Today I attended a very interesting conference on Capitol Hill, hosted by the American Hellenic Institute... our Greek friends. Great people. I love the Greeks. The conference was addressing US-Turkish Relations and the speakers were Christopher Hitchens, author, Aram Hamparian, our own Executive Director of the Armenian National Committee, a human rights speaker from the Christian Solidarity... forget the rest of the name, and Kani Xulam on behalf of the Kurds. The event was attended by NUMEROUS Turks, as well as Greeks, Armenians, and Kurds... possibly Cypriots, but none I saw. The panelists spoke very well on Turkish violations of human rights in Cyprus, with the Kurds, Greeks, and of course, the Armenians.

The Turkish presence was certainly noticed, and it was impossible not to. The question and arguement sessions with each speaker allowed for Turks to make very poor arguements, purely reactionary arguements contradicting each others' statements and completely discrediting their own positions. An example is their persistence to deny the Armenian genocide, and yet, they questioned the Kurdish speaker about Kurdish massacres of the Armenians, which the apparently don't understand was under instruction of the Ottoman Empire... to which Xulam responded saying that the Kurds recognize, and have appologized, but not before Hitchens could show his disgust in the statement's "stupidity" in that it denies the genocide, and then asks the Kurds to take the blame for it.

To go on, the ending note was a positive one in that Turks came out defeated. Sadly, the only people in the room at the time were people who's minds were made up one way or another.

Anyhoo, it was an interesting day, Aram Hamparian was so well spoken and quick on his feet to reply to the attacks of the Turks. Another day on the Hill!