[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 74 (Thursday, May 23, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H5553-H5555]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        TURKISH STUDIES PROGRAM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Pallone] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to express my serious concern 
about what I consider a troubling case of the manipulation of 
historical fact under the guise of academic integrity. This is 
happening at a university in my

[[Page H5554]]

own State, Princeton University, an Ivy League university and one of 
the leading institutions of higher learning in the Nation and in the 
world.
  As the New York Times reported yesterday, Princeton accepted $750,000 
from the Government of Turkey to endow a new Attaturk Chair of Turkish 
Studies in the Department of Near Eastern Studies and hired a 
professor, Heath W. Lowry, who worked for the Turkish Government as 
executive director of the Washington-based Institute of Turkish 
Studies. Professor Lowry has written and spoken extensively, 
questioning whether or not the Armenian genocide committed by the 
Turkish Ottoman Empire between the years 1915 and 1923 actually 
occurred.
  Mr. Speaker, last month, on April 24, more than 40 Members of this 
body from both sides of the aisle took part in a series of special 
orders commemorating the 81st anniversary of the unleashing of this 
genocide against the Armenian people. It was planned and executed in 
the name of Turkish nationalism in the final years of the Ottoman 
Empire. Eventually, 1.5 million Armenian men, women, and children were 
murdered in this first, though sadly not the last, genocide in the 20th 
century. Although the word ``genocide'' had not yet been coined, 
genocide is what happened. It is a great and noble effort for this 
Congress to recognize that the genocide occurred. I will be working 
with my colleagues from both sides of the aisle to enact a resolution 
officially recognizing the historic fact that the genocide occurred and 
urging Turkey, the recipient of millions of dollars in United States 
assistance, to finally end its deceitful policy of denying that the 
genocide ever took place.
  While remembering the Armenian genocide is important in its own right 
from the standpoint of honoring the victims and providing future 
generations with an important example of what can happen when ethnic 
hatred goes unchallenged, one of the most important reasons for 
commemorating the genocide is to challenge the efforts of those who 
deny that it occurred.

  Now we see this genocide denial has been given a platform at one of 
our most prestigious universities. Professor Lowry, who is recognized 
as one of the leading specialists in Turkish studies, does not 
necessarily deny that many Armenian people suffered and died during 
that period of time, but he claims that the word ``genocide'' is not 
the most accurate word to describe this tragedy. Coincidentally, this 
has been the line put out by the Turkish Government and its apologists.
  The Turkish spin that has been put on the genocide is disputed by a 
large volume of documented evidence, much of it collected by American 
diplomats and journalists on the scene. There is also the testimony of 
the survivors. There was, in conjunction with the physical destruction 
of the Armenian people, the effort to erase all traces of the Armenian 
presence in the areas now in Eastern Turkey by changing geographic 
names and destroying Armenian religious and cultural monuments. This 
was not a random violence, Mr. Speaker, but a concerted program to 
eliminate the Armenian people and culture. It was, as we now use the 
term, ``a genocide.''
  While Professor Lowry and others have the freedom to publish, 
obviously, what they like, I question whether it sets a good precedent 
for a major university to accept funding from a foreign government to 
essentially promote its propaganda. Many scholars agree, and have 
sharply criticized Princeton because that is exactly what is happening. 
I would hope that Princeton would seriously reconsider taking money 
from the Government of Turkey for this purpose or, at a minimum, would 
somehow build into its program certain safeguards to prevent the 
Turkish Government influence over essentially what the professor or 
others might say.
  Mr. Speaker, I know that this is just one example, if you will, of 
how the Turkish Government tries to influence what goes on in this 
country, not only here in Congress, but also through our institutions 
of higher education, but I think it is terribly important that 
Princeton University and other universities like it do not continue to 
let their academic programs be influenced because of the money that is 
being donated, in this case by Turkey, or other foreign governments.
  Mr. Speaker, I would like, if I could, to include the article that 
was in the New York Times on Wednesday, May 22, entitled ``Princeton Is 
Accused of Fronting for the Turkish Government.''

