ARMENIAN QUESTION DOCUMENTARY CAUSES MORE CONTROVERSY
Today’s Zaman
Feb 20 2009
Turkey
Disputes surrounding a recent directive by the Ministry of Education
requiring that a controversial documentary on the Armenian question
be screened at Turkey’s primary schools have become even more heated
as Turkey’s Armenian citizens have appealed to Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan against showing the documentary.
While Armenians are disturbed by the required screening of the
documentary, called "Sarı Gelin: Ermeni Sorununun İc Yuzu" (Yellow
Bride: The True Face of the Armenian Question), at primary schools,
it has been revealed that the General Staff was not involved in
making the documentary as had been previously claimed. Meanwhile, the
Ministry of Education has said the documentary was sent to schools
as an educational resource for teachers, not students. Armenians,
concerned the documentary would confuse younger students, have sent
a letter addressed to Prime Minister Erdogan asking him to suspend
the screening of the controversial documentary.
Karun Kovan, vice president of the Armenian group Karagözyan
Vakıf, said Armenians believe the documentary should not be shown
to children, or even adults, of any nation, let alone to students in
Armenian schools in Turkey. "We want the screening to be called off
because this will promote violence and discrimination and breed hatred
among the students," he added. The History Foundation of Turkey has
also described the documentary as a propaganda film and said it was
inappropriate for students because it would promote enmity.
In a memo sent to schools, the Ministry of Education asked that
schools submit a report by Feb. 27 on the effect that the documentary
had on students. The memo said the documentary had been prepared by
the General Staff.
However, Ä°smail Umac, who produced the documentary, said there was
no link between the documentary and the General Staff, adding: "This
documentary was prepared by our company. I distribute the documentary
to anyone who pays for it. The documentary is not a biased production
that promotes the Turkish view of the events. It is objective. There
were 14 historians from different countries involved, and archives
from nine countries were examined. If the documentary was biased, the
[Armenian] diaspora would have shown a strong reaction when it was
distributed in the European version of Time magazine and in Russia."
Plans for sending the documentary to primary schools were initially
discussed two years ago. A coordination committee set up to dispel
baseless genocide claims sent the documentary to the Ministry of
Education on March 15, 2007. On Dec. 17, 2007, 56,388 DVD copies of the
documentary were delivered to the Board of Education and Discipline and
then sent out to primary schools in the summer of 2008. In a statement
issued on the recent controversy, the Ministry of Education said the
documentary was sent to primary schools as an educational resource
to be used by teachers, not to be shown to students, and said the
distribution of the remaining half of the copies has been discontinued.
Meanwhile, Serdar Kaya, the parent of an 11-year-old girl, filed a
criminal complaint yesterday with the Uskudar Prosecutor’s Office on
the grounds that the documentary negatively influenced his daughter’s
psychology.
The "Yellow Bride" is the name of an Armenian folk song that is also
popular in Turkey.
Armenia claims that the mass deportation of hundreds of thousands
of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire in 1915 amounted to genocide,
while Turkey strongly denies the claim.