LETTER: Sight Unseen

There has been controversy over the Armenian Genocide committed by the Turks from 1914-1915 by those who want to rewrite history in favor of the Turkish government because they are allies of the United States. Cenk Uygur (DP 11/22/91) makes reference to historians who have absolved the Turks of doing anything wrong and he continues to cite various individuals who have searched all kinds of archives and have never been able to establish the genocide. I would like to call to his attention that my father survived the Turkish genocide at the age of 14 along with his sisters and mother. He (along with his sisters) witnessed hundreds of killings, including their fathers and uncles. I would like to know whether I should believe my father and my aunts or should I discount their eyewitness accounts? My father and his sisters were not historians or diplomats, they were just plain ordinary citizens in Malatya, Turkey, where the family was born and raised. Why did they end up in Mosul, Iraq? Not for better opportunities, but simply because they were driven out of their country as part of a caravan driven into the desert in northern Syria to die. As a matter of fact, their mother did die of starvation. Can Uygur explain to me why my father's father and his brothers were killed along with many hundreds of villagers? Shall I look in the library and/or the archives to understand the truth or shall I believe my father? There are thousands of eyewitnesses and survivors of this genocide (like my father and his sisters). Are they all lying? Are the survivors of the Jewish holocaust and their eyewitnesses lying? I think we have wasted seventy-five years discussing this issue. No one is accusing present Turkish people of the genocide. All we are saying is that it happened. Let us admit it so that it doesn't happen again. I hope Uygur will stop looking in the archives and start talking to eyewitnesses that are still alive. Maybe he will understand and will be kind enough to acknowledge it as we have acknowledged the Jewish holocaust. J.S. HOVNANIAN Wharton '52

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