May 15, 1997
Via fax: (201) 539-7919
To the Editor of The Star-Ledger:
Your May 13th letter published under the name Tamer Ozaydin was carefully crafted to achieve its effect on an audience that has had little exposure to the topic it addressed: the denial of this century’s first genocide during which 1.5 million Armenians and 300,000 Pontian Greeks were exterminated by the Turkish nation. The letter is typical of a disturbing effort best summarized by Stanley Cohen, Professor of Criminology at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem:
The nearest successful example [of "collective denial"] in the modern era is the 80 years of official denial by successive Turkish governments of the 1915-17 genocide against the Armenians in which some 1.5 million people lost their lives. This denial has been sustained by deliberate propaganda, lying and coverups, forging documents, suppression of archives, and bribing scholars. The West, especially the United States, has colluded by not referring to the massacres in the United Nations, ignoring memorial ceremonies, and surrendering to Turkish pressure in NATO and other strategic arenas of cooperation."1
What makes Turkey’s brand of genocide denial particularly menacing is that it is not confined within its own borders but is being aggressively, and stealthily, exported to the US, thereby seriously undermining the integrity of our nation’s press and academia. As documented by exposés in publications such as The New York Times, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Boston Globe, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and even The Turkish Daily News,1 the Turkish Government is spending millions of dollars in pursuit of a false, offensive and, above all, dangerous historical revisionism through the outright purchase of scholars and university chairs within our nation’s most prestigious universities.
Heath Lowry for example--the Princeton academic praised in the Ledger’s May 13th letter--is now the subject of a scandal involving his surreptitious employ by the Turkish Government and his clandestine communications coaching the Turkish Embassy on how to most effectively deny the Armenian Genocide within academic circles. Lowry was appointed head of the "Ataturk Chair of Turkish Studies" at Princeton University after a $1.5 million endowment from Turkey but was recently removed as department head after the scandal.
As for Turkey’s more obvious attempts at influencing American public opinion, an article by New York Post writer Colman McCarthy, entitled "The Torture That Turkey Fails to Advertise", chronicles Turkey’s mammoth advertising campaign in American publications and, in his opinion, the "laughably inept efforts of the Turkish government to deny its policies of torture".
At a time when the Turks’ highly successful strategies of historical revisionism are being publicly exposed--strategies which range from the purchasing of American academia to an unholy alliance of US military contractors, highly-placed State Department and Pentagon officials, and mammoth public relations firms such as Hill & Knowlton and Fleishman Hillard--Turkey’s well-orchestrated denials of its dark past and sordid present must be vigilantly challenged. Just as The Ledger would owe a responsibility to its readers to expose false claims involving Holocaust denial, your paper owes a similar responsibility to expose this equally insidious menace to truth and to the struggle against man’s inhumanity to man.
Very truly yours,
P. D. Spyropoulos, Esq.
Director
2 "Princeton Is Accused of Fronting For The Turkish Government", The New York Times, 5/22/96; "Critics Accuse Turkish Government of Manipulating Scholarship", Amy Magaro Rubin, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/27/95; "Turkish Largess Raises Questions", The Boston Globe, 11/25/95; "Ciller’s Favorite, Kriegel, Wins New Exclusive Contract", The Turkish Daily News, 4/16/97.
May 15, 1997
Via fax: (201) 539-7919
To the Editor of The Star-Ledger:
Your May 13th letter published under the name Tamer Ozaydin was carefully crafted to achieve its effect on an audience that has had little exposure to the topic it addressed: the denial of this century’s first genocide during which 1.5 million Armenians and 300,000 Pontian Greeks were exterminated by the Turkish nation. The letter is typical of a disturbing effort best summarized by Stanley Cohen, Professor of Criminology at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem:
The nearest successful example [of "collective denial"] in the modern era is the 80 years of official denial by successive Turkish governments of the 1915-17 genocide against the Armenians in which some 1.5 million people lost their lives. This denial has been sustained by deliberate propaganda, lying and coverups, forging documents, suppression of archives, and bribing scholars. The West, especially the United States, has colluded by not referring to the massacres in the United Nations, ignoring memorial ceremonies, and surrendering to Turkish pressure in NATO and other strategic arenas of cooperation."1
What makes Turkey’s brand of genocide denial particularly menacing is that it is not confined within its own borders but is being aggressively, and stealthily, exported to the US, thereby seriously undermining the integrity of our nation’s press and academia. As documented by exposés in publications such as The New York Times, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Boston Globe, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and even The Turkish Daily News,1 the Turkish Government is spending millions of dollars in pursuit of a false, offensive and, above all, dangerous historical revisionism through the outright purchase of scholars and university chairs within our nation’s most prestigious universities.
Turkey’s well-orchestrated denials of its dark past and sordid present must be vigilantly challenged. Just as The Ledger would owe a responsibility to its readers to expose false claims involving Holocaust denial, your paper owes a similar responsibility to expose this equally insidious menace to truth and to the struggle against man’s inhumanity to man.
Very truly yours,
P. D. Spyropoulos, Esq.
Director
2 "Princeton Is Accused of Fronting For The Turkish Government", The New York Times, 5/22/96; "Critics Accuse Turkish Government of Manipulating Scholarship", Amy Magaro Rubin, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/27/95; "Turkish Largess Raises Questions", The Boston Globe, 11/25/95; "Ciller’s Favorite, Kriegel, Wins New Exclusive Contract", The Turkish Daily News, 4/16/97.