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February 28, 2009
Father sues Turkish Education Ministry over Armenian ‘genocide’ DVD
Suna Erdem in Istanbul
A father is suing the Turkish Education Ministry for forcing his
11-year-old daughter to watch a `racist’ and `disturbing’ film
countering claims that Ottoman Turks committed genocide against
Armenians in 1915 with graphic allegations of Armenian atrocities
against Turks.
The landmark case takes on what human rights activists have called the
State’s militarist policy of brainwashing Turkey’s schoolchildren to
the point of racist paranoia, aiming to preserve a nationalist status
quo criticised by the European Union, which Turkey is keen to join.
`My daughter was very disturbed and frightened by the documentary and
kept asking me if the Armenians had cut us up,’ said Serdar Kaya, an
ethnic Turkish doctor, who is suing the ministry and the child’s
school for inciting racial hatred.
`There are many mass graves, bones and skulls in the DVD. They have
interviewed old grandads who inspire confidence and compassion. When
they say things like ‘They cut off his head’ and ‘They used it instead
of firewood’, that is bound to stay with the children,’ Serdar
Degirmencioglu, a psychologist, told the Armenian newspaper Agos when
news first broke that the documentary was being shown to primary
school children – including ethnic Armenian Turks.
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The Education Ministry says that it has stopped the distribution of
the documentary, Sari Gelin (Blonde Bride), named after an Armenian
folk song. But it has apparently not recalled it and critics say that
it remains part of the curriculum.
Some MPs are bringing up the case in Parliament. The education union
Egitim-Sen has condemned the film, and the History Foundation has
dismissed it as baseless propaganda.
Another lawsuit has been filed by a foundation set up in honour of the
murdered Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink. The former editor of
Agos was murdered in 2007 by a young nationalist whose links to a
group of ultra-nationalists, codenamed Ergenekon, operating within the
security forces and state bureaucracy are now being investigated. `In
the whole of the documentary the word ‘Armenian’ has been used
thousands of times and only with negative connotations,’ the
Foundation said.
Mr Dink had been one of several high-profile intellectuals, also
including Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel literature laureate, and Elif Shafak,
the bestselling author, who had been sued by nationalist lawyers over
comments and writings alluding to the mass Armenian deaths. `You can
see that all those cases were part of a project of manipulation …
There is a sick, abnormal tissue of Turkish society that is poisoned
by a nationalist, racist virus,’ said Ufuk Uras, an independent MP who
backs Mr Kaya’s case.
Many historians class the 1915 events as genocide, but even those who
reject the term accept that hundreds of thousands of Armenians died
when the Ottoman Turks deported them from eastern Anatolia. According
to the International Association of Genocide Scholars, the death toll
was `more than a million’.
`You go and kill more than a million Armenians, wipe the traces of
Armenians from Anatolia, grab their property, and then show children
videos about ‘What the Armenians did to us’ … We are cutting these
children off from the rest of the world,’ said Ahmet Altan, editor of
the independent newspaper Taraf.
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