By Appo Jabarian
Executive Publisher / Managing Editor
USA Armenian Life Magazine
For quite some time now, Dr. Pamela Steiner, Fellow, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and Visiting Scientist, Harvard School of Public Health under the guise of aiming “to improve the relationship between Turkish and Armenian populations,” has been fast at work to pacify the Armenians, the victims of the Turkish-executed Armenian Genocide of 1915-1923, at the expense of the victims.
A few weeks ago, during the period starting August 31, while the infamous Turkish-dictated Protocols were being actively condemned by the world Armenian community, Dr. Steiner and the Harvard University along with Dr. Eileen Babbitt, and unbeknownst to the 99% of Armenians, were quietly holding a Turkish-Armenian workshop on Sept 18-20. In reality the so-called “conflict resolution workshop” was nothing more than a new type of ploy that in reality aimed to promote yet one more defrauding TARC (Turkish-Armenian Reconciliation Commission).
It’s interesting to know, why the “workshop” organizers, specifically invited weakling individuals to “represent” the Armenian position on the issue of the Genocide, land and monetary compensation demands from Turkey?
Was it perhaps because they had designed to extract self-defeatist expressions from the few hand-picked Armenian participants?
They agreed that there would be no territorial demands from Turkey
In an October 22, article titled “Turkish-Armenian dialogue initiative by Harvard University” in the Turkish Today’s Zaman, Ali Aslan wrote: “The Armenian participants briefly responded to the question as to what their move would be if Turkey were to recognize the genocide some day: They agreed that there would be no territorial demands.”
Mr. Aslan made sure to lend a helping hand to the workshop organizers in misrepresenting Armenian public opinion. Therefore, “special attention was paid to make sure that the participant profile was diverse.”
The workshop organizers also made sure that the perpetrator community of Turkey and the victim community of the Armenians are unjustly equated as being “two traumatized sister communities and nations,” putting both the victims and the perpetrators in one bag. I wonder what would Dr. Steiner’s reaction be if others would unfairly equate Hitler’s Nazi Germany and their Jewish victims in one cage as being “traumatized sister communities and nations?”
While the victim community of Armenians lost its homeland in Western Armenia and Cilicia, the perpetrator community of genocidal Turkey confiscated the victims’ homeland along with their real and personal properties.
Dr. Steiner’s great-grandfather Henry Morgenthau, the US ambassador to Turkey during the Armenian Genocide, must be turning in his grave. Amb. Morgenthau served under the beloved U.S. President Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921) who through a binding international arbitration between Armenia and Turkey awarded then Turkish-occupied lands in Western Armenia back to Armenia.
If Drs. Steiner and Babbit and Harvard University’s leadership are really serious in assisting with a genuine rapprochement between Armenians and Turkey, then they should not allow themselves to be used in Turkey’s political ploys to continually defraud the Armenians. But they should give psychological counseling to the denialists and the occupationists in Ankara.
Individuals like the self-defeatist Armenians who are mis-characterized as “representing” the Armenians in the Diaspora and Armenia-Artsakh, can hardly make up even a tiny percentage of the world Armenians.
By promoting these false Turkish-Armenian “dialogues,” Harvard University and its faculty members are wittingly or unwittingly undermining the genocide victims, the Armenians’ basic human rights to justice.
Before being administered any professional “help” for the purpose of “curing” their psychological trauma, first and foremost, Armenians need:
– To recover their Turkish-occupied homeland in Western Armenia and Cilicia;
– To be compensated for the immense real and personal property losses inflicted on them by Turkey;
– To receive blood money for the one and one half million victims;
– To de-Stalinize and re-Armenianize the forcibly Stalinized, and now-Azeri-occupied Armenian territories in Nakhitchevan; and Georgian-occupied Javakh (Akhalkalak);
– To secure and consolidate the liberation of the formerly Stalinized and until recently Azeri-occupied Armenian Republic of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabagh);
– To Assist fellow victims Greek Cypriots liberate Northern Cyprus from Turkish occupation since 1974;
I am surprised that a reputable university like Harvard undermines its own prestige by allowing itself to be used “in service” for the unholy objectives of denialist Turkey, a pariah state.