I find it important to mirror this work here to help truth-seekers gain one more access the information which is denied them by aggressive Armenian falsifiers, their usually anti-Turkish sympathizers, and other thinly veiled Turk-haters. Hate-based-propaganda and intimidation should not be allowed to replace honest scholarship and reasoned debate. Nothing less than the freedom of speech of those who hold contra-genocide views are at stake. Tools most used to advance censorship of contra-genocide views are hearsay, forgeries, harassment, political resolutions, editorial freedom, and consensus, among others. The key to resolving this controversy is more knowledge as in more honest research, more truthful education, and more freedom to debate… not less.
Those scholars who take Armenian claims at face value today urgently need to ponder these simple questions, as honestly as they possible can:
1) HOW CAN ONE STUDY A REGION’S OR A COUNTRY’S HISTORY WITHOUT RESEARCHING THAT REGION’S/COUNTRY’S ARCHIVES?
Can one study Europe’s history, for instance, without using European archives?
Or America’s history without researching American records?
Or Russia’s past without using Russian documents?
Or Ottoman Empire’s past without using Ottoman archives?
Why were the Ottoman archives almost never used in most current Armenian arguments and claims?
Are language barriers, bureaucratic hurdles, cost, or other reasons convincing enough excuses in scholarly studies that span a over decades or even centuries?
Or is it instant gratification that these, so-called, genocide scholars who insist on ignoring Turkish archives really seek, not really the whole truth?
2) HOW CAN ONE UNDERSTAND A CONTROVERSY IF ONE CONFINES ONE’S VIEWS TO ONLY ONE SIDE?
Can you argue that only one side of say, the abortion issue, is absolutely correct, flawless, settled, and worthy of knowing, and that the other side should be totally ignored and even censored?
How about gun control? Can you say one side is it; the other side to be dismissed, ignored, and/or censored?
Or immigration?
Taxes?
Iraq War?
Gay rights?
Or many other such controversial issues?
Can one be restricted, or asked/forced to be confined, in education or research, to only one side of the debate and categorically dismiss forever the other side(s) ?
Can this discrimination and censorship ever be built into a state’s public education policy, as it is shamefully attempted by the Armenian falsifiers and Turk-haters in Massachusetts and California, vis-a-vis the 1915 Turkish-Armenian conflict ?
Is the freedom of speech (of Turkish-Americans,), enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, a disposable right or a privilege, that can be trample upon by the Armenian lobby and their racist and dishonest politician friends like Schiff, Radanovich, Menendez, et. al.? (Racist because they only recognize Armenian dead, but ignore Turkish dead , and dishonest because they dismiss the six T’s of the 1915 conflict.)
If I, as an individual with contra-genocide views, am slandered, intimidated, harassed, and even threatened for my views by some “opinion thugs” and often censored by “consensus mobs” and “hate-editors”, then is this not a blatant attack on and destruction of my constitutional right to freedom of speech?
Does consensus mean correct? (After all, lynch mobs always had a pretty good consensus, too.)
Does might make right?
3) WHY DO THOSE GENOCIDE SCHOLARS SELECTIVELY REACT TO HUMAN TRAGEDY?
Why do those genocide scholars— most if not all paid by the Armenian lobby and related institutions directly or indirectly— who love to get on their high horses and preach perfect morals to others, fail to scream murder in the face of that terrible human tragedy in Azerbaijan that victimized a million Azeri women and children in Karabagh and western Azerbaijan?
Is it because the perpetrator of this inhumanity is Armenia, their client state and the Armenian genocide industry, their paymasters?
4) If the study of genocide is designed to teach humans how to recognize, prevent, and fight back against new genocides, then why do these genocide scholars not take their client, Armenia and Armenians, to task about the genocide in Khodjaly on 19 February 1992? (Since a genocide verdict by a competent tribunal, required by the 1948 UN Convention, does not exist, yet, for consistency, I should call it man’s inhumanity to man and pogrom for now. The question is why did all the genocide study fail to stop Armenia from committing one between 1992-1994? Can you see the heart wrenching irony here?
***
Anyway, here then is what honest scholars (not genocide scholars) say about the BOGUS Armenian genocide:
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EBERHARD JÄCKEL
Professor Emeritus of modern world history, Stuttgart University. Jäckel is a Social Democratic German historian, noted for his studies of Adolf Hitler’s role in German history. He also conducted comparative work on genocide and reached the conclusion that the Holocaust is unique. Jäckel has been teaching modern world history at Stuttgart University since 1967.
Major Publications
* Hitler’s Herrschaft (1999)
* Das deutsche Jahrhundert (1999)
* Der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland (1990)
Relevant Publications
* Genocide or not? Hundred thousands of Armenians died in 1915/16 without any intent: (Genozid oder nicht? Hundrttausende Armenier kamen 1915/16 wohl ohne Absicht um), March 23, 2006, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
Source: Genocide or not? Hundred thousands of Armenians died in 1915/16 without any intent (Genozid oder nicht? Hunderttausende Armenier kamen 1915/16 wohl ohne Absicht um), March 23, 2006, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, translated into English from the original text in German.
