“Hanimefendi, Don’t Disgrace Yourself”

Dear Friends,
According to media sources, during the conference titled “The Armenians during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire” held at Istanbul’s Bilgi University on Sept. 24-25, 2005, lecturers taking the floor were sometimes intervened by some people among the audience.
One of those was Fatma Sarikaya, a grave denier of the Armenian genocide, who previously failed to complete a debate on the Armenian genocide with a member of this group. Fatma Sarikaya has translated and summarized the distorted article titled “Money spent by the Armenian lobby in America” authored by Senol Kantarci, Assistant at Erzrum University (see www.info-turc.org/article2225.html). The lies of this article were exposed by Harut Sassounian in his column in the California Courrier titled “Turks scare themselves by claiming Armenians spend millions on lobbying” (see Armeniapedia.org).
At the conference, Sarikaya introduced herself as a member of the forum that is preparing a Turkish lobby in the US. During the speech of the Rector of Bilgi University Aiden Ugur, Sarikaya intervened by shouting out: “Was the independence of universities insufficient that you are bringing about the freedom of speech to us now?”!!
Then, Sarikaya shouted down the Rector of Bosporus University, Dr. Ayse Soysal, by saying: “Since when the terrorists became scientists?” Dr. Soysal didn’t respond to this provoking shouting.
When Sarikaya continued her interventions and showed a picture of armed Armenians, the chairman of the session Ahmet Insel shouted out at her:
“Hanimefendi, don’t disgrace yourself”!!
In Armenian: “Digin, tuk tsez mi khaydaragek”!!