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GUENTER LEWY PROVED THERE IS NO GENOCIDE

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The AFATH community is busy plastering anti-Turkish messages on any blog they can get their hands on. This is why I coined a new term back in 2003: Ethocide. A brief meaning of ethocide is: “extermination of ethics via malicious mass deception for political and other gain.”

I hear you say: “So the AFATH community writers resort to ethocidal coverage of the Turkish-Armenian conflict. What else is new?” I agree, nothing new for 93 years… Make that since 1877… Their hate messages, however, suffer from lack of credibility, as Dr. Gwynne Dyer put it so eloquently in 1976:

“… The deafening drumbeat of the propaganda, and the sheer lack of sophistication in argument which comes from preaching decade after decade to a convinced and emotionally committed audience, are the major handicaps of Armenian historiography of the diaspora today…”

There are those cyber-thugs with questionable morals, cyber-stalkers with convoluted messages, and a whole cyber community of insulters and slanderers to whom concepts like Armenian terrorism means nothing. I suggest to my readers not to address their postings to these cyber-lynch-mobs, but to the open-minded truth-seekers. The minds of these cyber-lynch-mobs cannot be changed, but the other side of the story can certainly be told to fair-minded truth-seekers.

AFTER ALL, OUR MESSAGE IS VERY SIMPLE

Wartime suffering ?

Yes, but on all sides, Turks, Armenians, and others, alike…

Genocide?

No, not even by a long shot.

The term genocide does not apply to warring factions; never did. Armenians were certainly “de facto belligerents” with an army of more than 150,000, as Nubar, head of Armenian delegation to Paris Peace Conference, himself wrote in 1919. That army was not created for picking flowers.

A court verdict does not exist supporting Armenian genocide claims. Insisting on a guilty judgment without a court verdict, therefore, boils down to lynching.

And that is the plain truth.

MARK TWAIN

Mark Twain once said “It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.” AFATH writers prove Mark Twain right everyday by attacking the freedoms of speech and conscience of all Turkish-Americans, with their posture tainted by anti-Turkish discrimination.

HOW THE AFATH WRITERS COMMIT ETHOCIDE

By only telling one side of the story and hiding the other. One will tell you, for example, about an article demonizing Turkey and Turks, but will fail to tell you the rebuttal to it in the same column.

Or he will tell you about Guenter Lewy’s quotes out of context, but will not tell you about the fact that there may have been comments setting the record straight. That’s AFATH morality for you.

If one chooses to believe the AFATH writers with “selective morality”, that is that person’s problem. Trying to silence people like me who are only telling their side of the story, calling them names for doing so, and basing this lynch-mob-like behavior on the long discredited Armenian propaganda, however, is hardly fair, ethical, or American, whether in journalism, academia, or politics.

The Armenians have defined the Turkish-Armenian conflict one way, their way, for 93 years. Even this could be understood within the context of ethnic and/or religious fanaticism. After all, it is a free country, you can believe whatever you want, even that the world is flat.

Problem arises when the Armenians demand their claims be declared as settled history with zero tolerance for the other side of the story, coming from Turks and non-Turks alike. The problem turns into a criminal conduct when these demands turn to violence, as in Armenian terrorism that claimed 70+ innocent lives (three right here in Southern California) since 1973, aimed at imposing the Armenian will on others.

Whether the Armenian claims of genocide are recognized by this country or that, does not change the fact that Armenians engineered, provoked, and waged a civil war within a world war; took up arms against their own government; killed their Muslim/Turkish neighbors; joined the invading enemy armies; demanded territories where they were a minority to create Greater Armenia; and did all that with the help of active allies (Russia, Britain, France), passive allies (U.S. diplomats, Protestant missionaries, the New York Times) and others.

THE SIX T’S SUMMARIZE THE TURKISH-ARMENIAN CONFLICT WELL

1- Tumult (Armenians taking up arms against their own government;)

2- Terrorism (by Dashnaks, Hunchaks, and other such Armenian terror groups;)

3- Treason (Armenians joining the invading enemy armies;)

4- Territorial demands (where Armenians were a minority attempting apartheid;)

5- Turkish suffering (at the hands of Armenian revolutionaries and terrorists; number exceeds half a million Muslims, mostly Turks)

6-Tereset (temporary resettlement triggered by the above 5 T’s and misrepresented by Armenians as genocide.)

MY OBJECTIONS TO LEWY

I praised the world renown Historian Guenter Lewy for the damning conclusion in his article titled “Revisiting the Armenian Genocide” published in Fall 2005 edition of Middle East Quarterly ( https://www.meforum.org/895/correspondence ):

” …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,…, 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…. 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….”

