2736) The Armenian Issue or Tragedy – This is What I know and Believe In

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My Response To Armenews Commentary

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President Obama’s campaign pledge that he will sign the ‘’Armenian resolution’’ following its passage at the House of Representatives which is expected to be brought to the floor by the Speaker Nancy Pelosi, has encouraged the Armenian-Americans (better known as the Armenian Diaspora) to launch an early campaign. This is totally untruthful and detrimental to the interest of the American people and the US Government. It is also an insult to Turks everywhere and the Turkish – Americans, at least those who are concerned, and should be completely abandoned. . .

I am a Turkish – American with a plea to the Armenian – Americans and their supporters to re-think their quest which is not in the interest of anyone including President Obama whose aim is to improve the relations among the people that make up the United States of America, all 330 million of them, being deceived by many perpetrators of the Tall Armenian Tale for their own selfish interests, as mentioned by Holdwater’s blog. I know that Americans with every ethnic background are honest people who believe in what they are told and read, as I have lived among them for 52 years, with 7 years of high school education in Talas and Tarsus, Turkey, under American teachers prior to my arrival in the United States in 1957.

I was introduced to the Armenian issue (perhaps a better description would be the Armenian Tragedy) during the first ‘’Armenian Genocide Commemoration’’ held on April 24, 1965 at the Riverside Church in New York city, which I attended quite by chance after reading an article about the event in the New York Times. I was shocked with the presentation of the main speaker Henry Morgenthau Jr. about the events that took place in the Ottoman lands in 1915 when his father was the US Ambassador to Turkey. This incident was followed by a question a few days later from an elderly colleague at the Engineering Firm where we both worked; ‘’Why did the Turks kill 1.5 million Armenians?’’ When I had told him that I did not believe him, the following day he brought to the office the first volume of Encyclopedia Britannica, where it stated what he had told me under ‘’Armenians’’. I still did not believe what the Encyclopedia or Henry Morgenthau Jr. stated and started reading about the Armenian issue, including books, magazine articles, commentaries and attending many conferences, symposiums, panel discussions and watching movies such ‘’Ararat’’, based on a missionary doctor’s book, and the horrible play on Broadway, ‘’The Beast on the Moon.’’ What an incredible flow of falsified historical facts and fabrications, just like a modified photograph of Mustafa Kemal taken in 1923 where puppies were replaced with dead infants, and used at a conference at the University of California at Los Angeles.

Last year a Turkish businessman, Sukru Aya, published a 700 page book on the Genocide issue, showing to the world through the pages of documents authored by the Armenians and their supporters that the Armenians were responsible for starting a conflict in order to create a state of their own on lands where they were never the majority. I read the book and wrote three part review and also attended the presentation of the Turkish version of the book on January 19, 2009. Evidently, my commentary on the presentation was published in a French Armenian blog recently, stating that I was a denialists, complete with information on my background, which I welcome. The article, with the photograph of Sukru Aya, Vatan newspaper columnist Ms Ruhat Mengi who was at the presentation and me, (the English translation forwarded by a Turkish-Armenian) states that I am an architect and live in New Jersey. The author forgot to mention that I am a civil engineer who has been involved in building power plants around the world and in Turkey, which light up the cities where even Armenian-Americans live. As a builder, I also worked very hard to correct the negative image of Turkey abroad and in the United States and to build good relations, as opposed to hatred that is being created with false publications by some Armenians. It is incredible that the main Armenian associations of Los Angeles chartered buses to brings seven to thirteen year old children to the trial of Yanikian who murdered the Turkish General Counsel

The blog also mentions that I was the President of the Federation of Turkish-American Associations, which is correct and the signatory of a letter to the President on the murder of a Turkish Ambassador in Los Angeles. The FTAA along with its sister umbrella organisation, The Assembly of Turkish American Associations (ATAA) has over the years tried to enlighten the Americans on the Armenian issue which continues today. Ftaa has organized a month-long series of presentations by Prof. Dr. Turkkaya Ataov across the United States starting February 12 in New York city. We hope that these presentations will not be blocked by the Armenian-Americans as they did when the late Turkish Amb Gunduz Aktan tried to make a presentation in California in 2006. Unfortunately hate and disinformation campaigns by some Armenian-Americans continue today.

Several years ago, an Armenian-American wrote the following in the Company newsletter of a large utility in California, also involved in the Turkish electricity market:

‘’When a major earthquake devastated Armenia in 1988 – killing more than 25,000 people and leaving 500,000 homeless – Azerbaijan and Turkey began blockading Armenia the same year, which has added to the difficulties in rebuilding the nation.’’

The above is a lie as Turkey was the first country to rush to the aid of the Armenian earthquake victims and shows how American people are deceived, an example of thousands of articles full of distortions that continue to be published all the time, which creates a bad of image of Turks and Turkey.

After 44 years of research, reading and writing (to newspaper editors, book publishers, to the State Governors, President of the United States when the Turkish Consul General was murdered and to the President of Armenian), producing a booklet on the issue and speaking to who ever would listen, I believe that the death of Armenians that came about as a result of their uprisings and deliberate massacres o moslems that led to their relocation to other pars of the empire can not be labeled as ‘genocide.’’ The Armenian Diaspora, especially in the United States and Europe, has deceived the people through false propaganda, fabricated stories and endless publications that tell only the Armenian side of the tragedy, without mentioning the atrocities committed by the Armenian separatists and terrorists.

Turks do not hate the Armenians, as some Armenians would like the Americans believe, and most agree that what happened in 1915 and during the preceding and later years following the Re-location was very sad and wants the Armenians and the world to recognize the suffering of the Turks as well.

Respectfully,

Yuksel Oktay, PE
February 7, 2008, Istanbul, Turkey