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, and concepts like “editorial freedom” and “consensus”, among others—please note that “The Wild West” town papers and lynch mobs of 19th Century had the last two concepts down path and hung anyone who was deemed worthy of hanging.)
The key to resolving this controversy, therefore, 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?

***
Here then is what honest scholars (not genocide scholars) say about the fraudulent Armenian genocide:
***

APPENDIX 3
REVIEW ESSAY: Ethnic Cleansing or Genocide?
MASAKI KAKIZAKI, University of Utah, Ph.D. Student,
Department of Political Science, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah
The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide,
Guenter Lewy, Salt Lake City: University of Florida Press, 2005

Guenter Lewy’s The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide has unleashed debate in the United States as well as in different countries such as Canada, France, Germany, and Turkey. In the United States, Lewy’s articles expressing skepticism about historiographies constructed by both Armenian and Turkish historians about the Armenian genocide appeared in Middle East Quarterly and Commentary; in subsequent issues, these journals published several letters to the editors from readers, mostly Armenians, who objected to Lewy’s thesis. [1]

Among the letters in Commentary, perhaps the most antagonistic criticism was presented by Peter Balakian, a poet, professor of English, and author of The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response. Subsequently, Balakian asked Chronicle of Higher Education to investigate the process of publishing Lewy’s book, as well as the forthcoming book of prominent Ottoman historian Justin McCarthy. [2 ]

Chronicle reporter Jennifer Howard’s investigation provides an insight into the ways ideology can be used to try to discredit scholarship.
According to McCarthy, Howard telephoned him on 7 September 2006 and asked the following three questions:

“ Did you send your manuscript to Oxford and other presses before you sent it to the University of Utah Press (UUP)?; did you receive money from the Turkish government to write this book?; and why did the editor of UUP resign? [ 3 ]

McCarthy said he responded: ‘No, I did not send my manuscript to any publisher. I know Hakan [Yavuz], who is the series editor [at UUP], and he asked me whether I had any manuscripts. I sent it [the manuscript for The Armenian Rebellion at Van ] to him, and three months later I received two referee reports along with comments from the editor whether I would address some of the issues raised in those two letters. One of them was positive and the second one suggested a number of changes. I wrote back and said I would make some changes in response to the second referee’s report. A month later I received a contract from the UUP.’

As for Howard’s second question, whether McCarthy had received any funds from the Turkish government, he said he told her, ‘none,’ adding that ‘whoever makes these charges must prove it. I am a tenured professor and do not need money.’ With regard to the resignation of the editor of the UUP, McCarthy said he told Howard that, as far as he knew, it occurred for totally personal reasons and had nothing to do with the Press. The reporter informed Professor McCarthy that it was Balakian who had called the Chronicle of Higher Education and informed it about these accusations. [ 4 ]

Several months earlier, following the publication of Lewy’s book, Richard Hovannasian, a leading Armenian scholar, had visited the University of Utah campus (23 March 2006) and delivered a harsh speech against it. [ 5 ]

In fact, no book has created such a controversy at the UUP as this one by Lewy. For this reason, it is important to examine Lewy’s argument in order to understand the reasons for Armenian scholastic anger against the book. The attacks on the book demonstrate how an inquiry into the tragic events of the First World War can be removed from historical context and elevated to mythological level, a process that, in turn, prevents any rational exchange between the two sides.

SCHOLASTIC EXERCISE

Lewy’s purpose is to evaluate the consistency and validity of the ongoing debate over the evidence for the Armenian massacres in Ottoman Turkey. The literature that pertains to the fate of the Armenian population during the First World War involves two narratives. On the one hand, Armenian scholars present this tragedy as the first genocidal event of the twentieth century. They argue that the Armenian massacre was a product of the Ottoman government’s special intent to deport and exterminate the entire Armenian population in the empire. On the other hand, Turks contend that this event was an outcome of Armenian collaboration with the Russians, inter-communal warfare in eastern Turkey, and the harsh economic and social conditions of war (such as food shortages and the spread of diseases). Both sides produce and maintain their own readings, understandings, and selective historical memories, resulting in two highly polarized historical versions.