“Undoubtedly the Armenians had long intended to establish autonomy or even their own state. Many had sympathized with the Russians and their Western allies, some had deserted the Turkish army. Then as problems of supply emerged and the British landed in April 1915 at Gallipoli, from where they threatened Constantinople, panic occurred. The Turkish Government decided to deport the Armenians into the interior territories. Certainly old resentments that had already been building up during the massacres of 1894 until 1896, and the large territorial losses of the 19th century, especially those during the Balkan Wars of 1912-13, played an important role. The Ottoman Empire was in an existential crisis.
The Turkish authorities were unable, some of them unwilling to lead deportations in an orderly fashion. The misery and loss of Armenians were huge, which is also not contested by the Turkish side. The question is whether the government of Turkey, as the Armenian version maintains, used the crisis to eradicate the Armenians, or whether it solely wanted to deport them, albeit not under humane conditions . An explicit order for mass murder has so far not been found. But that is no proof; some files were destroyed or are not freely accessible. More importantly, in and around Constantinople Armenian residents were not deported, and those from the area of Aleppo were allowed to use rail transportation during the deportation. This is strong evidence against an intended comprehensive genocide.”
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FIRUZ KAZEMZADEH
Born in 1924. MA at Stanford University in 1947, Ph.D. at Harvard University in 1950. Research Fellow at Harvard University from 1954 to 1956. Instructor, then Assistant, Associate professor and finally Professor at Yale University, from 1956 to 1992. Chairman of the Yale Committee for Middle East Studies from 1979 to 1983. Editor of World Order from 1966 to 2000. Member of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom from 1998 to 2000.
Major Publications
* The Struggle for Transcaucasia
New York-Oxford, Philosophical Library/George Ronald Publisher, 1952.
* Ideological Crisis in Iran, The Middle East in Transition
Frederick Praeger, New York, 1958.
* Russia and the Middle East, Russian Foreign Policy: Essays in Historical Perspective
Yale University Press, New Haven, 1962.
* Russia and Britain in Persia: A Study in Imperialism
New Haven, Yale University Press, 1968.
* Russian Penetration of the Caucasus, Russian Imperialism
New Brunswig, Rutgers University Press, 1974.
* Soviet Iranian Relations: A Quarter Century of Freeze and Thaw
The Soviet Union and the Middle East: The Post World War II Era
Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1974.
* Iranian Relations with Russia and the Soviet Union to 1921
Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 7, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992.
* Reflections on Church and State in Russian History, Proselytism and Orthodoxy in Russia
John Witte and Michael Bourdeaux, editors. Orbis Books, New York, 1999.
Relevant Publications
* The Struggle for Transcaucasia
New York-Oxford, Philosophical Library/George Ronald Publisher, 1952.
Source: The Struggle for Transcaucasia, NY-Oxford, Philosophical Library/George Ronald Publisher, 1952.
“For centuries they [the Armenians] had been loyal subjects of the Sultans even receiving the appellation ‘the Loyal Nation’. It was only under the influence of European nineteenth century nationalism that the Armenians began to stir.
The Armenians in Turkey were by no means an oppressed and miserable people. Through hard work, thrift, native intelligence, and a cultural level generally higher than the Turks, they had become a prosperous and important community. In the eastern vilayets they were the predominant economic force. In these vilayets, more than half of all merchants (58 per cent) and three quarters of all persons engaged in mining (75 per cent) were Armenians. In the same vilayets, the Turks accounted for only one quarter of all merchants, doctors and so on. By contrast, they accounted for well over half of all government, employees and magistrates.” P. 8
“Long before the adoption of the programme of 1907, the Dashnaktsutiun [Nationalist Armenian party, created in 1890] developed into a strong, disciplined, conspiratorial organization. Already in the nineties they were preparing armed uprisings in Turkish Armenia, for they hoped to provoke conflicts which would attract the attention of Europe to the national struggle of Armenians.
Although at this stage the Dashnaktsutiun operated almost exclusively in Turkey, the base for their activities was Russian Armenia. It was there that they first organized armed bands, the khumbas, one of which, led by Kukujanian, penetrated Turkey but was later disarmed by the Russians. Other bands infiltrated across Persian territory and caused considerable trouble to the Turkish authorities.” P. 10
“On 5th August, 1914, the Catholicos [supreme chief of Armenian church] wrote a letter to the Viceroy [Russian governor of Caucasus], asking the latter not to forget the Armenian question and to make use of the favorable historical moment for its solution. He stated that it was necessary that the following things should be done: the Armenian vilayets of Anatolia should be united into a single province and put under a Christian governor-general , selected by Russia and independent to the Porte; and a considerable degree of autonomy should by granted to the Turkish Armenia. The carrying out of this reform should be entrusted to Russia exclusively, otherwise no Armenian would even believe in it. The Catholicos called the attention of the Viceroy to ‘the terrible dangers’ which would threaten the Armenians in Turkey should Russian turn away from them.
