The Emory Alumni Magazine is a quarterly publication of Emory University, which is located in Atlanta, Georgia.

Disputing the Armenian Genocide

On reading the "Ghost Stories" article (Autumn 1999) [in which an Emory English professor, Walter Kalaidjian, studies the literature of third-generation survivors eighty-five years after the Armenian genocide], I was disturbed by the phrases used. I would like to bring some facts to your attention about a sensitive subject for the Turkish community: the alleged "genocide" of the Armenians. The British were the closest party to the events from 1915 to 1922 because they were the principal occupying power of the Ottoman Empire and its capital, Istanbul, and the Ottoman archives. On April 14, 1999, the British Parliament rejected a resolution to recognize Armenian "genocide" because there was no scientific evidence of a systematic extermination plan against Armenians by the Ottomans. I do not think it is fair to use the term "genocide" in conjunction with this tragedy, since it is not proven to be so.

Pelin Purentepe '98MBA
Mersin, Turkey

Editor's note: The "Ghost Stories" article is accessible by logging onto: http: //www.emory.edu/EMORY MAGAZINE/

Responses to Pelin Purentepe's Letter in Emory Magazine Forum

Armenian Genocide Not Debatable

Mr. Pelin Purentepe's letter "Disputing the Armenian Genocide" (Spring 2000) does the Emory community a grave disservice in denying the truth of the twentieth century's first recorded genocide.

This summer, Elie Wiesel was the lead signer of a statement co-signed by 126 Holocaust scholars and intellectuals on "Affirming the Incontestable Fact of the Armenian Genocide" (June 8, 2000, New York Times). Moreover, the Association of Genocide Scholars has ratified a similar Armenian genocide resolution. Not long ago, Israeli Minister of Education Yossi Sarid publicly declared that the Armenian genocide "would have a prominent place in the Israeli school curriculum." Even twelve thousand Turkish citizens living in Germany petitioned their government last year to acknowledge the Armenian genocide. In short, the world is asking Turkey to confront its moral responsibilities, to stop the violence of state-sponsored genocide denial, and to apologize to the Armenian community.

Unfortunately, the force of economic and political state interests does not always coincide with the truth of historical witnessing. By various methods, including threats of canceling large economic deals, the Turkish government has had success in coercing parliamentary votes into "officially" colluding with its genocide denial. While this is shameful, it cannot erase over eight decades of scholarship and survivor testimony, as well as thousands of government records documenting the Armenian genocide.

Denial of genocide - whether that of the Turks against the Armenians or the Nazis against the Jews - is not an act of historical reinterpretation. Genocide deniers conspire to shape history in order to demonize the victims and rehabilitate the perpetrators. Denial of genocide is the final stage of genocide; it is what Elie Wiesel has called "a double killing." Denial murders the dignity of the survivors by destroying the remembrance of the crime.

Genocide denial is an insidious form of intellectual and moral degradation. It violates what a university represents. As Turkey seeks to improve its human rights record - one of the worst in the world today - we are hopeful that all Turkish citizens will work to end their government's denial of the Armenian genocide and to seek reconciliation with the world community.

Deborah E. Lipstadt
Director, Institute of Jewish Studies
Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish and
Holocaust Studies


Wole Soyinka
Nobel Laureate in Literature
Robert W. Woodruff Professor of the Arts


As the granddaughter of genocide survivors and as an alumna of Emory University, I felt great pride in reading about Dr. Walter Kalaidjian's efforts to document the atrocities of the Armenian genocide of 1915 through his research on genocide literature, poetry, and firsthand survivor testimony ("Ghost Stories," Autumn 1999).

Over the past eighty-five years, the Turkish government has systematically orchestrated a campaign to rewrite what is the ugliest chapter of its history by denying their role in the extermination of 1.5 million Armenians. It is such Turkish propaganda which gives rise to sentiments such as those expressed by Mr. Pelin Purentepe of Mersin, Turkey . . . .

I am proud to be a graduate of Emory University especially because of scholars such as Dr. [Deborah] Lipstadt and Dr. Kalaidjian. I only wish that the publishers of Emory Magazine would have shown more respect towards Dr. Kalaidjian and the Armenian community at Emory University by exercising better judgment in their decision to print Mr. Purintepe's misinformed and harmful letter. Journalistic balance does not require the printing of falsehood.

Marlyne K. Israelian '00PhD
Decatur [GA]

As the daughter of a first-generation American-Armenian, I was deeply offended when I read Pelin Purentepe's response to the "Ghost Stories" article. The fact that the British Parliament in 1999 rejected a resolution to recognize the Armenian genocide based on a so-called lack of scientific evidence does not alter the reality of the attempt at mass extermination of the Armenian people by the Turks.

This reality was one which my grandmother was reluctant to relate. When she finally did, she balanced the horrifying story of the slaughter of her family with the kindness of those Turks without whom she never would have survived.

By terming it the "alleged 'genocide'", Purentepe denigrates the "tragedy," rejects these stories, and casts the event back into the shadows, where it has lived for so long only to be repeated in world-wide episodes of "ethnic cleansing" right up to our present day.

If we are ever to learn from our past and move beyond it, I believe we all must accept and embrace both the horrifying and the redeeming aspects of our histories.

Amber A. McAlister '89C
Athens, GA