Armenian Genocide

Mitchell Daniels’ column on the Armenian genocide (Op-Ed Page, Feb. 23) was nothing more than a piece of pro-Turkish propaganda from a man who, as you phrase it, “just returned from a trip to Turkey.”

If 1.5 million Armenians were not butchered by Daniels’ pals, the Turks, could he then tell us what has happened to 1.5 million innocent people? He says that “most were casualties of war, not of pogroms”; a worn-out contention refuted by hundreds of eyewitnesses, many of whom were not even Armenians (Arnold Toynbee, George Horton, etc.).

Daniels also tells us that the Turks themselves have been victims of pogroms, and he gives as examples Cyprus in the 1970s and “Bulgaria and Thrace at this very moment.” Well, I do not know about Bulgaria (except that they are giving the Turks some of their own medicine) but I do know about Cyprus and Thrace, and, thereby, must hasten to say that Daniels is ignorant of the facts and unconscionable in his statements. What pogrom against the Turks occurred in Cyprus is beyond me or anyone who has followed the modern history of Cyprus. What pogroms are taking place in Thrace is also beyond me, and I keep abreast of the news from there on a daily basis. Not one Turk has been killed in Thrace.

The Turks have a long history of oppressing minorities, as Greeks, Kurds, Bulgarians, Armenians and Jews will tell you. No obfuscating propaganda and distortion can alter that fact, and Daniels’ opinion that there was no Armenian genocide is similar to the one that claims that there was no Holocaust. The difference between these two assertions is that Daniels would be afraid of the repercussions if he were to assert the latter.

MINAS SAVVAS

San Diego