Tall Armenian Tale

 

The Other Side of the Falsified Genocide

 

  Proof of Turkish Propaganda  
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Mahmut Ozan
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 We sometimes hear about the Turkish campaign to spend immense amounts of money on propaganda. Since we all know the Turks are largely "inept" about selling themselves (otherwise, why is the Turkish image so ... bad?), I always wondered what the proof of this may be.

 

 
 


Well, I got a clue by reading this letter from the honorable P. D. Spyropoulos!

(His words of unfriendliness may be found at http://www.ahmp.org/njstarl1.html)

His 1997 letter to the New Jersey Star-Ledger begins with:
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.

(Well, you get the drift.)

This is the part that caught my eye:

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".


(According to Princeton articles of the period, the grant was $700,000, so who knows where our friend came up with the $1.5 million figure from... over double!)

ADDENDUM: Peter Balakian claims (in "The Burning Tigris") Turkish media mogul Ahmet Ertegun put up matching funds. I suppose that's what made up the rest of the "1.5 million" figure (whenever I come across the figure of "1.5 million," I realize that's grounds for immediate suspicion), and if such was the case, the honorable The Spyropoulos who shagged Turkey was not being factual in making it seem the entire amount came from the nation. (Incidentally, despite his diplomat father's great contribution in getting MGM to forget about a film version of "The Forty Days of Musa Dagh," there are very persuasive clues Ahmet Ertegun is a strong proponent of the Armenian perspective of events. I commend him for putting up the matching funds if he indeed did so [since the source was Peternocchio Balakian], but I have yet to figure the man out.)

What I was most interested in was the article by Colman McCarthy (who has been known to write fair articles on the Turks, such as "Armenian Terror Tactics") chronicling "Turkey’s mammoth advertising campaign in American publications." I thought, a-ha! Proof at last.

I ran a search, and found this article. (http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Congress/1881/advertise.htm) Here is the pertinent part:

...The Turkish government was buying advertising space in U.S. publications to prettify itself. In an eight page color spread in Time, the claim was made that "few countries are changing faster or more positively than Turkey.: Four full pages of self-promotion appeared also in The Washington Post.

The image campaign is defensive as well as offensive. Newspaper editorials that criticize Turkey's state violence are routinely countered by letter-to-the-editor from one embassy functionary or another. A recent letter to the Los Angeles Times, started with the canned line: "Your Oct.16 editorial fails to accurately portray Turkey as a democratic and open society." On Oct.17, The New York Times editorialized : "America Arms Turkey's Repression." As fast as a whirling dervish taking to the dance floor, the Turkish ambassador wrote in to fantasize: " We work to promote political stabilization and economic development."

Letters of protest to perceived injustices aside, the evidence of Turkish propaganda boils down to...

Buying space in newsmagazines demonstrating the good points of the country? Particularly a country with a tarnished image, always having been so horribly (Midnight)-expressed?

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

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THE PURPOSE OF TALL ARMENIAN TALE (TAT)
...Is to expose the mythological “Armenian genocide,” from the years 1915-16. A wartime tragedy involving the losses of so many has been turned into a politicized story of “exclusive victimhood,” and because of the prevailing prejudice against Turks, along with Turkish indifference, those in the world, particularly in the West, have been quick to accept these terribly defamatory claims involving the worst crime against humanity. Few stop to investigate below the surface that those regarded as the innocent victims, the Armenians, while seeking to establish an independent state, have been the ones to commit systematic ethnic cleansing against those who did not fit into their racial/religious ideal: Muslims, Jews, and even fellow Armenians who had converted to Islam. Criminals as Dro, Antranik, Keri, Armen Garo and Soghoman Tehlirian (the assassin of Talat Pasha, one of the three Young Turk leaders, along with Enver and Jemal) contributed toward the deaths (via massacres, atrocities, and forced deportation) of countless innocents, numbering over half a million. What determines genocide is not the number of casualties or the cruelty of the persecutions, but the intent to destroy a group, the members of which are guilty of nothing beyond being members of that group. The Armenians suffered their fate of resettlement not for their ethnicity, having co-existed and prospered in the Ottoman Empire for centuries, but because they rebelled against their dying Ottoman nation during WWI (World War I); a rebellion that even their leaders of the period, such as Boghos Nubar and Hovhannes Katchaznouni, have admitted. Yet the hypocritical world rarely bothers to look beneath the surface, not only because of anti-Turkish prejudice, but because of Armenian wealth and intimidation tactics. As a result, these libelous lies, sometimes belonging in the category of “genocide studies,” have become part of the school curricula of many regions. Armenian scholars such as Vahakn Dadrian, Peter Balakian, Richard Hovannisian, Dennis Papazian and Levon Marashlian have been known to dishonestly present only one side of their story, as long as their genocide becomes affirmed. They have enlisted the help of "genocide scholars," such as Roger Smith, Robert Melson, Samantha Power, and Israel Charny… and particularly  those of Turkish extraction, such as Taner Akcam and Fatma Muge Gocek, who justify their alliance with those who actively work to harm the interests of their native country, with the claim that such efforts will help make Turkey more" democratic." On the other side of this coin are genuine scholars who consider all the relevant data, as true scholars have a duty to do, such as Justin McCarthy, Bernard Lewis, Heath Lowry, Erich Feigl and Guenter Lewy. The unscrupulous genocide industry, not having the facts on its side, makes a practice of attacking the messenger instead of the message, vilifying these professors as “deniers” and "agents of the Turkish government." The truth means so little to the pro-genocide believers, some even resort to the forgeries of the Naim-Andonian telegrams or sources  based on false evidence, as Franz Werfel’s The Forty Days of Musa Dagh. Naturally, there is no end to the hearsay "evidence" of the prejudiced pro-Christian people from the period, including missionaries and Near East Relief representatives, Arnold Toynbee, Lord Bryce, Lloyd George, Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, and so many others. When the rare Westerner opted to look at the issues objectively, such as Admirals Mark Bristol and Colby Chester, they were quick to be branded as “Turcophiles” by the propagandists. The sad thing is, even those who don’t consider themselves as bigots are quick to accept the deceptive claims of Armenian propaganda, because deep down people feel the Turks are natural killers and during times when Turks were victims, they do not rate as equal and deserving human beings. This is the main reason why the myth of this genocide has become the common wisdom.