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Prof. George Gawrych’s lecture on Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founding father of the Republic of Turkey that was scheduled to take place on November 10th at California State University Northridge was forestalled by a group of Armenians.

The Armenian group shouted “Turkey is guilty of genocide” and “genocide denialist” before Prof. Gawrych began his lecture. In order to prevent further outburst, two policemen entered in the conference hall, which is quite unusual in American campuses. Nevertheless, the Armenian group succeeded in preventing Prof. Gawrych from speaking about his research on Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in a university setting.

In the evening of the same day, the same group again raided into the conference hall in which Prof. Gawrych and the Turkish Consul General Raife Gülru Gezer were to deliver speeches at Chapman University. The Armenian group continued their provocation and verbally assaulted the audience in the hall. Thanks to the security personnel that separated the two groups, further escalation was prevented, and the Armenian group was moved away.

The fact that the provocative action that was staged at California State University Northridge was advertised at the Facebook page of the Armenian Youth Federation (AYF) hints that these events were orchestrated by this organization. AYF is the youth organization of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation-Dashnaksutyun (ARF) in the USA. As shall be remembered, alongside the ASALA, Justice Commandos for the Armenian Genocide-Armenian Revolutionary Army, which is widely believed to be the underground organization of the ARF, plotted many assassinations against Turkish diplomats and their families between 1975 and 1985.

Prof. Gawrych is a professor of Middle Eastern History at Baylor University and currently a visiting scholar at West Point Academy. His book The Young Atatürk: From Ottoman Soldier to Statesman of Turkey (2013) is the winner of 2014 Distinguished Book Award from The Society of Military History.