population. More than a million Armenians were exterminated through direct killing, starvation, torture, and forced death marches. The rest of the Armenian population fled into permanent exile. Thus an ancient civilization was expunged from its homeland of 2,500 years.”

Turkey has put forward a number of arguments in recent years, since admitting that something terrible did happen to many Armenians. Among the explanations offered by the government and its supporters are that many people died, but not as many as the scholars say; that Armenians share responsibility for a civil war in which civilians were killed on both sides; and that the chaos of World War I and not any specific action by government authorities led to the mass deaths and exiles.

Beyond those arguments, many raise political arguments that don’t attempt to deny that a genocide took place, but say that given Turkey’s sensitivities it isn’t wise to talk about it as such. This was essentially the argument given by some House members last week who voted against the resolution, saying that they didn’t want to risk anything that could affect U.S. troops. Similarly, while Holocaust experts, many of them Jewish, have overwhelmingly backed the view that Armenians suffered a genocide, some supporters of Israel have not wanted to offend Turkey, a rare Middle Eastern nation to maintain decent relations with the Israel and a country that still has a significant Jewish population.

Dissenters or Deniers?

Probably the most prominent scholar in the United States to question that genocide took place is Bernard Lewis, an emeritus professor at Princeton University, whose work on the Middle East has made him a favorite of the Bush administration and neoconservative thinkers. In one of his early works, Lewis referred to the “terrible holocaust” that the Armenians faced in 1915, but he stopped using that language and was quoted questioning the use of the term “genocide.” Lewis did not respond to messages seeking comment for this article. The Armenian National Committee of America has called him “a known genocide denier” and an “academic mercenary.”

The two scholars who are most active on promoting the view that no genocide took place are Justin McCarthy, distinguished university scholar at the University of Louisville, and Guenter Lewy, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Both of them are cited favorably by the Turkish embassy and McCarthy serves on the board of the Institute of Turkish Studies.

McCarthy said in an interview that he is a historical demographer and that he came to his views through “the dull study of numbers.” He said that he was studying population trends in the Ottoman Empire during World War I and that while he believes that about 600,000 Armenians lost their lives, far more Muslims died. “There’s simply no question,” he said, that Armenians killed many of them.

The term genocide may mean something when talking about Hitler, McCarthy said, “where you have something unique in human history.” But he said it was “pretty meaningless” to use about the Armenians. He said that he believes that between the Russians, the Turks and the Armenians, everyone was killing everyone, just as is the case in many wars. He said that to call what happened to the Armenians genocide would be the equivalent of calling what happened to the South during the U.S. Civil War genocide.

So why do so many historians see what happened differently? McCarthy said the scholarship that has been produced to show genocide has been biased. “If you look at who these historians are, they are Armenians and they are advancing a national agenda,” he said. Cuthell of the Institute for Turkish Studies said that it goes beyond that: Because the Armenians who were killed or exiled were Christians (as are many of their descendants now in the United States), and those accused of the genocide were Muslims, the United States is more sympathetic to the Armenians.

Lewy said that before he started to study the issue, he too believed that a genocide had taken place. He said that intellectuals and journalist “simply echo the Armenian position,” which he said is wrong. He said that there is the “obvious fact” that large numbers of Armenians were killed and he blamed some of the skepticism of Turkey’s view (and his) on the fact that Turkey for so long denied that anything had taken place, and so lost credibility.

In 2005, the University of Utah Press published a book by Lewy that sums up his position, Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide. Lewy’s argument, he said in an interview, “is that the key issue is intent” and that there is “no evidence” that the Young Turks sought the attacks on the Armenians. “In my view, there were mass killings, but no intent.” Lewy’s argument can also be found in this article in The Middle East Forum, as can letters to the editor taking issue with his scholarship.

The Evidence for Genocide

Many scholars who believe that there was a genocide say that Lewy ignored or dismissed massive amounts of evidence, not only in accounts from Armenians, but from foreign diplomats who observed what was going on — evidence about the marshaling of resources and organizing of groups to attack the Armenians and kick them out of their homes, and the very fact of who was in control of the government at the time.

Rouben Adalian, director of the Armenian National Institute, called the Lewy book part of an “insidious way to influence Western scholarship and to create confusion.” He said it was “pretty outrageous” that the Utah press published the book, which he called “one of the more poisonous products” to come from “those trying to dispute the genocide.”

John Herbert, director of the University of Utah Press, is new in his job there and said he wasn’t familiar with the discussions that took place when Lewy submitted his book. But he said that “we want to encourage the debate and we’ve done that.”

Notably, other presses passed on the book. Lewy said he was turned down 11 times, at least 4 of them from university presses, before he found Utah. While critics say that shows the flaws in the book, Lewy said it was evidence of bias. “The issue was clearly the substance of my position,” he said.

Of course the problem with the “encouraging the debate” argument is that so many experts in the field say that the debate over genocide is settled, and that credible arguments against the idea of a genocide just don’t much exist. The problem, many say, is that the evidence the Turks say doesn’t exist does exist, so people have moved on.

Andras Riedlmayer, a librarian of Ottoman history at Harvard University and co-editor of the H-TURK e-mail list about Turkish history, said that in the ’80s, he could remember scholarly meetings “at which panels on this issue turned into shouting matches. One doesn’t see that any more.” At this point, he said, the Turkish government’s view “is very much the minority view” among scholars worldwide.

What’s happening now, he said, outside of those trying to deny what took place, “isn’t that the discussion has diminished, but that the discussion is more mature.” He said that there is more research going on about how and why the killings took place, and the historical context of the time. He also said that he thought there would be more research in the works on one of “the great undiscussed issues of why successive Turkish governments over recent decades have found it worthwhile to invest so much political capital and energy into promoting that historical narrative,” in which it had been “fudging” what really happened.

