Continued Research on Armenian Genocide Urged by Deukmejian

Gov. George Deukmejian, frustrated at modern Turkey’s refusal to admit responsibility for the massacre of Armenians in 1915, exhorted scholars Thursday to persevere in documenting research so no one can deny that the “genocide was anything but a stark reality.”

The son of immigrant parents and the nation’s most prominent officeholder of Armenian ancestry, Deukmejian is passionate about the Armenian genocide issue and recognition of it by the United States.

He lashed out at “present-day Turkish officials and certain revisionist historians” who he said have labeled as “forgeries” and “wartime propaganda” documentation of the mass slayings by Western observers.

“In essence, they deny that there ever was such a thing as an Armenian genocide,” Deukmejian said in a speech to a symposium on the Armenian massacres at Cal State Sacramento.

The conference attracted university professors from throughout the United States, Canada, Austria and Greece.

“That is why competent, professional research is so important,” he told the standing-room-only crowd. “The world community is entitled to thoroughly researched and overwhelmingly documented facts that no one can dispute that the Armenian genocide was anything but a stark reality.”

Under former President Ronald Reagan, the U.S. State Department repeatedly lobbied successfully against legislation that would declare a national day of remembrance for the approximately 1.5 million Armenians slain at the hands of the Ottoman Turks or deported to the deserts starting in April, 1915.

The measure was strongly opposed by Turkey, a key NATO ally, which warned that approval could damage U.S.-Turkish relations.

Reagan Policy

During the last presidential campaign, then-Vice President George Bush indicated that he was not bound by the Reagan policy and told the American Armenian Assembly that as President, “I would join Congress in commemorating the victims of that period.”

Deukmejian was asked after his speech what steps the Bush Administration had taken so far to recognize the genocide. He replied, “No official acts have been taken that I’m aware of.”

He said he believed that the Bush Administration is still in the process of developing a foreign policy, but “we will make sure our view is heard” on the genocide issue when the time is right.

In his speech, Deukmejian noted that in addition to American, British and French reports of a 1915 Turkish policy of genocide against Armenians, German diplomats made similar observations. At the time, Germany was an ally of Turkey.

Deukmejian said one piece of research disclosed that Baron von Wangenheim, German ambassador to Turkey in 1915, wrote that it was obvious “that the banishment of the Armenians is due not solely to military considerations.”

‘Internal Enemies’

“Talaat Bey, the minister of the interior, has quite frankly said . . . the Turkish government intended to make use of the World War and deal thoroughly with its internal enemies, the (Armenian) Christians in Turkey, and that it meant not to be disturbed in this by diplomatic intervention from abroad,” the ambassador wrote.

His successor, Count Wolff Metternich, reported in a 1916 cable to his superiors that it was Turkey’s objective to “resolve its Armenian question by the destruction of the Armenian race.” He said the Turkish government “has refused to be deterred.”

“We owe it to all those who perished on the burning desert many years ago to ensure that the world always remembers what happened,” Deukmejian told the conference. “Only by doing so will the world have a chance to prevent a repetition of a similar tragedy.”

Richard G. Hovannisian, a renowned scholar on Armenian and Near Eastern history at UCLA, said the purpose of the conference, in part, was to draw together new research into the Armenian genocide and make it available to school students, so that the so-called “forgotten genocide” would not be forgotten.