Armenian Americans, Friends Put Their Money Where Their Mouth Is By Appo K. Jabarian Executive Publisher/Managing Editor USA Armenian Life Magazine Ever since the announcement of the planned May 18 voting on the proposed French law on penalizing the denial of the Armenian Genocide, the denialist Turkish leadership in Ankara resorted to an unprecedented political attack. The Turkish denialist offensive against France was multi-pronged. Never before since its name-change from the "Ottoman Turkish Empire" to the "Republic of Turkey" in 1922, the denialist masters in Ankara were so hyper-active in their desperate efforts to suppress the facts of the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1923. In order to defeat the proposed French law, Turkey outspent its opponents by leaps and bound. Contrary to Turkish expectations, the Parliament of France simply postponed the voting till November. A few days before the postponement of the French voting, Harut Sassounian, the Publisher of The California Courier, in an article titled "Turkey Declares Diplomatic War on France on Armenian Genocide Law," unmasked the imminent danger of ultimate Turkish failure to secure a lasting international cover-up of the facts of the Armenian Genocide. As the news of the postponement emerged, denialist Turks began celebrating this mistaken "quasi victory". No sooner than their uneasy celebrations begun, Sassounian's lucid comments and observations about the entire affair began making in-roads in several political circles. Sassounian foresaw: "Even if this law is not adopted this week by the French Parliament, the bullying behavior exhibited once again by the Turkish government on this occasion, would surely further erode its low standing in the eyes of the European public. A country that uses threats and boycotts against its future partners cannot then turn around and ask for their support to gain entry into the European Union." Sassounian concluded: "Furthermore, thanks to the Turkish overreaction to this proposed law, Ankara has once again managed to do something Armenians could never have accomplished on their own: it has placed the Armenian Genocide issue on the front pages of newspapers around Europe and indeed around the world. The only thing that would top this in the future is if the Turkish government would repeat its erratic behavior in many more countries. Should that happen, Turkey would withdraw its ambassadors from several countries, cancel all trade, boycott foreign products, and become an isolated pariah state - a fitting punishment for a denialist regime!" The impact of Sassounian's well-guided views was felt not only in Paris and Ankara but also in many distant places and circles around the world. One such circle was the "Armenian Listserv" emanating out of the University of Michigan. Several Turkish members along with few non-Turkish crony-members of the "Armenian Listserv" administered by Turkish Prof. Muge Gocek, resorted to an attempt to psychologically encircle Sassounian, a fellow member. Their desperate attempts were driven by their desire to subdue and eventually silence Sassounian, an Armenian American writer who is respected by literally tens of thousand of readers worldwide for being guided by clarity and courage. It is no surprise at all, that a writer who sheds much-needed light on the dark pages of a denialist government in Ankara would create great unease not only among its members but also among the righteous Turks who are torn between their urge to speak out in favor of the truth, on the one hand, and the fact that they are voluntary or involuntary preys at the hands of the Turkish denialist machine in Ankara, on the other. It is interesting to see how long more these "Armenian listserv" members will carry on with their psychological offensive. Will their attacks succeed in intimidating Sassounian into submission? Will they be able to eventually silence Sassounian? To my knowledge, both questions will definitely land decisive "no" answers. It is no secret that the Turkish denialist leadership is fighting tooth and nail to avert a near-total political encirclement by Armenians, Greeks, Kurds, Assyrians, Arabs, and others. They know very clearly that a political encirclement will ultimately usher in economic encirclement. See? It's not the "G" word -Genocide- that the denialists detest the most but the "D" word-Disintegration. Several righteous Turks privately confide that to let Turkey's future in the hands of the denialist hard-line leaders in Ankara would be suicidal for the Turkish people. They are striving to avert a political adventure that was started by the now-infamous criminal triumvirate Talaat-Enver-Jemal. The righteous Turks complain that, had the 1915-23 Turkish leadership acted wisely and not resorted to genocidal ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Armenians, Greeks, and Assyrians, today's region would have been home to various sovereign republics cordially co-existing in contentment. The criminal Turkish triumvirate of 1915 missed an immense opportunity to live and let the Armenians live on ancestral lands of Western Armenia. And the result proved to be disastrous for the Armenians and the Turks. It is yet to be seen if today's Turkish denialist leaders squander away new opportunities to voluntarily respect the Armenian people's birthright to live, let others live and to prosper on ancestral lands. No Justice, No Peace And now, with the way the current political climate is continuously poisoned by the denialist Turks, and in the absence of justice, no peace will prevail. The denialist descendants of the Turkish perpetrators can do well to realize that the genocidal objectives by Talaat et al. were not realized. The victims are not completely annihilated. Of the 1915 total worldwide Armenian population of nearly seven million, five and one half million survived. And today they number anywhere from 12 to 15 million. Their number is growing and certainly they will not go away. And to make matters even worst for denialist Ankara, just a few days ago, the nearly two million Armenian Americans and friends put their money where their mouth is. Collectively they have raised over $2.7 million, in little over than six hours, for the specific purpose to even more actively pursue their Cause through the timely efforts of the Armenian National Committee of America. True, this amount is no match for the hundreds of million spent by Ankara to obstruct justice for Armenians. However, Ankara's artificial life-support system that is constantly bailed out by hopeless dollar transfusions is no match to the Armenians' shiny shield of truth either!

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