Lewy traces how Armenian and Turkish historians as well as other experts on this subject have constructed their arguments and tried to assess to what extent their reasoning, presentation of historical events, and choices of evidence support the validity and reliability of their theses. For this goal, he provides careful corroboration of the main pillars of Armenian and Turkish historiographies by cross-examining their arguments, in particular, their ways of using quotations about ‘genocide,’ citing references to primary and secondary resources, and comparing these approaches with the work of other eyewitnesses and scholars.

This book tackles the question not of the scale of Armenian suffering but of ‘the premeditation thesis.’ Although there are wide discrepancies with regard to the total number of victims, at least both camps acknowledge that hundreds and thousands of Armenians lost their lives during the deportation. Thus, Lewy focuses on the dispute over the cause of Armenian massacres by inspecting the way in which Armenians and Turks have offered contradictory or competing accounts. By attempting ‘a historical reconstruction of the events in question—to show what can be known as established fact, what must be considered unknown as of today, and what will probably have to remain unknowable’ (p. x).

He concludes that an Ottoman intent to organize the annihilation of Armenians cannot be determined with the evidence that so far has become available to scholars. Thus, he rejects the term ‘genocide’ to describe the mass killing of Armenians, while admitting the indirect responsibility of the Ottoman local government officials for the loss of life of a large number of Armenians.

Lewy divides his book into four parts. First, he introduces readers briefly to the history of the relationship between the Ottoman Empire and its Armenian subjects, the development of the Armenian revolutionary movement, the acceleration of tensions between Armenians and Turks that led to the Armenian massacres of 1894 – 96, and the impact of the Young Turks’ seizure of power from Sultan Abdulhamid in 1908. In this period, the deterioration of the socioeconomic environment in the Empire awakened the national consciousness of Armenians, most of whom were peasants and oppressed by their Kurdish neighbors, the latter of whom resisted control by the authorities. In addition, the infusion of Western and revolutionary ideas through European books, education, and missionaries accelerated the rise of Armenian identity.

Furthermore, an economic prosperity gap in towns between Turks and the comparatively wealthier Armenians promoted feelings of enmity against the latter (although a large number of Armenian peasants were not better off than Turks in the countryside). For these reasons, the Ottoman authorities, who had perceived the Armenians as ‘the loyal community’ to the Empire began to suspect them as a people ‘in league with foreign enemies’ (p. 7), namely Russia.

Among Armenians, a group of revolutionaries began to dream of the revival of historic Armenia; they created the image of Armenians as dedicated patriots while depicting Turks as the villainous ‘Other’, in order to mobilize the Armenian masses. These growing tensions culminated in the intercommunal explosion of 1895 – 96 in which a series of mass killings of Armenians took place. When the Young Turks came to power in 1908, the suspicion about Armenians had become more widespread in the government, owing to the successive loss of Ottoman territory in the Balkan Peninsula. Since then, what Lewy calls ‘a siege mentality’ was pervasive among the Ottoman authorities.

Part II includes the crucial chapters that scrutinize two differing views among the Armenians who argue for the genocide thesis and one Turkish version of historiographies. The first group of Armenians claims that the large number of Armenian victims does support the existence of a state organized plan of annihilation prepared by the Young Turks, who intended to achieve their ideological goal to homogenize Turkish society. In order to prove the premeditation thesis, Armenian historians offer several manifestations of Ottoman premeditation: a secret speech allegedly delivered by Talaat Pasha encouraging the use of the army to eliminate the Armenian population; the role of Ziya Gökalp, sociologist and ideologue of Turkish nationalism, in the planning for the eradication of the Armenian population; the so-called ‘Ten Commandments of the Committee of Union and Progress’ indicating Turkish intent and planning of the deportation, extermination, and forced conversion of Christian Armenians to Islam; and the Young Turks secret February 1915 meeting at which the extermination plan is alleged to have been formulated.