The Catholicos was clearly asking for a Russian attack upon Turkey. […] Russia was not really interested in the Armenians; she was prepared to use them as a tool of her expansionist policy and no more. Blinded by the hatred of Turkey, the Armenians did not realize what a sorry part was prepared for them in the coming war.” P. 10
“In Tiflis, the Armenian National Bureau was organized with Alexander Khatissian, the mayor of that city, at its head. The Bureau helped the Armenian refugees, conducted auxiliary military works, and organized khumbas (bands, detachments) which entered the Russian army. As a matter of fact, the Dashnaktsutiun had begun to organize volunteers bands even before the war was declared.” P. 26
“In April 1915, the Dashnaktsutiun sent a representative, Dr Zariev, to France and England in order to gain the sympathy of the said countries toward the realization of Armenian aspirations. Zariev asked the diplomats in Paris and London to introduce him to government circles. He told the Russian ambassador in Paris, Izvolskii, that the Russian Foreign Ministry intended to propose to the Powers the creation of an autonomous Armenia within the Ottoman Empire and under the protection of Russians, England and France. Zariev claimed that the territory of the proposed state would include not only the so-called Armenian vilayets [where the Armenians were a minority] but also Cilicia [where the Armenians were a smaller minority] and a port on Mediterranean Sea. He said that the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs approved this plan it would be better for the Armenians themselves to deal with the Powers in order to allay their suspicious.” P. 27
“The Armenians were the only Transcaucasian people who engaged themselves in diplomatic and quasi independent military activities during the war.” P. 31
“The Armenians like the other peoples of Transcaucasia, welcomed the March Revolution [liberal revolution in Russia]. To the Dashnaktsutiun it meant first of all the solution of the national question of which they were so painfully conscious. More than any other party in Transcaucasia the Dashnaktsutiun wanted to win the war: the defeat of Turkey was with then an idée fixe, almost a mania.” P. 43
“But it was neither the Kadets, nor the Mensheviks, nor the S.R.’s who saved the Soviet [of Baku] during the March [1918] Days. It was the Dashnaktsutiun, with its military organization that tapped the scales in its favor. At first the Armenian National Council proclaimed its neutrality in the quarrel between the Musavat [Azeri national party] and the Soviet. It has been even suggested that the Armenians told the Musavat that the latter might expect their help against the Bolsheviks. If it was the case, then the Armenians were largely responsible for the massacre that ensued, because the Musavat plunged into the armed conflict thinking that it had only one enemy to face.” P. 71
“On the basis of the material presented above it is possible to state that the Soviet provoked the ‘civil war’ in the hope of breaking the power of its most formidable rival, the Musavat. However, one the Soviet had called upon the Dashnaktsutiun to lend its assistance in the struggle against the Azerbaijani nationalists, the ‘civil war’ degenerated into a massacre, the Armenian killing the Muslims irrespective of their political affiliation or social and economic position. The non-Bolshevik Russians sided with the Soviet for the simple reason that they were Russians and would rather see the triumph of the Soviet which obeyed Moscow, than the victory of the separatist Musavat.
When finally a semblance of order was restored in Baku, the streets cleared of the thousands of dead bodies, and the fires extinguished, the Soviet emerged as the greatest force in the city. The Muslims were defeated and completely disarmed, while the Armenians weakened.” Pp. 74-75
“In the territories which the Russian army had conquered, and which were now [1918] held by Georgian and Armenian troops, the Muslim population was persecuted by the Armenian bent on vengeance. Vehib Pasha called the attention of the General Odishelidze to the cruelties inflicted on the Muslims. He cited cases of Muslims having been burned alive and other such of atrocities. Apparently Odishelidze admittet that there has been atrocities, for in another letter Vehib Pasha thanked him to protect the Muslims from the Armenians. But the massacres continued as before. On 15th and 16th January, several hundreds of Muslims were killed by the Armenians in Erzinjan [city of Eastern Anatolia].” Pp. 85-86
“The victory which had come to Armenians [in Fall 1918] after so much sufferings turned the heads of her leader. They visualized a Greater Armenia, a country stretching from Mediterranean Sea to the Black Sea, and from the Black Sea to the Caspian. They claimed not only the six vilayets of Anatolia, but also Cilicia as well. They even claimed a part of the Persian Azerbaijan, though Persia had not been belligerent. Their fantasies were encouraged in Paris, London, and especially Washington. […]
But the Armenians were misled by their hopes and these promises. The interest of Europe and America in Armenia was not deep. Most people in the West did not know then, nor do they know today, whether Armenia is in Europe, Asia or Africa. An Irish member of the House of Commons used the Turkish massacres in Armenia as a convenient introduction to his speeches against what in his opinion were similar atrocities of the British in Ireland. Moreover, the Armenian failed to appreciate the vitality of he Turkish people and their determination not to bow to the victorious Allies.
In February 1919, Turkey [the actual Ottoman government, a British puppet] made an attempt to negotiate with Armenia, promising the Turkish Armenia autonomy within the Turkish state, and proposing to effect an exchange of population in some areas where tension was specially acute. Flushed with victory, the Armenians rejected the Turkish overture […]
No peaceful settlement could be achieved on the above terms which show that the Dashnaktsutiun were not really interested in settling their conflict with Turkey, but were pursuing the old policy of attracting Europe’s attention by their defiance of the Turks, just as they had done in 1896, when they startled Constantinople by capturing and holding for a few hours the building of the Ottoman Bank.