Among the scholars attracting the most attention for work on the genocide is Taner Akçam, a historian from Turkey who has been a professor at the University of Minnesota since 2001, when officials in Turkey stepped up criticism of his work. Akçam has faced death threats and has had legal charges brought against him in Turkey (since dropped) for his work, which directly focuses on the question of the culpability of Young Turk leaders in planning and executing the genocide. (Akçam’s Web site has details about his research and the Turkish campaigns against him.) Opposition to his work from Turkey has been particularly intense since the publication last year of A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility.

In an interview, Akçam said that his next book — planned for 2008 — may be “a turning point” in research on the genocide. He is finishing a book on what took place in 1915 based only on documents he has reviewed in Ottoman archives — no testimony from survivors, no documents from third parties. The documents, only some of which he has written about already, are so conclusive on the questions Turkey pretends are in dispute, he said, that the genocide should be impossible to deny.

To those like Lewy who have written books saying that there is no evidence, “I laugh at them,” Akçam said, because the documents he has already released rebut them, and the new book will do so even more. “There is no scholarly debate on this topic,” he said.

The difficulty, he said, is doing the scholarship. In the archives in Turkey, he said, the staff are extremely professional and helpful, even knowing his views and his work. But he said that he has received numerous death threats and does not feel safe in Turkey for more than a few days, and even then must keep a low profile. As to legal risks, he said that laws on the books that make it illegal to question the Turkish state on certain matters, are inconsistently enforced, so while he has faced legal harassment, he generally felt that everything would work out in the end. But Akçam is well known, has dual German-Turkish citizenship, and a job at an American university, and he said those are advantages others do not have.

He plans to publish his next book first in Turkey, in Turkish, and then to translate it for an American audience.

Another scholar from Turkey working on the Armenian genocide is Fatma Müge Göçek, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Michigan. Until she came to Princeton to earn her Ph.D., Göçek said that she didn’t know about the Armenian genocide. For that matter, she said she didn’t know that Armenians lived in Turkey — “and I had the best education Turkey has to offer.”

Learning the full history was painful, she said, and started for her when Armenians she met at Princeton talked to her about it and she was shocked and angry. Upon reading the sorts of materials she never saw in Turkey, the evidence was clear, she said.

Göçek’s books to date have been about the Westernization of the Ottoman Empire, but she said she came to the view that she needed to deal with the genocide in her next book. “I have worked on how the Ottoman Empire negotiated modernity,” she said, and the killings of 1915 are part of “the dark side of modernity.”

So the book she is writing now is a sociological analysis of how Turkish officials at the time justified to themselves what they were doing. She is basing her book on the writings these officials made themselves in which they frame the issue as one of “the survival of the Turks or of the Armenians” to justify their actions. While Göçek will be focusing on the self-justification, she said that the diaries and memoirs she is citing also show that the Turkish leaders knew exactly what they were doing, and that this wasn’t just a case of chaos and civil war getting out of hand.

Göçek said she was aware of the harassment faced by Akçam and others from Turkey who have stated in public that a genocide took place. But she said scholars must go where their research leads them. “That is why one decides to become an academic — you want to search certain questions. If you do not want to, and you are not willing to, you should go do something else.”

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.

The Art of Denial: Turkey’s evolving denials of the Armenian Genocide

28 November 2007
ArmeniaNow.com, Armenia
By Dr. Rouben Adalian
Director, Armenian National Institute

Many across the Jewish community in the United States seemed to have breathed a sigh of relief when the influential Anti-Defamation League acknowledged the Armenian Genocide. The growing gap between public understanding of the historical events and the political concerns of the Jewish-American leadership over relations with Turkey had become untenable.

The longstanding policy of the Turkish government to deny the Armenian Genocide has suffered yet another embarrassment. Virtually everywhere the Armenian diaspora has a presence it has had its voice heard by local communities and host governments. With one major exception, the United States, twenty countries have on record formally recognized the Armenian Genocide.

It is no secret that the Jewish community has been divided over the issue of U.S. recognition of the Armenian Genocide. To curry favor with Turkey on behalf of Israel’s security and strategic interests, most key organizations representing the Jewish-American community in Washington have supported the Turkish Embassy’s lobbying strategies to hinder approval of congressional resolutions. Of course they are not alone in opposing such legislation. The Departments of State and Defense have also consistently disagreed with proposed congressional resolutions on the argument that relations with Turkey would be harmed. There is no real evidence that relations between Turkey and the United States would rupture as nothing of the sort has happened upon recognition by other countries. Nor can it be argued that a relationship built upon a half-century long United States - Turkey alliance is so shaky that it can be undone by one congressional resolution. Still the debate continues.

What is apparent through all this is the failure of the Turkish government to convince the rest of the world of its position on the events of 1915, That position, which only twenty-years years ago was unchallenged is now viewed as inconsistent with the facts and offensive in its propositions. How far Turkey has retreated is evident in the continuously evolving denial arguments manufactured somewhere in Ankara. As one case after another was discredited, more arguments were contrived. Even the politicians in Turkey have lost sight of where their government started and where it has ended up.

Turkey’s starting point was complete denial that anything out of the ordinary had occurred in Armenia in 1915. At best a program to relocate Armenians from the war zone with Russia was allowed and Ankara argued that this was done out of humane consideration for the benefit of the Armenians in order to remove them from harm’s way. This absurd line of argument proving too ludicrous to maintain for long was replaced with another arguing that wartime conditions precipitated the resettlement of the Armenians because they had become an unreliable population.

