[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'?''

                          ____________________