TALKING POINTS THAT YOU CAN USE WHEN MEETING WITH YOUR REPRESENTATIVE OR SENATOR

• Despite claims that “all historians” accept the so-called Armenian “genocide,” many reputable American scholars do not, among them: Bernard Lewis, dean of American Middle East historians; John M. Smith, UC Berkeley (Emeritus); Guenter Lewy, UMass at Amherst (Emeritus); Walter Denny, UMass at Amherst; Justin McCarthy, U. of Louisville; Walter Weiker, Rutgers; George S. Harris, Johns Hopkins (SAIS); and the late Stanford Shaw, UCLA.

• From p. 251 of Lewy’s “The Armenian Massacres: in Ottoman Turkey” “The large Armenian communities of Constantinople (Istanbul), Smyrna (Izmir), and Aleppo were spared deportation and apart from (the) hunger and epidemics that also afflicted the Muslims…of these cities survived the war largely intact…”

• Correspondingly, there were Turkish atrocities against the native Armenian population, but figures for deaths are widely disputed, and many who died succumbed to disease and starvation, not violence, as did many Turks and Kurds.

• For the most part, those atrocities were committed during the forced migration of large sections of the Armenian population. It is conveniently forgotten that large numbers of Muslim Turks and other Turkic peoples (Crimean Tartars, Laz, Abkhazians) suffered equally grievously when expelled from Russian lands (by good Russian Christians) during the 19th century, and that the Balkan Wars (1912-13) saw hundreds of thousands of Muslims suffer gruesome fates when expelled from southeastern Europe, again by Orthodox Christian armies. Why not condemn those “genocides” as well?

• There is of course the practical argument of alliance with Turkey, and at this point in the history of the Middle East it seems reckless to ignore it.  See op-ed by Pres. Clinton’s Ambassador to Turkey 1997-2000, Mark Parris, attached.

• But, there is a moral argument as well. Many members of the Armenian Diaspora – to a much greater extent than Armenians in Armenia – nourish an irrational hatred for Turks.  I have had well-educated Armenian-Americans scream to me “The Turks are barbarians.” Is it moral to legitimize and encourage that hatred by passing the so-called “genocide” resolution?  What kind of message will we be sending to our future generations about this hatred, harassment, and discrimination?  Things  will only get worse, if this resolution is passed.