Meanwhile in those parts of Turkish Armenian which the Armenian army had reoccupied following the retreat of the Turks, massacres and pillage of the Muslim population reached tremendous proportion. A Soviet writer, Borian, himself an Armenian, states that the Armenian politicians had organized state authority not for the purpose of administering the country, but for the extermination of the Muslim population and the looting of their property. When voices were raised in Armenia against this murderous policy, many of the leaders of the Government answered: ‘The Turks always looted the Armenians; so, why is it so strange if the Armenians should for once loot the Turks?’ Borian comes to the conclusion that ‘these facts permits one to say that the Armenian Dashnaks have excelled the Turks.’ Borian’s opinion is largely supported by General Harbord [US chief investigator in Anatolia] who writes that the Turks committed many atrocities, but ‘where the Armenians advanced and retreated with the Russians their retaliatory cruelties unquestionably rivaled the Turks in their inhumanity’.” Pp. 213-214
***
YITZCHAK KEREM
Professor of History, Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Yitzchak Kerem is an historian on Sephardic Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has been the editor of Sefarad, the Sephardic newsletter, since 1991. He is also a former radio moderator of “Diaspora Jewry” (Reshet Bet and Aleph, 2004-2007), section editor for Encyclopedia of the Holocaust and New Encyclopedia Judaica, and is now visiting Israeli professor of Sephardic Studies at American Jewish University of Los Angeles. He is the founder and director of Institute for Hellenic Jewish Studies at University of Denver, and have given some 150 academic conference papers. He has contributed to numerous encyclopedias including Encyclopedia Judaica bi-annual yearbooks, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press), and Chronology of World Slavery.
Major Publications
* The Settlement of Rhodian and Other Sephardic Jews in Montgomery and Atlanta in the Twentieth Century, American Jewish History – Volume 85, Number 4, December 1997, pp. 373-391
* The Greek-Jewish Theater in Judeo-Spanish, ca. 1880-1940, Journal of Modern Greek Studies – Volume 14, Number 1, May 1996, pp. 31-45
Source: Excerpted from lukeford.net (Luke Ford’s interview with Yitzchak Kerem)
Luke: “There’s been controversy over the past 20 years about Israel pushing Turkey to recognize the Armenian genocide?”
Yitzchak: “It’s an extremely loaded issue. The Ottoman scholars have a different view of it, more as a perennial conflict. Armenians have knocked off over 40 diplomats. There are 42 Turkish diplomats killed since 1973 by Armenians. There are additional assassinations which are more contemporary. Note the assassination of the Turkish consul in Los Angeles.”
Luke: “Turkish diplomats?”
Yitzchak: “Yes. There’s a scholar in Minnesota who’s a Turk and totally sympathizes with the Armenians and is critical of Turkey. But there’s a middle road. The problem is when you have these scholars who twist reality. That’s where the friction starts. There’s an Ottoman scholars group. You have these people who come. We even pressed for the Turkish archives to be opened to these people. Then they come and they make up things and they twist things. So instead of having a genuine dialogue over what happened, it becomes overly politicized. The problem is the question is extremely loaded and there was not one incident in 1915. What happened in 1893-1895 was a blatant genocide. Extremist [Armenian] groups tried to overthrow the sultan six times. So, like a bully, Turkey retaliated in mass. It also was led by the treacherous Sultan Abdul Hamid. The 1915-1923 events of the Armenian-Turkish conflict are of a very different nature.
“In 1915, it’s more of a conflict. Turks will exaggerate and say that more Turks were killed in the fighting from 1915 to 1923 than Armenians. They do have responsibilities towards the Armenians, but to pattern itself as a Jewish holocaust which [some Armenians] have done, they were pushed by British intelligence, is a distortion of history.
“My point is, and this is what the Armenians don’t like, is that more Kurds killed Armenians than Turks. The Turks did terrible things to the Armenians. They butchered people right and left. They raped and pillaged, but it wasn’t an organized act by the regime. It was a byproduct of hate. The Turks did terrible things to the Greek Orthodox, especially in Izmir. To call that a holocaust and a genocide when you are equating that with the Jewish holocaust is a distortion.
“In academia today, if 100 people have been killed in a planned massacre, you can call that genocide. The issue here is — is it an attempt to wipe out an entire people? The Armenians had a state afterward. Not in the historic areas of Armenian kingdoms in the past, but in what became the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union essentially threw them out. The Armenians have a state today.
“What the Armenians do is not commemoration. They don’t have holocaust museums. They take a tramp on the Jews.
“Why aren’t Armenians all over the world giving millions of dollars to establish an Armenian genocide center? They’re just interested in provoking. To threaten a few Jewish scholars, a few Jewish historians, is not the way to deal with it.
“No Ottoman scholar is going to give legitimacy to any murder that a Turk did. After the war, the Turks did put 1800 people on trial.”
“At a Holocaust conference in 1994 Berlin, the Armenians tried to take over the stage and demanded that the Armenian issue get equal footing. This isn’t the way.
“During the Holocaust there were only three righteous Jews from Armenia. That’s an indication that Jews were not very well liked. “
“Essentially, what [the Armenians] are doing is propagating hate. The Armenians are not establishing centers all over the world for genocide education.”
“Extremist groups among the Armenians are involved in all these underground activities in Cyprus, the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon.
“In terms of Israel, the Armenians a lot of the time were on the wrong side. They were in terror with the Palestinians against Israel, together with training with the IRA and all sorts of bad boys.”
“Stanford Shaw was hugely sympathetic towards the Armenians. At UCLA, they organized a huge demonstration at his class. What kind of behavior was that? And then a young man put a bomb in his house in Northridge.”
