Talk at Columbia University, International Affairs Building, Tuesday, 22 February 2010

“Deciphering Denial: State, Modernity, and the 1915 Armenian Ethnic Cleansing”

By Fatma Muge Gocek (1), Discussions by Elazar Barkan (2) and Moderator, Mucahit Bilici (3)

A 2 day Symposium on the 1909 Adana Incidents was held at the Turkish Historical Society (THS) offices in Ankara. Following the opening speeches by Prof. Dr. Ali Birinci, the President of THS, and Kemal Cicek, the head of the Armenian Research Desk at THS, Kemal Cicek made the first presentation, ’’What we Know and Don’t Know About the Adana Incidents.’’ Dr. Cicek emphasized that the purpose of this symposium was really to understand what happened in April of 1909. There were two sessions on Friday with presentations by speakers from the U. S. , Israel , Japan and Turkey , but a prior committment prevented me from attending these sessions.

UNESCO has declared 2008 as the Willam Saroyan Year in honour of the Pulitzer Prize winning author on his 100th birthday which is being celebrated in California and other cities accross the USA. The Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism has announced plans to open a museum in Bitlis where his family lived before migrating to the United States in 1907. An article in the Turkish Daily News (Oct. 4/5, 2008) states that search is continuing to find the house that belonged to his parents, which was still existing when I visited Bitlis in 1999.

The President of the Republic of Turkey should go to Erivan as invited by the President of Armenia but with a message from the Turkish people that should be pubished in Turkish and Armenian newspapers and perhaps in the American, European and the World media as well.

The invitation to attend the first match of the World Cup was first made in an article by the President of Armenia published in the Wall Street Journal on 9 July 2008. Armenians have used this method of communication with Turkey before, as manifected in a letter that was published in the Times of London back in1919, as will be referenced below. The official letter of invitation was delivered to the Turkish Embassy in Tiblis, Georgia, since there is no diplomatic relations between the two countries.

July 2008

I. Introduction

Statesmen in western countries are often besieged by representatives of Armenian groups representing huge voting blocks demanding resolutions or "Denier" legislation -with penalties- in connection with events that occurred in Eastern Anatolia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As they would with any other constituents, legislators typically feel obliged to hear these people out and somewhat obligated to represent their interests.

The historical events in question are extremely complex. Not only did they occur in a Moslem culture which is seldom studied to the requisite level of detail by typical students in Western Colleges - or even by future History Teachers - but the particular events in question occurred at the center of an extremely complex web of relationships between nations of extremely diverse cultural backgrounds. Legislators approached with these demands:

By Justin McCarthy, Esat Arslan, Cemalettin Taskiran and Omer Turan

Book Review

A new book based on years of study and documents from the archives of many nations by Justin McCarthy, Esat Arslan, Cemalettin Taskiran and Omer Turan, published in 2006. Utah Series in Turkish and Islamic Studies, The Universty of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.

Very few books mention the true version of the Van incidents, among them Prof. Dr. Stanford Shaw's `'History of Ottoman Empire and Turkey.'' For years, the world learned about the Van incident through the one sided books, such as `'An American Physician in Turkey'' by Clarence Ussher, which was also made into a movie with the title, `'Ararat'' (1). `'The Armenian Rebellion at Van'' negates the false tales told in these books and movies, which is summarized in the back cover by Prof. Dr. Justin McCharty with the following statement:

Book Review

By Taner Akcam, 2006

Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company, 175 Fifth Avenue, NY

The author, Taner Akcam, is a Turkish and a German citizen. He was born in Ardahan in 1953, in eastern Anatolia, whose father was a very respected educator and writer, Dursun Akcam, who died several years ago and buried without Taner Akcam being present at his funeral. A Cultural Center established in Dursun Akcam

Genocide of Truth is an excellent book with a collection of detailed information from a wide variety of sources which includes many books, articles, newspaper opinions and commentaries from many foreign publications written by westerners over the past 100 years (Over 2,000, according to the author). It is almost like an encyclopedia, presented under 30 chapters, with an Introduction by Prof. Talat S. Halman and a Foreword & Bibliography by the author.  Each chapter can be read as a stand alone treasury of information on various subjects related to this important issue which has been presented to the world as a one sided and prejudiced tragedy with many fabrications, as shown by many authorities.

In the Part I of my review, I covered chapters which I am most familiar with which are also the most controversial.