250) Proof of Turkish Propaganda / Creationism of the Armenian Genocide by Holdwater

We sometimes hear about the Turkish campaign to spend immense amounts of money on propaganda. Since we all know the Turks are largely "inept" about selling themselves (otherwise, why is the Turkish image so ... bad?), I always wondered what the proof of this may be. . .


Well, I got a clue by reading this letter from the honorable P. D. Spyropoulos!

(His words of unfriendliness may be found at http://www.ahmp.org/njstarl1.html)

His 1997 letter to the New Jersey Star-Ledger begins with:
Your May 13th letter published under the name Tamer Ozaydin was carefully crafted to achieve its effect on an audience that has had little exposure to the topic it addressed: the denial of this century’s first genocide during which 1.5 million Armenians and 300,000 Pontian Greeks were exterminated by the Turkish nation.

(Well, you get the drift.)

This is the part that caught my eye:

Heath Lowry for example--the Princeton academic praised in the Ledger’s May 13th letter--is now the subject of a scandal involving his surreptitious employ by the Turkish Government and his clandestine communications coaching the Turkish Embassy on how to most effectively deny the Armenian Genocide within academic circles. Lowry was appointed head of the "Ataturk Chair of Turkish Studies" at Princeton University after a $1.5 million endowment from Turkey but was recently removed as department head after the scandal.

As for Turkey’s more obvious attempts at influencing American public opinion, an article by New York Post writer Colman McCarthy, entitled "The Torture That Turkey Fails to Advertise", chronicles Turkey’s mammoth advertising campaign in American publications and, in his opinion, the "laughably inept efforts of the Turkish government to deny its policies of torture".

(According to Princeton articles of the period, the grant was $700,000, so who knows where our friend came up with the $1.5 million figure from... over double!)

ADDENDUM: Peter Balakian claims (in "The Burning Tigris") Turkish media mogul Ahmet Ertegun put up matching funds. I suppose that's what made up the rest of the "1.5 million" figure (whenever I come across the figure of "1.5 million," I realize that's grounds for immediate suspicion), and if such was the case, the honorable The Spyropoulos who shagged Turkey was not being factual in making it seem the entire amount came from the nation. (Incidentally, despite his diplomat father's great contribution in getting MGM to forget about a film version of "The Forty Days of Musa Dagh," there are very persuasive clues Ahmet Ertegun is a strong proponent of the Armenian perspective of events. I commend him for putting up the matching funds if he indeed did so [since the source was Peternocchio Balakian], but I have yet to figure the man out.)

What I was most interested in was the article by Colman McCarthy (who has been known to write fair articles on the Turks, such as "Armenian Terror Tactics") chronicling "Turkey’s mammoth advertising campaign in American publications." I thought, a-ha! Proof at last.

I ran a search, and found this article. (www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Congress/1881/advertise.htm) Here is the pertinent part:

...The Turkish government was buying advertising space in U.S. publications to prettify itself. In an eight page color spread in Time, the claim was made that "few countries are changing faster or more positively than Turkey.: Four full pages of self-promotion appeared also in The Washington Post.

The image campaign is defensive as well as offensive. Newspaper editorials that criticize Turkey's state violence are routinely countered by letter-to-the-editor from one embassy functionary or another. A recent letter to the Los Angeles Times, started with the canned line: "Your Oct.16 editorial fails to accurately portray Turkey as a democratic and open society." On Oct.17, The New York Times editorialized : "America Arms Turkey's Repression." As fast as a whirling dervish taking to the dance floor, the Turkish ambassador wrote in to fantasize: " We work to promote political stabilization and economic development."

Letters of protest to perceived injustices aside, the evidence of Turkish propaganda boils down to...

Buying space in newsmagazines demonstrating the good points of the country? Particularly a country with a tarnished image, always having been so horribly (Midnight)-expressed?

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The so-called Armenian Genocide is mainly a “faith-based” presentation, instead of being grounded in reality. This is why power-advocates such as Peter Balakian and Taner Akcam are on record for insisting there are no two sides to this story. (Forgetting the age-old maxim that there are always two sides to a story.) The moment their obsession/money tree lays open to scientific analysis with real historic facts, they are aware their wild claims don’t have much of a leg to stand on. They will do anything to discourage true debate, by engaging in smear campaigns and labeling their nay-sayers as “denialists.”

