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Excerpt. Full article here: http://users.ids.net/~gregan/ethics.html

Article in Holocaust and Genocide Studies

The following is an article concerning Heath Lowry that appeared in
Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Vol. 9, Number 1, Spring 1995, pages 1-22

Professional Ethics and the Denial of Armenian Genocide
By:

Roger W. Smith
College of William and Mary Williamsburg, Virginia

Eric Markusen
Southwest State University Marshall, Minnesota

Robert Jay Lifton
The City University of New York

This article examines Turkish efforts to deny the Armenian genocide of
1915-17. Specifically, it exposes an arrangement by which the government
of Turkey has channeled funds into a supposedly objective research
institute in the United States, which in turn paid the salary of a
historian who served that government in its campaign to discredit
scholarship on the Armenian genocide. After a short review of the Armenian
genocide and a range of Turkish denial efforts, three documents are
reproduced in full. They include a letter that Robert Jay Lifton received
from the Turkish Ambassador to the United States, and two documents that
were inadvertently included with the Lifton letter, a memorandum to the
Turkish Ambassador and a draft letter to Lifton for the Ambassador's
signature. After a critical analysis of each document, we discuss the
harmfulness of genocide denial and explore why intellectuals might engage
in the denial of known genocides. The article concludes with reflections
on the relationship between scholars and truth.

The will to truth is cowed by pressure of numerous kinds, reasons
of state on the one hand, economic necessities on the other, and,
not least, the pure careerism of intellectuals who put their
expertise in the service of power as a matter of course. When
governments and professional elites find reward in the sophistries
of might makes right, truth is bound to suffer. [1]

Terrence Des Pres

It has been said that gentlemen do not read other gentlemen's mail. But
suppose that one receives a letter from the Turkish ambassador to the
United States rebuking one's scholarship because one has written about what
the ambassador refers to as "the so-called 'Armenian genocide,' allegedly
perpetrated by the Ottoman Turks during the First World War." And suppose
that, inadvertently, the envelope also contains an internal memorandum
written by the executive director of what claims to be a non-political,
scholarly institute and that memorandum reveals much about the mentality of
those who engage in denial of the Armenian genocide. What then?

The attempt to confuse and intimidate academics by such letters is an
ongoing process. The letter that we shall present is from the current
ambassador, but two of us have received such letters from his predecessor.
The difference is that only in the letter to Robert Jay Lifton is there
created an opportunity to see what takes place behind the scenes, what
assumptions guide the work of scholars who engage in denial, and what the
implications are in terms of professional ethics.

Our concern is not with the person who wrote the memorandum and drafted the
letter, but with the role such scholars perform in the subversion of
scholarship and with their assumptions which substitute a narrative of
power for the search for truth. In such narratives, as Terrence Des Pres
has noted, "knowledge" is what serves the interest of the powerful
(particularly the state), the goal of knowledge is seen as control rather
than freedom, and "truth" is whatever officials (and their adjuncts) say it
is. [2]

The Armenian Genocide and Turkey's Attempt to Deny It

From 1915 to 1917 the Young Turk regime in the Ottoman Empire carried out a
systematic, premeditated, centrally-planned genocide against the Armenian
people. One of the documents authenticated by Turkish authorities in 1919
is a telegram sent in June 1915 by Dr. Sakir, one of the leaders of the
secret organization that carried out the planning and implementation of the
genocide. He asks the provincial party official who is responsible for
carrying out the deportations and massacres of Armenians within his
district: "Are the Armenians, who are being dispatched from there, being
liquidated? Are those harmful persons whom you inform us you are exiling
and banishing, being exterminated, or are they being merely dispatched and
exiled? Answer explicitly...." [3]

The evidence of intent is backed also by the outcome of the actions against
the Armenians: it is inconceivable that over a million persons could have
died due to even a badly flawed effort at resettlement. Moreover, the
pattern of destruction was repeated over and over in different parts of
Turkey, many of them far from any war zone; such repetition could only have
come from a central design. Further, the reward structure was geared toward
destruction of the Christian minority: provincial governors and officials
who refused to carry out orders to annihilate the Armenians were summarily
replaced. [4]

