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Hilarious Haters: Ergun Kirlikovali, Coto de Caza Armenian Genocide

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  • Hilarious Haters: Ergun Kirlikovali, Coto de Caza Armenian Genocide

    Orange County Weekly
    Dec 29 2011


    The Hilarious Haters
    Ergun Kirlikovali, Coto de Caza Armenian Genocide Denier Supreme,
    Threatening Legal Action Against UC Davis Professor


    By Gustavo Arellano Wed., Dec. 28 2011 at 2:00 PM

    Earlier this year, for some bizarre (or telling?) reason, the Assembly
    of Turkish American Associations (ATAA) allowed Ergun Kirlikovali to
    become its president. You remember Ergun--the whackjob Coto de Caza
    resident who's perhaps this country's most notorious denier of the
    Armenian genocide, a historical fact accepted by any sane human but
    rejected as propaganda by Turkish nationalists like Kirlikovali.

    Anyhoo, Kirlikovali and his gang of outraged Ottomans are messing with
    a UC Davis professor because the profe stated the truth: that people
    like Kirlikovali and groups like ATAA are useful idiots in Turkey's
    campaign to discredit the Armenian genocide.

    The controversy started with an article that Keith David Watenpaugh,
    director of the UC Davis Human Rights Initiative, penned for the
    university's magazine in February about how the Armenian genocide was
    a linchpin for the modern humanitarian movement. The article drew a
    response in the fall issue from one Gunay Evinch, a past president of
    ATAA who just happens to do legal work for the Turkish embassy in the
    United States. He repeated the same tired line that the Turkish
    government instills in its citizens--that there was no Armenian
    genocide, that Turks suffered as much as Armenians during the
    post-World War I period, and that any suffering that Armenians had to
    bear was their fault.

    Watenpaugh responded to Evinch in the same issue, destroying his
    arguments and adding this barbed paragraph:

    "What is most important to understand is that the Assembly of Turkish
    American Associations has been at the forefront of a Turkish
    government-sponsored effort in the United States to deny that what
    happened to the Armenians was genocide. The attack on my work in Mr.
    Evinch's letter is part of that project and should be understood in
    this light. At UC Davis, we teach our students that history is more
    than just a collection of facts, but rather is the starting point for
    an ethical relationship with the past."

    BURN! But that's when Kirlikovali and his ilk butted in, crying foul.
    In October, he wrote a letter to the magazine claiming Watenpaugh had
    defamed ATAA by insinuating that they take money from the Turkish
    government for spreading their vile Armenian-genocide denying--no,
    see, they do it for FREE! The implication that ATAA was ready to get
    sue-y with Watenpaugh, in turn, drew a November response from the
    Middle Eastern Studies Association to back off.

    "We do not believe that legal action is the proper way to resolve
    disputes about historical interpretation, and we fear that legal
    action of this kind, or the threat thereof, may undermine the ability
    of scholars and academic institutions to carry out their work freely
    and to have their work assessed on its merits, in conformity with
    standards and procedures long established in the world of
    scholarship," they wrote.

    Kirlikovali, for his part, isn't backing down, telling Inside Higher
    Ed, "freedom of speech does not include defamation. Defamation is an
    important exception to freedom of speech." But his move has now drawn
    the attention of the Armenian-American press, who started reporting on
    the controversy this month, which means this issue will be far from
    over.

    All we know is that in our dealings with Kirlikovali--to paraphrase
    the famous Western aphorism--he's all fez and no carpet. And earlier
    this year, another organization with which Kirlikovali has associated
    and which has OC ties, the Turkish Coalition of America (TCA), sued
    the University of Minnesota because the school's Center for Holocaust
    and Genocide Studies deemed TCA's website as "unreliable" due to their
    Armenian genocide-denying. A federal judge tossed out that lawsuit.
    Stand strong, UC Davis...

    http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/2011/12/ergun_kirlikoval_watenpaugh_uc_davis.php

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