It’s one thing to discourage true debate while hiding behind intellectual fraud, knowing the real events of this historic tragedy and deliberately, unethically twisting them. This is what the “evangelists” do; they know their prey are true believers, and are open to all suggestions fortifying their reason for existence. The main body of Armenians and genocide advocates have passions that run so deep, they are unwilling or unable to listen to reason.

This is why the so-called Armenian genocide comes dangerously close to becoming a religious obsession with many Armenians and those who mindlessly support them. (Terrence Des Pres gives a grand idea on the parallel between genocides and the religious feelings they evoke, in this excerpt from a New York Times article.)

With the neo-conservative swing that has overtaken the United States in recent years, I see many parallels between their tactics, and the Armenians. Chancing upon conservative forums, their style is little different than the voices heard in Armenian forums; rants based on bigotry and name-calling run rampant. Both groups are quick to make their points by smearing and labeling. Discrediting the opponent takes precedence over intellectual discussion. It’s easy to take advantage of the emotional mentality of both constituents.

(And I’m not saying the liberal camp is always reasonable and unemotional; for example, the ranks of the genocide scholars and human rights groups are composed of equally shrill, dogmatic pharisees, and these people are mostly left-leaning. [Since the days of William Gladstone, the left has had a tradition to speak ill of Turks... mainly because the “compassion” liberals are famous for is reserved for the groups liberals hypocritically find exclusively worthy.] This is the problem with generalizing; keeping in mind extremists exist in both camps, generally speaking, reason and intelligent debate usually gets shorter shrift in the “radical” conservative crowd.)




A TIME Magazine article (Jan. 31, 2005) got me thinking about these parallels between most genocide-obsessed Armenians and “radical” conservatives. One parallel off the bat is that both these groups have the cash to finance their beliefs, and impose them on the masses. Since their opponents (Turks on one hand, and what we might call “liberals” on the other) generally like to let things be and not make waves, and simply don’t possess the fanaticism to put up much of a struggle.

The article is entitled “Stealth Attack on Evolution.” (“Who is behind the movement to give equal time to Darwin’s critics, and what do they really want?”)

One difference between the Creationism movement and the widespread acceptance of the Armenian “Genocide” as historical fact is that at least the USA is protected by its Constitution, serving for the separation of church and state. So the underdog of the Creationist movement are still the Creationists, as opposed to the underdog of the Armenian “Genocide” movement, which has had over a century to spread its near-unilaterally presented poison.

The article tells us church and state separation is becoming an issue among many Americans. “So at a time when religious faith is increasingly worn on public sleeves — most prominently that of the President — a dispute that dates back to the celebrated 1925 Scopes ‘Monkey Trial’ is being replayed around the country in legislatures, courts, school-board meetings and parent-teacher conferences. School administrators in rural Dover, Pa., visited biology classes .... to read a declaration proclaiming, among other things, that ‘Darwin’s theory [of evolution].... is a theory, not a fact.”

This boggles the mind, when you think about it. If you’ve read “Inherit the Wind” (a Broadway play which also had an excellent film version with Spencer Tracy; he played the defense attorney for the schoolteacher on trial for teaching evolution, in a small religious community), who could forget the moment when the attorney called up his opponent, the religious prosecutor, on the stand. The defense attorney used the Bible as his source. When reason met faith, there was no way the prosecutor’s “mythological case” could sustain itself. Yet, here we are in the 21st century, and we still have to deal with this issue! (What a powerful parallel with the myth of the Armenian “Genocide,” which may be substituted for the Bible or any “holy book”; on the opposing end, we have undeniable evidence negating this purported genocide, such as the Malta Tribunal... and yet the myth still persists. Such is the power of blind. religious or quasi-religious passion.)