The second group of Armenians believe that the claim of Turkish premeditation is substantiated by the following factors: The Memoirs of Naim Bey, a Turkish official whose account was published in Armenian, French, and English by Aram Andonian and others; the proceedings of special court-martials that the Turkish government convened in 1919 – 20 to try the Young Turks; and the vicious role and involvement of the Teskilat-i Mahsusa (Special Organization) in the Armenian massacres. Authors such as Vahakn N. Dadrian, a sociologist who is known as the theoretician of the Armenian genocide thesis, generally regard these cases as sufficient evidence for the premeditation thesis. [ 6 ]

However, Lewy is skeptical about the reliability of this evidence and tests its consistency by referring to governmental documents of European countries as well as other historians’ accounts, including those of Armenian scholars. Also, he criticizes the manner in which Armenian authors rely on the consequences of the Armenian deportation to prove that the Young Turk leaders had prior plans for total destruction of the Armenian population. He argues that ‘objective results are not the same as subjective intent’ (p. 53). Furthermore, Lewy claims that the Armenian side ignores the multiplicity of cases in the tragedy by playing down the roles of starvation and disease, which afflicted not only the Armenian deportees but also Muslim Turks.

Lewy also finds problems in the Turkish version of the stories. Turkish historians maintain, first of all, that the Ottoman government needed to implement the relocation of the Armenians because of the seditious movements among the Armenian revolutionaries and their collaboration with the invading Russian troops. Turks contend that the initial impulse for this affair came about as a result of activities by the Armenian revolutionaries, especially the Hunchaks, which committed murders of Muslims in order to force the Ottoman government to suppress the Armenians so as to restore social order. The intent of these Armenian revolutionaries was to provoke excessive measures by the government, and these in turn would prompt the intervention of European countries to save the Armenians. This ‘provocation thesis’ constitutes the main pillar of Turkish historiography on the massacres (pp. 16 – 17).
In effect, the Turkish historians deny that the Ottoman government had any a priori intent of destroying the Armenian communities. Rather, the military measures and the relocation of the Armenians were necessitated by the Armenian threat to the integrity and security of the Empire. This provocation thesis has been rejected by Armenian historians who claim that the Armenians were innocent victims of atrocities committed by the Turks. A second argument of Turkish historians is that the government tried to prevent the excessive measures of local officials that resulted in the killing of Armenians. Third, Turkish historians claim that it was not only the Armenians but also many Muslims who lost their lives in inter-communal wars. One of the main reasons for the Armenian relocation has been attributed to the rebellion in Van, which was a center of Armenian revolutionaries. The Turkish historians argue that this uprising was prepared in order to assist the Russian invasion, while the Armenians claim that this was necessary to protect the Armenian population from the deportation. What is striking to readers in this debate is that both sides provide one-sided arguments. As Lewy points out, ‘Both Turks and Armenians have accused each other of horrible crimes while at the same time denying or minimizing the misdeeds committed by their own forces’ (p. 116). The Turkish side tends to dodge the responsibility of atrocities against Armenians by shifting the blame from the Ottoman government to ‘the civil war cause.’ On the other hand, Armenian authors ignore the Armenian revolutionary movements’ relationship with Russia and the threat this relationship posed to the Ottoman government.

Part III of Lewy’s book aims to clarify the gap in our knowledge of the Armenian suffering. Lewy ‘reconstructs’ a history of this tragedy by strictly distinguishing the confirmed facts from the mere assertions of historians who fail to support their claims with substantive evidence. In this process he attempts to determine how the government decided on the deportation plan, how it was implemented in different regions and cities, who were responsible for the massacres, and how many people died. The chapters in this section reveal the diversity in the levels of Armenian suffering and the variation of the degree of implementing the deportation. This picture seems to imply that the deportation of the Armenian population was not carried out in a systematic or well-organized manner, which would be necessary for the purpose of total destruction of the Armenian community. Further, the responsibility for the mass killing of Armenians was confused and dispersed among several actors, including Kurds, wartime gendarmerie, local officials, and others. In terms of the number of victims, different authors have generated different estimations. It is also difficult to determine the precise death toll because we have neither an exact figure for the prewar Armenian population nor an accurate count for the number of survivors. It also is impossible to distinguish the number killed by Turks and Kurds and those who perished due to starvation and disease (p. 240).