Heatedly denying the commission of atrocities, in the face of the growing evidence that began to be issued mostly retrieved from official archival sources, the enormous loss of life suffered by the Armenian population begged an explanation. First the theory of epidemics was promoted, attributing the death to passive causes. Then the theory of wartime military exigency and the lack of sufficient manpower to oversee the wholesale relocation of the Armenians was advanced, and thereby shifted the blame for the casualties to lawless elements and especially unruly Kurds. Finally a civil war was posited to deal with the matter of the scale of the atrocities. As dismissal of the evidence attesting to such could no longer be sustained, the denials began insidiously to imply that Armenians invited the calamity upon their own heads and got what they deserved by taking up arms. The argument also ignored the logic that if there was a civil war then there might have been legitimate cause for people to defend themselves. The blame was laid upon the victims for starting the conflict, ignoring the fact that the Ottoman state had fully equipped armed forces and Armenians constituted a largely unarmed civilian population.

When all failed, a country that had always prided itself in its military might contrived the strangest defense yet. If it is true that Armenians were subjected to genocide, the Turks were the victims of genocide also, a bizarre combination of admission and accusation that possibly made facing the historical evidence more palatable.

The pressure upon the public, the media and academia inside and outside Turkey to sustain these rationalizations only delayed the reckoning that was occurring in many quarters all across the globe. As the scholarship on the Armenian Genocide grew and improved, skepticism in academia retreated, so much so that a mere handful nowadays defends the official Turkish version of events. That scholarship proved rigorous enough to raise questions in the mind of Turkish academics. For a brief moment in 2005 they dared convene a conference in Istanbul to address the issues and possibly usher in a new beginning in the debate over the Armenian Genocide. In response prosecutors invoked Article 301 of the Turkish penal code criminalizing reference to the Armenian Genocide. Then the assassination in January of 2007 of the outspoken Hrant Dink, who was motivated by honorable intentions, spread fear and silenced those who had dared challenge the system.

Dink was allowed a public funeral and even the Turkish media conceded its shock upon the demise of man who never advocated violence and who passionately strived to cure some of the sources of the hatred that poisoned relations between Armenians and Turks. The reality of an independent Armenian state symbolized for him a new scope of possibilities and the Turkish media had found in him an interlocutor who could help explain the rancor and offer remedies.

In some small way perhaps the Turkish government thought that it could ease the situation by announcing the re-opening of the renovated Church of the Holy Cross, more simply known as Akhtamar, one of the very rare still intact places of worship once venerated by Armenians.

However, the occasion of the re-opening of Akhtamar was squandered by the lack of coordination with the Armenian community in Turkey and by the hoisting of the national flag and a giant poster of Ataturk upon the entrance to the church. Everyone is entitled to raising the flag of their country upon an appropriately positioned mast, but the hanging of a giant portrait of Ataturk where people once worshiped the Deity bespoke of the vast distance remaining between Armenians and Turks. The Turkish authorities may have wanted to leave the impression they had permitted the renovation of an Armenian church, and certainly they allowed the media to spread that notion widely. What they actually announced was the formal secularization of the onetime church as a museum and as a tourist site, and in so doing stressed less its renovation and more its appropriation as a Turkish cultural heritage site.

Finally, there is a long way to go before a common language is shared by Armenians and Turks. One thing is certain, however, the vindication of the memory of the Armenian Genocide has made men and women of conscience take note, and governments to take heed, and for some Turks to take steps toward a rapprochement that does not discard the acknowledgement of the Armenian Genocide that caused so much loss and so much injustice.

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.

Genocide Controversy Leads L.A. Times Managing Editor To Resign

Armenian National Committee of America
Western Region
104 N. Belmont, Suite 208, Glendale, CA 91206 * Tel. (818) 500-1918
Fax. (818) 246-7353 * Email.ancawr@anca.org

PRESS RELEASE

For Immediate Release ~ 2007-06-29
Contact: Haig Hovsepian ~ Tel: (818) 500-1918

Genocide Controversy Leads L.A. Times Managing Editor To Resign

Los Angeles, CA – After escalating criticism from the Armenian American community for his role in obstructing an article on the Armenian Genocide this April and his discriminatory behavior against Armenian American reporters, Los Angeles Times Managing Editor Douglas Frantz has resigned effective July 6th and will be returning to Istanbul, reported the Armenian National Committee of America-Western Region (ANCA-WR).

This past April Frantz “killed” a story on the Armenian Genocide that was written by Armenian American Los Angeles Times reporter Mark Arax. Frantz had erroneously accused Arax (who recently left the paper) of having a “conflict of interest” regarding reporting on the Armenian Genocide and had also circumvented the standard editorial process for reviewing articles. A subsequent internal investigation by the Times deemed Frantz’s accusations to be completely baseless.

This past April, the ANCA led a grassroots campaign to raise awareness regarding Frantz’s actions. Over 5,000 activists responded to an ANCA action alert and sent emails and letters calling for Frantz’s resignation. In addition, the ANCA-WR, California Courier Publisher Harut Sassounian and other community representatives met with the publisher and senior Los Angeles Times management on multiple occasions during the last several months to convey the community’s outrage regarding Frantz’s discriminatory actions.

“Doug Frantz’s resignation from the Los Angeles Times is an appropriate answer to his unprofessional behavior and anti-Armenian posture in the newsroom,” remarked ANCA-WR Board member Zanku Armenian. “The Los Angeles Times is a fine newspaper and deserves better than to have a genocide denier as a member of its senior staff. The fact that Frantz is returning to Istanbul tells the full story of where he stands.” he added.

