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It is with utmost disappointment and grave sadness that Americans of Turkish heritage coast-to-coast watched CBS’s 60 Minutes program on 28 February 2010 blatantly take side on the documentary “Battle Over History”. Instead of being impartial, objective, and balanced reporters, as expected from an international news media organization, CBS chose to act like an arrogant journalist with a cause, promoting a long discredited political claim of a spurious genocide as settled history.
Selection of obviously biased contents, clearly provocative symbols, incredibly misrepresented location, dishonest and racist Armenian speakers, and overtly partisan narratives pointed to a propaganda campaign rather than an honest attempt to educate public about a historical controversy.
The documentary start with a falsehood purporting “…overwhelming majority of historians recognize genocide…” whereas the opposite is true. Here is a partial list of 69 world renown historians who rejected publicly on 19 May 1985, in New York Times & Washington Post, the Armenian characterization of WWI events as genocide, instead called it “…inter communal warfare fought by Christian and Muslim irregulars…”: Prof. Bernard Lewis of Princeton, Prof. Stanford Shaw of UCLA, Prof. Justin McCarthy of Louisville, and many others.
In fact, so many of the true scholars were refuting the Armenian claims that the Armenian lobby was forced to create new avenues to buy credibility: genocide scholars. These are mostly retired professionals, psychiatrists, lecturers on US Government, English teachers, and others, all posing as authorities in history but most are not even historians, and all organized through the Armenian lobby, financed in part by the Cafesjian Foundation and organized by the notoriously anti-Turkish Zoryan Institute.
It was remarkable that an English professor, Balakian, and not a historian was selected as the spokesperson for Armenians in a complex event in history, along with a dentist, a priest, and others. The token inclusion of the harshly edited words of the frequently interrupted Turkish ambassador did little to counter the massive infusion of disinformation and deception by the Armenian propagandists featured prominently throughout the documentary.
Balakian asserted “…450,000 Armenians died in Dar El Zor…” which was another falsehood. Even American consul wrote that 500,000 Armenians survived the move within the context of the temporary resettlement (TERESET) order of 1915. TERESET was a wartime homeland security measure taken to defend the country in the face of brutal foreign invasions (i.e. military campaigns by the ANZAC and the French in the Dardanelles, Russians in the Ottoman-Russian border, and British in Sinai, among others) and equally atrocious domestic revolts and fifth columns (i.e. Van Revolt by Armenians in April 1915).
Even the U.S. Congress’ own records from those times and dates clearly corroborate the Turkish position on the conflict:
a- “American Military Mission to Armenia” (General Harbord) Report 1920 and the Annex Report Nat. Archives 184.021/175 –which does not mention any “race extermination” but, on the contrary, refers to “…refinements of cruelty by Armenians to Muslims…”
b- Joint U.S. CONGRESS RESOLUTION NO. 192, APRIL 22, 1922 relative to the activities of Near East Relief ending 31 December 1921 which has unanimously resolved that a total of 1,414,000 Armenians were alive (which makes killing of 1.5 million Armenians an impossibility, since the total Armenian population was around 1.5 million at the time.)
c- George Montgomery, a member of the U.S. delegation at the Paris Conference, had presented a detailed tabulation in 1919, showing a total of 1,104,000 Armenians alive, apart from those who had already immigrated to other countries.
d- 29 March 1919 report of the Paris Conference subcommittee on atrocities, chaired by the U.S. secretary of State Lansing, lists Armenian losses as “…more than 200,000…” Even this number is exaggerated as they got their information from the Armenian church, not exactly an impartial source. After meticulous research through the archives, the Turkish Historical Society documented the deaths of 54,000 Armenians using Ottoman police reports filed on site, of which number only about 8,400 are reported as victims of massacres. The paragraphs a, b, and c jointly point to the THS number being closer to reality.
Who, then may have jacked this number of Armenian casualties from the original 54,000 first to 200,000 in 29 March 1919 (Paris Peace Conference;) 600,000 in May 1919 (in a poster created by Armenians soliciting money in U.S. churches;) to the current 1.5 million? Take a guess!
