Target of Turkish Campaign : Jews Pressured on Issue of Armenian Genocide

As part of a campaign to deny that massacres of Armenians occurred 70 years ago in eastern Turkey, Turkish officials are quietly exerting pressure on local and national Jewish groups to discourage Jews from recognizing Armenians as fellow victims of genocide.

In recent months, Jewish leaders in Los Angeles and New York have received telephone calls from the Turkish ambassador in Washington and cables from Turkish Jews in Istanbul urging them to cancel scheduled presentations by Armenian-American speakers on the 1915 genocide.

According to local Jewish leaders, Turkish representatives implied that if the Jewish-sponsored speeches went ahead in Los Angeles, they could imperil the well-being of Turkish Jews and might prompt the closing of a border crossing in Turkey that has been an avenue of escape for Jews fleeing Iran.

In one instance, the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles received a cable from the chief rabbi in Istanbul objecting to the group’s sponsorship of a speech by Richard Hovannisian, an Armenian history professor at UCLA. Murray Wood, an executive director of the federation, said objections to the speech last November also were raised in calls from Turkish Ambassador Sukru Elekdag to the World Jewish Congress in New York.

“Here we are halfway around the world, and they are telling us we are doing something that will be detrimental to the Jewish community there,” Wood said. “It was disturbing and frustrating. At one point, I was told the border was closed for 6 to 12 hours and several people were turned away, all because the speech went forward. I later found out that wasn’t true.

“The threats were never expressly stated but the implication in the phone calls and cables was very clear. I can put two and two together.”

In another instance, Jewish leaders in Turkey telephoned New York officials of the Anti-Defamation League objecting to a talk last December in Los Angeles by Armand Arabian, an associate justice of the Court of Appeal. Local league officials refused to cancel the talk, and Arabian gave a moving account before a Jewish audience of how his parents survived the Armenian genocide.

League officials said it was unclear if the Jewish leaders in Turkey were acting on their own or at the behest of the Turkish government.

‘Amounted to Blackmail’

“There’s no question that the attempts to cancel Judge Arabian’s speech amounted to blackmail,” said a league representative in Los Angeles. “The Jewish community in Turkey expressed terrible distress over threats to them because we attempted to establish a rapport with the Armenian community.”

But the Assembly of Turkish American Assns., the largest Turkish-American lobbying group, denies that threats against the well-being of Turkish Jews were either expressed or implied when objections to the planned speeches were raised. They said the chief rabbi and other members of the Jewish community in Turkey approached U.S. Jewish organizations on their own, without pressure from the Turkish government.

The Turkish ambassador in Washington and the Turkish consul general in Los Angeles refused to be interviewed for this story.

“When Turkish Jews speak out, they speak out without pressure from Turkey,” said Nan Canter, executive director of the assembly, which has eight regional offices in the United States. “They are responding as members of the Turkish community, and it is absolutely a misperception on the part of American Jewish leaders that some pressure and intimidation is involved.”

The pressure felt by Jewish organizations is part of a growing national campaign by Turkey and Turkish-American lobbying groups to cast doubt on what most historians agree was a genocide in the obscure reaches of eastern Turkey between 1915 and 1918. Turkey denies that a genocide occurred and says that both Christian Armenians and Muslim Turks died during a civil war prompted by an Armenian revolt.

The campaign attempts to discredit diplomatic cables sent to Washington in 1915 by U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Henry Morgenthau, detailing a “race extermination” of Armenians, arguing that Morgenthau was a virulent anti-Muslim and depended solely on the eyewitness accounts of Christian missionaries, who ignored the deaths of Muslims.

Cite Link to PLO

In appeals to the Jewish community through personal lobbying and advertisements taken out in Jewish community newspapers, Turkey and Turkish-American groups have emphasized ties between an Armenian extremist group and the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

Canter said the assembly also tries to show that recognition of genocide is just one of several goals sought by Armenian political groups that, if realized, would bring great harm to Turkey, an important NATO ally and the only Muslim country other than Egypt to have relations with Israel.

But Hovannisian, the UCLA history professor, said the campaign is a thinly veiled attempt to create divisions between Jews and Armenians, who share a common history of persecution and exile. “A broad breach between the two communities would serve the purposes of the Turkish government,” Hovannisian said. “The tone and tenor of the campaign is more strident than ever. They are leaving no stone unturned, no dollar unused, to perpetuate their denial.”

There are indications that the campaign, which argues to Jewish groups that Armenians are diluting the impact of the Holocaust with their genocide claims, has had some impact.

Wood said the local Jewish Federation Council is unsure if it will sponsor future educational presentations on the Armenian genocide. The Jewish community in America is caught in the middle and must “walk a very tight rope on this issue,” Wood said.

“We would be stupid to do anything that would jeopardize Jewish lives in Turkey, and we would also be stupid not to recognize Turkey’s humanitarian effort in helping Jewish refugees cross the border,” he continued. “Likewise, it would be equally stupid to turn our back on a politically active and influential Armenian community with which we feel a certain kinship because of the Holocaust and the genocide.”

Seek Change in School Book

And Abraham Foxman, associate national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said the league has been asked by a visiting delegation of Turkish Jews to delete three articles on the Armenian genocide from its anthology “Holocaust and Genocide,” which has been used in the New Jersey school system since 1983.

“How books used in New Jersey schools could come to the attention of the Jewish community in Turkey, I don’t know,” Foxman said. “We promised them that we would consider their objections and make changes where and if warranted.”

Foxman, however, said his organization will continue to sponsor speeches on the Armenian genocide, despite the pressure.

Turkish-American groups say that a lobbying campaign, underscoring Turkey’s role in NATO and pointing to the assassinations of Turkish diplomats by Armenian terrorists in Los Angeles and other cities worldwide, has succeeded in getting the State Department, the Pentagon and President Reagan to back away from formal recognition of the genocide.

Two weeks ago, Reagan angered Armenian community leaders when he refused to support April 24 as a national day of remembrance for Armenian victims, saying a joint congressional resolution to that effect might damage relations with Turkey and inadvertently encourage Armenian extremists. The resolution was defeated in 1983 and 1984 and appears headed for defeat again this year after heavy lobbying by the State Department.

“In effect, Turkey is using its strategic position as a window on the Soviet Union to ask that America deny a historical fact,” said Rep. Tony Coelho, (D-Calif.), who authored the bill. “Now the President himself has succumbed to that pressure.”

Reagan’s first public stance on the resolution comes at a time when Armenian-Americans are preparing to observe the 70th anniversary of the genocide. April 24, 1915 is the date Armenian civic, political and intellectual leaders in Istanbul were arrested, deported and killed, commencing the first systematically planned, government-sanctioned genocide of the 20th Century.

More than 300 survivors, many of them in their 80s and 90s, from around the country will gather Wednesday in Washington for a national commemoration. Southern California’s Armenian community, which numbers more than 200,000, will sponsor several events this week, including a memorial service in Montebello.