Frantz’s activities and pro-Turkish positions have been monitored over the course of his many assignments at different newspapers and most recently in May when he moderated a panel in Istanbul that featured a well-known genocide denier. The Armenian National Committee of America-Western Region (ANCA-WR) worked with a coalition of individuals to bring to light the situation that had developed at the Los Angeles Times after Frantz more overtly revealed his anti-Armenian position with his actions against Mark Arax. Sassounian had highlighted the Frantz controversy in several columns that appeared in the California Courier and a host of other news websites. Sassounian was also instrumental in bringing to light Frantz’s involvement in the May conference held in Istanbul.

The Armenian National Committee of America is the largest and most influential Armenian American grassroots political organization. Working in coordination with a network of offices, chapters, and supporters throughout the United States and affiliated organizations around the world, the ANCA actively advances the concerns of the Armenian American community on a broad range of issues.

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.

Turkish Denier of Armenian Genocide Exposed!!!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=FmjzevJw6qo

Holdwater: The mysterious name behind the “premier” anti-Armenian website

Posted on June 6th, 2007 by Blogian.

By Taner Akçam

This article by Taner Akçam reveals who "Holdwater" the pseudonym for the webmaster of "Tall Armenian Tale" is. It is a shame to see how a person with such a vindictive nature towards Armenians can be accepted and quoted by many. He compares Armenians to rodents. His true name is Murad Gümen. He "is best known for his animation work. After making his own animated short 'Erased Off', he went on to work as an in-between on 'Raggedy Ann and Andy' in 1977. He wrote, directed, and produced the comedy-fantasy feature film, 'Wonderguy'. He has also worked as a writer, artist and illustrator. His work appeared in Crazy (Marvel), Ghostly Haunts (Charlton) and Cracked, as well as Playboy and Heavy Metal. He worked as a staff artist at the New York office of the Walt Disney Company in the 1980s" Here.

On July 27, 2005, the Yeni Şafak newspaper published an interview, “The Mysterious American Who Drives the Armenians Mad,” about an “interesting and unique” person who writes under the pseudonym Holdwater. “This mysterious American has been financing, for many years, a highly effective, U.S.-based Internet site,” Yeni Şafak reports. “The principal aim of Tall Armenian Tale: The Other Side of the Falsified Genocide is to provide substantial responses to the Armenian Diaspora’s claims of genocide.”

According to the newspaper, Holdwater, a New York native, was born in the 1950s to Turkish parents who had migrated to America in the 1940s and raised their son without teaching him a single word of Turkish. He champions the Turkish theses [denial of the Armenian Genocide] on his website at www.tallarmeniantale.com.

Holdwater says he uses a pseudonym because he is the target of threats and sabotage on a daily basis. “If I tell you my real name and you publish it in your newspaper,” he told Yeni Şafak, “trust me, within a few days neither my family harmony nor my good business nor my Internet site will still be in existence.”

While afraid to disclose his own name because his peace will be disturbed, Holdwater does not hold back from publishing the photographs of intellectuals such as Halil Berktay and Müge Göçek [of the Workshop for Armenian-Turkish Scholarship], and parading them as targets in his articles full of animosity and hatred. It is quite difficult to understand how someone who is afraid of being attacked can organize such ruthless campaigns of belligerence against others.

[...]

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.

Exclusive: Shameful Over Sensitivity

Gregg Bemis
Author: Gregg Bemis
Source: The Family Security Foundation, Inc.
Date: May 4, 2007

When truth surrenders to fears of insensitivity, there are dark days ahead. FSM Contributing Editor Gregg Bemis studies the absurd lengths to which “sensitivity” has gone, both in the U.S. and throughout the West. Isn’t it clear by now that cultural diversity is the opposite of inclusiveness? Gregg has answers.

Shameful Over Sensitivity
By Gregg Bemis

In England in the year 2000, Mr. Justice Gray wrote a 300-page opinion destroying David Irving’s ridiculous lawsuit against author Deborah Lipstadt for criticizing Irving’s insanity at denying the Holocaust. Now a school in England has shown the ultimate cowardice, or head in the sand if you prefer, by removing the Holocaust from the history curriculum of one of their schools. The reason: because the continued recognition and teaching of this monstrous black moment of history is “insensitive” to the feelings of Britain’s Muslim community who deny the occurrence of the Holocaust. What total rot!

What have we come to? It is bad enough that we have become so skittish that any truth that offends cannot be expressed verbally or in writing. Any action, no matter how innocently undertaken, if it offends is not allowed. I’m not talking about courtesy versus offensive rudeness. I’m talking about history and realities. When our Ambassador to Armenia inadvertently used the word “genocide” referring to a dark period in the history of Turkish Armenian relations, he was sacked. This is despite the fact that the U.S. Congress has from time to time had bills of recognition of the fact up for voting.

When I attended Stanford University what seems like 100 years ago, the student body, such as it was, was fully integrated and inter-related. Now the University in its fervent attempt to be politically correct, and to recognize diversity, has created “theme” houses and “theme” organizations thereby driving peoples and cultures into separate camps. This emphasizes dissimilarities rather than likenesses. Does this create harmony? No. Does this create acceptance of multi-cultures? No. It puts a premium on recognizing and supporting differences, separating not bringing together.

Does America resolve its current problems of integration and acceptance of minorities by ignoring our early history of abuse of Native Americans or of our participation in the slave trade? I don’t think so. In fact the honor we have bestowed on President Lincoln for his efforts to abolish slavery and hold the Union together play a major part in any history of America. And surely the special considerations we have bestowed on Native Americans, whether too much or too little, certainly do not derive from attempting to sweep our history under the rug.

