Welcome to our new website for Turkish Anti-Defamation Alliance.
Dear Concerned Friends,
On behalf of a new volunteer group TADA (Turkish Anti-Defamation Alliance; Turkish: İftiralara Karşı Türk Birliği, İKTB), I would like to inform you of the establishment of a platform to discuss and assemble information related to the harassment or intimidation of Turks, Turkish Americans, and friends of Turks in the U.S. stemming from accusations of Armenian “genocide.”
Such persons can be adults who, for example, may have suffered tangible damage in their professional lives, or school-aged children who may have been harassed or mocked by their peers and sustained pychological damage, or even loss of educational opportunity, due to their being of Turkish origin.
It is not necessary that a person is accused of being a descendent of alleged genocide perpatrators. An accusation of being just a “denialist” is worth cataloguing because of its impact on a potential lawsuit. Even a “dirty look” from students or the teacher is worthy of mention.
Instead of students themselves, especially in the case of young children, information coming from parents in connection with the harassment their children suffered would also be welcome.
We welcome any information that you may have to help us identify cases of material or psychological damage. Please put your story in writing and forward it to me, through e-mail or postal service, providing as much relevant information as possible.
We also encourage you to pass on this message to your friends and acquaintances who may provide such information.
In addition to assembling relevant information through this message, we are planning a Turkish Channel USA “forum” series in New York. Through this series, which will also be posted on YouTube, we will seek and convey the experiences of those Turks and Turkish Americans who come forward. We currently have seed money almost sufficient for a 1-hour show once a month for 6 months, and we hope to have additional funds to extend it to 12 months, thereby securing a 1-hour show each month for the first year.
We will endeavour to publicise our efforts through other means including the print media.
You are probably wondering what next? Should certain cases warrant, we will vet the submitted information through the assistance of an attorney and gather evidence for a potential court case. Given sufficient funds, and assuming also a legal recourse has merit, our ultimate goal is to take legal action against those individuals and establishments that perpetrate unfounded Armenian “genocide” accusations to harm individuals of Turkish origin.
We will need financial contributions toward this end.
Pending further developments, in future we may broaden the scope of our efforts to take legal action (1) against those individuals and establishments, including media, that openly and slanderously accuse, without just cause, Turks and Turkish heritage with allegations of Armenian “genocide” in public; (2) against schools that include, in a prejudicial manner, Armenian allegations of genocide in educational curricula that instigate anti-Turkish hatred, even racism, in young minds of impressionable age; and (3) against academic institutions and the media that deliberately censure the Turkish view on the 1915 events in Ottoman Anatolia, thereby denying the Turkish side its freedom of expression.
We believe that unjust Armenian accusations – which amount to defamation – have gone on too long without any legal challenge, and it is time to curb if not silence such accusations and the damage that they cause. Both the 1948 UN Convention on the Punishment and Prevention of Genocide as well as recent judicial rulings from Europe are in our favour, i.e., Armenian “genocide” is not proven. The U.S. First Amendment does not protect defamation that causes harm.
Legal challenge against Armenian “genocide” resolutions passed by parliaments of some foreign countries is outside the purview of TADA. Such efforts would undoubtedly complement TADA’s mission.
It is also a fact that, the Armenian side, fearing defeat, to date has refrained from taking its case to court to prove its “genocide” accusations. “Genocide” is a strictly legal term, and unlike Holocaust, Armenian “genocide” remains unproven in a court of law.
By this statement we are also approaching our Turkic friends, in particular our Azerbaijani cousins, and inviting them for a unified stand towards a common goal. We also encourage our Turkish friends outside the U.S. to pursue similar legal remedies against Armenian allegations in their areas.
Kind regards,
Turkish Anti-Defamation Alliance Team