After a critical examination of the Armenian and Turkish historiographies, Lewy proposes an alternative explanation (pp. 252 – 57). He argues that ‘it was possible for the country to suffer an incredibly high death toll without a premeditated plan of annihilation’ (p. 253) for several reasons. First, the Ottoman government, despite its willingness, failed to arrange an orderly process of relocation of Armenians because of its institutional ineptness. The systematic and organized relocation of tens of thousands of Armenians proved beyond the ability of the Ottoman government. Food shortages and epidemic diseases which the authorities could not prevent or control exacerbated the environment for Armenians during the course of the deportation. Additionally, the government could not provide adequate protective measures for the Armenian deportees from hostile Kurds, Circassians and others. According to Lewy, these severe conditions and the inability of the Ottoman government to provide protection resulted in the high death toll of the Armenians.

Thus, while he concedes that the government bears responsibility to a certain extent for the outcome, he emphasizes that it is the government’s ineptness rather than a premeditated plan to exterminate the Armenians that caused the Armenian tragedy.
One of the contributions of Lewy’s work is that he clarifies what we have learned as confirmed facts from both the Armenian and Turkish historians. Without leaning to either side, he accepts evidence and arguments that are substantiated by other sources. His neutrality becomes obvious in Part IV, which discusses the politicization of the controversy over the Armenian massacres. He argues that the Armenian side’s argument of the premeditation thesis lacks authentic documentary evidence and suffers from a logical fallacy (p. 250). But he also criticizes the Turkish side for distorting the historical fact by translating the Armenian massacres into mere ‘excesses’” or ‘intercommunal warfare’ (p. 252).

Lewy’s book also tells us how historiography can go beyond objective facts: It is constructed on the basis of what people want to remember and what information they recollect from the past. He points out that each side intentionally has forgotten historical settings that are not consistent with their theses. Such simplification of a complex historical reality and disregard of crucial evidence make it impossible to ‘yield a more nuanced picture’ (p. x).

The personal memories of individual Turks and Armenians are not separable from the collective social memory of their communities because people can be confident about the accuracy of their remembrances only when their own memory is confirmed by others’ remembrances. [ 7 ] The politicization of the Armenian massacres, then, facilitates the transmission of collective memories from generation to generation; Armenian campaigns for the recognition of the genocide and the airing of the Turkish government’s argument have functioned as mechanisms by which both Armenians and Turks are reminded of the past and their distinctive identities. [ 8 ] The current rigid adherence of both sides to their historiographies thus is likely to lead to the deepening of the gap between them, not pave a way to closing this gap. For this reason, Lewy suggests that historians ought to keep the door of research open for further exploration of the Armenian massacres. Political confirmation of the Armenian massacres as historically established genocide, he argues, will deprive future historians of opportunities to start collaborative research for the advancement of common understanding grounded in historical facts rather than propaganda.

Lewy’s study carefully disaggregates the series of historical events into regions and actors. Lewy knows that an attempt to put all the aspects of the Armenian massacres into a single picture as a whole ignores the variation of stories. In this tragedy, there is a diversity of experiences lived by each group of people. Therefore, Lewy adopts a method with which he constructs his own historiography by aggregating different local incidents and experiences. The Armenian and Turkish historians take the opposite approach. They look into the events from the pictures that they want to see. In this process, evidence and incidents that may disconfirm their theses are likely to be ignored in their analytic frameworks.

