In November 1999 an alert member the Turkish-American community discovered that the Armenian lobby is planning to pass a resolution in Wisconsin Legislature that purported to include the teaching of the Holocaust, the so-called Armenian Genocide, and the Irish Famine in Wisconsin’s history related schoolbooks.

Troubled by this news I joined a group of Turkish-Americans on the morning of November 16, 1999 and made our way towards the Wisconsin State Capitol laden with all the data necessary to expose the myth of the “Armenian Genocide.” We made sure to arrive early enough so at we had an opportunity to meet the Representatives prior to the meeting. As expected, many of the Representatives had only a fleeting knowledge about the events that transpired in Eastern Anatolia during World War I, and thus they were very open to listen to what we had to say and what we believed.

The hearing began on time. Our group found itself in a large room facing the Representatives who were seated around a horseshoe-shaped amphitheatre. We were seated on the right side of the room and the representatives of the Armenian-Amercan community were seated on the left.

The hearing began with a statement from-Representative J. Plale, the sponsor of the bill. In his speech he tried to cleverly argue that the “Armenian Genocide” should be included as part of a larger curriculum that would also consist of the Holocaust and the Irish Famine. In essence he co-joined to these two very real occurrences with one that is still very much under debate. During this presentation, Mr. Plale was asked how he knew for certain that the Armenian Genocide had ever occurred. In reply to this, Mr. Plale got defensive and stated that he had been told that President Wilson had affirmed it and that the U.S. Ambassador in Istanbul had also documented it. The Representative also made it clear that he had grown up with Armenians in Milwaukee and he appeared very comfortable in catering to his personal connections. However, Mr. Plale failed to produce any material evidence to back his claims. Following this preliminary hearing, the Chairman announced that all registered guests would be called to the podium in order to present their cases. The first person to speak was an Armenian chemist called Dr. Leon. In his 45 minute long speech, of which 15 were spent highlighting his accomplishment as a chemist, Dr. Leon aggressively accused the Turks of killing scores of Armenian, including his grandfather. However, he too failed to provide any concrete evidence to back-up his claims.

A Professor of Turkish history who gave a true and balanced historical perspective of the tragic events of 1915 then followed Dr. Leon.

Another Armenian-American who stated for the record that she was an educator subsequently took to the podium. Of course, it came as no surprise to us that her speech was also full of anti-Turkish rhetoric and unfounded claims and allegations against the mistreatment of her people. The weakness of her arguments became all too evident when she seriously stumbled on the few questions that the Representatives did ask her, making it all the more obvious that this whole effort had nothing to do with education on human suffering but everything to do with politically pushing an exclusively Armenian version of history onto American children.

She was then followed by another Turkish-American who spent his allotted time highlighting the fact that Armenians of the Ottoman Empire had turned against their own country and joined the invading armies of the Russian Czar in order to be able to carve out a piece of the Empire for themselves. He emphasized the point that during these communal conflicts, Armenian bandits were responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of Muslims including Turks, Kurds and Azeris. It was obvious from the expressions of horror on the faces of the Representatives that this was the first time that they had been given an opportunity to hear the Turkish side of the events of 1915. After several more statements, the hearing was adjourned and the resolution is now slated to be debated on another day.

Although this hearing eventually turned out to be a success for the Turkish-American community, I do feel there is much that we must still do. For example, the time has come to publicly explain the fact that over 2.5 million Muslims died in the same period that Armenians claim for their suffering. In fact, countless numbers of these innocent civilians did so at the hands of Dashnag rebels. The inflated figures of losses — ranging from 1 million to 2 million Armenians — are another piece of distortion that goes unchallenged. The reality is that, out of approximately 1.5 million Ottoman Armenians, roughly 600,000 perished. The majority of these were victims of famine and disease that ravaged war-torn Eastern Anatolia. The Armenians have now become so self-assured of winning the day in the USA that none of their community members brought any concrete evidence to the hearing. It was obvious from their demeanor that they just assumed that the Representatives were going to believe them and that this whole hearing was a cut-and-done deal. It was not.

Furthermore, the correct books have to be read so that we ourselves can be better educated about these matters. I recommend Erich Feigl’s “Myth of Terror”, “Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims” by Professor Justin McCarthy and the “Talat Pasha Telegrams” that proves that the Armenians actually manufactured the Ottoman documents that supposedly ordered the systematic killing of the Armenians. If anything, this Wisconsin hearing showed that if Turks are prepared to stand up for the truth they could put a stop to over 70 years of propaganda and falsifications by the financially powerful Armenian Diaspora.

We must make sure that the public knows that the Armenians have spent the last 100 years systematically killing Turks and Muslims. This extreme and deep-rooted nature of their agenda became all too self-evident when, as recently 1999, the chairman of the Armenian National Committee of America, Mourad Topalian, was indicted for several counts of planning and carrying out bombing campaigns against Turkish diplomats and that in January 2000 the political wing of ASALA (The Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia), which was responsible for the death of hundreds of Turks in the 70’s and 80’s, announced that they would never stop fighting until Turkey secedes its Eastern provinces to Armenia.