Black Dog of Fate: A Memoir

An Armenian group invites Peter to read his poetry in a 75th anniversary commemoration of the genocide taking place in Times Square. Before he speaks, he sees protestors of Turkish descent handing out pamphlets about the Armenian Genocide being a hoax—they suggest that it was all propaganda created by Armenian nationalists to demonize Ottoman Turkey. Peter notes that this was not a fringe effort. The Turkish government, and groups in Turkish and American cities had a long history of policing the dissemination of historical information out of Turkey and denying the genocide all over the globe through protests and threats.

Peter voices rage over these denials and abuses as he expounds them:

It has become clear to me that Turkey not only is a culture of severe human rights abuses but a place devoid of any mechanisms of critical self-evaluation […] In Turkish schools everyone is taught that in 1915, Armenians were traitors who attacked and killed Turks and deserved everything they got […] A Turkish writer for the Encyclopedia Britannica had been sent to prison for letting the word Armenia appear on a map of ancient Anatolia (281).

His rage spills over when he makes an impromptu speech following his reading in Times Square.