***
WILLIAM L. LANGER
William Leonard Langer (1896-1977), was assistant professor (1925-1936), then professor of history (1936-1942; 1952-1977) at Harvard University, specialist of Ottoman Empire, Near East and Russia. He was also Chief of the Research and Analysis branch of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), from 1942 to 1945, and assistant director of the Central Intelligence Agency, from 1950 to 1952.
Major Publications
* The Franco-Russian Alliance. 1890-1894, 1929.
* European Alliance and Alignments. 1870-1890, 1931.
* An Encyclopedia of World History, 1940; new editions, 1948, 1952, 1968, 1972.
* Our Vichy Gamble, 1947
.
* Political and Social Eupheaval, 1969.
Relevant Publications
* The Diplomacy of Imperialism, 1935; second edition, 1951, reprint 1960.
Source:The Diplomacy of Imperialism, 1935
“The Hentchakian Revolutionary Party was, in 1890, invited to join the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, and did so, but the association of the two did not last long. Nazarbek was evidently not an easy person to get on with, and preferred to work on his own. At first he had trouble in finding followers, but his new collaborators worked hard. Khan-Azad, for example, went to Constantinople in July 1889 and began to spread propaganda. He consulted with Khrimian, but found the old man doubtful: “You are crazy,” said the old patriot. “The Armenians are a very small nation, and how much blood will have to be shed.” He could not see how anything substantial could be done without European help. But Khan-Azad was not discouraged. He went on to Tiflis, where he had no better luck. It was only in Trebizond that he found any real enthusiasm. There he established the central committee of the party, and from that centre agents were sent out who organized revolutionary cells in Erzerum, Kharput, Smyrna, Aleppo and many other places. Nazarbek himself stayed discreetly in Geneva, but in a volume of stories published later he has given us vivid pictures of the agitators visiting the peasants, “talking the night through with them, speaking with them of their sufferings, unceasingly, impatiently, preaching the gospel of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, rousing their crushed spirits with high resolves and mighty aspirations.”
The ambassadors at Constantinople were not slow in following the development of this agitation. From 1888 onward the English representative reported the presence of revolutionaries and the seizure of seditious literature. Revolutionary placards were being posted in the cities and there were not a few cases of the blackmailing of wealthy Armenians, who were forced to contribute to the cause. Europeans in Turkey were agreed that the immediate aim of the agitators was to incite disorder, bring about inhuman reprisals, and so provoke the intervention of the powers. For that reason, it was said, they operated by preference in areas where the Armenians were in a hopeless minority, so that reprisals would be certain. One of the revolutionary told Dr. Hamlin, the founder of Robert College, that the Henchak bands would “watch their opportunity to kill Turks and Kurds, set fire to their villages, and then make their escape into the mountains. The enraged Moslems will then rise, and fall upon the defenseless Armenians and slaughter them with such barbarity that Russia will enter in the name of humanity and Christian civilization and take possession.”
When the horrified missionary denounced the scheme as atrocious and infernal beyond anything ever known, he received this reply:
“It appears so to you, no doubt; but we Armenians have determined to be free. Europe listened to the Bulgarian horrors and made Bulgaria free. She will listen to our cry when it goes up in the shrieks and blood of millions of women and children… We are desperate. We shall do it.”
Serious trouble began in 1890, when there were disturbances and some bloodshed at Erzerum. The outbreak had not been premeditated or planned, but the Hentchak hoped to capitalize it. To encourage interest it arranged to stage a great demonstration in Constantinople to impress both the Turkish and the European governments. The affair was carefully planned and the minimum demands of the revolutionaries (civil liberties) were sent in advance to the foreign ambassadors. A proclamation was read in the Armenian Church at Kum-Kapu, in which the Armenians were told in so many words: “You must be your own self-governing master.”
Even this demonstration had no favorable results. During the following months the efforts of the leaders seem to have gone into negotiations for an agreement with other revolutionary groups. There were long conferences at Athens, and in December 1891 the Hentchak officially joined the Oriental Federation of Macedonian, Albanian, Cretan and Greek revolutionists. The newspaper was transferred to Athens, where it remained until the end of 1894, at which time the Armenian organization moved to London. In the interval propaganda was being carried on in Armenia and efforts were being made to induce the Kurds to join forces with the insurgents. Agents were sent also to America, where branches were established in Boston, Worcester and other cities. Khan-Azad reports that he raised in America no less than $10,000 to support the cause.
When the Gladstone cabinet came into power in the summer of 1892 the hopes of the Armenians ran high, for was not the Grand Old Man the saviour of the oppressed? As a matter of fact the Liberal Government began almost at once to send sharp notes to the Porte. The Anglo-Armenian Committee and the Evangelical Alliance made the most of the situation and raised the hue and cry of religious persecution. But English influence had sunk so low at Constantinople that no attention was paid to the protests from London. The Turkish government probably realized even then that the Russian government, just as hostile to the Hentchakian aspirations as the Turkish, would stand behind it. In 1890 the Russian officials had co-operated with the Turkish in breaking up an Armenian raiding party organized in the Caucasus. Many writers have taken the stand that English intervention only made matters worse. “The Turk begins to repress because we sympathize,” wrote David Hogarth, “and we sympathize the more because he represses, and so the vicious circle revolves.” England “is more responsible for the cold-blooded murders which have come near exterminating the Armenians than all other nations put together,” remarked an American traveller.
