Pleasant Hill - Turkey Sister-City Program Ended
Dear Friends,
Pleasant Hill, CA - The sister-city relationship between northern California's city of Pleasant Hill and Merzifon, Turkey (formerly Marsovan) has come to an end after eight years. The Pleasant Hill City Council had embarked upon the sister city relationship in 2000, and the program was run by the local non-profit group, “Friends of Merzifon”. The program was discontinued by a recent vote of the organization's Board of Directors, which issued a statement saying that over the past two years, local officials in Merzifon had not been responsive to inquiries, distancing the Turkish city from the sister-city relationship.
During the first four years of the Pleasant Hill-Merzifon association, Friends of Merzifon coordinated a number of events. In 2001 and 2002, members of the group traveled to Turkey. In 2003, the organization hosted a visit by an official delegation from Merzifon. In 2004, it ran an exchange program for four high school students and two teachers and sent volunteer English-language teachers to Merzifon. The group also collected and delivered two shipments of wheelchairs (280 wheelchairs each) to Merzifon.
The sister city relationship was initiated by John Blake, a long-time Pleasant Hill resident who was born in Turkey. The son of educational missionaries, Blake spent his childhood in Merzifon. A local park there is named after Blake's father.
The Pleasant Hill City Council's July, 2000 decision to adopt Merzifon as its sister city drew substantial outcry from the East Bay city's residents. Community members opposed the agreement because of Turkey’s deplorable human rights record, including its history of persecution against minorities, the 1915 genocide against its Armenian population, and its government’s ongoing denial of the Armenian Genocide. In response, the City Council tabled its decision, pending a visit to Merzifon by City Councilman David Durant, City Manager Joe Tanner, and a number of other supporters of the proposal. Armenian-Americans residents provided the City Council with substantial educational and reference materials about the Armenian Genocide and Turkey's ongoing denial, and many Pleasant Hill residents voiced their opposition to the plan through letters, faxes, e-mails, and phone calls.
The Durant team presented a report on its trip to Turkey and a recommendation in favor of the sister-city relationship at a standing room only City Council meeting in June, 2001. The meeting included a lengthy public testimony period lasting until nearly 2:00 am, and concluding with a 2-3 vote against rescinding the sister city relationship with Merzifon.
On April 21, 2003, at the request of many local residents of Armenian decent, the Pleasant Hill City Council approved a resolution recognizing a day of remembrance of the Armenian Genocide. The resolution passed with a 4-1 vote, with David Durant dissenting, and two Council members who had supported the project expressing their hope that the resolution would serve to begin to heal the division that had developed in Pleasant Hill as a result of the sister city issue.
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Armenian National Committee
San Francisco - Bay Area
51 Commonwealth Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94118
Tel: 415-387-3433
Fax: 415-751-0617
mail@ancsf.org
www.ancsf.org
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