Genocide Book Pulled from High School Reading Lis

[MrHyeSev]

TORONTO (Globe and Mail)--A book about genocide has been pulled from the recommended reading list of a new Toronto public school course because of objections from the Council of Turkish Canadians.
Barbara Coloroso's Extraordinary Evil: A Brief History of Genocide was originally part of a resource list for an 11th grade history course entitled "Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity," set to launch across the Toronto District School Board this fall.
The book examines the Holocaust, which exterminated six million xxxs in the Second World War; the Rwandan slaughter of nearly one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 1994, and the Genocide of more than a million Armenians in 1895, 1909 and 1915-1923.
But a committee struck to review the course decided in late April to remove the book because "a concern was raised regarding [its] appropriateness.... The Committee determined this was far from a scrupulous text and should not be on a History course although it might be included in a course on the social psychology of genocide because of her posited thesis that genocide is merely the extreme extension of bullying," according to board documents.
Print Edition--Section Front
Director of education Gerry Connelly did not return calls seeking comment yesterday.
Coloroso, a best-selling author of parenting books, said she wasn't surprised her work was removed, given that "ever since the book came out, the Turks have mounted a worldwide campaign objecting to it, which is not surprising because of the denial of the genocide."
She said what upset her was not so much that her book had been pulled, but that it was replaced by works by Bernard Lewis and Guenter Lewy, who are ardent genocide deniers.
"I knew when I wrote Extraordinary Evil that I would anger some genocide deniers," she wrote to Connelly. "I am disappointed that a small group of people can bully an entire committee. ..."
The Council of Turkish Canadians gathered nearly 11,000 signatures on an online petition calling for changes to the course. Turkey denies the Genocide, claiming that they were the result of First World War casualties.
Aris Babikian, executive director of the Armenian National Committee of Canada, said Armenian-Canadians feel the course as it stands is headed "in the right direction."
"But we have some concerns about...the inclusion of Bernard Lewis and Guenter Lewy as reputable scholars. It will be unjust to the hundreds of scholars who have researched the Armenian genocide."



Very Sad.

[Mos]

Re: Genocide Book Pulled from High School Reading Lis

What can you do, it unfortunate, but when you have such a country dedicated to blurring the Armenian Genocide, and with the fact that not many countries give a xxxx about Armenia, but instead cling more to the lying but powerful Turkish country, we're taken out of the picture. Justice will be served one day, one day........մի օր......

[Siamanto]

Re: Genocide Book Pulled from High School Reading Lis

1 of 2

Genocide Denial Robs us of our Humanity

http://www.yenihayatnews.com/news/?p=112

Mayýs 15, 2008

"Yeni Hayat"
Canadian Turkish Newspaper
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 psycho logists.

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.[/b]

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.-
........
Ardash Amroyan

[Siamanto]

Re: Genocide Book Pulled from High School Reading Lis

2 of 2

Genocide Denial Robs us of our Humanity

http://www.yenihayatnews.com/news/?p=112

Mayýs 15, 2008

"Yeni Hayat"
Canadian Turkish Newspaper
Haber: Politika
....
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 Talt 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

[freakyfreaky]

Re: Genocide Book Pulled from High School Reading Lis

Additional criticism over TDSB's pulling of Coloroso's book. http://www.quillandquire.com/blog/in...#comment-80761

Gary A. Kulhanjian says:

Dear Madam or Sir:

The Armenian Genocide is an incontestable event in the history of the world. Yes, the Armenians were victims of the Ottoman Turks and thus those who survivied emigrated in what has become an Armenian diaspora. You don’t see any Turks who fled this catastrophe other than perpetrators who escaped from the trials held after World War I.

Ms.Coloroso’s book should be adopted by the Toronto School Board although there are many others also that can authenticate the Armenian Genocide along with the Archives of the United States and Great Britain.