Recently PBS has been doing a series on the Muslims, their culture and their religion. Two renowned videographers with encouragement from PBS produced an exemplary portrayal of the differences and conflicts between the moderate versus the extreme sides of the culture. The ever present, mind numbing, politically correct, left wing upper management faction at PBS killed it. Reportedly they didn’t want to offend the extremists. In what possible way is that helping to educate Americans or support the right to diverse thinking?

So, coming back to the United Kingdom, have things become so scary, so out of control in Britain that one of the greatest monstrosities of the 20th century has to be erased from the history books? The Holocaust was a fact, not a myth. In its calculation and practice, it was one of the most extreme examples of “man’s inhumanity to man”. This decision no longer to include this historical fact in the British school curriculum is a shocking reflection of how far under the tent the camel has pushed its nose. When truth surrenders to fears of insensitivity, there are dark days ahead indeed.


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.

Investigator Accuses Turkey of Tampering With Assyrian Mass Grave

4-27-2007
AINA
Source: Turkish Daily News
By Onur Burçak Belli

The author says "The date is a symbolic day for Armenians who commemorate "genocide" on that day, a characterization disputed by most Turkish and many international scholars."

Please read the "many international scholars" as a minority or a handful of scholars funded by Turkey. As for the "most" Turkish historians Turkey has the PCA 301 (the penal code that punishes insulting "Turkishness") to keep all the rest out.

Istanbul -- An investigation to clarify conflicting claims about the origins of a mass grave found near the city of Mardin last year in Turkey's southeast ended in disappointment this week as historians traded accusations and a Swedish expert denounced the excavation as an "expensive picnic."

The grave first came to light last October when villagers in the district of Nusaybin reported that they had found a mass grave near the village of Kuru. Turkish historians insisted that the grave dated back to Roman times while some Westerners claimed it could be a mass burial site of Armenians, killed around 1915 in a series of massacres that remain the subject of red hot controversy today.

After the weekly news magazine Nokta published photos of the site and international news agencies picked up the story, Sweden's Soderton University demanded an investigation.

Refusing collaboration:

Professor David Gaunt of Soderton, accompanied by Yusuf Halaçoglu, the President of the Turkish Association of Historians (TTK), arrived at the burial site together last Tuesday, April 24. The date is a symbolic day for Armenians who commemorate "genocide" on that day, a characterization disputed by most Turkish and many international scholars.

On examining the grave, Gaunt refused to collaborate with the Turkish historians. It had been tampered with since it was first uncovered, making it impossible to conclusively establish its origins or the circumstances of the human remains.

"I have some photos of the grave, dating back to October, when it was first found," Gaunt told the Turkish Daily News yesterday. "But the place I saw was totally different from the photos."If proving that the grave is not evidence of Armenian claims, it should have had serious protection, he said. However, it is "full of mud.""My impression is that this grave is one in which no scientific research can be carried out. The grave has undergone numerous changes so it is unrecognizable," he said.

Soil sample conflict:

The Turkish Association's Halaçoglu, however, said in response that no bones were removed from the place and that the change was due to natural factors such as rain. Gaunt in turn rejected that explanation, saying if indeed scientific standards of protection were used "then it could not have been affected by rain or anything else."The aim of this visit was to make a preliminary survey to establish whether the site is suitable for interdisciplinary investigations in the future by forensic medical experts, archaeologists, physical anthropologists and historians. If such a decision was taken, forensic experts would be engaged to assist the Turkish Historical Society and the Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation in their work.Noting that Roman pantheons have their own entrance, which was closed in the grave, Halaçoglu emphasized that the grave represents a typical Roman burial site.

It could not be a site, in his view, of alleged Armenian victims at the hands of the Ottoman Empire. He also chastised Gaunt for flippancy, saying if he is sincere about investigating genocide claims, he should have taken soil samples that could prove the history of the bones. He also recalled that Turkey has made an official proposal to Armenia to set up a joint commission of historians to study such disputed events and all sides should conduct their work impartially.Such impartiality is now impossible, an angry Gaunt argued: "They gave me a shovel to dig and get some soil and some little bones, which were impossible to work on and reach any scientific conclusion. It is an archeological site. The process should continue slowly and gently," he said "That was when I realized it was impossible to reach any scientific conclusion. Why should I get soil samples? What happened to those bones that are the real source for forensic research?"It could well be a Roman grave, he said, but the point was to examine the remains of 38 bodies there and that is now difficult if not impossible."Our intention was to understand how they got there, but I have heard that they were removed. I cannot accept the claim that mud filled the grave naturally," Gaunt explained.

Understanding the exact date:

David Gaunt also said it is scientifically impossible to understand the exact date from the bones. "It is not possible to say the exact date with scientific and chemical examinations. One can only merge the scientific outcomes with the stories of the local people. Then maybe one may have an answer close to reality."

Sait Yildiz, a Syriac local of Mardin, said Halaçoglu accused him of manipulating reality and misinforming the media. Yildiz was at the site with Gaunt and Halaçoglu the first time they went into the grave. "I was carrying the photographs taken at that time," Yildiz said. "A villager came to me, looked at the photos and confirmed that the grave looked like this the first time he discovered it," he added, explaining that villager was the one who first found the grave and reported it to the authorities.

The Swedish professor expressed his disillusionment, describing what happened as "childish."

"This is the most expensive picnic I have ever attended," concluded the professor.

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.

Stop denying the Armenian genocide

National Post (Canada)
April 27, 2007 Friday
National Edition

Imagine a country that denies the Holocaust.

