NOTE TO THE EDITOR: Below find the text of ANCA Chairman Ken Hachikian’s letter to “The Wall Street Journal” regarding efforts to misuse the U.S. legal system to inject Armenian Genocide denial into the Massachusetts state educational curriculum. The letter along with several others by Armenian and Turkish Americans, were printed on November 12, 2005.

Among the respondents to Kara Scannell’s October 27th article, “Turk-Armenian Fight Over WWI History Goes to a U.S. Court,” was University of Michigan Professor Fatma Muge Gocek, who wrote, “As a Turkish American scholar who is working on the dynamics of the Turkish state’s denial of the Armenian massacres of 1915, I wish to state that I don’t concur with what I regard as the highly political stand of the Assembly of Turkish American Associations on this issue, and I find this lawsuit extremely offensive.”

TEXT OF ANCA CHAIRMAN KEN HACHIKIAN’S LETTER,
AS PRINTED IN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

November 12, 2005

Dear Editor,

I read with dismay that an attorney is suing the state of Massachusetts to mandate the teaching of the denial of the Armenian genocide based on a First Amendment claim (“Turk-Armenian fight Over WWI History Goes to a U.S. court,” page one, Oct. 27). This lawsuit is not about free speech, but about a massive Turkish state-sponsored campaign to cover up the genocide. Not satisfied with repression at home, Turkish affiliates are working to prevent the teaching of the Armenian Genocide here in the U.S. We must fight against such attacks on the integrity of the education of our children and attempts to use U.S. public funds to misinform them.

This strategy to cloak Turkey’s campaign of furthering genocide denial under a false pretext of First Amendment protections is morally repugnant and intellectually indefensible.

Ken Hachikian
Chairman
Armenian National Committee of America
Washington