Author: Harut Sassounian

The Hoya, the student newspaper of Georgetown University in Washington, DC, published last week a lengthy investigative article about the demise of the Institute of Turkish Studies, established by the Turkish government. Interestingly, a note at the bottom of the article stated that it was written by Liam Scott and another staff writer who “requested anonymity due to safety concerns in Turkey.”

Even though the Institute was established to paint a positive picture of Turkey in the United States, it ended up antagonizing its own American board members when the Turkish government decided to shut it down.

In 1982, the government of Turkey founded the Institute of Turkish Studies (ITS) at Georgetown University with an endowment of $3 million. The purpose was to give Turkey a respectable image in the United States by recruiting and funding American academics who would do research on Turkish topics. Throughout its existence, the ITS spent around $350,000 a year to give “grants, scholarships, subventions, and seed money” to 400 scholars in 19 universities to publish books and journals in order to promote Turkish studies. The ITS stated that it played “a key role in furthering knowledge and understanding of a key NATO ally of the United States, the Republic of Turkey.”

Not surprisingly, the ITS had appointed as its Honorary Chairman of the board of governors Turkey’s Ambassador to the U.S. to oversee its activities and funding decisions. The board consisted of prominent former State Department officials and well-known American scholars in Ottoman and modern Turkish studies. The first Executive Director of the ITS was Heath Lowry, a denialist of the Armenian Genocide.

I got involved in a legal dispute with the ITS in 1985 after I wrote an editorial in the California Courier titled, “How the Turks Use Our Tax Dollars Against Us.” I pointed out that many of the scholars who had received grants from the ITS were the same ones who had signed a statement denying the Armenian Genocide. The statement was published as a paid ad in The Washington Post and The New York Times on May 19, 1985. Lowry was involved in drafting this statement and collecting signatures for it. In my article, I reported that 20 of the 69 signatories of the statement had received tens of thousands of dollars from the ITS. Lowry’s role in this ad was a violation of the tax-exempt status of the ITS which was legally prohibited from political lobbying at a time when the U.S. Congress was considering adopting a resolution on the Armenian Genocide. The ITS also contradicted its own statement that it “does not seek to influence legislation nor advocate particular policies or agendas.”

Even though I had obtained the amounts received by the scholars who had signed this denialist statement from an ITS brochure, the ITS sent a letter threatening my newspaper with a major lawsuit, unless I published a lengthy retraction, which I refused to do. The ITS dropped the lawsuit.

The Hoya article provided extensive details about the collapse of the ITS, a Turkish propaganda project disguised as an academic endeavor. The Institute was closed down in September 2020 because some of the independent-minded scholars on its board had refused to go along with the directives of the Turkish government.

The Hoya wrote that “according to former ITS Executive Director Sinan Ciddi and former ITS board members Walter Denny and Steven Cook, Turkey’s decision to defund the ITS came amid rising government pressure to blindly support and loyally promote Erdogan. The ITS was caught in the line of fire of government repression that has characterized Erdogan’s increasingly autocratic Turkey, they said.”

Ciddi, a Georgetown professor of Turkish studies, told The Hoya that the ITS was initially a separate entity from Georgetown University. Later on, the University “provided the ITS with office space and administrative assistance, but the university did not have a say in the Institute’s operations. Georgetown also supplemented the salary of the Institute’s executive director after the ITS lost funding from the Turkish government.” Prof. Jenny White, who served on the ITS board for nearly 20 years, told The Hoya that the ITS was “the best advertisement that there could have been for Turkey.”

In 2006, former Binghamton University professor Donald Quataert resigned as chairman of the ITS board after insisting on the importance of researching the Armenian Genocide, reported The Hoya. The Middle East Studies Association’s Committee on Academic Freedom, in an open letter to then Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, complained that “Quataert resigned because of pressure from the Turkish government. Several other ITS board members resigned in support of Quataert.”

As Erdogan became more repressive, the Institute was viewed by the Turkish government as funding academic research that was not favorable to Turkey. In May 2015, Turkish ambassador to the U.S. Serdar Kilic, during the semi-annual dinner at the Turkish Embassy in Washington, DC, complained to ITS chairman Ross Wilson that “some recent work from the ITS was negative toward the Turkish government and expressed interest in redirecting the work of ITS to politically benefit the government,” The Hoya reported. Amb. Kilic then cancelled the scheduled ITS dinner in the fall of 2015. Finally, “in early September 2015, Saltzman and Evinch, a Washington, D.C. law firm representing Turkey’s U.S. embassy,” told the Institute that the Turkish government would no longer fund the ITS. Later, Kilic sent a letter confirming the end of funding.

