SELECTED LETTERS


To: Governor of Alabama, Don Siegelman
From: Mr. I. Ioannou, Alabama, USA
Date: 10.Sep.2001

Re: Alabama Proclomation


Governor Siegelman,

It is with great anger and surprise that we learn of your decision to support the proclamation of August 30th, as a Remembrance Day of the so-called "Turkish tragedy" in Asia Minor.

It is astonishing that you can even consider such a motion. We as Greeks still feel very strongly about the massacres of our people in Asia Minor some eighty years ago, and we still live with the memories, passed down from generation to generation.

Needless to say, Turkish oppression still continues to this day: for the Greeks of Cyprus, for the remaining Christians in Asia Minor, for the Kurds in south-east Anatolia, and even for their own citizens, as recent reports from Amnesty International and other human rights groups have shown.

Turning the events of the time around to support the fallacy of a "Turkish tragedy" is a complete falsehood. At a time when Revisionism and Holocaust denial are gaining ground in intellectual circles it surely cannot be of any benefit for state officials to endorse these distortions of history.

With your proclomation you are saying: History is maleable, to be interpreted in any way which is most beneficial to us.

Surely a man of your intelligence is aware of the fact that members of Judaism, your own and your familes religion, are enduring the same type of denial concerning their Holocaust in Hitler's Germany sixty years ago, that the Greeks, Armenians and Assyrians are now with this new proclomation.

Your endorsement of this kind of revisionism only encourages support for organizations like the Institute for Historical Review and other Neo-Nazi groups.

Do you compare yourself to them? Would you bow to pressure from such groups if they were an important enough electorate? Would you deny the Jewish Holocaust if it meant political gain?

If the genocide of our people is being denied, should we question the events of 1940-45 and re-examine the legitimacy of Jewish Holocaust claims?

I rather think these are some of the questions you should be asking yourself right now.

In a state with a large Greek and Armenian constituency it is disappointing and short-sighted that you should choose to bow to pressure from Turkish lobbyist groups. Greek and Armenian Americans have been instrumental in the development of the New South and they deserve better.

Yours Sincerely

I. Ioannou


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