We need more emails sent please!
Kindly circulate this message as widely as possible!
Thank you.
Ergün KIRLIKOVALI,
TURKISH FORUM
*****
To: All Turkish-Americans and Friends
Step 1 – Please select one of the 17 sample letters below (or create your own wording)
Step 2- Add your name, address, and day phone
Step 3- E-mail the Assembly Members below today!
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California State Assembly / Committee on Education / Phone |
(916) 319-2087 |
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Committee Members |
District |
Phone / Fax |
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Julia Brownley – Chair |
Dem-41 |
(916) 319-2041 Fax: (916) 319-2141 |
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Brian Nestande – Vice Chair |
Rep-64 |
(916) 319-2064 Fax: 916-319-2164 |
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Tom Ammiano
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Dem-13 |
(916) 319-2013 Fax: (916) 319-2113 |
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Juan Arambula
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Dem-31 |
(916) 319-2031 Fax: (916) 319-2131 |
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Joan Buchanan
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Dem-15 |
(916) 319-2015 Fax: (916) 319-2115 |
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Wilmer Amina Carter
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Dem-62 |
(916) 319-2062 Fax: (916) 319-2162 |
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Mike Eng
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Dem-49 |
(916) 319-2049 Fax: (916) 319-2149 |
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Martin Garrick
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Rep-74 |
(916) 319-2074 Fax: 916-319-2174 |
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Jeff Miller
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Rep-71 |
(916) 319-2071 Fax: 916-319-2171 |
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Jose Solorio
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Dem-69 |
(916) 319-2069 Fax: (916) 319-2169 |
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Tom Torlakson
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Dem-11 |
(916) 319-2011 Fax: (916) 319-2111 |
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Letter 1
No to SB 234
Dear Assembly Member,
Senate Bill No. 234 will cause division, polarization, and isolation among our children simply because it attempts to teach scholarly contested political controversies and views as routine, settled history.
Case in point: Rwanda was declared “genocide” by the International Court of Justice under the rules of the UN Genocide Convention, but, Darfur/Sudan was not; the latter was charged with crimes against humanity and other war crimes. If you cannot see the difference, that SB 234 deceives you, too.
Another case in point: The Jewish Holocaust is a court-tested verdict (Nuremberg, 1945), whereas Armenian allegations of genocide have not yet seen the inside of a “competent tribunal” because of fears that Armenian hearsay and forgeries may not stand the scrutiny.
If we choose to declare any event in history anything we want, just by the number of votes cast by legislators, what kind of message are really sending our children about scholarship in history or other social sciences? Forget education, think legislation?
Dear Assembly Member, whatever happened to the time honored dictum: “Teach the children well?”
I urge you to vote NO on SB 234 !
Sincerely,
(name, address, day phone)
Letter 2
Please vote No on SB 234 !
Dear Assembly Member
In these economic hard times, California is paying huge sums to Armenians who have been brought here on false documentations as “relatives” just to campaign and act against Turkish Americans and Azeris.
This, in addition to these representatives of Armenian origin debasing the properly court-recognized genocide victims and wasting our public state resources in time, money and energy year after year for hate campaigns.
Proof? Simple: Just take out the reference to Armenian mythical genocide and let’s see if they still are sponsoring these bills.
Please do not be a party to advancing Armenian interests which run against the American interests.
California first !
I urge you to vote No on SB 234 !
Sincerely,
(Name, address, day phone)
Letter 3
No on SB 234 !
Dear Assembly Member
Make no mistake: this is an Armenian bill against Turkey and Turks, thinly camouflaged by other, more proper human tragedies. We live in California, America, not Armenia.
Turkey and Armenia should be allowed to settle their differences over sensitive historical subjects via appropriate local and international research institutions, as Turkey offered in 2005 and Armenia refused.
