We could not stay silent when we read the letter “Tesdell column lacks research, twists history” from Dec. 4 by Kubilay Gursel, where he downplays the internationally recognized genocide of Armenian people by Ottomans (modern Turkey) from 1915-1923.

His letter claims there were an estimated 40,000 casualties during “orderly distribution of population” – just little enough not to call it genocide. The author also claims Armenians brought misery on themselves when they started mass killings of Turks. Well, if a statement with an accusation is made by one party, the other party has the right to be heard, especially if the truth is trampled underfoot.

Armenian genocide by Ottomans, which claimed lives of estimated 1.5 million ethnic Armenians (not a meager 40,000 mentioned in the article), is officially recognized by a number of world powers.

On Oct. 19, 2000, the U.S. House of Representatives was about to pass a resolution recognizing mass killings of Armenians as genocide. The vote was canceled under pressure from the Clinton administration after Turkey threatened not to renew a mandate for U.S. forces using the Incirlik air base in southern Turkey to control a no-fly zone in Iraq.

United Nations archives contain documented evidence pertaining to the Ottomans’ atrocities against ethnic Armenians. The official report by United Nations Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities from July 2, 1985, puts Armenian genocide on equal footing with Nazi atrocities.

Ironically for Kubilay, Ottoman Turkish government conducted a court martial in 1919 against the perpetrators of the Armenian genocide and sentenced to death four ministers involved in the decision making. However, later in a blatant about-face, Turkish government denied everything as fact-forging and claimed Armenians were killed or displaced as the Ottoman Empire tried to quell civil unrest, a position remaining largely unchanged until now.

The fact is that Armenian genocide has been recognized by a number of world leaders and intellectuals. Professor Raphael Lemkin, the key figure in the history of making genocide a crime under international law and the person behind adoption of the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, repeatedly cited the Armenian genocide and the Jewish Holocaust as prototypes of the crimes of genocide.

Henry Morgenthau, the U.S. ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in 1915, wrote, “The great massacres and persecutions of the past seem almost insignificant when compared to the suffering of the Armenian race in 1915. “President Theodore Roosevelt wrote in his letter dated May 11,1918: “[T]he Armenian massacre was the greatest crime of the war, and the failure to act against Turkey is to condone it .”

As to the claim that Ottomans never intended to perpetrate mass killings, the best response is contained in Morgenthau’s words: “When the Turkish authorities gave the orders for these deportations, they were merely giving the death warrant to a whole race; they understood this well, and, in their conversations with me, they made no particular attempt to conceal the fact .” An “orderly distribution of Armenian population?” I recall that Joseph Stalin in his heyday was practicing similar “orderly distributions” of whole nations to Siberia.

Kubilay suggested that people do their research before making contentious claims. But has he done his research instead of just reading and listening to only what was pleasing to his eyes and ears?

The fact that the genocide was perpetrated by Ottomans does not make him, a Turk, a criminal.

What’s sad is that he, who is about to get an advanced university degree, is still not able to form an unbiased opinion based on facts.

What about those poorly educated people, then, who form most of their opinions from official mass media?

How are they going to accept these facts if there is nobody from their own nation to teach them? Is not the modern world about living together in peace, showing more tolerance to others, becoming more humane?

If a nation is not willing to accept the responsibility for the past wrong-doings how can there be a change for the better to prevent such tragedies from happening and promote peace in the world?

Igor Eshenko

ISU Alum, 2000

Marina Miroumian

Graduate student

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