                         (By William H. Honan)

       A group of prominent scholars and writers contends that 
     Princeton University is allowing itself to be used by the 
     Turkish Government as a center for propaganda about Turkey's 
     role in the massacre of a million Armenians during World War 
     I.
       Three years ago, the university accepted $750,000 from the 
     Government of Turkey to endow a new Ataturk Chair of Turkish 
     Studies in the Department of Near Eastern Studies and hired a 
     professor, Heath W. Lowry, who had worked for the Turkish 
     Government, as executive director of the Washington-based 
     Institute of Turkish Studies.
       Peter Balakian, a professor of English at Colgate 
     University who has helped organize recent protests against 
     the appointment, characterized Professor Lowry's scholarship 
     as ``evil euphemistic evasion'' and charged that his 
     appointment at Princeton was an instance of a foreign 
     government buying credibility for its propaganda by endowing 
     a chair at an American university and influencing the choice 
     of who fills the post.
       Princeton has defended the appointment of Professor Lowry 
     through a terse statement by Amy Gutmann, the dean of the 
     faculty, declaring that the university ``does not permit 
     donors of chairs to influence the outcome of its appointment 
     process.''
       Debates on responsibility for the Armenian massacres in 
     1915 and 1916 have gone on for years, and have accelerated 
     recently with the rising interest in Holocaust studies. The 
     Turks and a handful of American scholars, among them 
     Professor Lowry, contend that the Armenian deaths were the 
     unintended result of wartime deprivation, while the Armenians 
     and many more American scholars consider it genocide 
     centrally planned by the Ottoman Turks.
       The attacks on Princeton erupted last year with a critical 
     article in the academic journal Holocaust and Genocide 
     Studies by the scholar Robert Jay Lifton. In February, a 
     group of 100 scholars and writers published a denunciation of 
     the Turkish Government and Professor Lowry in The Chronicle 
     of Higher Education, a weekly journal; the signers included 
     Alfred Kazin, Norman Mailer, Arthur Miller, Joyce Carol 
     Oates, Susan Sontag, William Styron, David Riesman and John 
     Updike. And a group of nearly 200 Armenian-Americans held a 
     protest meeting last Wednesday night at the Princeton Club in 
     New York City.
       For his part, Professor Lowry says his skepticism about 
     whether the deaths were centrally planned simply reflects 
     adherence to scholarly rules of evidence.
       ``The Turkish Government is just as unhappy with a lot of 
     my work as are some of the Armenians who attack me,'' he 
     said. ``I have never denied the terrible suffering and deaths 
     of hundreds of thousands of Armenians during the First World 
     War. But I object to the use of the word genocide until the 
     relevant records are located, studied and have proved that 
     genocide is in fact the most accurate term to describe this 
     tragedy.''
       The furor over the appointment was prompted by an odd 
     incident involving Professor Lifton, who teaches at the John 
     Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan. In October 
     1990, the Turkish Ambassador to the United States, Nuzhet 
     Kandemir, wrote to Professor Lifton, upbraiding him for 
     referring in his latest book to the ``so-called'' `Armenian 
     genocide.' ''
       Professor Lifton was not surprised by the attack, but he 
     was by a puzzling enclosure with the letter. It was a memo 
     from Professor Lowry to the Ambassador that showed Professor 
     Lowry had drafted the official Turkish Government protest to 
     the Lifton book.
       The memo said Professor Lowry was writing to Ambassador 
     Kandemir ``with an eye to drafting a letter for your 
     signature to the author.''
       In the Holocaust and Genocide Studies article last year, 
     Professor Lifton revealed the memo and branded Professor 
     Lowry as an apologist for the Turkish Government.
       In a recent interview, Professor Lowry acknowledged that 
     his memo to Ambassador Kandemir was a mistake. ``I was not a 
     professor at Princeton when I wrote that,'' he said. 
     ``Looking back from where I am today, I goofed.''
       Professor Lowry, 53, received a Ph.D. in Turkish studies 
     from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1977. In 
     1985, he was one of 69 specialists in Turkish studies who 
     signed a petition urging that a House of Representatives 
     resolution condemning the crime of genocide should not 
     include the Armenian massacres. These crimes, the petition 
     stated, were the result of ``intercommunal warfare'' 
     complicated by ``disease, famine, suffering and massacres.''
       ``In my opinion,'' he said in an interview, ``it was a 
     total breakdown in civil authority on the part of a young, 
     revolutionary government fighting a world war simultaneously 
     on a number of fronts. That government's decision to relocate 
     its Armenian citizenry into north Syria created a situation 
     in which the deportees were subjected to attacks by marauding 
     Kurdish tribesmen, starvation and the ravages of cholera and 
     typhus epidemics.''

