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Şükrü Server Aya ( b. Galati, Romania 1930- d. Istanbul, Turkey 2019)
Şükrü Server Aya was born in 1930 to parents of Turkish descent, in Galati, Romania. His parents had come from Trabzon in late 19th century to settle in the Danube delta town of Sulina, populated mainly by Turks. When in August 1939 Russia occupied the Bessarabia Province of Romania (present day Moldova), his father packed up in a hurry and loaded the family onto a Turkish cargo ship full to the brim with timber and escaped WWII by arriving at their homeland Turkey.
Never mind his broken Turkish at first, he became fluent in it rather quickly and finished elementary, junior and high-schools and got accepted at Robert College. Mr. Aya passed away on Saturday, January 26, 2019, in Istanbul.
He had to interrupt his studies in engineering when his father died in a maritime accident in 1951, to support his family. He worked for a Dutch company building a harbor in Zonguldak on the Black Sea. He also worked for a Swiss company in Istanbul specializing in farming, road construction machinery and other engineering materials. He returned to Robert College and graduated in 1953 with a B.A. degree in Literature since, he says, “That branch did not require much homework or attendance, unlike the engineering Department.” He was then offered by the “Chula Vista” Rotary Club a one-year scholarship in San Diego in Journalism, which he now regrets that he ‘let it go,’ not wishing to deprive his family of financial support. Around that time, he and a friend formed a company. That was the start of his personal independence in business under his own name, and the rest is history, as they say.
Over a period exceeding half a century his traveling the world extensively has helped him develop an international and humanitarian attitude towards world affairs. As a Turk who has enjoyed the warm company of many friends of Armenian ethnicity during his school and business life, he has taken a keen interest in the so-called Armenian controversy. Added to this, his hobby of historical research has led him to investigate the parleys of “the pro-Armenian or neutral writers” on the controversy “Armenian Genocide” or in the words of Mr. Şükrü S. Aya, “the Armenian Fanfare.”
Aya was a graduate of Istanbul Robert College. He was an engineer by profession. He was a WWI history buff and extensively researched the relevant archives. He took particular interest in discerning the objectivity of “pro-Armenian and neutral writers” in the media and academia regarding the Armenian Revolt of 1885-1919. He found threads of continuity in the anti-Turkish, pro-interventionist articles of the late 1800s and early 1900s, and the current treatment of the controversy by Western media today. He wrote that the majority of the serious academia tended to disagree with the Armenian narrative of the events of 1915.
Aya wrote that while nationalist revolts carved out dozens of countries out of the falling Ottoman Empire, the Armenian Revolt failed. "Why?”, asked Aya. The Armenian Revolt was among the most tragic of internal conflicts. Due to the privations of WWI and the Armenian Revolt, more than 1.1 Million Muslim and Jewish Ottoman loyalists perished, and over 600,000 Ottoman Armenian rebels died or were displaced in Eastern Anatolia alone. In WWI, more than 4 Million Muslims and Jews Ottoman loyalists perished and many millions more were displaced.
In addition to numerous articles on the historical and legal controversy of the Armenian allegation of genocide, he published three books:
"Genocide of Truth", ("Soykirim Tacirleri ve Gercekler”) (2009)
"The Genocide of Truth Continues, but Facts Tell the Real Story" (2010)
"The Big Lie" ("Buyuk Yalan”) (2017).
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