Prof. Turkkaya Ataov, a Turkish historian and international relations expert, gave a conference titled “Turks and Armenians: What happened in fact on April 24, 1915?” at the U.S. Congress in Washington, D.C. on Thursday.

Ataov said that Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, and Howard Berman, the chairman of the U.S. House Foreign Relations Committee, wanted 1915 incidents to be recognized as “genocide” for electoral concerns and parliamentarians who had responsibilities for electorate could not make decisions on history. Ataov said 1915 incidents should be assessed through historical records and a “genocide” could occur by hostility against an ethnic group for long years as it happened against Jews. Some statements claiming that Hitler had said “Armenian genocide took place” did not comply with the facts, he said. “Unfortunately, they are trying to make up an enemy in order to create national identity and pass it to young Armenian generations,” he added.

History could not be written in accordance with personal demands, Ataov said. Ataov noted that April 24 had been tried to be acknowledged as “date of genocide” and made-up books had been published for this purpose. “In fact, interior minister of Ottoman Empire sent notices to 16 governors and 10 tenants on April 24, 1915. Branches of Armenian committees such as Tashnak and Hinchak should be closed down in regions of these governors and tenants, the notice asked. The same day 235 leaders out of 77,735 Armenians, were sent to Anatolian province of Cankiri,” he said.

Ataov stated, “some of them who were sent to Cankiri were released and some of them were sent to Ayas town in Ankara and Zor region. One of them died and two others were murdered by two people who did not have any link to the state. This was what happened on April 24. Was it genocide?”

Turkkaya Ataov is Professor Emeritus in International Relations at Ankara University. He did his graduate work in the United States, where he received two M.A.s (NYU & Syracuse Univ.) and a Ph.D. (1959, Syracuse U., NY). He taught at Ankara Univ. for more than four decades and lectured in several American, British, Russian, German, Dutch, Indian, Chinese, Middle Eastern, African and Australian universities. He is the author of close to 140 books (most of which have been in foreign languages and printed in Europe or in the Americas), a few hundred academic treaties, and a few thousand newspaper articles. His writings have been translated into 20 languages and appeared in 17 European, 13 Asian, 5 African, and 3 American states and Australia. He was elected to central executive positions of UN-related international organizations, dealing with racial discrimination, human rights, terrorism, nuclear war, and exchange of prisoners of war.

Prof. Ataov published 80 books or booklets on the Armenian issue participated in the UN (1985) Geneva meetings of the Human Rights Commission on the Genocide Convention, and partook in several meetings of the European Parliament that dealt with the Armenian issue. He received 17 academic awards or medals in recognition of his published works and activities. They include two (Italian and Federal Yugoslavian) presidential medals, two UN-affiliated awards, and several honorary doctorates and academic citations.

Source: Cumhuriyet
URL: en.cumhuriyet.com/?hn=131678