TURKISH ORGANIZATIONS REACT TO US TV CHANNEL FOR PROGRAM
Today’s Zaman
5-100-turkish-organizations-react-to-us-tv-channel -for-program.html
March 1 2010
Turkey
Two Turkish organizations reacted on Sunday to a US TV channel for
broadcasting a program regarding incidents of 1915.
The Federation of Turkish American Associations (FTAA) and the
Assembly of Turkish American Associations (ATAA) sent a letter to
executives of the US CBS TV channel to show their reaction to the
biased broadcasting of the channel.
Also, Turks living in the United States have launched a campaign to
protest the TV channel by letters, fax and e-mail messages.
The broadcast came only a few days before the Committee on Foreign
Affairs of the US House of Representatives is to discuss a resolution
on the incidents of 1915.
The committee is due to debate the resolution on March 4. Members
of the Turkish Parliament are actually visiting Washington D.C. to
prevent adoption of the resolution.
"We are sorry to see that a program that will lobby for the Armenians
has been broadcast on a TV channel in a period when Turkey and Armenia
are trying to ease their diplomatic relations with mutual protocols,"
FTAA’s President Can Kaplan said.
ATAA’s President Ali Cinar said they would continue their campaign
against the CBS until the TV channel apologized.
In "60 Minutes" program, the CBS channel claimed that there was
"the biggest Armenian graveyard in Deir ez-Zor in Syria" related
with the incidents of 1915, and "bones had still been unearthed from
the graveyard".
The channel also said "whatever Auschwitz meant for the Jews, Deir
ez-Zor meant the same for the Armenians."