By: Ergun Kirlikovali
Son of Turkish Survivors on both the Paternal & Maternal Sides
(whose family stories of suffering are now censored in America by this draconian court decision)
To: Steven John, Newscaster/Reporter, Minnesota Public Radio, sjohn@mpr.org
Re: “Court rules in favor of U of M’s academic freedom claim” by Steven John, Minnesota Public Radio , May 4, 2012, https://minnesota.publicradio.
This rule by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (St. PAUL, Minnesota) is nothing less than censorship by academia being sanctioned by law, encouraging more arbitrary and partisan approaches to future controversial issues. It is a significant blow to the freedom of speech, where unpopular views, publications, websites, and other sources can now be declared off-limits with a stroke of a pen of an irate professor. This 21st Century style censorship, sanctioned under the guise of supporting academic freedom, ironically, constitutes a vicious attack at the very foundations of and erodes freedom of speech for us all, the people.
There is a formidable array of world renown historians who disagree with the partisan characterization of “Turkish Armenian conflict” by some U of M genocide scholars. Some of these historians, unlike the passionate promoters of the genocide view at the U of M, speak the Ottoman-Turkish language, have studied the Ottoman archives, and wrote books on their findings. These views will now be excluded from the study of a conflict. Imagine evaluating other controversies like abortion, gun control, immigration, taxes, Iraq war, Afghan war, or many others, based on input from only one side. A professor who despises responsible opposing views can declare them “off-limits” now. Is this the America, with censorship lurking around the corner at every campus, that the deciding judges preferred to see in the future?
Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes articulated the above sentiments more than eighty years ago when he championed that freedom of speech does not protect “free thought for those who agree with us, but freedom for the thought that we hate.” U.S. v. Schwimmer, 279 U.S.644, 49 S. Ct. 448, 73 L. Ed. 889 (1929). In other words, you may or may not like me, or hate what I think and say, but you must respect my freedom to think and say it. The unfortunate verdict shows, apparently, that this basic tenet of American value system, which is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, is simply lost on the The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges.
It is not that the TCA website and similar ones wish to have restrictions placed on the right of the faculty at the U of M to offer an opinion about the historical events involving the death of many; it is that they want these faculty members to refrain from restraining students’ freedom of speech so the students can find out that the term “many” actually includes the other side’s victims, too.
Can one understand a conflict between the US and Russia by censoring Russian archives?
Or between US and China by censoring Chinese archives?
Or abortion conflict by censoring pro-life archives? Or pro-choice archives?
How can one then understand Turkish Armenian conflict by only studying Armenian documents?
HERE IS YOUR LITMUS TEST FOR CENSORSHIP: TAKE A LOOK AT THIS INCREDIBLE PHOTO
Before you rush to get a rope to hang the person who brought it to your attention, due to ill-feelings pumped by incessant Armenian propaganda supported by the U of M genocide scholars, please kindly take a look at this simple, unassuming, frame of photo from an Armenian source, currently located at https://www.ETHOCIDE.com , which refutes the Armenian narrative lock, stock, and barrel.
Taken in 1906, it depicts Armenian military cadets in full uniform, proudly posing their Russian-made MOSIN rifles brandished, at an Armenian Military Academy in Bulgaria. This photo is the tiny needle that bursts the “genocide balloon” forever!
Do these people in the photo look like “poor, starving, unarmed, helpless, innocent Armenian women and children” to you?
This single frame is a “smoking gun” of sorts that completely destroys the house of cards the Armenians built in their genocide claims,
… that Armenians were always loyal, hardworking citizens;
… that they never did anything to betray their country;
… that they never had armies;
… that they had no guns;
… that they were poor, starving, unarmed, helpless souls;
… that everything happened one day on April 24, 1915 one day;
… that there was no provocation or prior history of violance;
…and that the Armenians never posed a threat.
The Armenian myth is blown with a single photo…
Now, do you think you would censor this photo?
Would censoring this photo, like the U of M genocide scholars wish and the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges agree, help freedom of speech or hurt it? Would it help the debate or not? Would such censorship make America a better place?
And now the surprise: Armenians themselves did not believe in censoring this photo, because this photo is taken from an Armenian book: Houshamatyan of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, Centennial, Album-Atlas, Volume I, Epic Battles, 1890-1914 (The Next Day Color Printing, Inc., Glendale, CA, U.S.A., 2006).
The Turkish archives are replete with such photos, maps, documents, whether the U of M genocide scholars like it or not. This photo, by the way, does not deny Armenian suffering; it just proves Armenian complicity in the tragedy that engulfed the entire geography during WWI where all peoples suffered terribly, not just the Armenians.
How you handle this photo–and thousands like this proving Armenian war crimes, terrorism, hate crimes, revolts, treason, and territorial demands for the first apartheid of 20th Century, all in the Turkish archives and all ignored by the U of M genocide scholars– exposes who you really are:
a fair and decent person driven by facts?
or a member of a lynch-mob driven by ethno-religious hate speech who never heard the other side of the story which was censored by partisan scholars?