Furthermore, an International Trial did not follow the first World War does not suggest that the crime perpetrated by the Ottoman Turks did not exist.
For ninety-three years, the state of Turkey has black-balled and black-mailed international organizations and the U.N. including inviduals states against their use of the words “Armenian Genocide.” TheTurkish state tribunals/trials at the end of World War I were a fiasco leaving the perpetrators and its successive governments without proper adjudication of their crimes against humanity. The Turkish state and its Ottoman predecessors have gained impunity for their actions. Turkey has led most nations in human rights violations and continues its charade of history and the facts were documented in the archives of its collaborators Germany and Austria-Hunagary in World War I.

Sincerely,
Gary A. Kulhanjian, Former Member New Jersey Holocaust Commission

[Siamanto]

Re: Genocide Book Pulled from High School Reading Lis

Armenian National Committee of Canada
Comité National Arménien du Canada
130 Albert St., Suite/Bureau 1007
Ottawa, ON
KIP 5G4
Tel./Tél. (613) 235-2622 Fax/Téléc. (613) 238-2622
E-mail/courriel:[email protected]

https://www.anccanada.org

PRESS RELEASE

June 3, 2008
Contact: Roupen Kouyoumjian

Toronto District School Board Reaffirms the Teaching of the Armenian Genocide

Toronto--At a special meeting on June 2 the Program and School
Services Committee (PSSC) of the Toronto District School Board (TDSB)
unanimously approved the recommendation of its Review Committee (RC)
and its Director to include the Armenian Genocide in its Grade 11
genocide curriculum. Turkish groups have, in the past six months,
lobbied against the inclusion of the Armenian Genocide in the Grade 11
curriculum. The PSSC recommendation now goes to the board's June 25th
meeting for final adoption.

At the beginning of the meeting, the committee provided 20 minutes
each for the Turkish and Ukrainian community representatives to make
an oral deputation in regard to their concerns about the curriculum.

The Council of Turkish Canadians (CTC) objected to the inclusion of
the Armenian Genocide in the curriculum and called for its
removal. Furthermore, CTC threatened to take legal measures to halt
the introduction of the curriculum if the board did not consent to the
CTC demand.

A representative of the Muslim Canadian Congress, Farzana Hassan,
turned the curriculum teaching issue to a religious crusade. She
accused the board and the Western world of religious bias. She made
similar accusations against Canadian media, specially the Globe and
Mail and the Toronto Star newspapers. Two Turkish parents also made
presentations.

Ukrainian community representatives commended the board for
introducing the "worthy program", but they objected to the omission of
the Ukrainian famine/genocide from the curriculum. They urged the PSSC
to reconsider the exclusion of the Ukrainian case.

In responding to a question from trustee Gerri Gershon, David Rowan,
associate director of TDSB, reassured the Ukrainian community that the
Ukrainian famine /genocide, even though it is not in the curriculum as
a separate unit on its own, it will be discussed and taught in many
forms during the curriculum teaching.

After the presentations, the committee unanimously voted to adopt the
recommendations without any changes.

Based on yesterday's meeting and the approval of the recommendations,
the Armenian Genocide will be part of the Grade 11 genocide curriculum
and it will be taught as one of the three case studies along with the
Holocaust and the Rwandan Genocide and as a separate unit.

In regard to Barbara Coloroso's book, Extraordinary Evil: A Brief
History of Genocide, even though it will not be required reading, it
will be included in the curriculum as resource material.

Representatives of the Armenian National Committee of Canada (ANCC),
the Greek and Cypriot communities, Zoryan Institute, the Armenian
Certified Teachers Association, the Armenian Community Centre of
Toronto, Armen Karo Student Association, the Armenian National
Committee of Toronto, and many other supporters of the curriculum
turned out in large numbers to attend the meeting.

