REPORT: TURKEY ENTICES U.S. SCHOLARS, LAWMAKERS TO COVER UP WWI GENOCIDE
CBS 47
turkey-entices-us-scholars-lawmakers-to-cover-up-w wi-genocide,418387.shtml
June 3 2008
CA
MONTGOMERY, Ala., June 3 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — A network
of U.S. scholars funded by the government of Turkey is part of an
energetic campaign to cover up the Turkish genocide of as many as 1.5
million Armenians during World War I, an effort that has found success
in Congress and the White House, according to the latest issue of
the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Report, released today.
Despite abundant documentation and eyewitness accounts of the slaughter
of Armenians by Turkey’s Ottoman government between 1915 and 1918,
the current Turkish government has paid lobbyists and funded the
network of American academics, many of whom dismiss or rationalize
the killing. Genocide scholars agree that the slaughter was, indeed,
a genocide.
"What we are seeing is a despicable rewriting of history aimed
at absolving the perpetrators of mass murder and demonizing their
victims," said Mark Potok, editor of the SPLC’s Intelligence Report,
a quarterly investigative journal that monitors the radical right. "It
is no different than the Holocaust denial of Nazi sympathizers who
claim there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz and Treblinka."
The summer 2008 issue of the Intelligence Report can be read at
The cover story recounts a March 2007 event where Guenter Lewy,
a professor emeritus of political science at the University of
Massachusetts, told a Harvard University audience that the Turkish
government at the time may have been guilty of ineptness and "bungling
misrule" — but not genocide. Lewy, one of the most active members
of the network of academics, has made similar revisionist claims
in speeches at other campuses and in his 2005 book, The Armenian
Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide.
As early as 1985, Turkey bought full-page newspaper advertisements
to publish a letter questioning the genocide that was signed by 69
American scholars. All 69 had received funding that year from the
Turkish government or its proxies.
As the only Muslim-dominated country in a troubled region to call
the United States and Israel its allies, Turkey also has wielded
significant political influence in Washington. Last fall, lobbyists on
the Turkish payroll stymied a congressional resolution commemorating
the genocide by persuading more than 100 lawmakers to reverse their
positions. Even President Bush flip-flopped on a 2000 campaign promise
to back official U.S. recognition of the genocide.
"Denial is the final stage of genocide," Gregory Stanton, president
of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, told the
Intelligence Report. "It is a continuing attempt to destroy the victim
group psychologically and culturally, to deny its members even the
memory of the murders of their relatives. That is what the Turkish
government today is doing to Armenians around the world."
Also, in the Summer 2008 issue of the Intelligence Report:
"Secret Identity?" probes the ideology of Shepherd’s Chapel, an
Arkansas-based television ministry led by Arnold Murray that has
an audience in the millions. Despite a theology that identifies an
evil race he calls the "Kenites" as the killers of Christ, Murray
says his ministry is not anti-Semitic. Mounting evidence suggests
otherwise."Stalked by Skins" tells the story of twin brothers who
have lived in fear since a bloody 2003 encounter with a gang of racist
skinheads in Illinois that left one man dead. In interviews, Bill and
Roger Larson recount how they and their families have been tormented
by gang members ever since. "North Meets South" reports on the strange
alliance forged by a Vermont separatist group in recent years. Born
of the left, the Second Vermont Republic has now partnered with the
white supremacist League of the South, which seeks a second Southern
secession, to build a national movement."Of Race and Rockets" reveals
famed aerospace scientist Walter Kistler’s $200,000 in donations to
the Pioneer Fund, a racist foundation that funds controversial studies
of race and intelligence. A defiant Kistler says he is "not concerned
about battles in society about what is and what is not ‘racist.’"
The Southern Poverty Law Center is a nonprofit organization that
combats hate, intolerance and discrimination through education,
litigation and advocacy. The Intelligence Report is a quarterly
investigative journal that tracks the activities of hate groups and
monitors militia and other extremist anti-government activity. For
more information, visit