…

Can you see how masterfully Lewy refutes the Armenian allegations with just a few simple words?

My hat is off to Lewy. I was so impressed that I bought and read Lewy’s book. I did have some objections about some of the arguments and sources in his book which were conveyed to Lewy himself in a letter signed by yours truly two years ago:

1) Lewy seems to have spent spent little or no time describing the immense Turkish suffering and death toll at the hands of the Armenian nationalists. In my humble opinion, any treatment that fails to take into account the Turkish side of the story is inherently and inevitably incomplete and biased. No one can explain a controversy by completely ignoring half the story.

2) Lewy also seems to have made very limited use of the Ottoman archives (perhaps due to his lack of skills in reading the original documents in the Ottoman language which is understandable but perhaps not easily excusable.

3) He took at face value most of reporting from Anatolia by biased sources: the Armenian Patriarchate, ARF, Armenian insurgents, allied diplomats, military personnel, missionaries, and others who all clearly had vested interests in the conflict and/or were parties to the civil war and/or the world war, raging concurrently.

4) others

Having pointed out my objections to his book this way, I must emphasize that none of my objections above change the ultimate conclusion by Lewy that the Turkish-Armenian conflict, as tragic as it was, cannot be classified as genocide.

That conclusion stands on its own feet and I congratulate and praise Lewy for that… eternally.

Peace,

Ergun KIRLIKOVALI
Son Of Turkish Survivors From Both Maternal And Paternal Sides

www.turkla.com

…………..

Legend:

AFATH : Armenian Falsifiers And Turks-Haters

ETHOCIDE: Systematic extermination of ethics via malicious mass deception for political, social, academic, religious, ratings, and/or other gain.”


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Comments

12 responses to “GUENTER LEWY PROVED THERE IS NO GENOCIDE”

  1. jda Avatar
    jda

    This set of remarks must strike readers as a bit hard to follow. Let me give context. Let me also finish by posing a question to this publication and its readers,

    I posed five questions to Mr. Kirlikovali in a comment section of the Pasadena Star Register concerning Mr. Hahn’s race against Mr. Schiff.
    The questions were whether Kirlikovali agreed with five unattributed statements made by Professor Lewy at Harvard in 2007. post 182.

    The statements made by Profesor Lewy included things which are generally not controversial to those who affirm and who deny the Armenian Genocide, such as: that Armenian men, women and children were forced in 1915 to leave their homes without warning, and that about 40 per cent of the Armenians died during relocation on account of privation and murder.

    Apparently not realizing that Professor Lewy stated these things in 2007, Mr Kirlikovali offered a violent and disorganized disagreement with them all. His column today is his backpedaling and attempt to rewrite his own conclusions. posts 192-194.

    Now he says two things about Lewy which are simply not true:

    1. ThatLewy ‘proved’ there was no Genocide. Lewy’s 2007 speech expreses nothing of the kind. He says that the evidence is not persuasive, and that more work needs to be done to come to a conclusion.

    2. That Lewy relied only on Armenian and western sources. His own work clearly shows he looked at translated Ottoman sources.

    In his remarks on the Pasadena Star Register website, Mr. Kirlikovali states that only 4.7 per cent – 8,700 – Armenians died in 1915. This is less than standard mortality, meaning that according to Kirlikovali, the deportation improved Armenian health and mortality.

    He also offers the astounding claim that Armenians invented the Assyrian Genocide.

    But it gets worse. In today’s comments, Mr. K says Armenians today cannot be trusted to serve in any Armed forces, including those who serve in the US Military . I urge you to read the other racial remarks he freely makes: he posts that “most” Armenians in diaspora are “hateful”; and he has insulted Orange County writer Gustavo Arellano repeatedly on account of his race, calling him “Speedy Gonzalez” even after the slight was protested, and telling this American reporter why he should not do things as they are done in “Tijuana”.

    Mt question: why do you tolerate this racism from a writer on your site?

  2. ergun Avatar
    ergun

    JDA’s problem arises from the fact that he uses the concepts of genocide and human suffering intercahngeably.

    JDA is a cyber-stalker who likes posting convoluted messages to negate the facts ignored thus far by the AFATH (Armenian falsifiers and Turk haters) community.

    Among them, this simple question asked many times to many AFATH bloggers over many years:

    How many Muslims, mostly Turks, did Armenians kill during WWI?