If the allegations of crimes against humanity were to withstand the cross examinations and scrutiny of the court room, as described in the 1948 UN Genocide Convention, then it is declared a genocide. Without such impartial investigation followed by judicial proceedings, like Nuremberg Trial, it is inappropriate for the California legislature to label the massive suffering of multiethnic society in Eastern Anatolia in the course of World War I as a solely “Armenian genocide”, totally ignoring the Muslim (mostly Turkish) victims of Armenian revolutionaries and irregulars, Armenian rebellions, treason, and territorial demands. Senate is not the place to sort historical debates.
Please do not be a party to advancing Armenian interests which run against the American interests.
California first !
I urge you to vote No on SB 234 !
Sincerely,
(Name, address, day phone)
Letter 4
No on SB 234 !
Dear Assembly Member
This is a bill by the Armenian lobby against Turkey and Turks. We live in California, America, not Armenia.
Teaching students such a one-sided, politically-loaded and unprofessionally-legislated version of history is inappropriate for the State of California, which is committed to ethnic diversity.
If the learning objective of oral histories is to give students a glimpse of past, we should not uphold only one interpretation of history falling prey to political interest groups. Thousands of Turkish-Americans in California have a family history connecting to sad events of World War I, and it would be absolutely un-American for our education system to isolate and discriminate against them by imposing a legislated interpretation of history.
Please do not be a party to advancing Armenian interests which run against the American interests.
California first !
I urge you to vote No on SB 234 !
Sincerely,
(Name, address, day phone)
Letter 5
No on SB 234 !
Dear Assembly Member
I respectfully oppose this bill, basically by the Armenian lobby against Turkey and Turks, and agree with the sentiments voiced by the Turkish-American Legal Defense Fund on it:
“ An act to… (require) oral history indoctrination of public school students in a single, disputed thesis of an historical controversy …”
This bill would result in the further indoctrination of California’s public school students in the Armenian genocide thesis of World War I, despite the genuine historical dispute over how to properly characterize these events.
This bill is both educationally wrongheaded and unconstitutional under the First Amendment and
the exclusive foreign relations power of the federal government. Any Member who votes for SB 234 would be flouting his or her oath or affirmation to support the Constitution.
I urge you to vote No on SB 234 !
Sincerely,
(Name, address, day phone)
Letter 6
No on SB 234 !
Dear Assembly Member
I respectfully oppose this bill, which attempts to teach a hotly debated controversy as settled history, at taxpayer’s expense.
The Turkish-Armenian conflict is a genuine historic controversy because the human tragedy and its characterization singly as Armenian genocide are disputed among reputable scholars of the era and region. SB 234’s advocacy of a single viewpoint constitutes nothing less than educational malpractice.
Reputable experts either take issue with the genocide characterization, or provide an historical narrative which clashes with the California model curriculum on human rights and genocide. A recently launched website lists these scholars and excerpts of their works. They include: Arend Jan Boekestijn, Youssef Courbage, Bertil Duner, Gwynne Dyer, Edward J. Erickson, Philippe Fargues, Michael M. Gunter, Eberhard Jäckel, Yitzchak Kerem, Bernard Lewis, Guenter Lewy, Heath W. Lowry, Andrew Mango, Michael E. Meeker, Justin Mccarthy, Stephen Pope, Michael Radu, Jeremy Salt, Stanford Shaw, Norman Stone, Hew Strachan, Elizabeth-Anne Wheal, Brian G. Williams, Gilles Veinstein, And Malcolm Yapp. please visit:
Please, let’s all strive to teach the children well.
I urge you to vote No on SB 234 !
Sincerely,
(Name, address, day phone)
Letter 7
No on SB 234 !
Dear Assembly Member
I respectfully oppose this bill, which attempts to teach a hotly debated controversy as settled history, at taxpayer’s expense.
Contrary to popular belief in California, the genocide thesis for the Armenian tragedy does not command a consensus in the community of Middle East and Ottoman scholars.
The United Nations has refused to endorse it. And both the governments of Great Britain and Sweden have in recent years chosen not to endorse Armenian genocide resolutions after careful consideration.