Interestingly, the article tells us, “The intellectual underpinnings of the latest assault on Darwin’s theory come not from Bible-wielding Fundamentalists but from well-funded think tanks promoting a theory they call intelligent design, or I.D. for short.” Sound familiar? Money talks, and can buy seeming legitimacy. When the Armenians were in trouble in the 1970s and 1980s, after the Turks finally began to speak up (triggered by Armenian terrorists using Turks as target practice), they cleverly began supporting the “genocide institutes” that began to proliferate around that time. Hiding behind the cloak of the Jewish Holocaust, the Armenian cause became more righteous. After all, arguing about the Armenian “Genocide” became tantamount to arguing with the Holocaust!

The TIME article continues: “All the think tanks want to do, they insist, is make the teaching of evolution more honest by bringing up its drawbacks. Who could argue with that? But the mainstream scientific community contends that this seemingly innocuous agenda is actually a stealthy way of promoting religion.” The Armenians may have invented the word “stealth.” Their tactics before the “genocide” years included massacring Turks, with the real reason to invite European powers to come in and punish the Ottomans, when the Turks were incited to respond in kind. Similarly, the Armenians support grand human rights ideologies (for example, claiming they’re only bringing this up so that future genocides won’t be repeated), when all they care about is preserving their own precious myth.

One main power behind this Creationist movement is the “nonpartisan but generally conservative think tank,” Seattle’s Discovery Institute. Funding has come from “an ultraconservative savings-and-loans heir,” and Discovery “is best known as a major center of research and advocacy for I.D.” What a striking parallel to the genocide institutes, like Stephen Feinstein’s CHGS, funded in large part by at least one wealthy Armenian.




“Some 350 scientists have signed a declaration challenging evolution.” With a bit of searching, one can come up with candidates who are sympathetic to certain causes. Armenians have thrived on gathering the names of legitimate sounding “genocide scholars” and even celebrity authors like Norman Mailer and Arthur Miller, to sign their many genocide declarations.

The article confronts the Creationists’ argument that Darwin is “just a theory”:

“They are playing on the public’s lack of understanding of what a scientific theory is,” says (Kansas City biology teacher Ken) Bingham. “It’s more than a guess. It’s a set of hypotheses that has been tested over time.”

Just like the Armenians’ strategy of playing on the public’s ingrained prejudices and lack of understanding, regarding the other side of their genocide coin. The “other side,” as you may have discovered with minimal strolling throughout this site, presents inarguable historic events backed up by sources who would have had no reason to defend the Turks... turning the mythical Armenian “Genocide” on its ear.




The article tells us, “Evolutionary theory does have gaps, but so do relativity, quantum theory and the theory of plate tetonics. (I.D. director John) West says those are different because scientists in these fields, unlike evolutionists, aren’t afraid of intellectual debate. Evolutionists counter that they have welcomed challenges.”
An extra from THE FLINTSTONES grapples with a big fellow

Man and Dinosaur

There’s a switch. It’s the Creationist claiming the evolutionists aren’t broad-minded and are afraid of debate. It may not be that the latter are afraid... they just know the futility of arguing with absurdity. (Dinosaurs co-existing with Man when carbon dating clearly reveals the impossibility.) Unfortunately, the anti-Armenian genocide perspective is forced to argue against the genocide advocates.... no matter how ludicrous their arguments are. (And because they’re so possessed, arguing reasonably often proves futile; they’re going to keep on presenting their unfounded claims as real facts, like the familiar number of 1.5 million Armenians being murdered.

Just as evolutionary theory has gaps, so does the arguments that I’ve been presenting on this site. Do I know for certain the Ottoman government was not behind a systematic plan to exterminate the Armenians? As I’ve written repeatedly, I was not there, and neither were you. All we can do is look upon the most reasonable facts and figures and come up with our conclusions. If there were genuine proof such an extermination plan occurred, I would change my mind in an instant; all that matters is the truth.

Unfortunately, with the two movements compared on this page, truth is not the overlying concern. Both the Creationists and the pro-Armenians feel little remorse in twisting the most malleable evidence to support their agendas... closing their eyes to the arguments they can say nothing about, and discrediting all other counter-arguments in whatever way they can. Such is the power that fanaticism brings.

Outside Reading:

A Creationism Chart (slow loading)

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© Holdwater
tallarmeniantale.com/hold-Turk-Propaganda.htm
hold-creationism.htm

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