There is one point that I find unsatisfactory in Lewy’s book: he refrains from making his definition of genocide explicit while claiming that ‘the attempt to decide whether the Armenian massacres in Ottoman Turkey fit . . . definitions [of genocide] strikes me as of limited utility’ (p. xii). I agree that what constitutes ‘genocide’ and to what extent we should restrict ourselves to the definition written into the Genocide Convention of the United Nations are controversial issues. For example, genocide for some scholars is equivalent only to the Holocaust while there is another argument that genocide includes a variety of ethnic cleansings. Also I concede that the debate whether the Armenian tragedy was genocide has caused unfruitful and never-ending exchanges of acrimony between Armenians and Turks. However, this debate still is of substantive importance because parliaments in several countries have proclaimed this tragedy to be an instance of genocide. For example, in the fall of 2006 the French parliament adopted a bill that criminalizes the denial of the Armenian genocide. What is relevant to Lewy’s argument is that the politicians who vote on these resolutions are influenced exclusively by their ethnic
Armenian constituents, and they rely only on an Armenian version of the history of 1915. The politicians are not without their own prejudices, and their determinations never can substitute for actual history. In the French parliament, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin argued that it is ‘not a good thing to legislate on issues of history and of memory,’ but his caution was ignored. [ 9 ] These resolutions spotlight politics, not the truth, and are therefore debatable. Furthermore, historians need to clarify the concept of genocide when they conduct comparative analysis of massacres in order to prevent conceptual proliferation. As Lewy notes, genocide is used as a term of moral opprobrium as well as a legal concept (p. 262). Thus, whether scholars find documentary evidence that proves or disproves the premeditation thesis in the future, the debate still will continue without any agreement between the two sides on the definition of the term genocide.
Despite my disagreement with Lewy on this point, The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey is an important accomplishment by a political scientist who has worked on comparative studies of genocidal issues. He not only spells out many inconsistencies, illogical reasoning, and presentation of unauthentic historical documents appearing in the Armenian and Turkish accounts but also identifies where researchers need to go for further enquiry.

The attack against Lewy’s book and the controversy created by Peter Balakian and others who share his views indicate the problem of academic freedom of speech with respect to events associated with the Turkish-Armenian conflicts. There are coordinated efforts by Armenian NGOs and scholars to silence and suppress different interpretations about the events of 1915. Simultaneously, free speech about the Armenian massacres also is denied in Turkey. For example, Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish novelist who won the 2006 Nobel Prize for Literature, has been charged with insulting ‘Turkishness’ on account of his critical comments about the way the Turkish government treats both Armenians (in the past) and Kurds (currently). In an interview with a Swiss newspaper, Pamuk stated that ‘30,000 Kurds and 1 million Armenians were killed in these lands [Ottoman Turkey and Republican Turkey] and almost nobody but me dares to talk about it.’ His comment triggered the fury of Turkish nationalists who accused him as insulting the Turkish national character. Subsequently, some Armenian groups, without paying close attention to what Pamuk said, presented his statement as an ‘acceptance of Armenian genocide.’ The Turkish media have portrayed Pamuk as facing criminal charges on suspicion of violating the Turkish penal code, which bans insulting the Republic, the Turkish Grand National Assembly, and other state institutions. His real intention behind the statement was misunderstood or misrepresented by both the Turkish and Armenian media. Pamuk never said that what Armenians experienced in Ottoman Turkey was genocide. Rather, he intended to raise the issue of freedom of speech in Turkey. He said to BBC that ‘What happened to the Ottoman Armenians in 1915 was a major thing that was hidden from the Turkish nation; it was a taboo. But we have to be able to talk about the past.’ [ 10 ]
In the end, the case against Pamuk was dropped in January 2006, but public reaction against his quotation indicated that any reference to the Armenian issue may result in criminal charges in Turkey.

In the final analysis, Lewy’s book indeed has become like dynamite to both sides by pointing out the shortcomings of both Turkish and Armenian scholarship and revealing the difficulty of objective debate on the Armenian tragedy. It is very unproductive for diaspora Armenians to turn the Armenian genocide thesis into a source of identity. [ 11 ]

The shift prevents contextualization of the events and turns them into mythological facts outside of any rational inquiry. Lewy tried to de-sacralize the Armenian thesis by subjecting it to rational inquiry. Lastly, it is also important to mention that Lewy’s book has been relatively favored in Turkey despite his criticism of Turkish historiography on the Armenian massacres and the failure of Turkish historians to challenge the official view endorsed by the state. Since its publication, the Turkish media has presented Lewy’s book as a new scholarly work that supports the Turkish explanation of the Armenian killings, but the media also has ignored Lewy’s disapproval of the Turkish historiography. [12 ]

It seems that the Turkish side is satisfied with Lewy’s conclusion that the Armenian killing cannot be confirmed as a genocide ‘as of now,’ even though he criticizes Turkish historiography. In other words, Lewy’ book once again has illuminated that both sides simply are concerned whether the Armenian massacre in 1915 was or was not a genocide, an issue which Lewy has problematized in his work.

REFERENCES

Balakian, P. (2003) The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response (New York: Harper Collins).