[[Page H5555]]

       The current scholarly debate over the Armenian deaths 
     focuses on three principal sources of evidence: the memoirs 
     of Henry Morgenthau, who was the United States Ambassador to 
     Turkey from 1913 to 1916; a remark that Hitler reportedly 
     made in 1939, and cable traffic and other messages from 
     German diplomats stationed in Turkey during World War I.
       Vahakn N. Dadrian, a sociologist who wrote ``The History of 
     the Armenian Genocide'' (Berghahn Books, Providence, 1995), 
     said that Ambassador Morganthau's memoirs--published in 
     1918--provided ``conclusive proof'' that the Turks committed 
     genocide.
       ``Morgenthau reported that when he complained to top 
     Turkish leaders about reports that women, children and old 
     people were being marched into the desert to be killed,'' 
     Professor Dadrian said, ``he was told: `We can't make 
     distinctions. Those who are not guilty today will oppose us 
     in the future.' ''
       But Professor Lowry counters that official records he 
     discovered show that Robert Lansing, the Secretary of State 
     then, rewrote parts of the memoirs, and that the book--long 
     considered a standard in the annals of diplomatic history--is 
     filled with ``outright lies and half-truths''. His findings 
     were published in 1990 by an academic press in Istanbul.
       The remark by Hitler is another matter of contention among 
     scholars. He is reported to have said in a private meeting 
     with SS chiefs at Obersalzberg, on the eve of the invasion of 
     Poland: ``Be merciless in exterminating Polish men, women and 
     children. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of 
     the Armenians?''
       Professor Lifton said the quotation not only confirms the 
     genocide of the Armenians but indicates that ``if you don't 
     confront genocide, the next group inclined toward it can see 
     itself as carrying out the genocide with impunity.''
       Professor Lowry said he believes the Hitler quote is 
     probably apocryphal and has been used to establish a false 
     link between the tragic history of the Turkish Armenians and 
     the Holocaust a generation later.
       ``The Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal discarded this version 
     of Hitler's speech and relied instead on a version which does 
     not contain any reference to the Armenians,'' he said.
       The third source of evidence, German diplomatic traffic 
     reporting the Armenian massacres, is considered particularly 
     important by scholars, because Turkey was a German ally in 
     the World War I and because in their confidential reports to 
     Berlin, the German diplomats had no discernible reason to 
     falsify what they saw.
       Roger W. Smith, a professor of government at the College of 
     William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va., who specializes in 
     genocide studies, said the German cable traffic proves that 
     the deaths were genocide.
       In an interview, he said, ``Hans Wangenhelm, the German 
     Ambassador to Turkey, reported to Berlin in July 1915 that 
     the Turkish Government `is really pursuing the aim of 
     destroying the Armenian race.' ''
       Professor Lowry said he still needed to be persuaded. ``If 
     this material and newly available archives from Russia, the 
     Ottoman Empire and the various Armenian revolutionary 
     organizations, points to genocide as an accurate description 
     of what actually took place,'' he said, ``I'll be the first 
     to use the word.''

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