Chapel Hill, NC
September 5, 2001
Dear Governor Siegelman:
RE: Your August 30, 2001 Proclamation, "Day of Remembrance of the
Tragedies of Citizens of Asia Minor and
the Independence Day of the Republic of Turkey"
It is difficult to express calmly and tactfully the profound
disappointment, disgust and outrage that I feel at the blatant whitewash
of history that has been perpetrated on your "watch" in Alabama. As the
daughter of a US Marine World War II veteran, who laid his life on the
line for our country and its ideals, today I am ashamed to call myself an
American. As the granddaughter of Greek peasant immigrants, victims of a
barbaric Turkish ethnic cleansing campain in Asia Minor in the early
1900s, I cannot begin to adequately describe the personal pain I felt upon
reading your misguided proclamation.
My grandparents and their fellow innocent villagers suffered unspeakable
horrors at the hands of the Turkish government; they and a few others were
lucky enough to escape alive - - with no more than the clothes on their
backs and the searing memories of the atrocities they had witnessed
first-hand, including the killing of their loved ones by torture. All
told, millions of innocent Greek, Armenian and other Christian civilians
were brutally killed in Asia Minor, and untold others were permanently
displaced from the land that their ancestors had lived on for well over
1000 years, and forced to flee as refugees.
It appears that you and your staff have been victims of, and perhaps
unwitting accomplices in, a modern-day atrocity at the
hands of the Turkish government: a massive effort to whitewash their
murderous past, and re-cast the Turks, rather than the Greeks and
Armenians, of Asia Minor as victims. Did you consult with unbiased
historians before issuing your proclamation? Did you consult with
Greek-American and Armenian-American constituents, descendants of the
Greeks and Armenians who survived the Asia Minor catastrophe? Can you
imagine the horror that Greek-Americans and Armenian-Americans feel upon
witnessing, in our modern "enlightened" age, the long, bloody arm of a
murderer we hoped was long gone, reaching across generations and
continents in a desperate effort to snuff out the truth? Your
proclamation is the moral equivalent of proclaiming a "Day of Remembrance"
for six million Germans exterminated by Jews during World War II!
In researching the history of the Asia Minor catastrophe through 1923, I
was distressed to learn that the US, for the most part, stood idly by as
it unfolded, while millions of Greeks and Armenians were slaughtered by
the Turkish government in a massive ethnic cleansing campaign, inspired by
rising Turkish nationalism in the waning days of the Ottman Empire. I
find the current "catastrophe" in Alabama, and similar other
manifestations of a strong-armed pro-Turkish-government propaganda
campaign, to be equally repugnant. I implore you to right the terrible
blunder that your proclamation represents, and to recind it immediately.
The truth must prevail; I urge you and the State of Alabama not to be on
the wrong side of it.
Sincerely,
Demetra Vlachos Waters
mdwaters@bellsouth.net