ANCC President, Dr. Girair Basmadjian, commended the TDSB for
upholding its moral and ethical principles and for not wavering in the
face of unprecedented revisionist campaign to falsify and rewrite the
history of the Armenian Genocide. -By approving the recommendations,
TDSB proved that the Turkish government interference and manipulation
of academic institutions and its attempt to suppress freedom of
expression is a failed policy. We are confident the curriculum will
create better understanding between Turkish and Armenian students and
will help them rationalize their common history,- stated
Dr. Basmadjian

Aris Babikian, executive director of ANCC, criticized the Turkish
representatives who tried to use an educational forum to promote
unsubstantiated accusation against the Armenian community by
insinuating that Armenians are teaching hatred against Turks in their
churches, schools and community centres. -Once again, we would like to
emphasize that we do not have any conflict with the Canadian-Turkish
community. At issue is the Turkish government's denial policy. A
policy which Turkish ultranationalist are using to whip hysteria and
animosity between the two people. A policy which simply does not fit
with the school boards view of history, nor that of Canadians
generally,- said Babikian.

***********

The ANCC is the largest and the most influential Canadian-Armenian
grassroots political organization. Working in coordination with a
network of offices, chapters, and supporters throughout Canada and
affiliated organizations around the world, the ANCC actively advances
the concerns of the Canadian-Armenian community on a broad range of
issues.

------

Le CNAC est l'organisation politique canadienne-arménienne la plus
large et influentielle. Collaborant avec une série de bureaux,
chapitres et souteneurs à travers le Canada et des organisations
affiliées à travers le monde, le CNAC s'occupe activement des
inquiétudes de la communauté canadienne-arménienne.


Regional Chapters/Sections régionales

Montréal - Laval - Ottawa - Toronto - Hamilton - Cambridge -
St. Catharines - Windsor - Vancouver

http://groong.usc.edu/news/msg233754.html

[Siamanto]

Re: Genocide Book Pulled from High School Reading Lis

1 of 2

Assyrian International News Agency
June 6 2008


US Politicians, Scholars Helping Turkey Cover Up WWI Genocide

By David Holthouse

https://www.alternet.org

Early this year, the Toronto District School Board voted to require
all public high school students in Canada's largest city to complete a
new course titled "Genocide: Historical and Contemporary
Implications." It includes a unit on the Armenian genocide, in which
more than a million Armenians perished in a methodical and
premeditated scheme of annihilation orchestrated by the rulers of
Turkey during and just after World War I.

The school board members each soon received a letter from Guenter
Lewy, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of
Massachusetts, rebuking them for classifying the Armenian genocide in
the same category as the Holocaust. "The tragic fate of the Armenian
community during World War I," Lewy wrote, is best understood as "a
badly mismanaged war-time security measure," rather than a carefully
plotted genocide.

Lewy is one of the most active members of a network of American
scholars, influence peddlers and website operators, financed by
hundreds of thousands of dollars each year from the government of
Turkey, who promote the denial of the Armenian genocide -- a network
so influential that it was able last fall to defy both historical
truth and enormous political pressure to convince America's lawmakers
and even its president to reverse long-held policy positions.

Lewy makes similar revisionist claims in his 2005 book The Armenian
Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide and in frequent
lectures at university campuses across the country. Speaking at
Harvard University in March 2007, he chalked up the ghastly Armenian
death toll to "bungling misrule," and stressed that "it is important
to bear in mind the enormous difference between ineptness, even
ineptness that had tragic consequences" and deliberate mass murder.

"Armenians call the calamitous events of 1915-1916 in the Ottoman
Empire the first genocide of the twentieth century," he said. "Most
Turks refer to this episode as war time relocation made necessary by
the treasonous conduct of the Armenian minority. The debate on what
actually happened has been going on for almost 100 years and shows no
signs of resolution."

But it's not only Armenians calling the slaughter a genocide, and
there is no real debate about its essential details, according to the
vast majority of credible historians. Although Lewy's brand of
genocide denial is subtler than that of Holocaust deniers who declare
there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz, it's no less an attempt to
rewrite history.

"The overwhelming opinion of scholars who study genocide -- hundreds
of independent scholars, who have no affiliations with governments,
and whose work spans many countries and nationalities and the course
of decades -- is consistent," the International Association of
Genocide Scholars stated in a 2005 letter to the Turkish government.