It requires no very vivid imagination to picture the reaction of the Turks to the agitation of the revolutionists. They had constantly in mind, if not the revolt of the Greeks, at least the insurrection in Bulgaria and the disastrous intervention of Russia and the powers. Whether Abdul Hamid deserves the black reputation that has been pinned to him is a matter for debate. If he was “the bloody assassin” and the “red Sultan” to most people, he was the hard-working, conscientious, much harassed but personally charming ruler to others. Those who have spoken for him have pointed out that the Sultan felt his Empire threatened by the Armenians, who, he knew or at least believed, were in league with the Young Turks, the Greeks, Macedonians, etc. They believe that Abdul Hamid was the victim of what we moderns call a persecution complex. He was terrified, and for that reason surrounded himself not only with high walls, but with all sorts of dubious characters, especially spies and delators who justified their existence by bringing ever more alarming reports.
So much at least cannot be denied: that the revolutionists planned a great conflagration and that they gave the Sultan and his ministers ample fright. One of their proclamation read:
“The times are most critical and pregnant with ominous events. The cup is full. Prepare for the inevitable. Organize, arm, —arm with anything. If one place revolts or shows resistance, do the same in your locality. Spread the fight for liberation. Yes, in truth, it is better to live as a free man for a day, for an hour, and to die fighting, than to live a life of slavery for generations, nay for centuries.”
In the summer of 1894 the Revolutionary Committee wrote a letter to the Grand Vizier warning him that there would be a general rising in the Empire if the “very just demands of the Armenian people” were not met. No one could blame the government for anticipating a tremendous upheaval and for taking precautions. Probably to counteract the efforts made to bring the Kurds into the movement, the Sultan had, in 1891, organized the tribesmen in the famous Hamidie regiments, which were modeled on the Russian cossack brigades and were supposedly meant to act as a frontier defense force. In 1877 and 1878, however, the Kurd troops had been more trouble than they were worth; it may therefore be assumed that the purpose of the new organizations was to satisfy the chiefs and keep them from joining forces with the Armenian revolutionaries. In fact they could and were, under the new system, used against the Armenians. Beginning in 1892, the Hamidie regiments, sometimes supported by regular troops, began to raid the Armenian settlements, burning the houses, destroying the crops and cutting down the inhabitants.
And so the revolutionaries began to get what they wanted — reprisals. It mattered not to them that perfectly innocent people were being made to suffer for the realization of a program drawn up by a group in Geneva or Athens, a group which had never been given any mandate whatever by the Armenian community. So far as one can make out the Hentchak agitators were ardently supported by the lower-class Armenians in Constantinople, with whose help they forced the election of the patriot Ismirlian as patriarch in 1894. But the upper classes appear to have been opposed to the whole program; indeed, they were victimized themselves by threatening letters and by blackmail into the financing of a scheme which they regarded as disastrous. As for the peasantry in the provinces, it is perfectly obvious that they did not know what it was all about. Isabella. Bishop, who travelled through the country in 1891, makes the positive statement “that the Armenian peasant is as destitute of political aspirations as he is ignorant of political grievances. . . not on a single occasion did I hear a wish expressed for political or administrative reform, or for Armenian independence.” Hogarth tells of Armenians in the provinces who said they wished the patriots would leave them alone. But these people were not consulted. Whether they liked it or not, they were marked out by others for the sacrifice; their lives were the price to be paid for the realization of the phantastic national-socialist state of the fanatics.” Pp. 157-160
***
BERNARD LEWIS
Professor Emeritus of Islamic History and Middle Eastern Studies, Princeton University, MA in Middle Eastern History and PhD in Islamic Studies, University of London.
Bernard Lewis is a British-American historian, Orientalist, and political commentator. He is the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. He specializes in the history of Islam and the interaction between Islam and the West, and is especially famous in academic circles for his works on the history of the Ottoman Empire.
Major Publications
* The Emergence of Modern Turkey (1961)
* The Shaping of the Modern Middle East (1994)
* The Middle East: A Brief History of the Last 2,000 Years (1995)
* The Future of the Middle East (1997)
* The Multiple Identities of the Middle East (1998)
* A Middle East Mosaic: Fragments of life, letters and history (2000)
Source: Karpel, Dalia. “There Was No Genocide: Interview with Professor Bernard Lewis “, Ha’aretz Weekly, January 23, 1998.
“Because I am not a Turk nor an Armenian and I have no allegiance to any of these groups. I am a historian and my loyalties are to truth. The concept of genocide was defined legally. It is a term that the UN used and the Nuremberg trials made use of it [as well]. I side with words, which have accurate meaning. In my view a loose and ambiguous use of words is bad. The meaning of genocide is the planned destruction of a religious and ethnic group, as far as it is known to me, there is no evidence for that in the case of the Armenians. The deniers of Holocaust have a purpose: to prolong Nazism and to return to Nazi legislation. Nobody wants the ‘Young Turks’ back, and nobody want to have back the Ottoman Law. What do the Armenians want? The Armenians want to benefit from both worlds. On the one hand, they speak with pride of their struggle against the Ottoman despotism, while on the other hand, they compare their tragedy to the Jewish Holocaust. I do not accept this. I do not say that the Armenians did not suffer terribly. But I find enough cause for me to contain their attempts to use the Armenian massacres to diminish the worth of the Jewish Holocaust and to relate to it instead as an ethnic dispute.”
