Dear Sir,

I, a United States citizen of Hellenic decent, am frankly appalled at the Proclamation that you have made. I see this proclamation as another attempt at the aptly named "revisionist history" that Turkey and Turkish-Americans are promoting in this country.

The claim that millions of ethnically-Turkish peoples died of "starvation, violence and forced migration" is an absurd one at best, and also contradicts the historical record of post-World War I Europe and Asia. According to the true record, it was the Christian Minorities in Asia Minor that were subject to these migrations; this came about before the First World War, during the First World War and after the First World War, when the movement led by Mustafa Kemal came to power. The verbiage used in the first line of this proclamation appears to group Turks as the victims, along with the Christian Minorities. Rest assured, Mr. Governor, according to the historical record, the Turks were at the other end of the whips.

Further, the Turkish history is not one of friendship and peaceful co-existence. Rather, the Turk forced the Christian Minorities to live in hiding for fear of persecution. Hellenes in the Ottoman Empire had to either conform to the Turkish religion and society or live in hiding. Many were forced to teach Hellenic language and religion in hiding, at night to avoid the Turk. This is what prompted the Independence Movement in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Citing that Turkey has been on the side of the United States since the Korean War hardly qualifies Turkey as a 'staunch ally' of the United States. It is common knowledge that Turkey (or the Ottoman Empire) was fighting alongside Germany in the First World War. In fact, Turkey signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany and did not take a stand against the Axis Powers until shortly before the conference that formed the United Nations (source: Library of Congress). On the other hand, a nation approximately one-fourth the size of Turkey not only stood up to the Axis Powers, but successfully held off the invading Italian army, thus delaying the Nazi army's invasion of the USSR until the winter, which proved to be a major turning point of World War II. This small nation is the Hellenic Republic, or Greece.

In your proclamation, it is stated that, "residents of Alabama are highly sensitive to the need for consistently remembering and openly condemning the loss of all civilians due to war and ethnic strife to prevent future civilian tragedies . . ." Do the residents of Alabama acknowledge the Armenian, Assyrian And Hellenic Genocide of 1915-1923? To my knowledge, the only European country that has stood up to the revisionist history of Turkey is France. The United States of America, the leader of the free world and champion of human rights should be the first to acknowledge genocide when the historical record supports it. The state of Alabama should take the first step towards this just goal, not side step the issue.

"Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?" Adolph Hitler spoke these chilling words days before beginning the Holocaust.

I do.

I am a firm believer in the theory that states that one must learn from the past, in order to make the right choices for the future. This proclamation, in my eyes, not only sugarcoats the past, but also attempts to rewrite the facts and present them in a misleading and unethical way. Please reconsider this proclamation, in light of the historical record, and take a stand as a Philhellene.

I remain,

Mike Panayotou
Supreme Governor
Order of Sons of Pericles
Junior Order of the American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association (AHEPA)