“While Armenia and the Armenian Diaspora are guessing at whether the Armenian-Turkish Protocols will be ratified at all or whether the issue of the Armenian Genocide will be put on the agenda of the subcommittee of historians, the preparation of a ‘Turkish package’, which will actually be submitted to the international community, is in full swing in Turkey,” says an article entitled “The Armenian Genocide and Russia’s southern historical front” put on the website of the REGNUM News Agency.

The authors write that a team of Turkish specialists headed by Norman Stone, a prominent British academic, is preparing a historical basis for refuting the fact of the Armenian Genocide. Norman Stone, the “head coach” of the Turkish team, is currently a member of the faculty of the department of International Relations at Bilkent University, Ankara. He is also head of the Russian-Turkish center at the higher school. The authors point out that he is actually coordinating the selection of experts and collection of relevant materials, including the materials from the State Military-Historical Archives of the Russian Federation. However, the authors point out a selective approach to the documents, which prove, for example, the destruction of Kurdish population by Armenian volunteer detachments. In 1980s, Normal Stone was Advisor to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for Eastern Europe. He has recently intensified activities aimed at refuting the fact of the Armenian Genocide. “Norman took up a struggle against the history of the Armenian Cause immediately after he left England for Turkey. He had not been noticed in this field before. Considering this fact, it is hardly a labor of love,” the article says. Stone’s works denying the Armenian Genocide are regularly put on the Turkey-sponsored website Armenian Genocide (http://www.armenian--genocide.com). Here are a couple of titles: “Armenian story has another side” or “Armenian Genocide: the obvious lie.”

Interestingly, in his latest article Mr. Stone refers to Mehmet Perinçek, calling him a “Turkish historian.” In fact, Mehmet Perinçek is leader of the Turkish branch of the Eurasian Youth Union. He supports radical leftist views bordering on Nazism. His father, Doğu Perinçek, is the leader of the Turkish Workers' Party (Turkish: İşçi Partisi) and an arrestee in the Ergenekon case. The party is a radical organization, which, according to some information, is supported by Israel and aims at destroying the ruling party in Turkey. Mehmet Perinçek speaks excellent Russian and works at Russian archives much more than any other Turk. And here is an excerpt from one of his works: “There are documents at the Russian state archives which prove that the imperialists (Russians) invented a story of ‘genocide.’ The documents throw light on the truth that Armenians had never constituted a majority in any of the parts of Anatolia. They lived a comfortable life and committed heinous crimes against Muslims…” The theory advanced by Mehmet Perinçek, who, in turn, is quoted by Normal Stone, comes to the following: the massacre and deportation of Armenians in Western Armenia were the Ottomans’ response to the “chauvinistic” policy of Russia, which armed Armenians and sent them to fight against to Muslim population. In this context, an attempt is being made to prove that the Armenian massacre followed an uprising in Van, but not vice versa – the Van uprising was actually the Armenians’ reaction to the ethnic cleansing and Genocide throughout the Ottoman Empire.

Mr. Stone is actively working to create a picture of the past favorable for Turkey, aiming at the English-language readers (mostly in the USA). In his attempts to prevent the adoption of resolution on the Armenian Genocide by the U.S. Congress, Mr. Stone contributed an article to Chicago Tribune, which, particularly, says: “Congress should not take a position, one way or the other, on this affair. Let historians decide. The Turkish government has been saying this for years. It is the Armenians who refuse to take part in a joint historical review, even when organized by impeccably neutral academics.” As we can see, Mr. Stone has overtly been lobbying for a commission of historians since 2007, when his article was published. As regards the “impeccably neutral academics”, he must have meant the Nazi Mehmet Perinçek, who is sure that the Armenian Genocide is “Russian imperialists’” invention.