369) JTW Condemns The California Courier Publisher Harut Sassounian -JTW

As Journal of Turkish Weekly (JTW) we have been making constructive publishing on Armenian issue. We have argued that Turkey and Armenia could be very close partners even allies in the Caucasus. We defended that the diaspora should be more positive in solving historical disputes. The JTW has always supported dialogue between Turks and Armenians. Naturally we have Turkish perspective in comments though we also publish the other approaches in JTW. The problem is that some of the ultra extremist Armenians in diaspora cannot bear different ideas and they blame differences of being lies. We named this Armenian approach as "shut-up and accept it" approach. Armenian extremist groups do not want to listen, do not want to discuss, but they just impose their ideas as truth.

Two days ago JTW published a news titled "Swiss Senate: Genocide' Allegations is Not Parliament's Job". As expected many Armenians did not share the ideas in the news. Actually it was compiled news and was reporting Peter Briner's latest declaration about the Armenian issue. According to the news reported by Swiss news sources and JTW Briner said other countries had no business pointing the finger at Turkey 90 years after the disputed events.

Having published the news we received a letter from Maral Der Ohanesian. We thanked her and replied our point of view. We exchanged two letters on the report. But then we received a really rude letter from Harut Sassounian, publisher of The California Courier, instead of Mrs Maral. It is unfortunate that Mr. Sassounian's letter was full of insults. We as the JTW condemn Harut Sassounian, and we remind him that JTW and our editor will use all the legal rights regarding the insults. The JTW will start a legal action in California against this rude letter. However we consider his letter as a good example to show the extremist Armenian approach to our readers. Therefore we added his letter below so all Turks and Armenians could assess how he is constructive and polite.

Sassounian's letter' made us sad. Nevertheless we know that all Armenians are not the same and we, Turks and Armenians, can find a base to construct a dialogue environment.

-----------------
SASSOUNIAN'S LETTER
-------------------
Sir:

I don't know what your background or training is, but I am sure you know nothing about journalism. Your replies to Maral Der Ohanesian confirm my suspicions about your ignorance. How dare you give a lecture to her on a subject you know nothing about? Not only your distorted and perverted version of this news item was full of lies, every piece of news you have released has been nothing but a pack of lies. I will be happy to give you one free lesson in journalism: there is no such thing as Armenian or Turkish journalism. There is only one kind of universal journalism, which is reporting the truth. What you added to the ÔÇĞÔÇĞ. news is not the Turkish point of view, but sheer lies. Maybe lies ARE the Turkish point of view, in which case you have a point. I would normally list the lies in your news, but I am sure you do not need my help, since you know the lies that you have made up.

To report such lies and try to convince others that you are reporting the truth, you must be truly "sharafsiz"! (*) And you shamelessly call yourself "Editor" and "Dr."

Harut Sassounian
Publisher
The California Courier

(*) 'sharafsiz' is a Turkish word and it means one who has no honor)

-------------
Press Release
9 August 2005

turkishweekly.net/news.php?id=17361