ARMENIAN PATRIARCH OF TURKEY IN U.S. ON TURKISH PROPAGANDA TOUR ONCE AGAIN
By Harut Sassounian, Publisher, The California Courier
AZG Armenian Daily
20/09/2007
This week Mesrob Mutafyan, the Armenian Patriarch of Turkey, is making
his second visit to the United States in the past 6 months.
During his highly controversial first visit in April, the Patriarch
participated in a conference organized by a Turkish group at the
Southern Methodist University, in Dallas, Turkey. The conference was
titled, "Turkish-Armenian Question: What to do Now?"
Despite intensive efforts by various Armenian-American groups to
persuade the Patriarch not to speak at that conference, he went ahead
with his speaking engagement. All other Armenian invitees, for one
reason or another, refused to take part. The concern was that the Turks
would use the conference as a ploy to convince the outside world that
Armenians and Turks were "reconciling" with each other, and therefore,
there was no need to pressure Turkey into genocide recognition.
Archbishop Khajag Barsamian, the Primate of the Armenian Church
of America (Eastern Diocese), was so incensed by the Patriarch’s
planned participation that he wrote to University officials objecting
to its sponsorship of this politically tendentious and one sided
"Armenian-Turkish dialogue." The University complied with the Primate’s
request and withdrew its support from the conference. Archbishop
Barsamian rightly pointed out that Patriarch Mutafyan "has a very
limited ability to freely express his true thoughts and concerns
because of oppressive Turkish free-speech laws." The Primate aptly
described the Patriarch as "a virtual ‘prisoner of conscience’ of
the Turkish government."
Interestingly, the Patriarch repeated word for word in Dallas what he
had said a year earlier during a similar conference held at Erciyes
University in Kayseri, Turkey. The April 2006 conference was entitled:
"The Art of Living Together in Ottoman Society: The Example of
Turkish-Armenian Relations."
Patriarch Mutafyan will most probably repeat the same remarks during
his talk on September 20, at the Georgetown University in Washington,
D.C. The sponsors of both the April and September conferences are
affiliated with the Islamic Fethullah Gulen group.
To gain an advance insight into what the Patriarch might say this
week, here are some excerpts of his previously delivered talks in
Kayseri and Dallas which consist of some straight talk mixed with
words meant to appease Turkish officials.
"It is certainly not possible to idealize every phase in the history
of Ottoman-Armenian relations and to say that Armenians never had
any problems. Being Christians, the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire
were never first class citizens. And they certainly did suffer
discrimination. However, we know that the first acquaintance between
Turks and Armenians dates back to at least 1300 years ago…. In
this long history of commercial and political interactions between
neighbors, there are relatively few instances where we observe
exchanges of physical violence," the Patriarch said.
He then went on to say that "especially towards the end of the
19th century there was an increase in tension in relations, whether
responsibility for this was due to the Ottoman government, or the
German, American, French, British and especially Russian governments,
Armenian political parties, or even the Armenian Patriarchs of
Istanbul of that period, who discharged their obligations under the
surveillance of the Temporal Affairs Council that then consisted of
Armenian secularists in Turkey. Even if the various parties were not
all equally responsible, it is not a moral approach in view of the
painful after-effects for any one of them to deny any accountability
in the development of these events, or to place all the responsibility
on the other parties."
After several Turkish propagandists delivered their talks at the
Dallas conference, the Armenian Patriarch responded by making the
following statement outside of his written text: "Did some Armenian
political parties promote armed rebellion in the Armenian community?
They did. In some areas, did armed Armenian gangs work together
with the Russian army? They did. But the Government of the Committee
for Union and Progress, being in charge of the country, is chiefly
responsible for the painful events that occurred and the great
suffering that was endured. If you do not hold the government in
charge of the behavior of the country as responsible for that behavior,
then whom will you hold responsible? Instead of eliminating in their
local areas the armed Armenian factions who were in rebellion, the
Government of the Committee for Union and Progress sent all Armenians
in the Ottoman Empire on a sort of death march to the Syrian Desert;
it sentenced them to death. Therefore this party is chiefly culpable
for the 1915 events."
A day before his Georgetown speech this week, the Armenian Patriarch
is invited to participate at the 2nd Congressional Interfaith and
Intercultural Ramadan Iftar Dinner on Capitol Hill, where he will
speak along with several other clergymen from various faiths.
There has been some speculation as to who arranged for the Armenian
Patriarch to come to Washington, D.C., shortly before the anticipated
vote in the House of Representatives on the Armenian Genocide
resolution and less than a month before the Pontifical visit of His
Holiness Karekin II to the nation’s capital? Many see the sinister
hand of the Turkish government orchestrating the Patriarch’s speaking
engagements, using the connections of high-powered lobbying firms
hired by Ankara.
This writer has repeatedly urged the Armenian Patriarch to stay away
from involvement in political matters and instead tend to the spiritual
needs of his flock. He must at all cost resist the pressures exerted
upon him by Turkish officials, in order not to allow them to use him
as a propaganda tool serving Turkey’s denialist agenda.
In the meantime, Armenian religious and secular leaders have an
obligation to point out that the Patriarch does not speak for the
Armenian Church and that his political statements are made under
Turkish pressure and do not reflect his true views on the Armenian
Genocide.