McGill Tribune, Quebec, Canada
March 10 2009

VOX POPULI: Don’t allow genocide denial at McGill

McGill Armenian Students’ Association

On February 20, McGill University decided that its campus was an
appropriate stage from which the Turkish professor and known genocide
denier Türkkaya Ataöv could spread the fabrications, omissions, and
factoids of the Ankara government that aim to question the veracity of
the Armenian Genocide of 1915, during which 1.5 million Armenians were
massacred by premeditated measures taken by the Turkish Ittihadist
government.

This has set the precedent for other historical revisionists and
genocide deniers to find a podium in academia under the name of
"freedom of speech." Apparently, this principle outweighed the lost
lives of millions of innocent victims and their unspeakable suffering
in the minds of the decision-makers at McGill.

Ataöv said, "It is only when all nations come to terms with their past
that the Turks can be asked to come to terms with their past. And if
they do, we will consider every part of the historical record, and the
Turks will be among those with the whitest records."

Did he forget about the mass killings of 1.5 million Armenians in
1915, the expulsion of 1.5 million Greeks from Anatolia in 1923, the
special property tax on minorities in 1940, the Istanbul Pogrom of
1955, and the 378,000 Kurds displaced by the army?

Ataöv also said that in Turkey, second opinion is respected. What
about Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code, which makes it illegal to
insult the Turkish people and government? We still remember the trials
of the famous novelist Orhan Pamuk and the journalists Hrant and Arat
Dink. Hrant Dink was even gunned down in front of his office in
2007. By Western standards, murder is not considered to be a form of
respect.

Investigations concerning Turkey’s secret Ergenekon network showed
that hundreds of people were blacklisted by Turkish intelligence
agencies, which categorized people according to political and
religious affiliation, as well as sexual orientation. There seems to
be quite a deal of hypocrisy on the part of Ataöv, who openly blames
the Western world of being racist when there is such a thing as
Ergenekon in Turkey. Does he not see that the Turkish Nationalist
Movement Party has an important presence in the parliament, while its
youth branch has ultranationalist and neo-fascist orientations?

Most shockingly, Ataöv even said that the Nuremberg Trials were
unfair. Was he sent to McGill to defend the Nazi leaders responsible
for the Holocaust?

The falsification of history, denial of the Holocaust, or of any crime
against humanity recognized as genocide by the international academic
community can’t be protected by a false label of "freedom of speech."
The directors of McGill and the Turkish Students’ Society of McGill
University should formally apologize to the Armenian community and
other victims of atrocities.

Mardig Taslakian is the vice president external of the McGill Armenian
Students’ Association.

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