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
Internet:
PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 19, 2005
Contact: Elizabeth S. Chouldjian
Tel: (202) 775-1918
GENOCIDE SCHOLARS CALL ON TURKEY TO
END DENIAL OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
— ANCA Welcomes Open Letter by Leaders of the
International Association of Genocide Scholars
WASHINGTON, DC – The Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA)
has welcomed an open letter by leaders of the International
Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) calling on Turkey to end
its campaign of denial of the Armenian Genocide and urging the
Turkish government to accept responsibility for this crime against
humanity.
The open letter, dated April 6th and first reported by Bloomberg
News on April 14th, was signed by Robert Robert Melson, the
President of the IAGS; Israel Charny, Vice-President of the
Association, and; New York Times Best-Selling author Peter
Balakian, who holds the Donald M. and Constance H. Rebar Professor
of the Humanities at Colgate University. These scholars wrote in
response to Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan’s call for an “impartial
investigation” of the fate of the Armenians in Turkey in 1915.
“We very much appreciate the strong leadership, academic integrity,
and moral clarity of professors Melson, Charney, and Balakian in
challenging Prime Minister Erdogan’s cynical attempt to force an
artificial debate on an issue that is thoroughly documented and
universally accepted – except by the few remaining academic
mercenaries in the service of Turkey’s state-controlled
institutions,” said Aram Hamparian, Executive Director of the ANCA.
Speaking on behalf of the “the major body of scholars who study
genocide in North America and Europe,” the authors of the letter
noted that the “Armenian Genocide is abundantly documented by
thousands of official records of the United States and nations
around the world including Turkey’s wartime allies Germany, Austria
and Hungary, by Ottoman court-martial records, by eyewitness
accounts of missionaries and diplomats, by the testimony of
survivors, and by decades of historical scholarship.”
The letter went on to stress that, “there may be differing
interpretations of genocide – how and why the Armenian Genocide
happened, but to deny its factual and moral reality as genocide is
not to engage in scholarship but in propaganda and efforts to
absolve the perpetrator, blame the victims, and erase the ethical
meaning of this history.”
“We would also note that 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,” the letter continued. “We believe that it is clearly in
the interest of the Turkish people and their future as a proud and
equal participant in international, democratic discourse to
acknowledge the responsibility of a previous government for the
genocide of the Armenian people, just as the German government and
people have done in the case of the Holocaust.”
Commenting on the letter, Hamparian added: “Clearly, the
international pressure is growing on Turkey, and Ankara is finding
itself increasingly isolated in its campaign of genocide denial.
Unfortunately, rather than following the post World War II German
model of accepting responsibility – as suggested in this letter –
the Turkish government has responded, internally, by outlawing
discussion of the Armenian Genocide – through Section 306 of their
new penal code, and, abroad, in the form of aggressive, but
increasingly transparent, efforts to deny the truth, engage in
diversionary tactics, and escape justice for its crime.”
The full text of the letter is provided below.
#####
INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF GENOCIDE SCHOLARS
President: Robert Melson (USA)
Vice-President: Israel Charny (Israel)
Secretary-Treasurer: Steven Jacobs (USA)
Respond to: Robert Melson, Professor of Political Science Purdue
University, West Lafayette, IN 47907 USA
April 6, 2005
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan
TC Easbakanlik
Bakanlikir
Ankara, Turkey
FAX: 90 312 417 0476
Dear Prime Minister Erdogan:
We are writing you this open letter in response to your call for an
“impartial study by historians” concerning the fate of the Armenian
people in the Ottoman Empire during World War I.
We represent the major body of scholars who study genocide in North
America and Europe. We are concerned that in calling for an
impartial study of the Armenian Genocide you may not be fully
aware of the extent of the scholarly and intellectual record on
the Armenian Genocide and how this event conforms to the definition
of the United Nations Genocide Convention. We want to underscore
that it is not just Armenians who are affirming the Armenian
Genocide but it is hundreds of independent scholars, who have no
affiliations with governments, and whose work spans many countries
and nationalities and the course of decades. 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 ~V an unarmed Christian minority population. More
than a million Armenians were exterminated through direct killing,
starvation, torture, and forced death marches. Another million fled
into permanent exile. Thus an ancient civilization was expunged
from its homeland of 2,500 years.
The Armenian Genocide was the most well-known human rights issue of
its time and was reported regularly in newspapers across the United
States and Europe. The Armenian Genocide is abundantly documented
by thousands of official records of the United States and nations
around the world including Turkey’s wartime allies Germany, Austria
and Hungary, by Ottoman court-martial records, by eyewitness
accounts of missionaries and diplomats, by the testimony of
survivors, and by decades of historical scholarship.
The Armenian Genocide is corroborated by the international
scholarly, legal, and human rights community:
1) Polish jurist Raphael Lemkin, when he coined the term genocide
in 1944, cited the Turkish extermination of the Armenians and the
Nazi extermination of the Jews as defining examples of what he
meant by genocide.
2) The killings of the Armenians is genocide as defined by the 1948
United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the
Crime of Genocide.
3) In 1997 the International Association of Genocide Scholars, an
organization of the world’s foremost experts on genocide,
unanimously passed a formal resolution affirming the Armenian
Genocide.
4) 126 leading scholars of the Holocaust including Elie Wiesel and
Yehuda Bauer placed a statement in the New York Times in June 2000
declaring the “incontestable fact of the Armenian Genocide” and
urging western democracies to acknowledge it.
5) The Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide (Jerusalem), the
Institute for the Study of Genocide (NYC) have affirmed the
historical fact of the Armenian Genocide.
6) Leading texts in the international law of genocide such as
William A. Schabas’s Genocide in International Law (Cambridge
University Press, 2000) cite the Armenian Genocide as a precursor
to the Holocaust and as a precedent for the law on crimes against
humanity.
We note that there may be differing interpretations of genocide –
how and why the Armenian Genocide happened, but to deny its factual
and moral reality as genocide is not to engage in scholarship but
in propaganda and efforts to absolve the perpetrator, blame the
victims, and erase the ethical meaning of this history.
We would also note that 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.
We believe that it is clearly in the interest of the Turkish people
and their future as a proud and equal participant in international,
democratic discourse to acknowledge the responsibility of a
previous government for the genocide of the Armenian people, just
as the German government and people have done in the case of the
Holocaust.
Sincerely,
[signed]
Robert Melson
Professor of Political Science
President, International Association of Genocide Scholars
[signed]
Israel Charny
Vice President, International Association of Genocide Scholars
Editor in Chief, Encyclopedia of Genocide
[signed]
Peter Balakian
Donald M. and Constance H. Rebar Professor of the Humanities
Colgate University