Source: C-SPAN2, also available as video from www.youtube.com
Question: “The British press reported in 1997 that your views on the killing of one million Armenians by the Turks in 1915 did not amount to genocide and in this report in the Independent of London, says that a French court fined you one frank in damages after you said there was no genocide. My question is, sir, have your views changed on this whether the killing of one million Armenians amounts to genocide and your views on this judgment?”
Bernard Lewis responds: “This is a question of definition and nowadays the word “genocide” is used very loosely even in cases where no bloodshed is involved at all and I can understand the annoyance of those who feel refused. But in this particular case, the point that was being made was that the massacre of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire was the same as what happened to Jews in Nazi Germany and that is a downright falsehood. What happened to the Armenians was the result of a massive Armenian armed rebellion against the Turks, which began even before war broke out, and continued on a larger scale.
Great numbers of Armenians, including members of the armed forces, deserted, crossed the frontier and joined the Russian forces invading Turkey. Armenian rebels actually seized the city of Van and held it for a while intending to hand it over to the invaders. There was guerilla warfare all over Anatolia. And it is what we nowadays call the National Movement of Armenians Against Turkey. The Turks certainly resorted to very ferocious methods in repelling it.
There is clear evidence of a decision by the Turkish Government, to deport the Armenian population from the sensitive areas. Which meant naturally the whole of Anatolia. Not including the Arab provinces, which were then still part of the Ottoman Empire. There is no evidence of a decision to massacre. On the contrary, there is considerable evidence of attempt to prevent it, which were not very successful. Yes there were tremendous massacres, the numbers are very uncertain but a million nay may well be likely.
The massacres were carried out by irregulars, by local villagers responding to what had been done to them and in number of other ways. But to make this, a parallel with the holocaust in Germany, you would have to assume the Jews of Germany had been engaged in an armed rebellion against the German state, collaborating with the allies against Germany. That in the deportation order the cities of Hamburg and Berlin were exempted, persons in the employment of state were exempted, and the deportation only applied to the Jews of Germany proper, so that when they got to Poland they were welcomed and sheltered by the Polish Jews. This seems to me a rather absurd parallel.”
Source: “Documenting and Debating a ‘Genocide'”, The Ombudsman Column, PBS, April 21, 2006. See the copy as . . . Appendix 5 B . . . Documenting and Debating a ‘Genocide . . .
“The issue is not whether the massacres happened or not, but rather if these massacres were as a result of a deliberate preconceived decision of the Turkish government… there is no evidence for such a decision.”
“A large number of Western students of Ottoman history reject the appropriateness of the genocide label, i.e. Roderic Davison, J.C. Hurewitz and Andrew Mango.”
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GUENTER LEWY
Professor Emeritus of Political Science, University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
Lewy’s works span several topics, but he is most often associated with his book on the Vietnam War and his works that deal with the applicability of the term genocide to various historical events. In 1939, he immigrated to Palestine and then to the United States. He has been on the faculties of Columbia University, Smith College, and the University of Massachusetts. He currently lives in Washington, D.C. and is a frequent contributor to Commentary.
Major Publications
* The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies (2001)
* The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide (2005)
Relevant Publications
* The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide (2005)
* Revisiting the Armenian Genocide, Middle East Quarterly, Fall 2005
Source: Revisiting the Armenian Genocide, Middle East Quarterly, Fall 2005.
“Most of those who maintain that Armenian deaths were premeditated and so constitute genocide base their argument on three pillars: the actions of Turkish military courts of 1919-20, which convicted officials of the Young Turk government of organizing massacres of Armenians, the role of the so-called “Special Organization” accused of carrying out the massacres, and the Memoirs of Naim Bey which contain alleged telegrams of Interior Minister Talât Pasha conveying the orders for the destruction of the Armenians. Yet when these events and the sources describing them are subjected to careful examination, they provide at most a shaky foundation from which to claim, let alone conclude, that the deaths of Armenians were premeditated.”
Source: The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide
“It was not until 1965, the fiftieth anniversary of what Armenians began to call the first genocide of the twentieth century, that Armenians in Soviet Union and worldwide diaspora started to focus new attention on the events of 1915-16. History became a tool to highlight the suffering and injustices suffered by the Armenian nation”. P. 258
“Supporters of the Armenian cause have referred to the alleged Turkish genocide of the Armenians as an “established, incontrovertible historical fact” thus making it a closed issue similar to the Jewish Holocaust that would be questioned only by pseudo-historians such as Arthur Butz and Robert Faurisson. Yet the scholars who signed the Open Letter and who have questioned the appropriateness of the genocide label cannot be dismissed as a fringe group; they include some of the best-known experts on the history of Turkey”. P. 262
“As mentioned earlier, some Armenians use the word “genocide” not as a legal concept but as a term of moral opprobrium that castigates the deportation and its attending huge loss of life as a grave moral evil.” P. 271
Please also see Lewy’s comprehensive interview with Today’s Zaman “No Evidence of Ottoman Intent to Destroy Armenian Community”.
In December 2008, Lewy sued the Southern Poverty Law Center for falsely accusing him of being a foreign agent. The Turkish American Legal Defense Fund (TALDF) took over Lewy’s case. For more information, please see visit www.taldf.org.