Consider for example a central figure routinely summoned in favor of the Armenian thesis: United States Ambassador Henry Morgenthau. His reports were based on hearsay, not personal eyewitness evidence. He never strayed beyond Istanbul during his 26 months as U.S. Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. He never visited the regions where he said great crimes were committed. He could not speak Turkish, Greek, French or Armenian, the four languages used in the Ottoman capital. He reported events selectively for political impact. On November 26, 1917, Morgenthau confessed in a letter to President Wilson that he intended to write a book vilifying Turks and Germans to, “win a victory for the war policy of the government.” Moreover, he admitted that his works were edited and sometimes changed by his Armenian assistants: Arshag K. Schmavonian and Hagop S. Andonian, neither of which, the historical record has shown, visited the areas in rebellion.
Please, let’s not stray from the truth. Let’s all strive to teach the children well.
I urge you to vote No on SB 234 !
Sincerely,
(Name, address, day phone)
Letter 8
No on SB 234 !
Dear Assembly Member
I respectfully oppose this bill, which attempts to teach a hotly debated controversy as settled history, at taxpayer’s expense.
The genocide claim for the Armenian tragedy does not command a consensus in the community of Middle East and Ottoman scholars. The United Nations has also refused to endorse it. Governments of Great Britain and Sweden have in recent years chosen not to endorse Armenian genocide resolutions after careful consideration. No countries in Asia or Africa have recognized it. Only a handful of countries where Armenian Diaspora exerted political pressure recogniexd Armenian claims.
Moreover, while the Ottoman Archives are fully open, key Armenian archives remain closed. All of the relevant evidence is has not yet been made available. There has never been an impartial, independent tribunal or commission that has evaluated the Armenian genocide thesis, in contrast to judicial affirmations of the Holocaust or the Rwandan genocide. That glaring omission is not for the absence of an available judicial forum. The International Court of Justice enjoys jurisdiction to determine genocide accusations under the United Nations Genocide Convention of 1948. The ICJ recently adjudicated Bosnia’s claim of genocide against Serbia and Montenegro (February 26, 2007).
I urge you to vote No on SB 234 !
Sincerely,
(Name, address, day phone)
Letter 9
No on SB 234 !
Dear Assembly Member
I respectfully oppose this bill, which attempts to teach a hotly debated controversy as settled history, at California taxpayer’s expense and at a time of financial crisis.
The Ottoman Armenian tragedy is matched by the Ottoman Muslim tragedy that left 2.4 million corpses in Anatolia alone, yet the former is exhaustively taught in California while the latter is completely ignored. To teach the mutual tragedies and sorrows as an episode the precursor of Holocaust-like wickedness is educationally preposterous.
Indeed, SB 234 betrays a Christian bigotry that traces back to the Crusades and it dishonors President George Washington’s celebration of the United States as “giving to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.”
I urge you to vote No on SB 234 !
Sincerely,
(Name, address, day phone)
Letter 10
No on SB 234 !
Dear Assembly Member
I respectfully oppose this bill, which attempts to teach a hotly debated controversy as settled history, at California taxpayer’s expense and at a time of financial crisis.
I note for the Committee’s reference that the Republic of Turkey has proposed to the Republic of Armenia an international commission of experts to determine the facts and characterizations relevant to the Armenian thesis and to accept its findings as authoritative and conclusive. The Armenian government appears to have now endorsed at least some sort of historical reckoning with Turkey in the recently announced rapprochement roadmap unveiled on April 23. Many U.S. Armenians have criticized this approach, preferring history to be written by politicians, swayed by voting clout, rather than by truth.
I would respectfully suggest that most Assembly Members are poorly equipped by scholarship or otherwise to make an educated assessment of the Armenian thesis. Accordingly, to vote in support of SB 234 would be more an act of religious faith than of secular knowledge.
I urge you to vote No on SB 234 !
Sincerely,
(Name, address, day phone)
Letter 11
No on SB 234 !
Dear Assembly Member
The First Amendment prohibits government from compelling its citizens to endorse or promote speech that they dispute. Justice Robert Jackson, chief prosecutor before the Nuremberg Tribunal, wrote that the First Amendment prohibits government from stipulating what is orthodox in politics or otherwise by majority vote.