Connerton, P. (1989) How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Dhimmi Watch, ‘Vahakn Dadrian responds to Guenter Lewy;’ at .

Eke, S. (2006) ‘Armenian Diaspora Bound by Killings’. BBC NEWS,12 October; at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6044682.stm.

French in Armenia ‘Genocide’ Row (2006) BBC NEWS, 12 October; at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6042730.stm.

Halbwachs, M. (1980) The Collective Memory (New York: Harper Colophon Books).

Lewy, G. (2005) Revisiting the Armenian Genocide, Middle East Quarterly, 12(4), pp. 3 – 12.

Lewy, G. (2005) The First Genocide of the 20th Century?, Commentary, 120(5), pp. 47 – 52.

McCarthy, J., Arslan, E., Takran, C. & Turan, O¨ . (2006) The Armenian Rebellion at Van (Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press).

Radical (2005) Lewy: Soykırım belgeleri kus¸kulu. 30 August.

Rainsford, S. (2005) Author’s Trial Set to Test Turkey, BBC NEWS, 14 December; at .

Rogers, J. L. (2006) Scholar Questions Motives, Perpetrators of Armenian Genocide, The Daily Utah Chronicle, 27 March.

Sabah (2005) Lewy’ye go¨ re soykırım kanıtı yok, kus¸ku var, 30 August.

Zaman (2005) ABD’li Profeso¨ r, Ermeni soykırımı iddialarını yalanladı, 28 August.

NOTES:

[ 1 ] Guenter Lewy, ‘Revisiting the Armenian Genocide,’ Middle East Quarterly 12, 4 (2005), pp. 3 – 12; and idem. ‘The First Genocide of the 20th Century?’, Commentary, 120, 5 (2005), pp. 47 – 52. Letters to the editors (including Lewy’s rebuttals) are presented in Middle East Quarterly 13, 1 (2006), pp. 1 – 5; and Commentary 121, 2 (2006), pp. 3 – 9. Also, Lewy’s book is discussed in ‘Was It Genocide?’, Wilson Quarterly 30, 1 (Winter 2006), pp. 87 – 88.
[ 2 ] Justin McCarthy et al. (2006) The Armenian Rebellion at Van (Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press).
Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 16, No. 1, 85–92, Spring 2007
[ 3 ] I wish to thank Justin McCarthy and M. Hakan Yavuz for making available the records of their conversations and e-mail conservations on this matter. 1066-9922 Print/1473-9666 Online/07/010085-8 q 2007 Editors of Critique DOI: 10.1080/10669920601148638
[ 4 ] Ibid.
[ 5 ] Jay Logan Rogers, ‘Scholar Questions Motives, Perpetrators of Armenian Genocide,’ The Daily Utah Chronicle, 27 March 2006.
[ 6 ] See, for example, Dadrian’s long response to Lewy posted at Dhimmi Watch, ‘Vahakn Dadrian responds to Guenter Lewy,’
[ 7 ] For the relationship between individual memory and collective memory, see Maurice Halbwachs, The Collective Memory (New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1980).
[ 8 ] Paul Connerton discusses how social memory is produced and transcends generational boundaries; see Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
[ 9 ] ‘French in Armenia “Genocide” row’ (2006) BBC NEWS, 12 October, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6042730.stm
[ 10 ] Sarah Rainsford, ‘Author’s Trial Set to Test Turkey,’ BBC NEWS, 14 December 2005,
[ 11 ] Steven Eke reports that the genocide theme has provided a sense of national identity for dispersed Armenians and argues that it is the Armenian diaspora rather than Armenia the country that works for international recognition of the Armenian massacres as genocide; see Steven Eke ‘Armenian Diaspora Bound by Killings,’ BBC NEWS,12 October 2006 at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6044682.stm
[ 12 ] Many newspaper articles portrayed Lewy as if he helps the Turkish side on the Armenian issue while ignoring his critique of the Turkish version of historiography. See for example, ‘ABD’li Profesör, Ermeni soykırımı iddialarını yalanladı,’ Zaman, 28 August 2005; ‘Lewy: Soykırım belgeleri kuskulu,’ Radical, 30 August 2005; and ‘Lewy’ye go¨ re soykırım kanıtı yok, kusku var,’ Sabah, 30 August 2005.