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HEATH W. LOWRY
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk Professor of Ottoman and Modern Turkish Studies, Princeton University.
Heath W. Lowry is an American historian and the Ataturk Professor of Ottoman and Modern Turkish Studies at Princeton University. His area of expertise is the history of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey and has authored numerous books in both of these fields. He spent two years (1964-1966) working in a remote village in western Turkey as a Peace Corps volunteer. In the late 1960s, he was a graduate student at UCLA working with scholars Speros Vryonis, Jr., Andreas Tietze, Gustav von Grunebaum and Stanford J. Shaw. In 1970s, he taught full-time at the Bosphorus University and served as the Istanbul Director of the American Research Institute in Turkey. In 1983 he established the Institute of Turkish Studies, Inc. in Washington, D.C. together with a distinguished group of scholars, businessmen, and retired diplomats. Since 1993, he has been the Ataturk Professor of Ottoman & Modern Turkish Studies at Princeton University, where from July 1994-June 1999 he was the Director of the Program in Near Eastern Studies. Between 1994-1997, he served concurrently as Chairman of the Department of Near Eastern Studies.
Major Publications
* The Islamization and Turkification of Trabzon, 1461-1483. Istanbul (Bosphorus University Press), 1981 & 1999
* Continuity and Change in Late Byzantine and Early Ottoman Society [with: A. Bryer et. al.] Cambridge, MA & Birmingham, England (Dumbarton Oaks & University of Birmingham), 1985
* The Story Behind ‘Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story.’ Istanbul (Isis Press), 1990
* Studies in Defterology: Ottoman Society in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Century Istanbul (Isis Press), 1992.
* Fifteenth Century Ottoman Realities: Christian Peasant Life on the Aegean Island of Limnos. Istanbul (Eren Press), 2002
* The Nature of the Early Ottoman State. Albany (SUNY Press), 2003
* Ottoman Bursa in Travel Accounts. Bloomington (Indiana University: Ottoman and Modern Turkish Studies Publications), 2003.
Relevant Publications
* The Story Behind ‘Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story.’ Istanbul (Isis Press), 1990
Source: Lowry, H. W. (1990). The Story Behind Ambassador Morghentau’s Story. Istanbul, Turkey: Isis Press.
“Why then did Morghentau put these words into the mouth of Talaat Bey? Again, the answer is simple: he wanted to have the strongest figure among the Young Turk triumvirate embracing verbally what is one of the major leitmotifs of Ambassador Morghentau’s Story, namely, it was run-away Turkish nationalism which prompted their attempt to ‘exterminate’ the Armenians. This theme, which does not find a single iota of support in either the ‘Diary’ or the ‘Letters’, runs throughout his book.” Pp.35
“All comments in Ambassador Morghentau’s Story notwithstanding, as late as September 1915, Morghentau had not firmly concluded that the Armenians were the subject of an attempted ‘extermination’ by the Young Turk leadership.” P. 51
Source: Passage from the Schreiner (American correspondent of the Associated Press) letter on December 11, 1918
“To be perfectly frank with you, I cannot applaud your efforts to make the Turk the worst being on earth, and the German worse, if that be possible. …. Has it ever occurred to you that all governments reserve to themselves the right to put down rebellion? It seems to me that even Great Britain assumed that stand towards the Fathers of the Republic.” P.62
“In 1990, seventy-two years after its initial appearance, Ambassador Morghentau’s Story is still in print. In the same year it has been repeatedly cited on the floors of the U.S. Congress, by a host of well-meaning Senators, as proof of the fact that the Young Turk Government planned and carried out a ‘genocide’ against its Armenian minority. Currently, a number of ‘Genocide and Holocaust Studies Curricula Guides’ which are in use in high schools in the U.S. expose students to passages from the book as furnishing examples of the twisted minds that can plan and perpetrate a genocide, etc. etc. In short, far from having found the well-earned rest it deserves, Ambassador Morghentau’s Story remains today a lynch pin in the body of literature which has and continues to present the Turks as some of the unrepentant genocidal villains of history.
While the purpose of the present study is less an examination of the question of whether or not the fate of the Ottoman Armenians ought to be described as ‘genocide’, and more of an attempt to distinguish between the reality and the fantasy in Ambassador Morghentau’s Story, we must need be cognizant of the broader implications it suggests.” Pp.69-70
“That such an important book has not until this monograph ever been the subject of a single published study, would be inconceivable in any historical field except that narrow subfield known as ‘Turco-Armenian History’, where all too often, raw emotion serves as a substitute for dispassionate scholarship, and propaganda passes for history.
What can be said of scholars working on the Armenian ‘genocide’, who, in publication after publication, over the past decades quote the outright lies and half-truths which permeate Morghentau’s Story without ever questioning even the most blatant of the inconsistencies?” P.78
“This is not a study designed to answer the question of whether or not the fate of Ottoman Armenians during the First World War, should or should not be termed ‘genocide’. It is, however, a work designed to question the credibility of the United States Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, as a source for the history of that era as portrayed in Ambassador Morgenthau’s story. This disclaimer is necessitated by the fact that partisans, be they Turks or Armenians, to the discussion of Turco-Armenian relations during World War I, tend to defend their positions from behind ‘blinders’ which allow them to see only what they want with no regard for the larger picture.”
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(To be continued)