"The scholarly evidence reveals the following: 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." Double Killing

Despite this clear consensus of experts, Turkey exerts political
leverage and spends millions of dollars in the United States to
obfuscate the Armenian genocide, with alarming success even at the
highest levels of government. Lobbyists on the Turkish payroll stymied
a Congressional resolution commemorating the genocide last fall by
convincing lawmakers to reverse their stated positions. Even President
Bush flip-flopped.

Revisionist historians who conjure doubt about the Armenian genocide
and are paid by the Turkish government provided the politicians with
the intellectual cover they needed to claim they were refusing to
dictate history rather than caving in to a foreign government's
present-day interests.

"This all happened a long time ago, and I don't know if we can know
whether it was a massacre or a genocide or what," said U.S. Rep. John
Murtha (D-Penn.) after changing his vote.

"The last thing Congress should be doing is deciding the history of an
empire [the Ottoman empire] that doesn't even exist any more," said
President Bush.



But experts in genocide saw things quite differently.
"Denial is the final stage of genocide," says Gregory Stanton,
president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars. "It
is a continuing attempt to destroy the victim group psychologically
and culturally, to deny its members even the memory of the murders of
their relatives. That is what the Turkish government today is doing to
Armenians around the world."

Last year, the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity issued a letter
condemning Armenian genocide denial that was signed by 53 Nobel
laureates including Wiesel, the famous Holocaust survivor and
political activist. Wiesel has repeatedly called Turkey's 90-year-old
campaign to cover up the Armenian genocide a double killing, since it
strives to kill the memory of the original atrocities.

He was hardly the first. As long ago as 1943, law professor Raphael
Lemkin, who would later serve as an advisor to Nuremburg chief counsel
Robert Jackson, coined the term "genocide" with the Armenians in mind.

Stanton, a former U.S. State Department official who drafted the
United Nations Security Council resolutions that created the
International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, spoke this April at a
United States Capitol ceremony honoring victims of the Armenian
genocide -- a ceremony held four months after the bill to commemorate
the slaughter was shot down.

"The U.S. government should not be party to efforts to kill the memory
of a historical fact as profound and important as the genocide of the
Armenians, which Hitler used as an example in his plan for the
Holocaust," Stanton said before an audience that included three
survivors of the Armenian genocide and more than 100 representatives
and senators.



Infiltrating the Academy
Efforts to kill the memory of the Armenian genocide began while
carrion birds were still picking over corpses in their desert
boneyards, with Turkey issuing a first official statement assuring the
world at large that no atrocities had occurred. Turkey's primary
strategy for denying the Armenian genocide since then has shifted from
blanket denial to disputing the death toll to blaming the massacres on
Kurdish bandits and a few rogue officials to claiming the Armenians
who died were enemy combatants in a civil war.

Turkey began intervening in the U.S. on behalf of denying the genocide
in the 1930s, when Turkish leaders convinced the U.S. State Department
to prevent MGM studios from making a movie based on the book The Forty
Days of the Musa Dagh because it depicted aspects of the Armenian
genocide.

In 1982, the government of Turkey donated $3 million to create the
Institute for Turkish Studies, a nonprofit organization housed at
Georgetown University that pushes a pro-Turkey agenda, including
denial of the Armenian genocide. Three years later, in 1985, Turkey
bought full-page advertisements in The New York Times, The Washington
Post and The Washington Times to publish a letter questioning the
Armenian genocide that was signed by 69 American scholars. All 69 had
received funding that year from the Institute for Turkish Studies or
another of Turkey's surrogates like the Ankara Chamber of Commerce, a
quasi-governmental agency in Turkey's capital city.

The Institute for Turkish Studies has since received sizable donations
from American defense contractors that sell arms to Turkey, including
General Dynamics and Westinghouse. Turkey continues to provide an
annual subsidy to support the institute. In 2006, the most recent year
for which tax records are available, the institute awarded $85,000 in
grants to scholars. Its chairman is the current Turkish ambassador to
the U.S., Nabi Sensoy.

