[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 59 (Monday, May 15, 2000)]
[House]
[Pages H2971-H2972]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
TURKISH REGION RECALLS MASSACRE OF ARMENIANS
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Tancredo). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 19, 1999, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone)
is recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, on Wednesday, May 10, the New York Times
published an extremely important article on a subject that receives far
too little attention, in my opinion, and that is the Armenian genocide.
What was particularly interesting about this article was that it
addressed the issue of the Armenian genocide from the Turkish
perspective, from the point of view of ordinary people living in what
were the killing fields.
Many in the Armenian community and their friends and supporters
frequently discuss the painful memories of the genocide from the
perspective of the victims. The article in last week's New York Times
presents the history of the genocide from the descendents of the
perpetrators, the people who live on land in what is now the eastern
part of the Republic of Turkey but which once was the center of
Armenian life.
I include this article for the Record from the New York Times,
Wednesday May 10. It is entitled ``Turkish Region Recalls Massacre of
Armenians,'' by Steven Kinzer.
Every year in late April Members of this House come to this floor to
commemorate the Armenian genocide. April 24th of this year marked the
85th anniversary of the unleashing of the Armenian genocide. Over the
years, from 1915 to 1923, millions of men, women and children were
deported, forced into slave labor and tortured by the government of the
``Young Turk Committee.'' 1.5 million of them were killed.
To this day, the Republic of Turkey refuses to acknowledge the fact
that this massive crime against humanity took place on soil under its
control and in the name of Turkish nationalism. That is why this
newspaper article was so interesting and important.
Let me quote from one woman, Yasemin Orhan, a recent university
graduate and a native of the town of Elazig, Turkey. She says, ``They
don't teach it in school, but if you are interested, there are plenty
of ways you can find out. Many Armenians were killed. That is for
sure.'' Ms. Orhan told the New York Times reporter that she had learned
about the killings from her grandmother.
Another woman, Tahire Cakirbay, 66 years old, standing at the site of
a long-gone Armenian Orthodox church, pointed to a nearby hill and
said, ``They took the Armenians up there and killed them. They dug a
hole for the bodies. My parents told me.''
Mr. Speaker, it is hard to erase from memory such a monumental crime
as the Armenian genocide, but the Turkish government is trying. The
Times article notes that in the rest of Turkey little is known of and
remembered of the Armenian genocide or of the former thriving Armenian
community in what is now eastern Turkey. As Ms. Orhan says, ``They
don't teach it in school.'' In fact, what they do teach Turkish young
people in schools is a skewed version of their own history.
Not content with merely propagating this false version of history for
internal consumption, Turkey is using its resources to endow Turkish
Studies Chairs at prestigious American universities, staffed by
scholars sympathetic to the Turkish official version of history. They
are also using their lobbying resources, including former Members of
this House, to lobby against bipartisan legislation in this Congress
affirming U.S. recognition of the Armenian genocide.
Mr. Speaker, the United States must go on record acknowledging the
genocide, and rather than appease Turkey on this issue, we should use
our significant influence with that country to get them to do the right
thing, to admit what happened in the past, and to work for improved
relations with their neighbor, the Republic of Armenia.
The Republic of Armenia is working to build a strong democracy,
despite the hostility from Turkey and their ally Azerbaijan, both of
whom still maintain blockades preventing vitally needed goods from
reaching the Armenian people.
Last week, seven leading Members of the Armenian Parliament came up
to Capitol Hill to meet with a bipartisan group of Members of Congress.
This week, officials from Armenia and the Republic of Nagorno Karabagh,
as well as from Azerbaijan, will be in Washington for a conference on
how to resolve the Nagorno Karabagh conflict.
The Armenian people look forward to a bright future of freedom,
independence, prosperity and cooperation with their neighbors, but they
cannot forget
[[Page H2972]]
the bitter history of the early 20th century, and they cannot accept
Turkey's efforts to deny that it happened.
In closing, Mr. Speaker, I would like to quote from another of the
Turkish citizens quoted in the New York Times article, a factory worker
named Selhattin Cinar: ``This used to be an Armenian area, but now they
are gone. Dead, killed, chased away. Our government doesn't want to
admit it. Why would you want to say, `my yogurt is sour'?''
[From the New York Times, May 10, 2000]
Turkish Region Recalls Massacre of Armenians--But Many Deny Violence of
1915
(By Stephen Kinzer)
Elazig, Turkey, May 7--Groves of mulberry trees at lakeside
resorts are about all that remains from the days when this
region was a center of Armenian life.
One of the gnarled trees used to stand beside a long-gone
Armenian Orthodox church. Now it shades Tahire Cakirbay, 66,
as she looks out over her fields and shimmering Lake Hazar
below.
``They took the Armenians up there and killed them,'' Ms.
Cakirbay said, pointing to a hill above her. ``They dug a
hole for the bodies. My parents told me.''
More than one million Armenians lived in what is now
eastern Turkey until their community was shattered in an orgy
of ethnic violence that exploded 85 years ago this spring.
Many aspects of what happened then are still hotly debated,
but here where the killings took place, few people doubt that
they occurred.
``They don't teach it in school, but if you're interested
there are plenty of ways you can find out,'' said Yasemin
Orhan, a native of Elazig who graduated from the local
university last year. ``Many Armenians were killed. It's for
sure.''
