Ergun Kirlikovali is one of the founders and long standing member of Turkish Forum – Dunya Turkleri Birligi Advisory Board.
We wish him Good-luck, and we will support his actions in the coming years and with all membership and with all available means of Turkish Forum.
We also wish good-luck to ATAA’s sister organization FTAA . FTAA is now led by President Ali Cinar who is supported by wast majority of membership during the last months election. we recognize the wast amount work with Mr. Ali Cinar has to face. Similarly, Our support will also be with FTAA if he so desires.
Dr. Kayaalp Buyukataman, President
Turkish Forum -Dunya Turkleri Birligi
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President Message By Ergün Kırlıkovalı
Dear Members of the Turkish American Community coast-to-coast:
I hope you and your family have adjusted to the hustle and bustle of the New Year after having a wonderful holiday season.
The month of January has passed with fury and left me wondering where the whole month went. When you take a look at what was achieved, you will see why.
What a start to the New Year!
ATAA component associations were busy arranging local events and our TABAN and Student Outreach programs were on the road, visiting Colorado, Nevada and Canada. Membership drive and fundraising were in full swing. ATAA Türk Evi hosted the visiting graduate students from Bahcesehir University (İstanbul, Türkiye), where distinguished lecturers like Mark Meirowitz, David Saltzman, and Gunay Evinch, have addressed the students, explaining to them how the U.S. Government operates and the U.S. legal system works.
ATAA leadership paid an official visit to the brand new headquarters of the Turkish Coalition of America only steps from the White House. Joint programs were discussed.
ATAA leadership visited the offices of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus to sign the book of condolences for the legendary Turkish Cypriot leader and the founder of TRNC, Rauf Denktash, who passed away on January 13, 2012.
ATAA leadership also paid a courtesy visit to the Turkish Embassy to show our community’s deep respect and love for our motherland, Türkiye.
ATAA leadership met with Dr. Elizabeth W. Shelton, executive director of American Friends of Turkey, to coordinate the upcoming events. AFOT will be bringing to the U.S. Dr. Ufuk Kocabas, the Project Director of the Yenikapi, Istanbul Project (the Byzantine Port of Constantinople). As you know, the Istanbul University group undertaking the excavations has unearthed 36 vessels and cargoes, going back to the Fifth Century. It has been an amazing find. As you may well know, his trip will be the first time any information about this project will be presented to American audiences, and by all indications, the audiences will be packed to see his presentation and hear him lecture.
Congratulations FTAA President Ali Çınar!
On behalf of the Assembly of Turkish American Associations (ATAA), I congratulate Mr. Ali Çınar for his election to the presidency of the Federation of Turkish American Associations (FTAA). Established in 1956, FTAA is one of America’s leading national Turkish American organizations in a critical part of the country, New York and New Jersey. Ali Çınar comes to the FTAA Presidency with vast knowledge and experience in public advocacy and community empowerment. A former Vice President of ATAA (2009-11) and as Chief Advisor to the ATAA President since June 2011, Mr. Çınar a much loved, hard-working, creative, and energetic community leader. Mr. Cinar was also the founder of the Istanbul University Mezunlari US (IUMEZUS) and its first president.
ATAA looks forward to continued excellence in solidarity and cooperation with FTAA. I wish President Ali Çınar and the FTAA Team all the success.
Elections at ATAA
The ATAA Board of Directors resolved on January 18, 2012 to start a Nominating Committee to oversee the upcoming elections where one third of the Board will be up for election.
I am grateful to Lale Iskarpatyoti for accepting to chair the Nominating Committee and members Gunay Evinch (Past President, ATAA), Tunca Iskir (Past President, ATAA), Nurten Ural (Past President, ATAA) and Mehmet Celebi (President Elect, ATAA) for accepting to serve on this very important committee.
The positions up for election are the following: Treasurer (Esra Ugurlu), Vice President Midcentral (Feridun Bek), Vice President Southwest (Sibel Pakdemirli), Vice President Northwest (Sevgi Baran), West (Maria Cakiraga). Please note that all incumbents can run again for their seats as this is their first term in office and that the race is wide open to all other qualified candidates. I would be delighted, therefore, if you kindly participate in this democratic process by nominating candidates and/or voting.
We will issue a CIS on this immediately with more election information and specifics. Due to time limitations and in the interest saving paper and labor, a separate paper mass-mailing via USPS will not be done. We will try to reach every member via this monthly e-Newsletter and a separate CIS, as well as press releases, media coverage, and www.ataa.org site. We hope, with your support, to complete the nominating process by February 15, 2012, so that the elections may be completed by March 15, and the approved by the AOD on April 15, 2012. Your cooperation and participation is, again, greatly appreciated.
Damnation Without Representation: French Memory Law
We all know what “taxation without representation” led to in 1776: Expulsion of the British from colonial America.