The first unassailable evidence of the extent of the Armenian genocide
denial industry's reach in academic circles arrived in 1990 in an
envelope addressed to Robert Jay Lifton, a professor of psychology and
psychiatry at the City University of New York's Graduate Center and
John Jay College. It contained a letter signed by Nuzhet Kandemir, who
was then Turkey's ambassador to the United States, protesting Lifton's
inclusion of several passing references to the Armenian genocide in
his prize-winning book The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the
Psychology of Genocide. "It is particularly disturbing to see a major
scholar on the holocaust, a tragedy whose enormity and barbarity must
never be forgotten, so careless in his references to a field outside
his own area of expertise," Kandemir wrote. "To compare a tragic civil
war perpetrated by misguided Armenian nationalists, and the human
suffering it wrought on both Muslim and Christian populations, with
the horrors of a premeditated attempt to systematically eradicate a
people is, to anyone familiar with the history in question, simply
ludicrous."

There was nothing out of the ordinary about Kandemir's letter.
Academics who write about the Armenian genocide were then and still
are routinely castigated by Turkish authorities.

What Lifton found intriguing, however, was a second letter in the
envelope, which the Turkish ambassador had included quite by
accident. It was a memo to Kandemir from Near East historian Heath
Lowry, in which Lowry provided Kandemir with a point-by-point cheat
sheet on how to attack Lifton's book, which Lowry chummily referred to
as "our problem."

Lowry at the time was the founding director of the Institute for
Turkish Studies. He resigned that position in 1996 when he was
selected from a field of 20 candidates to fill the Ataturk Chair of
Turkish Studies at Princeton University, a new position in the Near
Eastern Studies department that was created with a $750,000 matching
grant from the government of Turkey.

Prior to joining the Princeton faculty, Lowry had never held a
full-time teaching position and had not published a single work of
scholarship through a major publishing house. As a result of that and
of what The Boston Globe described in 1995 as his work as "a long-time
lobbyist for the Turkish government," his appointment sparked a
firestorm of controversy. A protest group called Princeton Alumni for
Credibility published a petition decrying Lowry's appointment that was
signed by more than 80 leading scholars and writers, including Kurt
Vonnegut, Arthur Miller, Cornel West, Joyce Carol Oates and many
historians and experts in genocide.

Peter Balakian, the director of Colgate University's Center for the
Study of Ethics and World Societies and the author of The Burning
Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response, called Lowry "a
propagandist for a foreign government."

Speaking at a 2005 symposium at Princeton commemorating the 90th
anniversary of the Armenian genocide, Balakian posed a rhetorical
question: "Would a university want someone who worked with a neo-Nazi
group to cover up the Holocaust on their faculty?"

The relationship of Turkey to U.S. scholars promoting Armenian
genocide denial is similar to that of the oil industry to fringe
climatologists who dispute the reality of global warming. The cause
and effect relationship is murky. It's impossible to know for sure if
they're making the claims to get the money or getting the money
because they make the claims. And many of those who receive money from
the Institute of Turkish Studies do little or nothing to support the
government's version of what happened to its Armenian minority.

But a number of them certainly seem to, including Justin A. McCarthy,
a professor of history at the University of Louisville. McCarthy
claims that death tolls attributed to what he calls "this imaginary
Turkish plan" are grossly exaggerated and resulted from justifiable
wartime self-defense actions triggered by traitorous Armenians
conspiring with Turkey's enemies.

McCarthy also points out that Armenians massacred Turks on at least
one occasion before the "so-called Armenian genocide." In other words,
they had it coming. "The question of who started the conflicts is
important, both historically and morally important," McCarthy declared
in a 2005 speech before the Turkish Grand National Assembly. "In more
than 100 years of warfare, Turks and Armenians killed each other. The
question of who began the killing must be understood, because it is
seldom justifiable to be the aggressor, but is always justifiable to
defend yourself."