“After Turkey cut the organization’s funding, the [Georgetown University’s] School of Foreign Service provided the ITS with additional financial and administrative support,” The Hoya reported. The ITS had enough funds to continue its operations till Sept. 30, 2020 when it finally closed its doors.

The saga of the failed Institute of Turkish Studies should be a lesson to all universities not to repeat the mistake of Georgetown, welcoming a politically-motivated project contrary to its academic standards. Mixing academics and politics is never a good idea!

I came across a Turkish-American website, “tenthousandturks.org,” which is described as: “Ten Thousand Turks Campaign.”

The website includes the combined information of five separate Turkish-American political action committees (PACs): 1) Turkish Coalition USA Political Action Committee (TC-USA PAC); 2) Turkish Coalition California Political Action Committee (TC-CAL PAC); 3) National Coalition of Turkish American Lawyers Political Action Committee, (NC-TAL PAC); 4) National Coalition of Turkish American Women Political Action Committee (NC-TAW PAC); 5) Turkish American Political Action Committee (TURKISH PAC-TX).

The website states that the “Ten Thousand Turks Campaign,” was launched on April 29, 2010. It is “dedicated to reaching out to over 10,000 Turkish-Americans and friends of Turkey willing to take a stand to support candidates that understand the value of positive U.S.-Turkish relations.” This coalition of PACs has adopted the impossible task of fostering “positive U.S.-Turkish relations.” The leader of Turkey, Pres. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has done a great job of undermining U.S.-Turkish relations as well as Turkey’s relations with many other countries. I suggest that instead of wasting their hard earned money, Turkish-Americans get rid of Erdogan which will immediately improve U.S.-Turkish relations.

The group’s website claims that the five Turkish PACs combined have raised a total of $2,152,849 from 2007 to 2020 for U.S. political candidates. Interestingly, the amount of contributions they have received has declined precipitously from a high of $510,765 in 2015-16 to a low of $202,640 in 2019-20. This may indicate that Turkish-Americans are not as hopeful about improving U.S.-Turkish relations by contributing to political campaigns. The website does not explain how the group was able to raise money in 2007 to 2009 before it was formed in 2010.

The Turkish website also provides the amount of money raised by each of the five PACs in the 2019-20 election cycle: TC-USA PAC ($57,500); TC-TAW PAC ($37,750); TC-CAL PAC ($44,490); TC-MIDWEST PAC ($35,800); and TURKISH PAC-TX ($27,000). Some of the groups have changed their names over the years.

Here is additional information regarding each of the five groups:

1) TC-USA PAC: This group’s fundraising declined from $231,950 in 2009-10 to $57,500 in 2019-20. It is headquartered in Washington, D.C. G. Lincoln McCurdy is the Treasurer and Louette Ragusa is the Custodian of Records.

2) TC-CAL PAC: This group’s fundraising declined from t$64,400 in 2015-16 to $44,490 in 2019-20. It is headquartered in Long Beach, California. Maria Cakiraga is the Treasurer and Yelda Bartlett is the Northern California Representative.

3) NC-TAL PAC: No fundraising information is available on its own website. It is headquartered in Washington, D.C. The PAC’s Officers & Executive Committee Members are: Doreen Edelman, President; Robert Levent Herguner, Treasurer; Aylin Acikalin; Zeliha Arslan; Yelda Bartlett; and Lawrence Cenk Laws.

4) NC-TAW PAC: No fundraising information is available on its website. It is headquartered in Washington, D.C. Tuba Firincioglu is the Treasurer and Louette Ragusa is the Custodian of Records. Louette holds the same position with the TC-USA PAC. The website claims that there are nationwide 11 Turkish elected officials in city and local governments and none at state or federal levels.

5) Turkish PAC-TX: No fundraising information is available on its website and no executives are named. The group is headquartered in Houston, Texas.

The “tenthousandturks.org” website provides the following additional details: “In the 2019-2020 election cycle, the PACs contributed to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), Congressional Black Caucus PAC (CBC PAC), and Bold PAC (Congressional Hispanic PAC).