Imagine that the same country insists that Jews were killed because they were disloyal to Germany and were also guilty of killing German soldiers during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

Bizarre? Fiendish? Ridiculous statements that do not deserve a response? Yet something very similar has been asserted for the past 92 years by Turkey. A recent example appeared in these pages recently ("Bridging the divide between Turkey and Armenia," Aydemir Erman, April 24). Despite countless books by genocide scholars, tons of documents in American, Austrian, British, French, German (Turkey's wartime ally) and Russian archives, eyewitness accounts and Western (including Canadian) newspaper reports, the Turkish government denies that in 1915 it committed a deliberate, government-organized genocide against Armenians. That genocide has also been acknowledged by the UN Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities.

The International Genocide Scholars Association (IAGS), in its 1997 convention, adopted a resolution unanimously reaffirming that: "The mass murder of over a million Armenians in Turkey in 1915 is a case of genocide which conforms to the statutes of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide."

The IAGS in its June 16, 2005, open letter to the Prime Minister of Turkey, put to rest the issue of an "historians" commission to study the Armenian Genocide when they declared: "We are concerned that you may not be fully aware of the extent of the scholarly and intellectual record on the Armenian Genocide and how this event conforms to the definition of the United Nations Genocide Convention. We want to underscore that it is not just Armenians who are affirming the Armenian Genocide but it is the overwhelming opinion of scholars who study genocide ... to deny [the Armenian Genocide] its factual and moral reality as genocide is not to engage in scholarship but in propaganda and efforts to absolve the perpetrator, blame the victims and erase the ethical meaning of this history."

On June 9, 2000, 126 Holocaust scholars, including author Elie Wiesel, published a statement in The New York Times affirming "that the World War I Armenian Genocide is an incontestable historical fact." Raphael Lemkin, who drafted the UN Convention on Genocide and coined the word Genocide in 1948, on many occasions cited the attempt to annihilate the Armenians as a clear case of genocide as defined by the UN Convention on Genocide.

In recent years, righteous Turks -- particularly scholars and journalists -- have spoken against their government's denial of the Armenian Genocide.

It's clear that what happened to the Armenians was not the result of "civil strife," "rebellion" or "military necessity," as Turkish governments have claimed. The Armenian Genocide was a state-sponsored and state-sanctioned plan. At a 1910 conference in Salonika, the Young Turks leader Talaat Pasha stated: "There can be no question of equality [for minorities] until we have concluded our task of Ottomanizing the empire." Three months later the Young Turks leadership approved Talaat's plan in a secret meeting.

The Turkish Government's attempt to divert the attention of the international community from recognition through disingenuous proposals, such as the creation of "historians commission," is a bankrupt strategy.

The reaffirmation of the Armenian Genocide serves to address the injustice that took place 92 years ago and to play a positive role in the healing process for Armenians. The reaffirmation is about condemning attempts to rewrite history.

Because of Turkey's refusal to face its dark past, the process of healing, which is essential to peace, has not begun for Armenians. As genocide scholars have said, the last act of genocide is the denial of that act.

- Aris Babikian writes for the Horizon Weekly and is a member of the Media Council of Canada.

UN complicit in genocide denial

The Toronto Star, Canada
April 16, 2007 Monday
EDITORIAL; Pg. A14

It's odd that Turkey's leaders have not figured out by now that every time they try to censor discussion of the Armenian genocide, they only bring wider attention to the subject and link today's democratic Turkey with the now distant crime.

More than 90 years ago, when Turkey was still part of the Ottoman Empire, Turkish nationalists launched an extermination campaign there that killed 1.5 million Armenians.

It was the 20th century's first genocide. The world noticed, but did nothing, setting an example that surely emboldened such later practitioners as Hitler, the Hutu leaders of Rwanda in 1994 and today's Sudanese president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir.

Turkey has long tried to deny the Armenian genocide. Even in the modern-day Turkish republic, which was not a party to the killings, using the word "genocide" in reference to these events is prosecuted as a serious crime. Which makes it all the more disgraceful that United Nations officials are bowing to Turkey's demands and blocking the scheduled opening of an exhibit at UN headquarters commemorating the 13th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide because it mentions the mass murder of the Armenians.

Ankara was offended by a sentence that explained how genocide came to be recognized as a crime under international law: "Following World War I, during which 1 million Armenians were murdered in Turkey, Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin urged the League of Nations to recognize crimes of barbarity as international crimes."

The exhibit's organizer, a British-based anti-genocide group, was willing to omit the words "in Turkey." But that was not enough for the UN's craven new leadership, and the exhibit has been indefinitely postponed.

It's odd that Turkey's leaders have not figured out by now that every time they try to censor discussion of the Armenian genocide, they only bring wider attention to the subject and link today's democratic Turkey with the now distant crime.

As for Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and his inexperienced new leadership team, they have once again shown how much they have to learn if they are to honourably and effectively serve the United Nations, which is supposed to be the embodiment of international law and a leading voice against genocide.

This is an edited version of an editorial that appeared Friday in the New York Times.

“Screamers” Serj Tankian and Carla Garapedian Denounce Cancellation of UN Genocide Exhibition Mentioning Armenians

April 10, 2007

LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Following the UN Secretary General’s request to remove a sentence referring to a million Armenians being murdered during the Ottoman Empire from the Aegis Trust exhibition “Lessons from Rwanda,” and the exhibition’s subsequent cancellation, Serj Tankian and Carla Garapedian have issued the following statement:

“We are very shocked by this decision by the Secretary General to remove mention of a historical event which is well-documented by thousands of official records of the United States and nations around the world, including Turkey’s wartime allies, Germany, Austria and Hungary; by Ottoman court martial records; and by eyewitness accounts of missionaries, diplomats and survivors; as well as decades of historical scholarship. In the U.S., President Bush has called the events the ‘forced exile and annihilation of approximately 1.5 million Armenians.’

