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| Turkish Student Association Denounces Senate Resolution | ||||||
| Members of the Turkish Student Association appealed to the Academic Senate on Wednesday, asking for them to overturn a resolution that was passed last semester. | ||||||
| The resolution, which denounces the Armenian genocide by members of the "young Turk" government during the early twentieth century, was brought before the Senate almost five months ago with virtually no opposition from the Turkish Student Association. The Turkish students have now, however, decided to take issue with the resolution. | ||||||
| Turkish Student Association President Isil Rahmanian, accompanied by several other students and supporters, appealed to the Senate that the resolution passed last semester was not only "falsified" but "an insult" to her people. Rahmanian, citing numerous sources, went into a detailed explanation of the events surrounding and leading up to the event in question and asserted that there was "no direct evidence" saying a genocide of the Armenians ever took place. | ||||||
| Rahmanian also requested that the Senate not support the Armenian Student Association's "Human Rights Day," which is to take place on April 22, because "different views [will not be] presented." According to Rahmanian, the Turkish Student Association was "rejected by the Armenians to speak [at the event]." | ||||||
| Rahmanian's presentation was met with different reactions from the Senate. Senator Morgan Wheeler asked if Rahmanian was trying to allege that "the Armenian genocide was actually a relocation of 7,000 people due to terrorism, and that the genocide never occurred," which she affirmed. The Senate also assured Rahmanian that the resolution that was passed was "the same" as the resolution that the California legislature approved. Senator Kerry Reid asked Rahmanian if she was actually given a reason as to why the Turkish Student Association will not be allowed to speak at the Armenian Student Association's "Human Rights Day," to which Rahmanian said she was told the "speakers were already set." | ||||||
| Ara Aprahamian, a graduate student and member of the Armenian Student Association, followed Rahmanian's presentation with an emotional request to not overturn the resolution that he, and others, worked so hard on passing last semester. According to Aprahamian, "the last step of genocide is denial," and the event "was not just a random act of dislocating [a people, as Rahmanian claimed], but an attempt to extinguish a people off the face of the earth." Aprahamian also said that the resolution was responsible and should not be overturned as a matter of principle. "You should rest assured that passing this resolution was the right thing to do," Aprahamian said, and reiterated that it is a human rights issue. | ||||||
| Voskan Elbakyan, a member of the Armenian Student Association, and Dilara Sezgin, a Turkish student, both shared similar ideas for resolving the situation by saying that the two parties should put aside their differences and "get together and talk," in the hopes of coming to some sort of middle ground. | ||||||
| A.S.I. Vice President Guido Piotti continued to remind the parties that the situation would be looked at objectively and from both sides. | ||||||
| Copyright Gerry Wachovsky, 2004, and Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved. | ||||||
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