Armenian men were drafted into the army, set to work as pack animals, and
subsequently killed. Leaders were arrested and executed. Then the
deportations of women, children, and the elderly into the deserts of Syria
and Iraq began. The American ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Henry
Morgenthau, immediately recognized that the forced marches into the desert,
and the atrocities that accompanied them, were a new form of massacre.
"When the Turkish authorities gave the orders for these deportations, they
were simply giving the death warrant to a whole race; they understood this
well, and in their conversations with me, they made no particular attempt
to conceal the fact." [5]

The ambassadors of Germany and Austria, representatives of governments
allied with Turkey, also quickly realized what was taking place. As early
as July 1915, the German ambassador reported to Berlin: "Turks began
deportations from areas now not threatened by invasion. This fact and the
manner in which the relocation is being carried out demonstrate that the
government is really pursuing the aim of destroying the Armenian race in
Turkey." And by January 1917 his successor reported: "The policy of
extermination has been largely achieved; the current leaders of Turkey
fully subscribe to this policy." [6]

More than one million Armenians perished as the result of execution,
starvation, disease, the harsh environment, and physical abuse. A people
who lived in eastern Turkey for nearly 3,000 years lost its homeland and
was profoundly decimated in the first large scale genocide of the twentieth
century. At the beginning of 1915 there were some two million Armenians
within Turkey; today there are fewer than 60,000.

Despite the vast amount of evidence that points to the historical reality of
the Armenian genocide_eyewitness accounts, official archives, photographic
evidence, the reports of diplomats, and the testimony of survivors [7],
denial of the Armenian genocide by successive regimes in Turkey has gone on
from 1915 to the present. [8]

The basic argument of denial has remained the same, it never happened,
Turkey is not responsible, the term "genocide" does not apply. The tactics
of denial, however, have shifted over the years. [9] In the period
immediately after World War I the tactic was to find scapegoats to blame
for what was said to be only a security measure that had gone awry due to
unscrupulous officials, Kurds, and common criminals. This was followed by
an attempt to avoid the whole issue, with silence, diplomatic efforts, and
political pressure used where possible. In the 1930s, for example, Turkey
pressured the U.S. State Department into preventing MGM Studios from
producing a film based on Franz Werfel's The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, a
book that depicted aspects of the genocide in a district located west of
Antioch on the Mediterranean Sea, far from the Russian front. [10]

In the 1960s, prompted by the worldwide commemoration of the fiftieth
anniversary of the genocide, efforts were made to influence journalists,
teachers, and public officials by telling "the other side of the story."
Foreign scholars were encouraged to revise the record of genocide,
presenting an account largely blaming the Armenians or, in another version,
wartime conditions which claimed the lives of more Turks than Armenians.
[11] Thereafter, Turkey tried to prohibit any mention of the genocide in a
United Nations report and was successful in its pressure on the Reagan and
Bush administrations in defeating Congressional resolutions that would have
designated April 24 as a national day of remembrance of the Armenian
genocide. [12] The Turkish government has also attempted to exclude any
mention of the genocide from American textbooks. Stronger efforts still
have been made to prevent any discussion of the 1915 genocide being
formally included in the social studies curriculum as part of Holocaust and
genocide studies. [13]

There have also been attempts by the Turkish government to disrupt academic
conferences and public discussions of the genocide. A notable example was
the attempt by Turkish officials to force cancellation of a conference in
Tel Aviv in 1982 if the Armenian genocide were to be discussed, demands
backed up with threats to the safety of Jews in Turkey. [14] The U.S.
Holocaust Memorial Council reported similar threats over plans to include
references to the Armenian genocide within the interpretive framework of
the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. [15] At the same time, Turkey
has sought to make an absolute distinction between the Holocaust and the
Armenian genocide, defining the latter as "alleged" or "so-called." The
documents we have, however, show that, in private, such labeling drops off
(a point to which we shall return and discuss in detail).

