Armenian National Committee of America
888 17th St., NW, Suite 904
Washington, DC 20006
Tel: (202) 775-1918
Fax: (202) 775-5648
E-mail: anca@anca.org
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PRESS RELEASE
March 30, 2005
Contact: Elizabeth S. Chouldjian
Tel: (202) 775-1918

ANCA WARNS ARMENIAN AMERICAN COMMUNITY GROUPS
ABOUT TARC/ICTJ THREAT TO THE ARMENIAN CAUSE

WASHINGTON, DC – Responding to the Turkish government’s
increasingly aggressive campaign to deny justice for the Armenian
Genocide, the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) this
week circulated a letter warning all the leading Armenian American
organizations about the “quiet, but profoundly dangerous, campaign
by Turkey aimed at the very heart of our community’s struggle to
secure full recognition, proper commemoration, and a just
resolution of the Armenian Genocide.”

The full text of the two-page March 28th letter from ANCA Chairman
Ken Hachikian is provided below.

——————————————————————-

M E M O

To: Armenian American Organizations
From: Ken Hachikian, Chairman
Date: March 28, 2005
Re: TARC/ICTJ Report

I would like to convey to you our deep concern about a quiet, but
profoundly dangerous, campaign by Turkey aimed at the very heart of
our community’s struggle to secure full recognition, proper
commemoration, and a just resolution of the Armenian Genocide.

Successive U.S. administrations have sought to appease Turkey’s
sensitivities on this issue through the use of evasive wording each
April 24th and opposition to Congressional legislation on the first
genocide of modern history. We have, however, succeeded in
building Congressional opposition to Turkey’s policy of denial,
kept this issue on the U.S. legislative agenda, and, particularly
in light of the recent strains in U.S.-Turkish relations,
approached the critical mass necessary to overcome the opposition
to proper U.S. recognition of the Armenian Genocide. It is exactly
this momentum that is now being attacked by Turkey and its allies
in the Administration.

The Turkish government’s motivation in this matter is clear.
Recognizing the failure of its campaign of genocide denial, Ankara
has fallen back to exploring a position of acknowledgment without
consequences. These efforts enjoy the support of well-placed State
Department and Pentagon officials – adherents of outdated Cold War-
era thinking about the U.S.-Turkey relationship. These American
and Turkish officials have sought to create the false impression of
Armenian backing for this patently anti-Armenian undertaking by
securing the nominal support of a handful of Armenians. In this
way, they seek to disguise the true nature of their initiative and
to add a measure of undeserved credibility to a campaign crafted
specifically to deny justice to the Armenian people.

The main vehicle for the Turkish government’s effort toward this
end has been the discredited Turkish Armenian Reconciliation
Commission (TARC), a group substantially funded by the State
Department and rejected by Armenians worldwide. A study
commissioned several years ago by TARC is being used as an
instrument of this current “genocide without justice” campaign. It
should be noted that, although a New York-based group called the
International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) apparently
helped TARC identify an author for this study, the report was – at
ICTJ’s own admission – written entirely independently of the ICTJ.
Despite repeated requests for transparency, neither the ICTJ, nor
anyone affiliated with TARC has, so far, revealed the author or
authors.

This paper confirms the obvious: the systematic and deliberate
annihilation of 1.5 million Armenians is indeed a case of genocide
under the U.N. Genocide Convention. The anonymous author(s),
however, go on to find that the Armenian nation has no recourse
under the Convention. Although the report specifically states that
its scope is limited to the Genocide Convention alone and that it
does not endeavor to determine whether other international laws
were violated, it summarily rejects the application of the
Convention – the most comprehensive statutory expression of the
international community’s commitment to preventing and punishing
the crime of genocide – using poor documentation and analysis,
thereby substantially and materially prejudicing the ability of
Armenians to seek redress. There are many distinguished scholars,
including Dr. Alfred de Zayas, the former Secretary of the United
Nations Human Rights Committee, who disagree with this particular
conclusion and who argue persuasively that the Genocide Convention
is legally applicable to the Armenian Genocide.

The Turkish government and its surrogates are today aggressively
using this document to seek to escape responsibility for the
Armenian Genocide. Taking advantage of the veneer provided by the
token Armenian participation in TARC, they are seeking to create
the false impression that a meaningful segment of the Armenian
American community accepts the concept that Turkey should be
allowed to remain unaccountable for the genocide of the Armenians.
Simply put – the sponsors of TARC seek to manipulate elements of
the Armenian community into forfeiting all our rights and
compromising the future of our nation based on nothing more than a
cursory four-page analysis in a single, anonymously written,
seventeen-page report commissioned by a discredited Turkish
government-linked organization.

As the collective leaders of the Armenian American community, we,
of course, understand that the formula of “recognition without
consequences” of the Armenian Genocide lacks any moral or legal
basis. The present day Republic of Turkey is heir to the Ottoman
Empire, the beneficiary of the fruits of genocide, the architect of
an eight-decade long campaign of denial aimed at evading
accountability, and the entity currently eradicating our remaining
community and cultural presence in Turkey. As such, Turkey bears
full responsibility to make reparations and restitution to the
Armenian nation for the massacres, expropriation of property, and
the exile – for nearly a century – of our people from our ancestral
homeland of more than three thousand years.

The stakes could not be higher. We must, as a community, clearly
recognize the dangers presented by this threat, decisively reject
efforts to deny our rights, and recommit ourselves to the necessary
work of securing justice for our nation and people.