CONTROVERSIAL ’60 MINUTES’ AIRS AHEAD OF MARCH 4 VOTE
Hurriyet
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March 1 2010
Turkey
Turkish associations are protesting a private U.S. television channel
after it broadcast a program Sunday night discussing the tragic events
of 1915.
The "Battle over History" segment aired on CBS and was presented
by "60 Minutes" correspondent Bob Simon. Simon acknowledged at
the beginning of the segment that there is an Armenian "genocide"
resolution currently moving through both sides of the U.S. Congress.
The segment was partly shot in Dey-el-Zor, in Syria, and according
to Peter Balakian, who was the most featured scholar on the program,
the place is a cemetery, where 450,000 Armenians were killed and
buried during World War I by Ottoman forces.
Turkey’s former ambassador to the United States, Nabi Sensoy, was
also interviewed on the program, though his remarks were aired very
briefly and interrupted by several questions. Sensoy stated during the
segment that there were no intentional killings and argued therefore
it was not a genocide. He said the tragic events during World War
I happened as a result of mass deportation and there were many more
killings during the war years.
In the cemetery, Simon, along with a guide who was described as an
Armenian dentist, Balakian and several children were seen gathering
joints of bones from desert terrain, allegedly bones of those Armenians
who were killed during the episode.
Both Balakian and Simon compared the Jewish population under the Nazis
with Armenians under the Ottoman rule several times. The assassination
of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was also recalled in the
segment, and Dink’s daughter was interviewed by the "60 Minutes" team.
Simon said past U.S. administrations have fought against similar
resolutions each year, and that Obama did not use the word "genocide"
during his visit to Turkey in April or in last year’s April 24
commemoration statement, even though he openly promised to do during
his campaign.
Ahead of March 4, when the "genocide" resolution will be put to a
vote at the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the program was seen as
another venue to pressure U.S. lawmakers, according to many leaders in
the American-Turkish community in the U.S. They called on the Turkish
diaspora to protest CBS and "60 Minutes" for the segment before and
after the program aired.
Meanwhile, two Turkish organizations reacted on Sunday to CBS for
broadcasting a program regarding the incidents of 1915, Anatolia news
agency reported. The Federation of Turkish American Associations,
or FTAA, and the Assembly of Turkish American Associations, or ATAA,
sent a letter to CBS executives 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 email messages. "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 Cınar said
they would continue their campaign against CBS until the TV channel
apologized.