April 24, 2011, Washington, DC - In response to the President's annual statement on Armenian Remembrance Day, G. Lincoln McCurdy, President of the Turkish Coalition of America (TCA), issued the following remarks:
"Yesterday, President Barack Obama issued his annual presidential statement marking Armenian Remembrance Day. Turkish Americans across the country share the grief of all who lost their family members during dreadful events in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
"We note however that the President's views of this history and his statements perpetuate a missionary mentality which elevates Armenian suffering while ignoring the massive suffering caused by the ethnic cleansing of Ottoman Muslims from the Balkans, Eastern Anatolia and the Caucasus. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, five million Ottoman Muslims were killed and five and a half million were expelled from lands on which they had lived for centuries. TCA believes that without equal recognition of the tragedies inflicted on the Ottoman Muslim population during those years, reconciliation between Turks and Armenians will continue to elude us.
"The President argued that a 'full, frank, and just acknowledgment of the facts is in all our interests.' We fully agree with him. Yet, reconciliation can only come from the full truth, not from half-truths derived from a century of propaganda, permeated with racism and religious intolerance against Ottoman Muslims. We are concerned that by making such definitive but uninformed statements, the President undermines his own policy to support the establishment of an international commission of scholars and experts on the issue, a proposal that has been advanced by Turkey since 2005, strongly supported by the Turkish American community, but vehemently opposed by the Armenian Diaspora. We urge President Obama to voice his unequivocal support for the formation of such a commission, which is the fairest, if not only, method for assessing the truth, which will pave the way for reconciliation between Armenians and Turks.
"TCA would once again like to extend its hand of friendship to the Armenian Diaspora in the US. Over the years, we have implemented programs that we believe are helping to heal the divide between Turkish Americans and Armenian Americans. This includes our scholarship program for Armenian Americans to study abroad in Turkey and efforts to recognize the many contributions that Armenians have made and continue to make to Turkey's cultural heritage. It is our hope that by fostering dialogue between our communities, we can play a positive role in rebuilding a mutual understanding between the two nations."
