Duke University, NC
Oct 14 2006
French Bill Harms Understanding of Armenian Massacre, Says Duke
Scholar Arrested for His Research on Killings
Note to Editors: Yektan Turkyilmaz can be reached for additional
comment at [email protected].
Durham, NC — A bill passed Thursday by the French National Assembly
that labels the World War I massacre of Armenians as `genocide’ hurts
the cause of those trying to educate Turkish citizens about the
tragedy, says a Duke University graduate student.
The Strange Case of Yektan Turkyilmaz: An International Incident
International
The student, Yektan Turkyilmaz, was detained in an Armenian KGB
detention center for several weeks without charges being filed in
2005 while studying the conflict’s history. Turkyilmaz was released
after several American leaders, including former U.S. Senate Majority
Leader Bob Dole and Senator Richard Lugar, chairman of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee, as well as Duke President Richard
Brodhead, urged Armenian officials to intervene in the matter.
`I would like to see the entire world community, including Turkey,
recognize what happened to the people in Armenia,’ said Turkyilmaz, a
graduate student in cultural anthropology at Duke. `But decisions
like this [by the French parliament] only fuel reactionaries in
Turkey, who use this as an example of Western animosity. It doesn’t
encourage discussion at all.’
Turkyilmaz, a Turkish citizen of Kurdish decent, said some Turkish
scholars are already seeking to shed light on the Ottoman killing of
Armenians, as evidenced by a conference last September on the topic.
`"People do this despite this infamous code in Turkey that penalizes
`insulting Turkishness,” he said. `We can call what happened to the
Armenians `genocide,’ `tragedy’ or `massacre;’ the point is we need
to learn what happened and educate people about it.’
The French bill `jeopardizes the position of progressive people in
Turkey,’ he said.
`I would totally understand it if it were a principled decision about
genocide everywhere, but this is more about disturbing Turkey than
learning about the Armenian tragedy,’ he said.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
