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Pleasant Hill's Sister City Plan Has Detractors: Armenians oppose link to Turkey
In tranquil Pleasant Hill, residents typically fret over traffic or zoning in their community and rarely worry about this city's admittedly minor impact on geopolitics.
But at next week's City Council meeting, international relations will be hotly debated as officials and residents discuss whether an 85-year-old wartime atrocity should preclude a cultural exchange with a Turkish city.
Since June, Pleasant Hill has had a sister-city relationship with Merzifon, Turkey, after a majority of the council approved the agreement. A group from Pleasant Hill, including Vice Mayor David Durant, is scheduled to visit Merzifon in May.
In approving the relationship, the council did not take into account Turkey's 1915 expulsion, deportation and slaughter of thousands of ethnic Armenians at the start of World War I.
Now, a handful of Pleasant Hill residents, some of whose relatives died in that purge, are asking the council to terminate the sister-city relationship.
"I'm half Armenian," Karen Yapp said. "I had relatives who perished in Turkey. The basic point is that the Turkish government does not admit this ever happened. Not only do they not admit it, they are very active and aggressive in denying it."
How Pleasant Hill and a Turkish city thousands of miles away ever formed a connection can be traced back to John Blake, who happens to live three doors down from Yapp in Pleasant Hill and whose parents were teachers at an American school in Merzifon in the 1930s.
A retired schoolteacher himself, Blake travels frequently in Turkey and met up with the governor of the province where Merzifon is located two years ago. The governor mentioned his hopes for a sister-city relationship with an American city. Blake put a proposal together for the council to study before it approved the agreement last year.
As a regular tourist, Blake is well aware of the historical animosity between Armenians and Turks. But he noted that whatever crimes did occur happened under the regime of the old Ottoman Empire, not the Republic of Turkey.
"There is serious disagreement as to who was at fault, who did what to whom, " Blake said. "Armenians feel it is genocide. The Turks don't want to use that term."
Blake argued that modern-day Turkey welcomed visitors of all faiths and ethnicities, including Armenians. The city of Merzifon also has a history of tolerance.
"A number of Turks and Americans in Merzifon sheltered and hid Armenian people during that time," Blake said.
Yapp agreed that "in the big picture, this town was probably a small player" in any violence against Armenians.
Councilman Chuck Escover does not expect the controversy will change his vote in support of the sister-city relationship.
"My thought was it might be of some educational benefit for kids in the community," Escover said. "I'm not convinced we should eliminate that based on something that happened 85 years ago. Where do you draw the line? Look at us and slavery."
But other members of the council wonder whether there was a real connection to the city of Merzifon.
"My question has more to do with the concept of the sister city to begin with," Councilwoman Kim Brandt said. "It was my understanding that you adopted sister cities because you have something in common. I'm not sure exactly what we have in common with Merzifon."
Pleasant Hill already has a sister-city relationship with Chilpancingo, Mexico. According to Brandt, the relationship was formed after Pleasant Hill residents visiting Chilpancingo noticed a hill that appeared very similar to Contra Costa's Mount Diablo.
Five American cities have relationships with communities in Turkey, according to Sister Cities International, an organization formed in 1956 under the auspices of President Eisenhower to foster world peace.
"These are people-to-people exchanges," said Director Tim Honey,
who served as a city manager in Boulder, Colo., and has debated
these relationships before. "That is at the heart of sister
cities. And that's what most city councils come to realize."
Armenian, Assyrian and Hellenic Genocide News Archives