He continued: "If those who defend themselves go beyond defense and
exact revenge, as always happens in war, they should be identified and
criticized. But those who should be most blamed are those who began
the wars, those who committed the first evil deeds, and those who
caused the bloodshed. Those who began the conflict were the Armenian
nationalists, the Armenian revolutionaries. The guilt is on their
heads."
.......
By David Holthouse

https://www.alternet.org

http://www.aina.org/news/20080606042720.htm

[Siamanto]

Re: Genocide Book Pulled from High School Reading Lis

2 of 2

Assyrian International News Agency
June 6 2008


US Politicians, Scholars Helping Turkey Cover Up WWI Genocide

By David Holthouse

https://www.alternet.org

......
Enforcing the Turkish View
In France and Switzerland, it's a crime to deny the Armenian
genocide. In Turkey, it's a crime to affirm it.

Enacted in 2005, Article 301 of the Turkish penal code makes it
illegal for any citizen or resident of Turkey to give credence to the
Armenian genocide. Numerous journalists and scholars have been
prosecuted for "denigrating Turkishness" under that statute, beginning
with Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk, who was charged for stating, "A
million Armenians were killed in these lands." Turkish-Armenian
newspaper editor Hrant Dink was prosecuted three times for criticizing
the Turkish government's longstanding policy of denying the Armenian
genocide.

Where the law failed to silence Dink, bullets succeeded. He was gunned
down in front of his central Istanbul office last January by a Turkish
ultranationalist. Footage and photos later surfaced of the assassin
celebrating in front of a Turkish flag with grinning policemen.

Dink's friend and ideological ally Taner Akam, a distinguished Turkish
historian and sociologist on the faculty of the University of
Minnesota's Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, attended Dink's
funeral in Turkey, despite the considerable risk to his own
life. Akam, a leading international authority on the Armenian
genocide, was marked for death by Turkish ultranationalists following
the November 2006 publication of his book, A Shameful Act: The
Armenian Genocide and The Question of Turkish Responsibility. The book
is a definitive history based in large part on official documents from
Turkish government archives.

"It would be better for world peace and truth if sewer germs like you
were taken off the planet," went one of the dozens of anonymous
threats Akam continues to receive in Minnesota. "Pray that the devil
takes you away soon because otherwise you'll be living a hell on
earth. Who am I? You're going to find out, Taner, you're going to find
out."

Turkish ultranationalists have, in effect, targeted many other people
who, like Akam, affirm the genocide. Several of their websites include
home addresses, phone numbers and photos of these scholars.

Genocide deniers often disrupt Akam's lectures. In November 2006, a
gang of Turkish ultranationalists attacked him at a book signing at
City University of New York.

"Denial of the Armenian genocide has developed over the decades to
become a complex and far-reaching machine that rivals the Nazi Germany
propaganda ministry," says Akam. "This machine runs on academic
dishonesty, fabricated information, political pressure, intimidation
and threats, all funded or supported, directly or indirectly, by the
Turkish state. It has become a huge industry." Convincing Congress

Academia is one of two major American fronts in Turkey's campaign to
kill the memory of the Armenian genocide. The other is Congress.

As the only Muslim-dominated country in a troubled region to call the
U.S. and Israel its allies, Turkey wields significant political
influence that it uses to prevent the U.S. from joining 22 other
nations in officially recognizing the Armenian genocide as a
historical fact.

In 1989, the U.S. State Department released archived eyewitness
accounts that, according to State Department officials, showed that
"thousands and thousands of Armenians, mostly innocent and helpless
women and children, were butchered." That same year, a bill
commemorating the genocide was introduced in the U.S. Senate. But
Turkey responded by blocking U.S. Navy ships from entering
strategically important Turkish waters and by declaring a ban on all
U.S. military training operations on Turkish territory. The bill
quickly evaporated.

Last September, the matter came up again. The U.S. House Foreign
Relations Committee voted to bring a nonbinding resolution to the
floor of Congress condemning the mass murder of Armenians by Ottoman
Turks, placing the death toll at 1.5 million, and labeling the killing
a "genocide."

