Below is a letter that the author, as co-chairman of the Merrimack Valley Armenian National Committee (MA) sent to the Boston Herald in response to its article "Modern Turkey's Blameless for 1915." The article appeared on Monday, Nov. 27, 2000 on the editorial page (33).

Dear Editor:

Mr. Feder apparently believes because Turkey has been an "ally" of the United States and Israel, it should not be held accountable for human rights violations against the Kurds and its crime of genocide against the Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians and other minorities. Turkey has allied itself with the United States and the West because it is in Turkey's interest to do so. To think, for a minute, that this was because of a shared sense of democratic values and concern for human rights is patently absurd. Turkey has one of the worst human rights records and has imprisoned untold numbers of journalists (like Mr. Feder) for reporting things which the Turkish government prefers to hide. Turkey has been paid handsomely for its alliance with the US, and one of the benefits has been the complicity of the US in Turkey's denial of the Armenian genocide.

I have been to Turkey, to the killing fields. Local residents, off the record, will point to the spots where unarmed civilians were brutally massacred. Yet Turkey, despite volumes of documentation by missionaries and diplomats, many of whom were friendly to Turkey, continues the cover up.

Not only have many of the Armenian architectural remnants, many dating to the dawn of the Christian era, been deliberately leveled to obscure the historic Armenian presence on the ancient Armenian homeland, but Turkey continues to misrepresent the origins of many of the remaining archeological remains. It continues its attempt to rewrite not only Turkish but Armenian history for its own political purposes. If this is a matter for historians to study, it is also a matter for historians, and not the Turkish government, to write about.

If the world's only remaining superpower decides, in an uncharacteristic bout of morality, to honor the victims of the Armenian Genocide, Turkey will have no options. If it wants to be a part of the West, it will simply have to behave like other civilized nations and admit its past mistakes.

Joseph Dagdigian
Co-chairman
Armenian National Committee of Merrimack Valley
Harvard, MA