“Elie Wiesel says denial is the last stage of genocide – this act of censorship by the Secretary General is effectively an act of appeasement to the very forces in Turkey that led to the recent death of Hrant Dink and the prosecution of Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk. Other writers and artists in Turkey are facing prison sentences today under Article 301 for wanting to speak openly about this issue. What message does this send to them? The reason why genocides have continued in the last century – from the Armenian genocide, to the Holocaust, Cambodia, Bosnia and Rwanda, to the genocide going on now in Darfur – is because the international community has not intervened to stop them. Sadly, the Secretary General’s decision to stop any mention of the antecedents to the Rwanda genocide is a blow to those who want to stop genocide now.”

Serj Tankian, songwriter, singer, poet, activist and lead singer of System of a Down, appears in the film “Screamers,” which traces the history of genocide in the last century, from the Armenian genocide, to the Holocaust, Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur. He was invited by the Aegis Trust to meet the Secretary General on Monday, along with “Screamers” director, Carla Garapedian. Aegis is co-sponsoring a screening of “Screamers” in the British Parliament, following its theatrical run in the U.S. and screening in the U.S. Library of Congress.

James Smith, Chief Executive of the Aegis Trust, wrote to Tankian and Garapedian explaining why Aegis wouldn’t submit to the Secretary General’s request, which followed a protest from the Turkish government. The sentence in dispute: “Following World War 1, during which one million Armenians were murdered in Turkey, Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin urged the League of Nations to recognize crimes of barbarity as international crimes.”

“Had we been asked to remove reference of atrocities to Jews because Germany objected, we would have been equally resistant,” said Smith. “We can’t apply one rule to some and not to others because the political wind in the UN is blowing against the Armenians,” he said. Removing the sentence would amount to a “denial of elementary facts.”

Garapedian added, “Perhaps the Secretary General should visit the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC, where another sentence is engraved on the wall – ‘Who remembers the Armenians?’ That was Hitler’s answer to why he could get away with murdering the Jews. Hitler used the Armenian genocide as a blueprint for the Holocaust. The Secretary General should also visit the Kigali Memorial Centre in Rwanda, which has become the focal point for national remembrance and education about the 1994 genocide. There, too, the Armenian genocide is commemorated. No one there is trying to bury the truth.”

Contacts
GS Entertainment Marketing Group
Steven Zeller, 323-860-0270
stevenzeller@gsemg.com

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.

Vigilance Pays off: New York Times Corrects ‘Massacre’ to ‘Genocide’

Sassounian's column of April 12, 2007
By Harut Sassounian
Publisher, The California Courier

The New York Times published a news article written by Sebnem Arsu of Istanbul and Brian Knowlton of Washington on March 30 with the following headline: “Planned House Vote on Armenian Massacre Angers Turks.” In the article, however, the term genocide was correctly used instead of massacre to refer to the planned mass killings of Armenians in 1915.

The reference to the Armenian Genocide as a massacre in the headline was a clear violation of the newspaper’s editorial guideline on this subject.

Several individuals immediately sent letters to the New York Times complaining about this deviation from policy.

Businessman Dan Magarian of Cincinnati, Ohio, sent several letters to NY Times executives on March 30, asking for "a proper and full correction."

Attorney Steven Sarfatti of Washington, DC also wrote to the NYT stating that "massacre" was "woefully inaccurate as a matter of demonstrated historical fact…. Your staff and editors have disappointed the readership. A prompt correction is indicated."

Janice Kamenir-Reznik, the President of Jewish World Watch, sent a letter on April 1 to the NYT blaming the newspaper for choosing "to equivocate on the fact that the Armenian people was the target and victim of genocide…. To fall into the trap so neatly laid by the Turks, by calling the genocide a massacre, is immoral and smacks of pandering to the Turks. It is time that Turkey own up to its past, just as Germany has owned up to its past. And, for sure, the New York Times should not fall into this trap again."

Doris V. Cross on behalf of Media Watch Armenia sent a lengthy letter to the NYT on April 3, questioning not only the headline but also the content of the article which devoted an "inordinate amount of space" to the opposition of the U.S. Departments of State and Defense and the Turkish government to the proposed congressional resolution on the Armenian Genocide.

Kathy Rose, an assistant editor at the Foreign Desk of the New York Times, sent the following reply to Dan Magarian on March 30: "We do not think that the story violates our policy. It clearly calls the killings a genocide, and its language was reviewed very carefully before publication. The use of the word massacre in the headline in no way contradicts the policy, nor suggests that the killings were not a genocide. We do understand your concern, but in this case, see no inconsistency with Times policy on the subject."

Magarian responded to Kathy Rose telling her: "Your editorial review should have been more sensitive to which term was used in the headline. In point of fact, many deniers of the Armenian Genocide prefer to use terms such as massacre or mass killings."

Magarian then sent a third letter to Ms. Rose challenging the newspaper’s use of the term "massacre" in the headline, and maintaining that this was a violation of the New York Times editorial policy. He once again asked that the NYT "officially and properly apologize for this gross error and print a suitable correction."

After several days of silence, the NYT published the following correction in its April 5, 2007 edition: "A headline on Friday [March 30] about a planned vote in Congress over the widespread killing of Armenians by the Ottoman Turkish government early in the 20th century incorrectly described the killings, in which 1.5 million Armenians died. It was genocide, not a 'massacre.'"

This was a welcome but unexpected development as Ms. Rose had insisted just a week earlier that the use of the term massacre, instead of genocide, in the headline of the March 30 NYT article, had not violated the newspaper’s policy.

