ROSS VARTIAN: “TURKEY SHOULD FACE FACTS OF HISTORY”

WASHINGTON, APRIL 6, NOYAN TAPAN. On March 22, Ross Vartian, Executive
Director of the Armenian Assembly of America, was interviewed by
Al Hurra TV network, an U.S. State Department sponsored TV network
broadcast to the Arabic speaking world. Mr. Vartian was given 90
seconds to answer the question: “Armenians claim that the Turks
committed genocide – what proof is there?” If his response was longer
than 90 seconds, it would have been edited. Mr. Vartian used the
full 90 seconds without going over that time limit. Below is Ross
Vartian’s response: “The U.S. National Archives contain thousands
of pages documenting the premeditated extermination of the Armenian
people. The official records of many other countries corroborate the
evidence gathered by U.S. diplomats, including Ottoman Turkey’s WW I
friends and foes. At the end of WW I, a Turkish Military Tribunal was
convened. The Prime Minister, the Minister of War, the Minister of the
Navy and the Minister of Education were declared guilty by unanimous
vote of the Tribunal. Adolph Hitler understood the world’s tendency
to not act on its moral outrage and to move on when he said on the
eve of his invasion of Poland, “Who, after all, speaks nowadays of
the annihilation of the Armenians.” Today a growing list of nations
and intergovernmental bodies has affirmed the facts of the Armenian
Genocide. Additionally, 126 Holocaust and Genocide scholars declared
the Armenian Genocide an incontestable fact, urged all democracies
to recognize this crime and called upon Turkey to do the same. The
International Center for Transitional Justice was asked to study the
applicability of the UN Genocide Convention to this crime against
humanity. It found that “the events, viewed collectively, can thus
be said to include all of the elements of the crime of genocide as
defined in the Convention.” Pope John Paul, Nobel Laureates Bishop
Desmond Tutu and Elie Weisel, and most recently renowned Turkish
novelist Orhan Pamuk, all have affirmed the truth. To enhance its
standing in the international community, to come to terms with its
genocidal legacy, and for the sake of its evolving democracy, Turkey
should face the facts of history”.