Ignore Turks’ Pressure on Genocide, Deukmejian Asks

Gov. George Deukmejian took his appeal for a National Day of Remembrance for victims of the Armenian genocide to the nation’s capital Saturday night and declared it was time for President Reagan and Congress to “stop buckling under to Turkish pressure.”

In an impassioned address to about 2,500 Armenians, Deukmejian said: “It is very disturbing that our humane and free nation will not stand up for truth and justice. The Armenian genocide is an indisputable historical fact. There is nothing ambiguous about it.”

Reagan has refused to support a congressional resolution that would set aside April 24 as a day to honor the victims of genocide, including the 1.5 million Armenians who died at the hands of the Ottoman Turks beginning in 1915. Turkey steadfastly has refused to accept responsibility for the act.

In his keynote address at the commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the Armenian genocide, Deukmejian disclosed that the President had called him Thursday to explain his opposition and repeat the concern of his advisers that such a tribute could have an adverse effect on relations with Turkey, a military ally of the United States.

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But Deukmejian said that Reagan “also told me that he has asked his advisers to look into this situation to determine what he may be able to do.”

After his speech, Deukmejian said he was “very disturbed and I’m very disappointed” with the President’s stand.

“We cannot allow other nations to dictate to us. They cannot be permitted to change history,” he said. In a rare break with his fellow Republican, Deukmejian earlier in the week strongly and emotionally urged Reagan to support legislation creating the national day of recognition. The governor then added his voice to the growing chorus calling on the President to abandon plans to visit a German military cemetery at Bitburg on May 5 during a “reconciliation visit” to West Germany.

Deukmejian received something like a hero’s welcome from the gathering of Armenians that included hundreds of elderly survivors of the genocide. He received five standing ovations and his speech was interrupted 15 times by applause.

“It is time that Turkey admit its role in the Armenian genocide,” said Deukmejian, the first U.S. governor of Armenian ancestry and the son of Armenian immigrants. “And it’s time that the Administration and the Congress stop buckling under to Turkish pressure to deny this simple historical truth.

“We recognize that Turkey is a military ally of the United States. But a mature society should be able to admit its past mistakes.”

In words aimed directly at Reagan on the President’s home turf, Deukmejian said: “Mr. President, I pray that you will reconsider your current position and take action to affirm the historical truth, as you have stated it in the past, by issuing a public statement and by instructing the State Department and the Department of Defense to support the pending congressional resolutions.

“Thus far, our prayers have not been answered. But may I suggest that we do not give up hope, that we keep on praying that the President and Congress will join us in this recognition. I assure you that I will not stop praying, and I will not stop speaking out until they do.”

Deukmejian, who counts himself among Reagan’s strongest political supporters, noted that starting with the massacre of the Armenians, “a terrible pattern has been repeating itself over and over again in this century.”

He listed the Holocaust perpetrated by Adolf Hitler only 30 years after the Armenian genocide and, 30 years after that, the slaughter of millions of Cambodians--the destruction “of over one-fourth of the entire Cambodian people.”

“A new generation--a new genocide,” he said. “That has been the tragic history of this century. Perhaps if the world had not largely ignored this century’s first genocide in Armenia--if it had not allowed those crimes to go unanswered--then just maybe some of these later tragedies might have been prevented.