Many of the re-located Armenians did arrive in Syria and all of them were given homes, land and money. Armenians were given an option to return to Turkey in 1916 and 1917, and many actually did, in fact, some even joined the French forces and fought against the Ottoman Empire. The descendants of the re-located Armenians who chose to live in Syria and Lebanon make up a large portion of the Diaspora Armenians today. These facts, unfortunately, were not mentioned in the presentation.
A single site was shown along the Euphrates, claiming that the bones were everywhere, which is extremely questionable after 95 years. The Armenian propagandists featured in the documentary certainly are not known to be below placing those bones there just before the “show” for maximum impact on the story, in the finest tradition of Andonian, the master fabricator of fake Talaat telegrams fame.
The Turkish Ambassador Nabi Sensoy was not given an opportunity to tell the truth, as he appeared for less than a minute, and erroneously referred to the re-settlement as deportations.
Many American researchers and scholars, all experts in the history of the Ottoman Empire, dispute Armenian allegations, leading to the conclusion that although Armenian civilian losses during World War I were tragic, the events of 1915 were not tantamount to genocide. Armenians did not suffer alone, millions of Turks, Azeris, Kurds, Jews, Circassians, Persians also lost their lives during the same period from similar causes, including massacres by Armenian rebel bands. Take a look at the photos of Armenian revolutionaries, armed-to-the-teeth, here: www.ethocide.com . Do they look like the “poor, starving, unarmed, helpless Armenians” myth promoted deceptively and incessantly?
The mound said to contain Armenian bones sounds very much like that Vereshagin painting of skulls of 1871, hanging in a museum in Moscow, with which the Armenians duped the world into thinking that those were the skulls of Armenians killed by Turks. When the Armenian lies were finally exposed by Prof. Turkkaya Ataov in 1983, no apology was issued by the Armenian lobbies. Same thing with alleged Hitler quote: it is a hoax. Even the most cursory search in the internet will readily reveal many sources showing Princeton historian Heath Lowry’s extensive work exposing the Armenian falsifications.
That the frequently used infamous Hitler quote is a hoax is beyond suspicion. It suffices to read a few lines from the article “Historian of Armenian Descent Says Frequently Used Hitler Quote Is Nothing But a Forgery”, that appeared in The Armenian Reporter Vol. XVII, NO. 40, on August 2, 1984, where an Armenian historian advises his fellow Armenians not to use this fake quote again. “…Dr. Robert John, a historian of Armenian heritage from New York City stated, according the news article, that a commonly used quotation of an alleged statement by Adolf Hitler about the Armenian massacres was a forgery and should, therefore, not be used…” The complete article available at :
Many other such fabrications, meticulously documented in recent a book by Ataov, are the reasons why we would be careful, if we were CBS reporters, not to take any Armenian claims, let alone who lies in the alleged mass grave, at face value.
Armenians were never called infidels by the Ottomans as claimed in the film. On the contrary, it is a matter of historical record that the Ottomans had established one of the most tolerant administrations in history, with its millet system where the faith-based groups were organized in self-ruling, autonomous “millets”. When the Jews of Iberia were persecuted during the 1492 Spanish inquisitions and were told to convert to Catholicism, or leave, or get killed, no country in Europe would offer sanctuary to Jews for fear of retaliation by Catholic Rome. No country, except the Ottoman Empire, that is. Since than many other persecuted peoples have freely come to the Ottoman lands and prospered there in the centuries since. Turkey continued this fine tradition when German Jews in 1930, secular Iranians in 1980s, Iraqi Kurds in 1990s, and many others have also been saved. Balakian’s deliberate misrepresentation speaks volumes about his character. Like the skulls photo and the Hitler quote, this claim is fake, too.
Then there the forced comparison between the court-proven (Nuremberg, 1945) uniquely Jewish tragedy of Holocaust versus the long discredited, political, and unsubstantiated claim of genocide. Deportation is a misnomer, because the treasonous elements were moved from one part of the country to another temporarily, until the end of the war, hence the term TERESET, temporary resettlement. Therefore, mentioning the factual Jewish Holocaust in the same breath with the bogus Armenian genocide is an insult to the silent memory of six million Jews who were killed just for being Jews. Jews did not take up arms against their own government. They did not demand German territories to establish a Jewish state on them. They did not terrorize the German countryside. They did not kill their German neighbors to the tune of 524,000 German victims. They did not join the invading enemy armies during WWII. Armenian, on the other hand, committed all of those heinous crimes during WWI and got away with them. Judging by CBS’s ethocidal coverage, the Armenians are still getting away with murder.