    The reason they cannot nswer are:

    1- Because they are racsist and to them, Turks deserve bring killed bu not being counted or grieved;

    2- If they tell the truth (assuminbg they know the truth in the first place) then it will be obvious that it was a war, not genocide.

    Peace,

    Ergun KIRLIKOVALI
    Son Of Turkish Survivors From Both Maternal And Paternal Sides

  3. Jeni Avatar
    Jeni

    It’s much more than the Armenian genocide, it’s the Armenian Holocaust. The word “holocaust” has been used since the 18th century to refer to the violent deaths of a large number of people. For example, Winston Churchill and other contemporaneous writers used it before World War II to describe the Armenian Genocide of World War I.

  4. Kirlikovali Avatar
    Kirlikovali

    The term genocide does not apply to “warring factions”.

  5. je'ehenem Avatar
    je’ehenem

    Mr Kirlikovali now reaches a new outlier position that the Armenian dead of 1915 were in effect combatants, killed by some unidentified warring faction.

    All sources, including the denialist camp, seem to agree that the Armenians who died in 1915 while being deported, and virtually all who died were being deported, were under guard by gendarmes and other state actors.

    How can the death of unarmed Armenian civilians be attributed to their being part of a warring faction?

    How can people under guard be combatants?

    Thew law of war does not allow the execution of the disarmed, not that hundreds of thousands of elderly, women and babies were ever armed.

    I infer that as the (possibly useless) recognition of the Genocide by Congress approaches, the arguments advanced in this publication become even more extreme.

  6. Kirlikovali Avatar
    Kirlikovali

    You seem to start history after the Tereset (temporary resettlement.) Think 1890-1915 period and then answer this question:

    How many Muslims, mostly Turks, did Armenians kill:

    a) from 1890-1914 ?
    b) from 1914-1918 ?
    c) after 1918 ?

    Hint: be honest!

  7. Mahmad Ilyas Avatar
    Mahmad Ilyas

    You people have got into a wrong discussion. Things change very quickly. There were many a battles fought all over the world, may be many of you have seen or heard of your known people being dying or suffering of them; all that change with time and some even take not days to change. The same Afghans who were fighting against Russia as heroes are declared terrorists and hunted within twenty years gape. You might have seen the German wall. Likely be realistic and look toward the present and future. All have heard of Armenian genocide and the Armenian killings of Turkish people also but now to see how much the Turks and Armenians prove helpful or harming to each other.

  8. reader Avatar
    reader

    Professor Donald Quataert of the State University of New York at Binghamton was one of the signers of the 1989 proclamation that the US Congres should not recognize the Genocide of the Armenians. Some say he was only one of four signers who might be classified as an Ottomanist. He reads Ottoman, a combination of Arabic, Farsi and old Turkish script. The demographer McCarthy, and the retired professor of politcal science Lewy do not.

    Neither an Armenian nor a Turk, his scholarship has evolved to recognize the mounting evidence of Genocide, a conclusion with which he now agrees.

    In his Colllege Text, “The Ottoman Empire 1700-1922” Cambridge University Press (2005) at page 187 he writes:

    “…[t]here is abundant evidence that low and high Ottoman officers, soldiers and bureaucrats – the very persons who had sworn responsibility to defend and protect the lives of Ottoman subjects regard;less of religion or ethnicity – murdered vast numbers of Armenian men, women and children alike. Moreover the pattern of killings were chillingly similar in the various areas, powerfully suggesting the presence of a coordinated program.

    I recommend you google his book to verify. Also, google his name to see how the Turkish ambassador asked him to renounce his Genocide conclusion imn the review of Bloxham’s book in 2006, lest he lose his position on a Turkish-funded group of scholars.

  9. American Avatar
    American

    WHO IS ERGUN?

    It does not surprise that on a Turkish statist site, the anti-Armenian rhetoric is constant and harsh. It does surprise that Turkish Forum and other sites prominently feature the writings of Mr.Kirlikovali, whose writings are racist, pitiable and cowardly.

    Without shame he routinely misstaes what even Genocide Agnostic and denialist scholars say. For example, Lewis admitted that as many as 1,000,000. Armenians died; Ergun thinks the number is 50,000, and that those murdered died in what he calls “feuds”; he says here and elsewhere that Lewy “proved” there was no Genocide, while in fact, Lewy said the issue is unresolved, and he overlooks, as Lewy does not, that the vast majority of Armenians died while under Ottoman guard, thereby calling into question, as Lewy did, MCarthy’s thesis that these civilians died in a civil war.

