With great interest I read the news about the organization of a conference hosted by your university on: "The Art of Living Together in the Ottoman Society, The Case of Turkish Armenian Relation". You foresee the participation of 123 scholars from different countries of the world. The symposium aims to work out a new start in Turkish Armenian relations based on the Ottoman model, authentic facts and documents. Sincerely I immediately thought about the sentiments and reaction of the thirty million Kurds living today in the Republic of Turkey. Doubtless they will be surprised or rather shocked after reading the title of the conference and discussing the goals aimed at... For centuries they have lived under Turkish yoke but have not yet received the status of a nation or ethnic community. They have been ignored of national belonging, the right to be named Kurds or to speak Kurdish. They don't have their literature and schools. It has been forbidden to them to listen to Kurdish broadcasts aired from neighboring countries. The Ottomans have not accepted the existence of none-Turkish nationalities. They have declared that the country is only composed of religious communities and not of nationalities, of nations or ethnic groups. A Christian in court is voiceless agains a Moslim. As religious communities organized around their houses of worship they could develop a definite kind of schools or cultural activities. Often these communities were forced to forget their national languages and speak and write only in Turkish. My grandparents, grand grandparents were forced to speak Turkish. The state would cut the tongues of those who dared to use their mother language. As a result a new kind of Armenian written culture was created. The Armenians instead of Arab letters used their Armenian alphabet to write in Turkish. They published their Bible, their books and papers in that manner. The patriotic young generation learned their mother language in secret groups and under moonlight. In this way different nations under Turkish yoke were obliged to turn their folklore, their spoken or written culture (songs, sayings, tales, proverbs, names of foods and even second/family names) into Turkish. Turkish was the spoken language in elite circles of many Arab communities. The government officially declared that the Armenians who had lived for centuries on their lands have lost their rights to continue to live on those territories and are obliged to yield them to Turks. They have found it impossible for the two people to live together on the same territory. In the autumn of 1915 the Turkish leaders confessed to the American Ambassador Henry Morganthau that it is impossible to establish friendship with Armenian people after what they have done to them (after the Genocide). On Burial Certificate of the Armenian you would read : "I allow to bury this dog so that it will not contaminate the area". The history of the Ottoman Empire itself excludes the spirit and practice of genuine friendship between different ethnic groups and nations. During the 15th-17th centuries the Ottoman Empire established its reign on northern shores of Africa, the Arabic Peninsula, The Near and Middle East, the Balkans, part of the Caucasus, southern Russia and Ukraine. During the 17th- and the beginning of the 20th centuries the Empire shrieked, loosing occupied territories being unable to stand the liberation movements of the people. On the eve of WWI only some Arab territories (later Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, Palestine, Yemen, Saudi Arabia) Assyrians, Armenians and Jews were left under Turkish yoke. If any kind of harmony, or friendship, or art of living together, existed in that Empire the continuous process if segmentation would not be a law in that society. I would kindly ask you to take into consideration the above mentioned points before making judgments or making recommendations about the Ottoman Model of the Art of living together. If needed I can bring detailed facts related to my each statement Sincerely Yours, Dr. Prof. Gevork Kherlopian 21 April, 2006 E-Mail: kherlop@yahoo.com

---