Seeking an explanation for this change in heart, this writer contacted the editors of the NYT. Here is the reply of Craig R. Whitney, the Standards Editor of the NYT: "Dear Mr. Sassounian: I can explain what happened. Kathy Rose came to me, explained how she had answered complaints about the ‘Massacre’ reference in the headline, and asked me for my advice. I essentially overruled her, and she accepted that with grace. Had the headline been ‘Massacres,’ it might have been consistent with her explanation that the article made clear that it was about the Armenian genocide during the Ottoman Empire, but I felt that ‘Massacre’ muddied the facts and that we should bend over backward to correct the apparent misrepresentation of fact. So we ran the correction."

In a follow-up e-mail, this writer pointed out to Mr. Whitney that the use of "massacres" would have been just as wrong as "massacre." Mr. Whitney wrote back saying he agreed, "the headline should have said ‘Genocide.’"

This is a satisfactory conclusion to an unfortunate error by the NYT. Special appreciation should be expressed to all those who took the initiative to pursue this matter until a proper correction was published and the record was set straight. The editors of the NYT should also be thanked for graciously acknowledging their mistake. Hopefully, it won’t happen again, but readers should remain vigilant nonetheless.

UN exhibition postponed after Turkey objects to reference to Armenians

April 9, 2007
IHT
Source: The Associated Press

Below it mentions that James Smith, chief executive of the British-based Aegis Trust, which works to prevent genocide and helped organize the photo exhibition, said the U.N. Department of Public Information approved the contents and it was put up on Thursday.

Smith said the panel on the origin of genocide could have been done without referring to the Armenians.

But once the Armenian reference "was there and approved, we felt as a matter of principle you can't just go around striking things out. It is a form of denial, and as an organization that deals with genocide issues, we couldn't do that on any genocide, and we can't do this," he said.

Now Turkey has gone too far in imposing its denial on others. By doing so it is exposing itself to ridicule and impeding human rights.

UNITED NATIONS: A U.N. exhibition on the 1994 Rwanda genocide, scheduled to be opened Monday by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, has been postponed because of Turkish objections to a reference to the murder of a million Armenians in Turkey during World War I.

James Smith, chief executive of the British-based Aegis Trust, which works to prevent genocide and helped organize the photo exhibition, said the U.N. Department of Public Information approved the contents and it was put up on Thursday.

A Turkish diplomat complained about the reference to the Armenian murders, he said, and Armenia's U.N. Ambassador Armen Martirosyan went to see the new Undersecretary for Public Information Kiyotaka Akasaka and they agreed to remove the words "in Turkey."

Martirosyan said Akasaka invited him to the exhibition's opening, but late Sunday "I was informed that the opening would be postponed, or delayed, or even canceled." He blamed Turkish "censorship" and the country's refusal "to come to terms with their own history."

On Monday, the exhibition in the visitor's lobby had been turned around so it could not be seen by the public. Smith said he was still hoping for a diplomatic solution to the dispute.

"We are very disappointed about it because for us, this was meant to be about the Rwandan genocide, and the lessons from the Rwandan genocide," and to engage the secretary-general on the pledge by world leaders to protect civilians from genocide, war crimes and ethnic cleansing, which Smith said was not happening in Sudan's conflict-wracked Darfur region.

U.N. associate spokesman Farhan Haq confirmed Turkey complained about the exhibition, but he said "the basic concern" was that the review process for U.N. exhibitions, which takes into account "all positions," was not followed. He said there were other concerns which he refused to disclose.

"The exhibition has been postponed until the regular review process is completed," Haq said.

Smith told The Associated Press the exhibition refers to the Armenian murders to help explain the word "genocide," which was coined by Raphael Lemkin, a lawyer of Polish-Jewish descent. Lemkin was inspired by what happened to the Armenians and other mass killings, and campaigned in the League of Nations — the precursor of the United Nations — against what he called "barbarity" and "vandalism."

Historians estimate up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed by Ottoman Turks around the time of World War I, an event widely viewed by genocide scholars as the first genocide of the 20th century. Turkey, however, denies the deaths constituted genocide, saying that the toll has been inflated and that those killed were victims of civil war and unrest.

Smith said a small panel on Lemkin in the exhibit "says that during World War I a million Armenians were murdered in Turkey." It goes on to explain that Lemkin first used the word genocide in 1943, and then focuses on the Rwanda genocide, lessons from it, and the responsibility of the international community to prevent future genocides, he said.

Haq said "the U.N. hasn't expressed any position on incidents that took place long before the United Nations was established" after World War II.

"In any case, the focus during the anniversary of the Rwanda genocide should remain on Rwanda itself," he said.

Rwanda's genocide began hours after a plane carrying President Juvenal Habyarimana was mysteriously shot down as it approached the capital, Kigali, on April 6, 1994. The 100-day slaughter, in which more than 500,000 minority Tutsis were killed by Hutu extremists, ended after rebels ousted the extremist Hutu government that orchestrated the killings.

Smith said the panel on the origin of genocide could have been done without referring to the Armenians.

But once the Armenian reference "was there and approved, we felt as a matter of principle you can't just go around striking things out. It is a form of denial, and as an organization that deals with genocide issues, we couldn't do that on any genocide, and we can't do this," he said.

"If we can't get this right, it undermines all the values of the U.N. It undermines everything the U.N. is meant to stand for in terms of preventing (genocide)," Smith said. "You can't learn the lessons from history if you're going to sweep all of that history under the carpet. And what about accountability? What about ending impunity if you're going to hide part of the truth? It makes a mockery of all of this."

Haq said Ban planned to meet with Rwanda's U.N. ambassador late Monday, and he read a message from the secretary-general who recalled the "personal impact" of his visit to Rwanda last year to pay his respects to victims and survivors of the genocide.

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.