    He almost-daily cites the 1985 scholar statement, overlooking that one of the four Ottomanists who signed it, Professor Quataert, has written in his 2000 and 2005 text, as well as the Bloxham book review, that the Armenians suffered Genocide. Even Lowry admitted that he saw a document from the Archives making him believe it was possible.

    None of this surprises. What does surprise is the daily drumbeat of racism. He has written recently that modern day Armenians cannot be trusted to serve honorably in the Armed forces of any nation, ignoring for example the honorable service of many scores of thousands of Armenian Americans, including four recipients of the Navy Cross, and the Congressional Medal of Honor. One doubts that Kirlikovali has worn any uniform, let alone a uniform in combat.

    It does surprise that he says “most” Armenians are “hateful”. Even a child could determine that is racism.

    Or his using the insulting term “Speedy Gonzalez” to describe a Mexican American journbalist, whom he chided, by also saying that the journalist should not do things as they are done in Tijuana. This is a record of racism pure and simple, and Americans see it as such.

    Do you want Turks to be seen in this way?

    And, he gives offense freely. When he called another poster a coward for not posting his name, which the poster said he would not do for fear of hacking, not assault, the poster challenged him to back up his insults with a refereed boxing match.

    No response from the otherwise garrulous Kirlikovali.

    This pitiable bully has fallen silent and run away, as all Bullies eventually do.

    Whatever some or even most Turks may think of the Diaspora, or Armenians, I can say that I have located no Armenian site with these kinds of racist and hateful comments about modern day Turks. If there was one. I would complain as loudly.

    What will you do about it?

  10. jda Avatar
    jda

    Mr. Kirlikovali,

    Your favorite Professor, Guenter Lewy, says this on page 122 of his book, which you praised unconditionally in the Middle East Quarterly:

    “But many others [Armenians]lost their lives as a result of the deportations and the massacres…[.] The Turkish argument that the losses of both sides should be subsumed under the label ‘civil war’ undoubtedly has the purpose of deflecting attention from this basic fact. The large number of Armenian atrocities is irrelevant in this connection and does not make the ‘civil war’ argument any more convincing. Dissenting from the prevailing national consensus, Turkish historian Selim Derengel has insisted that “colossal crimes were committed against the Armenian people in Anatolia and elsewhere” and that “no historian with a conscience can possibly accept the ‘civil war’ line, which is a travesty of history.I agree withthis view.”

    You’ve known that your entire civil war theory is nonsense in the eyes of a Professor you praise. So, dredge up all the atrocity stories you like, Guenter is telling you its nonsense. Sure, Priests with flamethrowers, babies with daggers, old ladies with crochet needles, none of it matters.
    And almost all of it is untrue.

  11. Kirlikovali Avatar
    Kirlikovali

    Readr, American, and jda are one and the same person… A cyber stalker who is addicted to posting convoluted messages filled with lies, filth, libel, ridicule, and threats. Just ignor him.

    I ask him 2 simple questions for months and never get a staright answer:

    1- How many Muslims, mostly Turks, did Armenians kill during WWI?

    2- Were Armenian clergymen involved in the raids and killings?

    He cannot answer because

    a) Armenians are not taught facts that refute their genocide claim;

    b) he knows but cannot say because any answer he gives will not only refute the bogus genocide claims but also expose the ARmenian hypocrisy behind them.

  12. jda Avatar
    jda

    Quotes, I have quotes too.

    Ergun, Leyla et al: everytime you write racist, ahistorcal nonsense, Ataturk will follow you into print to correct the lies you spew. The more you say, the more he’ll say. Do you dare to contradict Ataturk?

    Mustafa Kemal Ataturk: In a communication to General Kazim Karabekir, on May 6 1920 about attacking the fledgling Armenian Republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (founder of the Turkish Republic) said:
    ·“The Christian world, especially America will turn against us, associating such an attack the possibility of ‘a new Armenian massacre’”[i]
    Kazim Karabekir, Istiklal Harbimiz [Our war of Independence], 1969.
    Mustafa Kemal Ataturk: On September 22 1919, from Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, to Major-General Harbord, the head of the American Military Mission to Armenia:
    ·“Kemal used the 800,000 figure to describe the number of Armenian victims. He, in fact,‘disapproved of the Armenian massacres.’(Ermeni kitlini o da takbih ediyordu).”[ii]
    “Rauf Orbayin Hatiralari” Yakin Tarhimiz [Memoires of Rauf Orbay; Our Contemporary History], 1962.