“The PACs also contributed to three U.S. senators, 61 candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives, and 10 candidates for state or local races. The percentage of wins was 100% for the Senate, 98% for the House, and 50% for state and local offices. Further, the PACs were instrumental in rallying support for the 11 Turkish Americans running for public office in 2020, the largest number ever, and the three spouses of Turkish Americans for a total of 14 candidates.

“Notable successes by the PACs in the 2019-2020 election cycle were the following:

“(1) The comeback of Cong. Pete Sessions, the former Turkey Caucus Co-Chair, in winning Texas’s 17th congressional district after his loss in 2018 when he represented the 32nd district;

“(2) The election of Farrah Khan, a popular friend of Turkish Americans in southern California, as the Mayor of Irvine, California;

“(3) The election of Turkish American Aycha Sawa as the City Comptroller for Milwaukee, Wisconsin;

“(4) The reelection of Turkish American Tayfun Selen as a Freeholder (County Commissioner) of the Morris County Board of Chosen Freeholders (County Commissioners) in New Jersey;

 “(5) The reelection of Ben Bartlett, spouse of Turkish American Yelda Bartlett, as a City Council Member in Berkeley, California; and

 “(6) The election of Leah Ersoylu, spouse of Turkish American Sarp Ersoylu, as a Trustee of the Newport Mesa United School District in Orange County, California.”

Naturally, Turkish-Americans have the right to contribute to political campaigns in the United States like any other American. The only issue is that they are using their political outreach to spread lies about the Armenian Genocide. Their political fundraising website is full of disinformation about the Genocide committed by Ottoman Turkey against Armenians. This is something Armenian-Americans need to counter with their own “One Million Armenians Campaign.”

Here we go again. Back in 2009, Pres. Serzh Sargsyan engaged in a misguided effort to sign an agreement with Turkey ostensibly to open the mutual border. Even though Armenians around the world strongly objected to the scheme, Pres. Sargsyan kept insisting that he was right and everyone else was wrong.

Sargsyan could not see that Turkey had no intention to open the border. Ankara used the border issue as a ploy to obtain maximum concessions from Armenia, such as giving up on the international recognition of the Armenian Genocide, accepting the territorial integrity of Turkey, which meant that Armenians were to abandon their demands for Western Armenia, and returning Artsakh to Azerbaijan. These were the Turkish preconditions. Furthermore, even if Armenia accepted these inadmissible conditions, Turkey would escalate its demands, adding new ones.

Pres. Sargsyan did not understand that if Turkey really wanted to open the border, it could have done so without signing any protocols and without making any demands from Armenia. After all, Turkey was the one that unilaterally closed the border, not Armenia, so it could have reopened the border anytime it wanted. When Pres. Sargsyan toured several Diaspora communities in 2009, supposedly to find out their views on the border issue, he faced massive protests and confrontations in Lebanon, France, the United States and Russia.

Finally, Azerbaijan succeeded in killing the Armenia-Turkey Protocols by pressuring Turkey not to ratify them, in order to exert maximum pressure on Armenia to return Artsakh. Ironically, Azerbaijan was the one that ended up safeguarding Armenia’s interests, not Pres. Sargsyan.

Now, in 2021, we see the repetition of the 2009 scenario, except this time, the situation is much worse, since Armenia is led by a defeated leader who has no choice but to accept Turkey/Azerbaijan’s escalating demands for concessions. All those who believe that Armenia and Turkey cannot remain eternal enemies and see nothing wrong with talking with “our opponents,” are forgetting one key point: Who is doing the negotiating? On the one side, we have a shrewd politician — Pres. Erdogan of Turkey, and on the other side, we have the inexperienced and defeated leader of Armenia! This is like asking the sheep to negotiate with the wolf. The outcome is obvious.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently said that “Turkey is willing to work for the normalization of relations with Armenia pending the neighboring country’s abandonment of single-sided accusations and embrace of a realistic outlook.” Amazingly, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan considered Erdogan’s statement a “positive signal” and promised to respond in kind! Turkey’s 2009 preconditions are still on the table, except that Azerbaijan recovered most of Artsakh by force. However, Turkey continues to demand that Armenia give up the pursuit of the international recognition of the Armenian Genocide and accept the territorial integrity of Turkey. Since last year’s war, Azerbaijan and Turkey have added a new condition: Armenia should sign “a peace treaty” with Azerbaijan, which would mean accepting the territorial integrity of the latter, thus permanently giving up Artsakh. Furthermore, even if Pashinyan were to accept such inadmissible demands, Turkey and Azerbaijan would certainly impose new more troubling conditions. This is a red line that no Armenian leader has the right to cross! How can one negotiate with a country that almost destroyed the Armenian race in 1915, and killed thousands of young Armenian soldiers as recently as last year?