***

APPENDIX 4

TURKEY, THE WORLD, AND THE ARMENIAN QUESTION

Turkey grapples with both pressure from European actors and domestic clashes regarding the Armenian question. The author outlines the recent developments in this realm while evaluating the implications of Turkey’s reactions to these developments. Leaving the ultimate question as to whether the massacres constituted genocide to historians, the author portrays both sides of the story and advises Turkey, Armenia, and the EU to take steps which will be conducive to the normalization of relations between Turkey and Armenia, and which will ease Turkey’s EU membership prospects.

AREND JAN BOEKESTIJN

The author is lecturer in the history of international relations at Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Citizens and politicians living in Western Europe tend to take the high moral ground on issues where they are not themselves directly involved. This is a strategy that runs the risk of applying double standards. It is all very nice to condemn the so-called Armenian genocide by the Ottoman Empire at the beginning of the last century; but what about the national sins of one’s own country? In addition to the holocaust, Germany committed genocide against the Herero tribe in then Southwest Africa, France slaughtered 200.000 Muslims in Algeria during 1954-1962, and what about King Leopold’s Ghost in the Belgian Congo? The list is much longer. Turks do not have a monopoly on human deficit.

A number of governments and national parliaments ask Turkey that it recognize Armenia’s claims of genocide. These governments include France, Belgium, Russia, Lebanon, Uruguay, Switzerland, Greece, and Canada. The European Parliament and a number of U.S. states have also recognized the slaughtering of Ottoman Armenians as stemming from a systematic policy of extermination. Turkey fears that the U.S. Congress may soon follow. Recently, the German Parliament adopted a resolution in which the word genocide was not used but still called on the Turks to confront their past.

The official Turkish reaction to all these resolutions has been defensive. A historical Conference on the Armenian issue is a case in point. It was cancelled a day before it was scheduled to take place in May 2005 at Istanbul’s Bogaziçi University. The conference, “Ottoman Armenians During the Decline of the Empire: Issues of Scientific Responsibility and Democracy,” was organized by historians from three of Turkey’s leading universities, Bogaziçi, Istanbul Bilgi, and Sabancı. The organizers said the conference would have been the first in Turkey on the Armenian question not set up by state authorities or governmentaffiliated historians. Government officials had pressured the organizers, first to include participants of the government’s choosing, then to cancel the event. The Turkish Minister of Justice, Cemil Çicek, even considered the conference ‘a dagger in the back of the Turkish people’ and said it amounted to ‘treason’. [1] But over the ensuing four months, the ruling Justice and Development Party made it clear that Çicek’s remarks reflected his views, and his alone. The Minister of Foreign Affairs Abdullah Gül announced that he had no problem with the expression of critical opinion and even said he would be willing to participate in the conference.

Despite legal maneuvering by Turkish nationalists that had threatened to prevent, the meeting was rescheduled in September at Bogaziçi, University. It was once again postponed on the eve of its opening, this time because of a legal challenge that questioned its scientific validity and the qualifications of its participants. The challengers also said it was inappropriate for Bogaziçi, a public university, to be the venue for such a gathering, which they said contravened its mission. [2] By transferring the event from the public Bogaziçi to one of the co-
sponsoring private universities, the legal obstacles were overcome and the conference was held. Many nationalists in the street, however, expressed their feelings of resentment. The upcoming trial of acclaimed author Orhan Pamuk, charged with “denigrating” Turkish identity for talking about the killing of Kurds and Armenians, has demonstrated a severe split in the country, with liberals standing up for freedoms while nationalists are on the defensive.

Hence, Turkey finds itself in a difficult position. A growing number of national Parliaments around the world want Ankara to come to terms with the Armenian question but public opinion and politics in Turkey remains sharply divided on the issue. There seem to be at least three good reasons why Turkey should try to confront its own past. The question whether Turks really committed genocide in the past should not be seen as a sign of treason but as a chance to reflect on the national heritage. Secondly, if Turkish society and politics come to terms with the past it will only serve to increase Ankara’s diplomatic leverage in the world since other governments may welcome this attitude. And finally, if the Turks objectively deal with their past, this will impress the world and make it more difficult for opponents of Turkish membership in the EU to derail ongoing negotiations. Seen from this perspective, Turks who take a defensive stance seem well advised to abandon it and ask some pertinent questions:

Did the Ottoman Turks really commit genocide? And, is the Turkish government handling this sensitive issue well?
Did the Turks Commit Genocide?