    Mustafa Kemal Ataturk: On April 24 1920, the day after the inauguration of the new parliament of the Turkish Republic, Ataturk stated:
    ·“The World War I massacres against the Armenians (Ermenilere karşi kitliam)[was] a shameful act (fazahat).”
    “Ataturkün Söylev ve Demerçleri 1918-1938”(The Speeches and Statements of Atatürk) vol.1, 1945.

    Mustafa Kemal Ataturk: In an interview with a French publicist he (Mustafa Kemal Ataturk) inveighed against the Ittihadist chiefs, whom he blamed for the crime against the Armenians:
    ·“They,[the Ittihadist] and their accomplices…deserve the gallows. Why are the Allies delaying having all these rascals hung?”[iv]
    (Maurice Prax,“Constantinople: Lectures pour tous,” 1920).

    Mustafa Kemal Ataturk:
    ·“The massacre and deportation of Armenians was the work of a small committee who had seized the power.”
    “Rauf Orbayin Hatiralari” Yakin Tarhimiz [Memoires of Rauf Orbay; Our Contemporary History], 1962.

    Mustafa Kemal Ataturk: In an interview (Los Angeles Examiner, August 1, 1926) with Swiss journalist, Emile Hildebrand, Ataturk said:
    ·“These leftovers from the former Young Turk Party, who should have been accountable for the lives of millions of our Christian subjects who were ruthlessly driven en masse from their homes and massacred, have been restive under the republican rule.”

    Other contemporaneous Turkish voices:

    Turkish Court Martial: To judge Talaat and the other criminals who participated in organizing the genocide of 1915, a Turkish Court Martial was formed on March 8, 1919.
    The following is an abridged version of the accusation against them:
    ·“…the essential point which emerges from the open inquiry is that the crimes committed during the deportations of the Armenians in different locations and at different times were not isolated and local cases. A central force, organized by and composed of persons mentioned here, premeditated and executed them, through secret orders or verbal instructions.
    The court declares unanimously the guilt of the charges mentioned earlier of the accused hereby named, members of the General Council which represent the moral person of the Ittihad. According to the disposition of the law, the Court declares the penalty of death against Talaat, Enver, Djemal and Dr. Nazim, and forced labor for 15 years against Djavid, Moustafa Cherif and Moussa Kiazim.”

    The Great Free-Mason Loge of Turkey: The Great Free-Mason Loge of Turkey voted the following motion:
    ·“The venerable Assembly reached the conclusion that during the last war, brothers Talaat Pasha, Midhat Chukri, Hussein Dhajid, Behaeddine Chekir, forced compatriots to leave their homes, had them assassinated, and stole their goods, and for these reasons they are expelled from the Masonic ranks.”
    c2. The Turkish Journal Yeni Stamboul

    General Vehib Pasha (Bukat): Commander of the Turkish Third Army
    ·“The massacre and destruction of the Armenians and the plunder and pillage of their goods were the result of decisions reached by Ittihad’s Central Committee…The atrocities were carried out under a program that was determined upon and involved a definite case of premeditation.”[ix]
    Records of the 1919 Turkish Military Tribunal
    Mustafa Arif (Deymer): Interior Minister 1918-19

    ·“Unfortunately, our wartime leaders, imbued with a spirit of brigandage, carried out the law of deportation in a manner that could surpass the proclivities of the most bloodthirsty bandits. They decided to exterminate the Armenians and they did exterminate them. This decision was taken by the Central Committee of the Young Turks and was implemented by the Government…The atrocities committed against the Armenians reduced our country to a gigantic slaughterhouse.”
    (VAKIT, 13 Dec. 1918)

    Halide Edib: American Educated Feminist Writer
    ·“…Indeed, we tried to destroy the Armenians through methods peculiar to the Middle Ages. We are living today the saddest and darkest times of our national life.”
    (VAKIT, 22 Oct. 1918)

    “Turks and their history books still cannot accept that there was an organized mass murder of Armenians between 1915 and 1917. Perhaps that is because so many of the murderers and looters were also heroes of the founding of the modern Turkish republic.
    “The founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, spoke on the subject dozens of times; he condemned the massacres, which he called infamous, and demanded that those who were guilty be punished.”

    Falih Rifik Atay, a close friend and confidant of Ataturk, a former Ittihadist, and Kemalist publicist:
    · When discussing the persecution of World War I Armenian massacres, he too saw fit to characterize them as “genocide,” using exactly this composite Greco Latin term, at the same time lamenting the fact that there were:
    “…alternative remedies [to the Armenian problem]; why incur the risk of dishonoring the name of the nation? Mustafa Kemal too was against the genocide.”

    Halil Berktay: Professor of History at the University of Sabanci in Istanbul

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