This time, Turkey responded by recalling its ambassador to the United
States and forecasting dire repercussions. "In the case that Armenian
allegations are accepted, there will be problems in the relations
between the two countries," warned Turkish President Abdullah Gul.

"Yesterday, some in Congress wanted to play hardball," said Egmen
Bagis, foreign policy advisor to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan. "I can assure you, Turkey knows how to play hardball."

The next day, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack apologized to
Turkey on behalf of the United States by issuing a statement
expressing "regret" for the committee's actions, which, he cautioned,
"may do grave harm to U.S.-Turkish relations and to U.S. interests in
Europe and the Middle East."

Defense Secretary Robert Gates added his opposition to the resolution
and pointed out that 70% of the air cargo sent to U.S. forces in Iraq
and 30% of the fuel consumed by those forces is delivered via
Turkey. President Bush, perhaps forgetting his campaign promise in
2000 to push for official recognition of the Armenian genocide if
elected president, also came out against the resolution.

While Turkish officials made threats, lobbyists paid by Turkey
delivered money to congressmen in the form of campaign and political
action committee donations. Louisiana representative Bobby Jindal (a
Republican who's now Louisiana's governor) and Mississippi
representative Roger Wicker (now a Republican senator representing
that state) both dropped their sponsorship of the resolution and began
speaking against it -- but only after receiving around $20,000 each
from former congressmen Bob Livingston, a Republican, and Richard
Gephardt, a Democrat, who now work for lobbying firms contracted by
Turkey to oppose any recognition of the Armenian genocide.

In 2000, while still in office, Gephardt had declared that he was
"committed to obtaining official U.S. government recognition of the
Armenian genocide." In 2003, he co-sponsored a resolution placing "the
Armenian genocide" in the company of the World War II Holocaust and
mass deaths in Cambodia and Rwanda that was voted down after a Turkish
lobbying blitzkrieg.

Since leaving office and accepting a $1.2 million-a-year contract to
lobby for Turkey, the former House majority leader has experienced a
profound change of heart. "Alienating Turkey through the passage of
the resolution could undermine our efforts to promote stability in the
theater of [Middle East] operations, if not exacerbate the situation
further," he wrote in an E-mail to the International Herald
Tribune. Last fall, as part of his efforts to help torpedo the
symbolic Armenian genocide resolution, Gephardt escorted Turkish
Ambassador Nabi Sensoy to meetings with Speaker of the House Nancy
Pelosi and other Democratic leaders.

Bob Livingston, whose firm has been paid more than $12 million by the
Turkish government since 1999, also pitched in. As part of the
lobbying effort last fall that U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), one
of the sponsors of the resolution, called "the most intense I've ever
seen," Livingston shepherded Turkish dignitaries from office to office
on Capitol Hill.

As another part of that campaign, the government of Turkey took out
full-page advertisements in major American newspapers calling upon the
members of Congress to "support efforts to examine history, not
legislate it." The ads featured a testimonial from Secretary of State
Condoleeza Rice -- "These historical circumstances require a very
detailed and sober look from historians" -- that implied that
historians have yet to seriously study the Armenian genocide.



More than 100 supporters of the resolution reversed their positions,
and H.R. 106 was voted down.

The government of Turkey has since continued to call for a
"historian's commission" of scholars to "study the facts of what
happened in 1915-1923." The proposed committee is marketed as a
high-minded quest for truth and reconciliation, a long overdue
arbitration of disputed history, and a chance to finally give equal
weight to both sides of the story.

But as the saying goes, a lie isn't the other side of any story. It's
just a lie.

"When it comes to the historical reality of the Armenian genocide,
there is no 'Armenian' or 'Turkish' side of the question, any more
than there is a 'xxxish' or 'German' side of the historical reality of
the Holocaust," writes Torben Jorgensen, of the Danish Center for
Holocaust and Genocide Studies. "There is a scientific side and an
unscientific side -- acknowledgement or denial."

By David Holthouse

https://www.alternet.org

http://www.aina.org/news/20080606042720.htm