Having mostly fulfilled the first Turkish precondition — the return of Artsakh — Azerbaijan now wants to complete the job by occupying the rest, this time not by war, but by forcing Armenia to give it up voluntarily, by signing a deceptive “peace treaty.” Azerbaijan is continuing to twist the knife in Armenia’s bleeding heart by encroaching on the country’s border and illegally holding and torturing Armenian POWs, even after Pashinyan needlessly turned over to Azerbaijan maps of 200,000 land mines in the Azeri-occupied territories. The Nov. 9, 2020 agreement had no such requirement. However, it did include a demand to return the Armenian POWs. Pashinyan should insist that nothing will be negotiated until the POWs are released and the Azeri troops withdraw from inside Armenia’s border. Under these circumstances, Armenia must counter Turkey’s preconditions with its own preconditions.

Then there are those who think that opening the Armenia-Turkey border will promote trade and bring financial benefits to Armenia. Just to the contrary, cheap Turkish products will flood the Armenian market, bankrupting the local producers. Armenian manufacturers cannot compete with Turkish producers who benefit from economies of scale, based on an 85-million population market.

Let us not sell Armenia cheap by acting like Turkey will be doing us a big favor by offering to open the border. In fact, Turkey stands to gain much more than Armenia by opening the border. The Turkish city of Kars, only 30 miles from Armenia, suffered a “massive blow” to its economy after the border was closed, according to EurasiaNet.org. As a result, the population of Kars province “shrunk from 662,000 in 1990 to 285,000 in 2020.”

It is ironic that Pashinyan, who came to power opposing all of his predecessors’ actions, is blindly repeating the previous president’s failed policy on relations with Turkey. He is even using Sargsyan’s own words: “establish relations with Turkey without any preconditions.” It seems that Armenia’s leaders not only do not learn from past mistakes, but blindly repeat them. It would have been somewhat understandable if Pashinyan, as the leader of a defeated nation, confessed that he had no choice but to accept the Azeri/Turkish imposed conditions. But, that’s not what he has said. Pashinyan repeatedly has stated that these imposed conditions, such as the planned route linking Nakhichevan to Eastern Azerbaijan and opening the border with Turkey, are in Armenia’s best interests! Such measures are completely against Armenia’s national interests. They are in fact, the age-old dreams of Pan-Turkists, to connect Turkey through Armenia to Turkic Republics in the Far East.

To make matters worse, in recent days, Pashinyan has welcomed Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s announcement that Armenia should make an effort to open its border with Turkey. This is not surprising as such actions are in Russia’s interest in order to further distance Turkey from NATO and the West. It is regrettable that while Russia, Turkey, and Azerbaijan are diligently pursuing policies that are in their national interest, Armenia’s leader has no conception about his country’s national interest.

Another appropriate title would have been, “Parliamentarians fiddle while Armenia burns,” which is my version of the well-known historic phrase, “Nero fiddles while Rome burns,” referring to Emperor Nero’s inaction during a massive fire in Rome.

This is the tragic situation in Armenia. After losing a major portion of Artsakh and the lives of thousands of young Armenians in last September’s war, one would think that Armenians both in and out of Armenia would rally together to lick their wounds, strengthen the military and repulse the enemy’s further advances. Unfortunately, the exact opposite is happening. The culprit is not Azerbaijan, Turkey, Russia or anyone else, but us. We are unwilling to unify even in the aftermath of a massive disaster. Before we blame anyone else, we need to hold the mirror to our faces.

Ever since Armenia’s independence, we have been boasting that Armenia has the most powerful military in the region, Azerbaijan would not dare to attack us, and if it did, we would march into Baku. Before last year’s war, Armenia’s Defense Minister David Tonoyan arrogantly proclaimed: “New War, New Territories,” meaning that if Azerbaijan attacked Artsakh, Armenia would conquer even more Azeri territories.