The Supreme Court has strictly policed the public school environment where the need for freedom of inquiry and thought to develop citizens fit for self-government are at their zenith. Thus, school authorities were prohibited from removing books from school libraries because of antagonism towards their viewpoints. The Court elaborated on the importance of academic freedom in teaching social studies.
“…No one should underestimate the vital role in a democracy that is played by those who guide and train our youth… No field of education is so thoroughly comprehended by man that new discoveries cannot yet be made. Particularly is that true in the social sciences, where few, if any, principles are accepted as absolutes. Scholarship cannot flourish in an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust. Teachers
and students must always remain free to inquire, to study and to evaluate, to gain new maturity and understanding; otherwise our civilization will stagnate and die.”
I urge you to vote No on SB 234 !
Sincerely,
(Name, address, day phone)
Letter 12
No on SB 234 !
Dear Assembly Member
The Supreme Court rejected state to impose ideological conformity on teachers through loyalty oaths or
otherwise. Justice William Brennan explained:
“Our Nation is deeply committed to safeguarding academic freedom, which is of transcendent value to all of us and not merely to the teachers concerned. That freedom is therefore a special concern of the First Amendment, which does not tolerate laws that cast a pall of orthodoxy over the classroom. “
And then there is this: “ …The classroom is peculiarly the ‘marketplace of ideas.’ The Nation’s future depends upon leaders trained through wide exposure to that robust exchange of ideas which discovers truth ‘out of a multitude of tongues, [rather] than through any kind of authoritative selection’….”
I urge you to vote No on SB 234 !
Sincerely,
(Name, address, day phone)
Letter 14
No on SB 234 !
Dear Assembly Member
Honorable Assembly Member,
I respectfully oppose SB 234, which facially concerns a new oral history component in the teaching of social studies in California. While oral histories are an important educational tool in engaging young people to have a better understanding of our past, SB 234 is inappropriate because we believe oral histories should not be a mandated component of this curriculum and we are concerned about the required expenditures assumed by this bill.
SB 234 is classic pork barrel politics, adding a new requirement to a subject that is already required to be taught in order to graduate and adding a new cost to California taxpayers, all to please a particular constituency. I am also concerned that the potential costs of this bill are poorly defined. California is facing unprecedented budgetary pressures and making cuts to basic educational programs and services.
No on SB 234 !
Sincerely,
(Name, address, day phone)
Letter 15
No on SB 234 !
Dear Assembly Member,
I note that the California Model Curriculum on Human Rights and Genocide asks that students be taught critical thinking especially on controversial subjects. The Armenian case cries out for a multiplicity of viewpoints to be heard so that students can judge for themselves and draw their own lessons from the events. I recommend that if an oral history component is to be mandated, that it not be limited to victims of just one side of the Turkish Armenian controversy, but also to Muslim victims as well.
SB 234 has no clear measurement or accountability tools. It does not provide sufficiently clear guidelines to ensure that history is accurately represented in all cases. Case in point: the use of the term Armenian genocide is simply disrespectful of the widespread suffering and loss felt by all communities during WWI at the fall of the Ottoman Empire. During that time Muslims and Christians suffered alike from a variety of causes, tragedy was mutual, and Armenian complicity was wide and deep.
No on SB 234 !
Sincerely,
(Name, address, day phone)
Letter 16
No on SB 234 !
Dear Assembly Member,
The desired educational outcome of this mandate is unclear. If it is to help students to understand past transgressions in international politics and societies, then there is ample support in the existing curriculum, which, though I disagree on its one-sidedness in addressing the Armenian-Turkish conflict, is certainly substantial. Then the terms of this bill need to be broadened to include oral histories from various wartime victims. California is too diverse to allow such an important issue as oral histories to be provided by only five communities. The scope of voices heard by students should include other key historical events such as the Iraq War, El Salvador, Guatemala, Vietnam and Korean history as well as many others.
No on SB 234 !
Sincerely,
(Name, address, day phone)
Letter 17
No on SB 234 !