Finally, in the 1980s the Turkish government supported the establishment of
"institutes", whose apparent purpose was to further research on Turkish
history and culture. At least one also was used to further denial of
Turkish genocide and otherwise improve Turkey's image in the West. To our
knowledge, the memorandum and letters that we reproduce in full provide the
first direct evidence of the close relationship between the Turkish
government and one such institute. Before turning to that evidence, we
shall provide background information on the origin, funding, stated
purposes, and tax status of the institute from which that evidence comes.

The Institute of Turkish Studies

The Institute of Turkish Studies, Inc., located in Washington, D.C., was
established in 1982 with a grant of three million dollars from the Republic
of Turkey. [16] Information about its current finances is not readily
available, but in 1989 it had expenditures of $264,593, of which $121,062
was for grants. That year it received gifts of nearly $240,000. The sources
of the gifts are unknown to us, but in the past much of its financial
support has come from American corporations that sell military equipment to
the Turkish government. In 1992 the Institute began a fund-raising campaign
to double its endowment to six million dollars, with funds to be raised
from businesses in America and Turkey.

The organization itself has a staff of two: an executive director and a
secretary. There is also a board of directors, which includes several
academics among its members.

In various directories of associations, its purposes and activities are
listed as:

To provide funding for research centers and scholars interested in
Turkish studies; to encourage development of Turkish studies in
university curricula. Bestows awards. Maintains 5000 volume library
on the Ottoman Empire, Turkey, and Turkish history.

Grants for the academic community of U.S. specialists in the field
of Turkish studies; support includes awards to individual scholars
and to institutions.

The Institute's fields of interest are said to be "Turkey, higher
education." In terms of activities, it is said to provide grants to
individuals and institutions for "research, publications, scholarship
funds, fellowships, seed money, conferences and seminars, including
matching funds, grants to individuals."

Its own brochure published within the first years of the founding of the
Institute, however, throws a somewhat different light on its stated
purpose. The Institute states that it has received grants from major
defense contractors, such as General Dynamics and Westinghouse, and with
this support the Institute "shall continue to play a key role in furthering
knowledge and understanding of a key NATO ally of the United States, the
Republic of Turkey, among citizens of our country." [17] Unfortunately, the
phrase "furthering knowledge and understanding" includes measures that have
been construed as denial of the Armenian genocide.

Under United States tax law, the Institute falls within section 501(c)3 of
the Internal Revenue Filing Status:

Charitable organization; educational organization; literary
organization; organization to prevent cruelty to children;
organization for public safety testing; religious organization;
or scientific organization.

Given its tax filing status, the Institute for Turkish Studies is exempt
from taxation. Contributions to the Institute are tax deductible.

The executive director of the Institute from its inception to 1994 was Dr.
Heath W. Lowry, who received his doctorate in history from UCLA. His mentor
at UCLA was Professor Stanford Shaw, whose history of Turkey strenuously
denies the reality of the Armenian genocide, while, at the same time,
blaming the victims, who are depicted as disloyal, rebellious, and
terroristic. [18] It is Lowry who wrote the memorandum and drafted the
letter for the ambassador that are now made public for the first time.

In 1994 Dr. Lowry became the first incumbent of the Ataturk Chair in Turkish
Studies at Princeton University. The chair was established through a $1.5
million grant from the Republic of Turkey. In its Report of the Institute
of Turkish Studies, Inc., 1982-1992, the Institute cites its "key role . .
.. in encouraging the Government of Turkey to embark upon a plan of endowing
a series of Chairs in Turkish Studies at major American Universities. In an
advisory capacity the Institute has been involved in every stage of this
process." The report notes that the chair at Princeton is "fully
established and funded" and that the Institute supports "the further
creation of endowed chairs at three other U.S. Universities." [19]