The former and current leaders of Armenia and Artsakh refused to make any concessions regarding the territories surrounding Artsakh, unless Azerbaijan first agreed to recognize Artsakh’s independence. Even though the rest of the world was urging Armenia’s leaders to make compromises and return at least some of the territories around Artsakh, we dismissed all such suggestions. That is the reason why no other country was willing to recognize the Republic of Artsakh. Even Armenia itself refused to do so, expecting that others would defend Artsakh’s interests ahead of us.

As a result, we squandered our unique chance to force Azerbaijan to recognize Artsakh’s independence in the 1990’s, while the enemy was defeated and weak.

Without getting into the meaningless debate of whether the former leaders or the current one was responsible for our defeat in 2020, I would say, we are all responsible for that disaster.

Since the end of the last war, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan rejected repeated suggestions that he resign and allow a new leader to take the helm of the devastated state. He insisted that he is the only one who can remedy the country’s massive problems. How could the one who was in charge when the country suffered such a defeat be able to fix anything? But, he stubbornly held on to his seat. Using the state resources at his disposal, he managed to convince slightly over half of those who participated in the election to support him and his political party. In reality, most of those who voted for Pashinyan actually voted against the former leaders. As expected, almost a year after the war, not only Armenia’s problems have not been resolved, but in many respects, they have become much worse.

While the former leaders were not well-liked during their reign, the degree of antagonism and hatred that we see today in Armenia is unprecedented. Regrettably, the current Prime Minister made matters worse by constantly issuing threats and warnings against anyone who disagreed with him. He started his rule by preaching democracy and tolerance, but quickly became a dictator, dividing the public into “blacks” and “whites, and shockingly, held up a hammer while on stage during his recent electoral campaign threatening to smash the heads of his opponents!

In such a toxic atmosphere, uniting the nation against the common enemy is impossible. It is much easier to fight against your political opponents. Neither the government nor the opposition is willing to make any compromises to solve the country’s problems and defend the homeland against further hostile incursions.

Not surprisingly, when Pashinyan came to the Parliament last week to present his government’s five-year plan, several fistfights erupted as a result of which the Chairman of the Parliament Alen Simonyan ordered the security guards to enter the chamber and forcefully drag some of the opposition members out. The Parliament looked more like a military garrison than a legislative assembly hall. Simonyan frequently violated the free speech rights of opposition members if they dared to refer to the Prime Minister in a derogatory manner. He ordered that the speakers’ microphones be turned off and the cameras broadcasting the meetings shut off. These draconian measures are unbecoming of a country’s legislature. The ugly scenes of the fistfights were aired by TV stations around the world, embarrassing all Armenians.

As a result, the government’s proposed five-year plan was hardly discussed. Instead, there were repeated attacks by the Parliamentarians both physical and verbal.

In the meantime, Azerbaijan and Turkey, emboldened by their recent victory, and seeing the deep divisions within Armenia, are encroaching on Armenia’s borders and demanding more and more concessions. Armenia’s weakened leader is unable to resist the overbearing demands of Azerbaijan, while Armenia’s military ally, Russia, is pursuing its own interests in coordination with Turkey and Azerbaijan.

In conclusion, I would like to make two points that are often debated on social media.

1) At the slightest criticism of Prime Minister Pashinyan, his supporters are quick to admonish the critics by saying that the Diaspora has no right to criticize the Armenian government. I reject such objections because Armenia is the homeland of all Armenians regardless of where they live. Criticism or praise is a sign that the individual cares deeply about his or her homeland rather than take the posture of a disinterested spectator. Why is it that we have the right to express an opinion about developments about any other country in the world, for example Afghanistan, but when it comes to Armenia, our homeland, we have no such right? It is also interesting to note that those who object to criticisms of the Armenian government by Diasporans have no objection when the latter praise Armenia. Therefore, the issue is not having the right to criticize Armenia, but not wanting to hear criticism about the Prime Minister.

2) In my opinion, constructive criticism is much more valuable than the blind support of a leader. Which is more patriotic — seeing something going wrong and keeping our mouths shut or speaking up and trying to correct it? In my opinion, taking corrective action is much more patriotic than remaining silent and allowing the error to continue.

I hope we stop “fiddling,” or in our case, feuding, and joining hands to create a strong Armenia that can withstand the incessant assaults of the barbarians at our gates.