Dear Assembly Member,
Turkey and Armenia should be allowed to settle their history in the judicial arena and diplomatically; not by California legislation. We ask you to remove the explicit focus on the “Armenian genocide”. Unlike the Jewish Holocaust, which was a horrific event, documented and proven at court (Nuremburg Trial), the large scale suffering of the Armenian people during a time of war has not been adjudged to have constituted the crime of genocide.
Furthermore, to teach it, labeled as such, creates a bias in the curricula and will not allow for a honest dialogue to take place. If the learning objective of oral histories is to give students a glimpse into the past, let’s give them the chance to see all sides of this past. Turkish Americans should also be encouraged to explain how their grandparents’ villages were razed and their relatives were put on a train, alone, to Istanbul to be raised in an orphanage or by other family members.
No on SB 234 !
Sincerely,
(Name, address, day phone)
===============================================================
Dear _____________:
I am deeply concerned by the recent possibility of consideration and passage of State Resolution No. SB-234, which seals a one-sided approach to a genuine historical controversy to which the United States is not a party.
The resolution in question is based on a spurious historical allegation that has not been historically or legally substantiated to this date. As such, it is not only without foundation, it is also inconsiderate, to the extent that it defames Turkish people as genocide perpetrators.
Numerous American scholars, all experts in the history of the Ottoman Empire, dispute the majority of the findings in the resolution, leading to the conclusion that although Armenian civilian losses during World War I were tragic, the events of 1915 were not tantamount to genocide. Armenians did not suffer alone and that millions of Turks also lost their lives during the same period from similar causes, including massacres by Armenian rebel bands.
I note that the resolution highlights the need to eliminate hatred. Yet I must question why this resolution, which embodies a festering enmity by certain extremist Armenian Americans toward Turks should be put to the vote. I cannot imagine how the passage of the said resolution, promoted by the same ethnic constituency, fosters peace, tolerance and dialogue among the many ethnic communities represented in California or in the USA.
The above notwithstanding, Turkey has no fear of its past and is willing to examine it, wherever that may lead. On April 10, 2005, Turkey ’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan invited Armenian President Robert Kocharian and the people of Armenia to establish a Joint Historical Commission to study the events of 1915 and share its findings with the general public. Turkey ’s Foreign Minister at the time Abdullah Gül added that historians from other countries, including the United States , would be welcome to take part.
Our past President Bush has acknowledged the wisdom of this approach, stating, “We look to a future of freedom, peace, and prosperity in Armenia and Turkey and hope that Prime Minister Erdogan’s recent proposal for a joint Turkish-Armenian commission can help advance these processes.” Our last Secretary of States Ms.Rice has also urged Turkey and Armenia to study their past together, saying, “These historical circumstances require a very detailed and sober look from historians. And what we’ve encouraged the Turks and the Armenians to do is to have joint historical commissions that can look at this, to have efforts to examine their past and, in examining their past, to get over their past.”
SB Res 252 will jeopardize American national interests and security, as it will damage US-Turkish relations. Turkey is a key ally of the United
States . In 2007, the last time such a Resolution in US Congress was introduced, former Secretaries of State Alexander Haig, Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, James Baker, Lawrence Eagleburger, Warren Christopher, Madeleine Albright and Colin Powell stated: “We must recognize the important contributions Turkey is making to U.S. national security, including security and stability in the Middle East and Europe. The United States continues to rely on Turkey for its geo-strategic importance. Turkey is an indispensable partner to our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan , helping U.S. troops to combat terrorism and build security.” And, the leader of the Armenian Church in Turkey , Archbishop Mesrob II has unequivocally stated, “Our children should grow up in friendship and brotherhood and not be poisoned by the seeds of hatred. … The proper platform to discuss this subject could only be a forum composed of Turkish and Armenian historians, and under conditions of equality and freedom.”
Ultimately, the message is clear: history ought not to be legislated. Only through genuine dialogue can Turks and Armenians reconcile their diametrically opposed narratives in a mutually acceptable manner.
In light of the above, I would respectfully urge you not to support this resolution SB-234, which not only defeats the goal of ethnic harmony but also runs counter to the policy of the current and pasted US-Administration.
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