Dear Editor:
Please permit me to use your pages to inform your readers of a very important matter.
The Republican-controlled legislature of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania voted into law a Genocide Education measure that specifically ignores the Armenian Genocide.
The law, sadly, goes into effect in the Commonwealth’s high schools in 2015—the year of the Centenary of the start of the Armenian Genocide—and is designed to teach the youngsters the evil and the horrors of genocides.
Reference to the Armenian Genocide was in the original draft, but was eliminated after a campaign by the Turks. Efforts to get the reference to the Armenian Genocide back into the bill received promises from many sides, including the leader of the Republican Party. However, when it came to the crunch, the reference to the Armenian Genocide was not included in the final measure, which did include constant references to the Holocaust and “other genocides” and which specifically also included the Rwandan Genocide.
Therefore, I urge all readers to vote against the Republican Party in the forthcoming elections. This is not to say that the Democrat Party candidate is the better candidate, but it is to say that the Republican Party candidate is the inferior.
I urge all your readers who are not residents of Pennsylvania but who have relatives and friends in the Commonwealth to contact them and spread this message.
The lesson the politicians must be taught is that the Turks may have the money but the Armenians have the votes.
Avedis Kevorkian
Philadelphia, Pa.
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We cannot underestimate the power of the Turkish lobby and the money they are willing to spend on this issue. If we Armenians do not begin to coordinate our efforts for 2015, I fear the Turks will suffocate our cause.
Excuse me, but where were ANCA and AAA while all this pro-Turkish, anti-Armenian activism in Pennsylvania was happening?
A very poor show by all the Armenian lobby groups.Very disappointed in all of them.
Avedis; you give too much credit to the Turks. The culprits are ‘the other’ folks who have been aiding and abetting the Turks on this issue since the 1960s.
I agree with the comments left by Massis. My list of “other folks” includes some of our own politicians who have been silenced by the Turkish lobby that continues to make hefty “political contributions” to their re-election campaigns.