Arm enian Group Fights for Genocide Recognition
Student Organization Urges Bush to Acknowledge Disregarded History
By Eric Simons, Staff Writer
Published Wednesday, April 25, 2001

Issue 113
Volume 81

On April 24, 1915, according to Armenians, the Turkish Ottoman Empire begana
systematic genocide of Armenian people in Turkey.
By 1922, 1.5 million people had died. In 2001, only one country in the world,
France, has recognized the Armenian genocide.
Armenian students on campus spent Tuesday wearing black ribbons and talking
to students about Armenian history. The Armenian Student Organization (ASO),
which has approximately 100 members, also sponsored a lecture Sunday night.
The ASO wrote letters to President George Bush, urging him to act on a
campaign pledge and recognize the genocide.
`The U.S. fears that if they were to pass the resolution, it would cause bad
relations between them and the Turkish government,’ ASO member Edwin
DerOhanian said. `The Armenian National Committee is hoping GeorgeBush would
mention
something about the genocide. In his campaign he promised to do something to
pass a resolution to recognize the genocide.’
The government of Turkey still denies the murders, junior anthropology major
Patrick Galoustian-Shea said.
`The final act of genocide is the denial that the act ever existed.It’s not
something that someone would be proud to admit,’ he said. =80=9CThe Nazi party
did not get the satisfaction of denying the act. The way [the Armenian
genocide] is different is to this day, [the government of Turkey] does notadmit
that there was ever murder.’
The National Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., has devoted a temporary
exhibit to the Armenian genocide. Adolf Hitler is reported to have said, before
invading Poland, `Who remembers the Armenians today?’
Present-day Armenia, which covers only a portion of the traditional Armenian
land, is located near Turkey, east of the Mediterranean Sea. The area has
been Christian since the early fourth century when King Gregory the Illuminator
officially converted it. The Ottoman Empire, which became present-day Turkey,
accepted Islam in the mid-1500s.
Armenia became part of the Soviet Union in 1920 and became one of the Soviet
Republics in 1936. Turkey, which never allied with the USSR, stayed friendly
with the United States during the Cold War. This, Galoustian-Shea said, is
one of the reasons America has difficulty recognizing the genocide today.
The present government of Turkey says that in the early 20th-century war over
the land, both sides committed atrocities, but the killings did not rise to
the level of genocide.
`The denial is something that affects me today, affects me in class. When you
come to a university and the text is not read, it hurts me,’ Galoustian-Shea
said. `When I’m sitting in a class and the instructor refers to the land as
modern-day Turkey, which was Armenia for many years, independent, and you
have to swallow your own thoughts and words to finalize the grades for that
class, that hurts me.’
The Armenian Student Organization meets every other Thursday night at 8 in
the Goleta Valley Room of the University Center.