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SPLC: WHAT WE ARE SEEING IS A DESPICABLE REWRITING OF HISTORY AIMED AT ABSOLVING PERPETRATORS OF MASS MURDER
PanARMENIAN.Net
04.06.2008 15:58 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ A network of U.S. scholars funded by the government
of Turkey is part of an energetic campaign to cover up the Turkish
genocide of as many as 1.5 million Armenians during World War I,
an effort that has found success in Congress and the White House,
according to the latest issue of the Southern Poverty Law Center's
Intelligence Report, released today.
As the SPLC told PanARMENIAN.Net, despite abundant documentation and
eyewitness accounts of the slaughter of Armenians by Turkey's Ottoman
government between 1915 and 1918, the current Turkish government
has paid lobbyists and funded the network of American academics,
many of whom dismiss or rationalize the killing. Genocide scholars
agree that the slaughter was, indeed, a genocide.
"What we are seeing is a despicable rewriting of history aimed
at absolving the perpetrators of mass murder and demonizing their
victims," said Mark Potok, editor of the SPLC's Intelligence Report,
a quarterly investigative journal that monitors the radical right.
"It is no different than the Holocaust denial of Nazi sympathizers
who claim there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz and Treblinka."
The cover story recounts a March 2007 event where Guenter Lewy,
a professor emeritus of political science at the University of
Massachusetts, told a Harvard University audience that the Turkish
government at the time may have been guilty of ineptness and "bungling
misrule" - but not genocide.
Lewy, one of the most active members of the network of academics,
has made similar revisionist claims in speeches at other campuses
and in his 2005 book, The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey:
A Disputed Genocide.
As early as 1985, Turkey bought full-page newspaper advertisements
to publish a letter questioning the genocide that was signed by 69
American scholars. All 69 had received funding that year from the
Turkish government or its proxies.
As the only Muslim-dominated country in a troubled region to call
the United States and Israel its allies, Turkey also has wielded
significant political influence in Washington. Last fall, lobbyists on
the Turkish payroll stymied a congressional resolution commemorating
the genocide by persuading more than 100 lawmakers to reverse their
positions. Even President Bush flip-flopped on a 2000 campaign promise
to back official U.S. recognition of the genocide.
"Denial is the final stage of genocide," Gregory Stanton, president
of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, told the
Intelligence Report. "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."
PanARMENIAN.Net
04.06.2008 15:58 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ A network of U.S. scholars funded by the government
of Turkey is part of an energetic campaign to cover up the Turkish
genocide of as many as 1.5 million Armenians during World War I,
an effort that has found success in Congress and the White House,
according to the latest issue of the Southern Poverty Law Center's
Intelligence Report, released today.
As the SPLC told PanARMENIAN.Net, despite abundant documentation and
eyewitness accounts of the slaughter of Armenians by Turkey's Ottoman
government between 1915 and 1918, the current Turkish government
has paid lobbyists and funded the network of American academics,
many of whom dismiss or rationalize the killing. Genocide scholars
agree that the slaughter was, indeed, a genocide.
"What we are seeing is a despicable rewriting of history aimed
at absolving the perpetrators of mass murder and demonizing their
victims," said Mark Potok, editor of the SPLC's Intelligence Report,
a quarterly investigative journal that monitors the radical right.
"It is no different than the Holocaust denial of Nazi sympathizers
who claim there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz and Treblinka."
The cover story recounts a March 2007 event where Guenter Lewy,
a professor emeritus of political science at the University of
Massachusetts, told a Harvard University audience that the Turkish
government at the time may have been guilty of ineptness and "bungling
misrule" - but not genocide.
Lewy, one of the most active members of the network of academics,
has made similar revisionist claims in speeches at other campuses
and in his 2005 book, The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey:
A Disputed Genocide.
As early as 1985, Turkey bought full-page newspaper advertisements
to publish a letter questioning the genocide that was signed by 69
American scholars. All 69 had received funding that year from the
Turkish government or its proxies.
As the only Muslim-dominated country in a troubled region to call
the United States and Israel its allies, Turkey also has wielded
significant political influence in Washington. Last fall, lobbyists on
the Turkish payroll stymied a congressional resolution commemorating
the genocide by persuading more than 100 lawmakers to reverse their
positions. Even President Bush flip-flopped on a 2000 campaign promise
to back official U.S. recognition of the genocide.
"Denial is the final stage of genocide," Gregory Stanton, president
of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, told the
Intelligence Report. "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."