Ms. Orhan said she had learned about the killings from her
grandmother. Here in eastern Turkey, the passage of several
generations has not been enough to wipe the killings from
memory.
In the rest of the country, however, most people know
little about the killings of 1915. Turkish textbooks refer to
them only indirectly. They stress that Armenian militants
were rebelling against the crumbling Ottoman Empire, and
discount or ignore the killing of hundreds of thousands of
civilians after the abortive revolt.
Conflicts over how to deal with the episode have provoked a
worldwide propaganda war between Armenia and Turkey.
Armenian lobbyists want foreign governments to declare that
what happened in 1915 was genocide. Some Armenian
nationalists say that if Turkey can be forced to concede
that, their next step might be to claim reparations or demand
the return of land once owned by Armenians.
Turkish diplomats resolutely resist those efforts. They
assert that Muslims as well as Christians were killed here in
1915, and that it is unfair to blame only one side.
To most Turks the events of 1915 seem distant, but in the
Armenian consciousness they are a vivid and constant
presence. Awareness of what is simply called ``the genocide''
is acute in Armenian communities around the world.
Often it is accompanied by fierce anger at Turkey's
recalcitrance.
That anger boiled over into violence during the 1970's and
80's, when a group calling itself Commandos of the Armenian
Genocide mounted a campaign against representatives of the
Turkish government. It killed Turkish diplomats in the United
States and elsewhere, and bombed targets including the
Turkish Airlines counter at Orly Airport in Paris.
Since then the battle has shifted back to the diplomatic
arena. Each spring, foreign leaders issue carefully worded
commemorations of the killings. Last month, President Clinton
issued a proclamation recalling ``a great tragedy of the
twentieth century: the deportations and massacres of roughly
one and a half million Armenians in the final years of the
Ottoman Empire.'' He did not use the word ``genocide.''
In the last year, Turkey has greatly improved its relations
with Greece, but there has been little progress with Armenia.
The two countries feud over a variety of political issues,
but the wound that 1915 has cut into the Armenian psyche also
plays an emotional role in keeping them apart.
In recent months, some of the first efforts toward
reconciliation between Turks and Armenians have begun. One
was a conference of Turkish, Armenian and American scholars
who met at the University of Chicago to begin a joint inquiry
into the events of 1915.
``This was the most difficult paper I have ever written in
my life,'' said Selim Deringil, a historian at Bosporus
University in Istanbul, as he presented his analysis of
Turkish-Armenian relations. ``Venturing into the Armenian
crisis is like wandering into a minefield.''
The scholars who gathered in Chicago plan to meet again.
Another group plans to open a series of conferences later
this spring in Austria.
In a different kind of gesture, seven Turkish and Armenian
women, all in their 20's, have joined in a campaign aimed at
improving relations between their peoples. The group's first
project will be raising money to restore an Armenian church
near Van, a city in eastern Turkey that was one an Armenian
capital. ``This kind of thing has never been tried before,''
said one of the organizers, Safak Pavey, a Turkish
journalist. ``We want to give an example of unity between two
peoples who lived together for a long time but became
alienated from each other. It's about restoring a church as a
way of restoring souls.''
Elazig is just one place where Armenians were killed by
Ottoman soldiers and Kurdish tribesmen in the spring and
summer of 1915. But because several foreigners were living in
the area and recorded what they saw, the killings here were
unusually well documented.
One of the foreigners was an American consul, Leslie Davis,
who took a trip around Lake Hazar, then known as Lake Golcuk,
after the massacres. ``Thousands and thousands of Armenians,
mostly helpless women and children, were butchered on its
shores and barbarously mutilated,'' he later wrote.
Armenian houses, churches and schools in this area have
long since been destroyed or allowed to collapse. New
villages have sprung up along the lake. Residents picnic
under the mulberry tress that Armenians planted around their
summer homes a century ago.
It is still possible to find artifacts of Armenian life
here. At one antique shop near Elazig, $250 will buy a heavy
copper serving tray inscribed with the name of its former
owner in distinctive Armenian script.
Just last month, a couple of men were discovered digging at
what they believed to be a former Armenian cemetery. They
were apparently looking for gold that, according to local
lore, was often interred with wealthy Armenians.
Nevzat Gonultas, manager of a telephone substation on the
lakeshore, is considered a local historian because his father
spent many hours telling him stories from the past. Like most
people around here--although unlike their brethren in other
parts of Turkey--he knows what happened in 1915.
``Other people don't know because they don't live here,''
Mr. Gonultas said as he sipped tea on a recent evening. ``My
father told me that Turkey was weak at that time and the
Armenians decided to stage an uprising. Then the order came
to kill them. Almost all were killed. It wasn't a war; it was
a massacre.
The Turkish authorities do not accept that version, and
many Turks never hear it. A historical atlas issued by a
leading Turkish newspaper does not show that much of this
region was under Armenian rule for centuries.
At historical sites in this region, signs and brochures
often discount or omit facts about the earlier Armenian
presence. According to one new travel book, ``guards are
under instruction to eavesdrop on tourist guides who might be
tempted to tell another story.''
Anyone who seeks to learn about the events in 1915,
however, need only come here.
``This used to be an Armenian area, but now they're gone,''
said a factory worker named Selhattin Cinar. ``Dead, killed,
chased away. Our government doesn't want to admit it. Why
would you want to say, `My yogurt is sour'?''
____________________