Simon also failed to remind his unsuspecting audiences that Armenians resorted to a massive revolt in April 1915, killed more than 40,000 Muslims in cold blood, wrestled the city out of the Ottoman government forces , and turned it over to the invading enemy armies (Russians.) That was the equivalent of 9/11 for the Ottoman Empire. Why is it acceptable for the U.S. to cross the oceans to start a global war on terrorists in Afghanistan in 21st Century but not acceptable for the Ottoman Empire to move its terrorists from one corner of its land to another in the 20th Century?
And the 24 April 1915, billed by the Armenian falsifiers as the start of a genocide is actually the equivalent of Guantanamo for the Ottoman Empire when known Armenian terrorists and their suspected accomplices were arrested and incarcerated for questioning. If it is good for the goose now, it should be good for the gander then. Please, no more double standards.
Loaded terms like “death march”, “concentration camps” and claims like the Nazis learned from Turks are more recent inventions and after thoughts by the Armenian lobby, not unlike the genocide scholars, genocide curriculums, genocide lectures at Holocaust museums and Jewish synagogues. All new, all cunning steps in a master propaganda scheme, all designed to establish “credibility by association”, all funded by the Armenian lobby.
Morgenthau, the career diplomat , historian, writer, quoted in the documentary, was actually none of those. He was a real estate agent and a developer from upstate new York who raised the most funds for Wilson in 1912 presidential campaign and was rewarded for his services by an ambassadorial post. He was a rabid anti-Turks and a Muslim hater. His book, published in 1918, was actually ghost –written by a Pulitzer Prize winner for him. Morgentahu never left Istanbul (except once for Jerusalem) but never set foot in Anatolia from where he reported. He could speak none of the languages of the era and area (Turkish, Persian, Arabic, Ottoman) so he relied on the translations and reports of his two male Armenian secretaries, Schmavonian and Andonian, hardly impartial sources of information. Morgenthau simply relayed the embellished and exaggerated reports filed by Armenian revolutionaries, American missionaries and other biased parties who could not care less about Muslims’ suffering, either directly or through American consuls in the area. As any fair-minded, honest, truth-seeker can easily see, the deck was shuffled with a pro-Armenians and anti-Turkish bias from the start.
Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink’s assassination of 2007 was mentioned, but no word about the thousands of Turks who took to the streets condemning it. No mention, either, of the murder of Turkish Consul General Kemal Arikan in 1982 in Los Angeles or the fact that Armenians took to the streets to “celebrate it”! This is important, because both men were the same age when assassinated under similar circumstances by brain-washed youths, both married, and both had kids, both victimized by a similar hate crime. Yet, the Armenian victim (Dink) is glorified while Turkish victim is forgotten, dismissed, or ignored. Also ignored are more than 70 victims of Armenian terrorism and hate crimes since 1973. What is even more incredible that four of those victims were murdered in cold blood on American soil! Still, not a word from CBS on Turkish victims. Perhaps CBS reporter thinks Turks are expendable sub humans who deserve deaths, being of the wrong ethnicity and religion.
BIAS & BIGOTRY IN THE TERM “ARMENIAN GENOCIDE”
If one cherishes values like fairness, objectivity, truth, and honesty, then one should really use the term “Turkish-Armenian conflict”. Asking one “Do you accept or deny Armenian Genocide” shows anti-Turkish bias. The question should be re-phrased “What is your stand on the Turkish-Armenian conflict?”
Turks believe it was an inter communal warfare mostly fought by Turkish and Armenian irregulars, a civil war which is engineered, provoked, and waged by the Armenian revolutionaries, with active support from Russia, England, France, and others, all eyeing the vast territories of the collapsing Ottoman Empire, against a backdrop of a raging world war.
Armenians, on the other hand, totally ignoring Armenian agitation, raids, rebellions, treason, territorial demands, and Turkish victims killed by Armenians, unfairly claim that it was a one way genocide.
