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North Shore Sunday, MA

Letter: There is no other side to the Armenian genocide

Sunday, May 7, 2006

To the editor:

I am astounded that your paper has devoted an entire article ("The Turks talk back," April 28, 2006) to denial of the Armenian Genocide. This was an unhealthy and dangerous move that casts doubt into the minds of your readers about the veracity of this dark chapter in world history.

There is a fundamental difference between objective journalism and providing a platform for falsehoods and distortions in an attempt to portray "both sides" of an event in history. As with the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide is an established historical fact, and any attempt to exploit our First Amendment rights of "freedom of speech" to deny its reality is unethical, unacceptable and a deliberate effort to misrepresent history.

Noted Holocaust authority Dr. Israel Charny states that the denial of countless deaths of genocide is to "celebrate the deaths of the same victims and to intimate cynically that the doctrine of power which brought about their destruction is still in force, to be used when opportunity permits." He likens genocide denial to the murder of truth, reality, human memory and history, and identifies it as the "final chapter to mass murder."

Over the past 90 years the Turkish government has engaged in an active global campaign to deny the destruction of its Armenian population, completely ignoring the fact that no Armenians remain in lands they inhabited for three millennia. The irony in this is that the first post-WWI Ottoman Turkish government under Damad Ferid Pasha admitted to the systematic destruction of the Armenian people. Even Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of the modern Republic of Turkey, declared in a 1926 interview to theLos Angeles Examiner that the Young Turk Party "should have been made to account for the millions of our Christian subjects who were ruthlessly driven en masse, from their homes and massacred."

Subsequent Cold War affairs and the more recent geopolitical considerations in the Middle East have placed issues of human rights and justice such as the Armenian Genocide on the backburner. Fortunately, over the past several years, we have witnessed a reversal of such expedient policies in many societies and nations around the world, including some in Turkish society itself who challenge their government’s official policy of denial.

Dr. Taner Akcam, among the growing number of Turkish scholars who acknowledge the Armenian Genocide, puts it well when he says, "We must reflect on our history if we want Turkey to become a democracy."

Given such a positive inclination even in Turkish society itself against denial, it is deplorable that an American newspaper would contribute to a reverse trend in support of official Turkish government policy.

Harout H. Semerdjian
Boston

Harout Harry Semerdjian is the Director of Public Relations and Communications of the kNOw GENOCIDE Coalition. He holds an M.A. in History from UCLA and an M.A. in International Law & Diplomacy from The Fletcher School at Tufts University.

http://www2.townonline.com/lynnfield/opinion/view.bg?articleid=489194

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