And now we will see what “damnation without representation” will lead to in 2012: expulsion of the French culture from the Turkish/Turkic world.
I am, of course, referring to the draconian French memory law that cleared the French Senate on January 23, 2012, which criminalizes the denial of the so-called “Armenian genocide”, allegedly carried out in Ottoman Empire during World War I. The passage of the measure, adopted a month earlier by a mere 50 out 577 deputies in the lower chamber of the French Parliament, makes a mockery of the notion of “participatory democracy”, not to mention the freedom of speech.
The WW I era atrocities in Eastern Anatolia were never tried by a “competent tribunal” as the 1948 United Nations Convention on Prevention and Punishment of genocide stipulates. “Intent” to exterminate was never proven, leaving the discredited political claim as just that. “No court verdict” was issued characterizing these events a genocide. This historical controversy has become fodder to election year politics in France, destroying the freedom of expression along with it. No law can be used retroactively, 1948 UN convention on genocide included. And yet, these rock solid facts, values, and concepts, which are foundations of modern life cherished by humanity were respected by only 86 courageous French Senators who tried to stop that shameful memory law with their “No” votes. The law passed by the “Yes” votes of 127 Senators, despite the rejection of the same law by the Constitution Sub-Committee a few days earlier. Now it looks like it is heading for the Constitution Committee for a final verdict on whether it is constitutional to criminalize thought.
Some French parliamentarians, it seems, felt compelled by ethnocentric political agenda in an election year, to play the judge, the jury, the executioner, and while at it, the expert historian. We all know they are none of these. The harsh memory law, reminiscent of those in the defunct Soviet Empire, places a severe limitation on the French democracy, curbs free speech, undermines dialogue, destroys scholarly research, and discourages scholarly dissent.
France currently serves as a co-chair country of the OSCE Minsk Group on the resolution of Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Adoption of a law upholding the victims of one ethnicity over another on a historically controversial issue would question the practicality of French role as a mediator on an issue, which both Azerbaijan and Turkey view as directly linked to Turkish-Armenian reconciliation.
This law might also be considered the epitaph of the Nabucco pipeline and the European energy security, if not also anything French in the culture of the people of the vast geography that stretches from the Balkans to the Caucasus, from the Middle East to North Africa, and from Anatolia to Central Asia.
Armenians have a cause, not a case
Armenians took up arms against their own government. They joined the invading enemy armies. They wreaked havoc among the unprotected Muslim villages of Anatolia with their Huncak, Dashnak, Ramgavar, and other bands and thugs. They demanded territory for what can only be described as the first apartheid of the 20th Century (i.e. the Greater Armenia.) These and other such aspects are grouped under the “NINE T’s OF THE TURKISH ARMENIAN CONFLICT”. If one ignores these, one ignores half the story gets no closure.
The assertion of Armenian genocide is based on a racist and dishonest version of history. Racist because Turkish suffering is deliberately ignored; and dishonest because the 9 T’s are ignored.
Just look at this 1906 photo of Cadets at an Armenian Military Academy, established in Bulgaria, with all in uniforms and their Russian “Mosin” weapons brandished. This single frame of an old photo destroys the entire Armenian narrative: that Armenians were peaceful; that they were poor, starving, and helpless; that all happened one day in 1915 without provocation; and that Armenians never killed any Turks. How much evidence does one need to wake up and smell the Armenian deception? Didn’t Armenians die? Didn’t they suffer? Yes, of course, but along with many more Muslims, mostly Turks. Wartime suffering? Yes. Genocide? No, not by even a long shot.
Social construction of Memory
This is a term used by sociologists to describe the process of rebuilding a group memory by social acts, not history’s facts. In order to make the long discredited political claims of Armenian genocide stick, Armenian propaganda, agitation, terror, raids, revolts, treason, territorial conflicts and the Turkish victims resulting from them, are all swept under the rug. Novels, letters, exhibits, parliamentary resolutions, films, rallies, political pressure, in short, anything but facts are employed in “social reconstruction” process. Such dramaturgical approaches and ethno-methodology, unfortunately shape most perceptions, feelings and behaviors. People soon start thinking “All this hype cannot be without justification.” French politicians or American columnists or others are not immune to such symbolic and seemingly humane interactions. Before long, one is consumed by “social construction of reality”, i.e. defining reality through social interactions, not objective realities, just like in the case of the alleged Armenian genocide today. Consider this: until 1990s, most media reports used the qualifier “alleged” before genocide, but now they dropped it. Why? Did new research unearth heretofore unknown information? Did a “competent court” determine Ottoman “intent” to exterminate? No and no. What happend is, the Armenians have since increased the dose of pressure to intimidation and harassment levels. That’s social construction at its worst !
May love and peace win over hate, bigotry and discrimination one day . . .
Ergün Kırlıkovalı
President
Assembly of Turkish American Associations