GENOCIDE ALLEGATIONS IGNORE “THE SIX T’S OF THE TURKISH-ARMENIAN CONFLICT”
While some in unsuspecting public may be forgiven for taking the blatant and ceaseless Armenian propaganda at face value and believing Armenian falsifications merely because they are repeated so often, it is difficult and painful for someone like me, the son of Turkish survivors on both maternal and paternal sides.
Those seemingly endless “War years” of 1912-1922 brought wide-spread death and destruction on to all Ottoman citizens. No Turkish family was left touched, mine included. Those nameless, faceless Turkish victims are killed for a second time today with politically motivated and baseless charges of Armenian genocide.
ALLEGATIONS OF ARMENIAN GENOCIDE ARE RACIST AND DISHONEST HISTORY
They are racist because they ignore the Turkish dead: about 3 million during WWI; more than half a million of them at the hands of Armenian nationalists.
And the allegations of Armenian genocide are dishonest because they simply dismiss
THE SIX T’S OF THE TURKISH-ARMENIAN CONFLICT:
1) TUMULT (as in numerous Armenian armed uprisings between 1877 and 1920)
2) TERRORISM (by well-armed Armenian nationalists and militias victimizing Ottoman-Muslims between 1882-1920)
3) TREASON (Armenians joining the invading enemy armies as early as 1914 and lasting until 1921)
4) TERRITORIAL DEMANDS (where Armenians were a minority, not a majority, attempting to establish Greater Armenia, the would-be first apartheid of the 20th Century with a Christian minority ruling over a Muslim majority )
5) TURKISH SUFFERING AND LOSSES (i.e. those caused by the Armenian nationalists: 524,000 Muslims, mostly Turks, met their tragic end at the hands of Armenian revolutionaries during WWI, per Turkish Historical Society. This figure is not to be confused with about 2.5 million Muslim dead who lost their lives due to non-Armenian causes during WWI. Grand total: more than 3 million, according to Prof. Justin McCarthy.)
6) TERESET (temporary resettlement) triggered by the first five T’s above and amply documented as such; not to be equated to the Armenian misrepresentations as genocide.)
VERDICT WITHOUT DUE PROCESS AMOUNTS TO LYNCHING
Those who take the Armenian “allegations” of genocide at face value seem to also ignore the following:
1- Genocide is a legal, technical term precisely defined by the U.N. 1948 convention (Like all proper laws, it is not retroactive to 1915.)
2- Genocide verdict can only be given by a “competent court” after “due process” where both sides are properly represented and evidence mutually cross examined.
3- For a genocide verdict, the accusers must prove “intent” at a competent court and after due process. This could never be done by the Armenians whose evidence mostly fall into five major categories: hearsay, mis-representations, exaggerations, forgeries, and “other”.
4- Such a “competent court” was never convened in the case of Turkish-Armenian conflict and a genocide verdict does not exist (save a Kangaroo court in occupied Istanbul in 1920 where partisanship, vendettas, and revenge motives left no room for due process.)
5- Genocide claim is political, not historical or factual. It reflects bias against Turks. Therefore, the term genocide must be used with the qualifier “alleged”, for scholarly objectivity and truth.
HISTORY IS A MATTER OF SCHOLARSHIP, NOT CONVICTION, CONSENSUS, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS
History is not a matter of “conviction, consensus, political resolutions, political correctness, or propaganda.” History is a matter of research, peer review, thoughtful debate, and honest scholarship. Even historians, by definition, cannot decide on a genocide verdict, which is reserved for a “competent court” with its legal expertise and due process.
POLITICAL LYNCHING OF THE TURKS BY ARMENIANS TODAY
What we witness today amounts to lynching of the Turks by Armenians to satisfy the age old Armenian hate, bias, and bigotry. Values like fairness, presumption of innocence until proven guilty, objectivity, balance, honesty, and freedom of speech are stumped under the fanatic Armenian feet. Unprovoked , unjustified, and unfair defamation of Turkey, one of America’s closest allies in the troubled Middle East, in order to appease some nagging Armenian activists runs counter to American interests.
Those who claim genocide verdict today, based on the much discredited Armenian evidence, are actually engaging in “conviction and execution without due process”. Last time I looked in the dictionary, that was the definition of “lynching”.
Isn’t it time to stop fighting the First World War and give peace a chance?