Chomsky to Address ANC Forum on His Recent Experiences in Turkey on June 7, 2002

By Jason Sohigian

May 23,2002

WATERTOWN, MA (Armenian Weekly)--Professor Noam Chomsky will be the featured speaker in a Public Forum organized by the Armenian National Committee (ANC) of Eastern Massachusetts titled "US Policy in West-Central Asia, Freedom of Speech, and the Kurds in Turkey." The event will be held at 7:00 pm on Friday, June 7, at the Armenian Cultural and Educational Center (ACEC), 47 Nichols Ave, Watertown, and is free and open to the public.

Prof. Chomsky is one of the foremost intellectuals of this era. A renowned professor at MIT, he has been honored with numerous awards. For many he is a symbol of resistance to tyranny and the depredations of private and state power. The Utne Reader stated that "Chomsky knows who's powerful, who's abusing their power, and what they and we should do about it. Over the years he's managed to provoke left and right through his relentless critiques of US foreign policy and culture." The New Statesman calls him, "the conscience of the American people." Rolling Stone says, "Chomsky has been unrelenting in his attacks on the American hierarchy...he is up there with Thoreau and Emerson in the literature of rebellion." A recent survey ranked Chomsky as the most cited living author, and he is considered to be one of the top 100 public intellectuals of all time.

In February 2002, Prof. Chomsky faced charges of "separatism" in Turkey, after the Istanbul State Security Court argued that Chomsky's book, American Interventionism, translated into Turkish by Aram Publishing in Turkey, was "propagating separatism." The court sought a one-year prison sentence for the publisher, Fatih Tas, according to the Anti Terror Law, for "propagating against the indivisible unity of the State of the Turkish Republic with its territory and nation."

In a chapter titled "Possibilities of Peace in the Middle East," Chomsky addresses Turkey and its human rights violations against the Kurds. "Throughout the 1990s, this region saw the most serious crimes against human rights, a still ongoing process," wrote Chomsky. "The Kurds were heavily oppressed through out the modern history of the Turkish state, but this changed in 1984. In 1984, the Turkish government started a full on war against the Kurdish population in the southeast. And it still continues."

Chomsky called the treatment of the Kurds by Turkey an "ethnic cleansing," resulting in the deaths of thousands of people, the emigration of 2-3 million people, and the destruction of approximately 3,500 villages.

Prof. Chomsky traveled to Turkey to attend the trial, and his court experiences and observations in Kurdish villages in the southeastern part of Turkey will inform his talk. Under the unprecedented attention of the international media because of Prof. Chomsky's presence, the Istanbul court acquitted the publisher, but Tas faces another six cases on similar charges. Prof. Chomsky was also asked to give a statement to prosecutors preparing another case against the publishers of Freedom of Thought 2001, a collection of essays calling for greater civil liberties. Prof. Chomsky has written extensively on freedom of speech issues, even in the case of historical revisionism.

Prof. Chomsky paid a visit to Diyarbakir, the regional capital of Turkey's Kurdish-populated region, the following day. Prof. Chomsky was able to visit the region where thousands of villages were destroyed or emptied during fighting between Turkish security forces and the Kurdish population. In an interview, he highlighted the role of the US in the oppression of Kurds. "When the US provides 80 percent of the arms for the express purpose of carrying out repression, that's my responsibility," he told reporters.

In an interview with Kurdish journalists, Prof. Chomsky discussed the increasing regionalization and erosion of the nation state system in Europe. "There is a revival of traditional languages, cultures, customs, and a degree of political autonomy leading towards what may become-and I think should become-an arrangement of regional areas that are essentially autonomous within a federal framework," he stated. Prof. Chomsky compared this development to the Ottoman Empire, while also noting the need for reforms. "There was a lot wrong with the Ottoman Empire, but some things about it were basically correct: mainly, the fact that it left a high degree of regional autonomy and independence within a framework, which unfortunately was autocratic and corrupt and brutal, but we can eliminate that part, and the positive aspects of the Ottoman Empire probably ought to be reconstructed in some fashion."

Prof. Chomsky is the author of numerous books on international affairs, including Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, Understanding Power, The Umbrella of US Power: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Contradictions of US Policy, and Fateful Triangle: The US, Israel, and the Palestinians. A professor of linguistics, Prof. Chomsky has also revolutionized this field with his research and theories into language and understanding.

Jason Sohigian is the Editor of the Armenian Weekly newspaper in Watertown, Massachusetts. The English-language Armenian Weekly has been published by the Hairenik Association for the ARF Eastern US Central Committee since 1934. For additional information, visit the web site http://www.hairenik.com.