In article 2 of the present United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (adopted 9 December 1948), genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group:

(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The problem in identifying whether genocide was committed is the clause: in whole or in part. In part, implies that most wars involve an element of genocide. Genocide only has real meaning if a government intends to destroy an entire group of human beings. The Armenian side claims that the Ottoman government at the highest level had the intention to kill Armenians. [3] So far, there is no such proof in the Ottoman Archives. There is however, some proof that high level Turkish administrators indeed seem to have had this intention.
Eyewitness reports of German, American, Austrian, and Swiss missionaries, as well as German and Austrian officers and diplomats who were in constant contact with Ottoman authorities seem to imply such an intention.

Moreover, evidence given to the post-war Ottoman tribunal investigating the Armenian massacres supports this claim. Lastly, to a certain extent, memoirs of Unionist officers and administrators indicate intentional acts. [4] All of this indicates that even if the Ottoman government was not involved in genocide, an inner circle within the Committee of Union and Progress under the direction of Mehmet Talât Pasha wanted to solve the Eastern Question [5] by the extermination of the Armenians and that it used “relocation” as a cloak for this policy. Some of the provincial governors and party chiefs assisted in this extermination, others did not. The fact remains, however, that some high level Turks used the deportations as a smoke screen to solve the Armenian question once and for all. For them the genocide claim seems appropriate. [6]

There are, however, important mitigating circumstances. First, Russian expansion and the Young Turks intellectual fascination with the concept of the nation state put the Armenians in a very difficult position. One might not expect the Young Turks to give Armenians a free ride in their new country, when their empire is close to collapse. The Young Turks might have panicked and overreacted but the Armenian challenge was a formidable one and came at a very dangerous time. Second, Muslims that behaved badly were to some extent the same Muslims, or relatives, of those that had escaped from the Balkans during the preceding successive Balkan Wars and were determined never to be forced to leave their ancestral homes again. Third, Armenians collaborated with Russians to kill many Muslims themselves.
Fourth, not all Armenians were deported. Those living in Istanbul and Izmir were unaffected. [7]

At the end of the day, however, it boils down to a brutal act of ethnic cleansing that also involved the other parts of Anatolia and even Thrace and that was to some extent planned by Talât Pasha. Henry Morgenthau, the American Ambassador to Turkey, when protesting the killings of the Armenians reported Talât Pasha as having said, “it is no use for you to argue, we have already disposed of three-quarters of the Armenians; there are non left in Bitlis, Van and Erzerum. The hatred between the Turks and the Armenians is now so intense that we have to finish them. If we do not they will plan their revenge.” [8] This is not to say, however, that one could consider the Armenian massacre and the German holocaust to belong in the same category.

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE ARMENIAN MASSACRE AND THE GERMAN HOLOCAUST

Today, the German Holocaust of the Jewish population is widely compared to that of the Armenian massacre. However there are important differences between the two. [9]

The party bosses took the real decisions on the ground in this matter. Unfortunately the records of the Te..kilat-ı Mahsusa have been destroyed and those of the CUP lost, which makes it hard, if not impossible, to prove the exact extent of the involvement of the different persons and institutions, but it can no longer be denied that the CUP instigated a centrally controlled policy of extermination.

First, Jews had done nothing wrong. They were just there and formed the basis of Hitler’s blatant racism. There is little doubt that the Turks overreacted to the Armenian challenge, but some Armenians did collaborate with the Russian enemy and some of them were involved in guerrilla like activities behind Ottoman defensive lines. This does not justify the Turkish position, but it is wrong to portray the Armenians as completely innocent.
Second, in Hitler’s Germany, those in power knew what the Nazi’s were doing with the Jews. Most of them chose to support his policies. In Turkey, not all the members of the Turkish government were aware that some of them were using the deportations as an instrument of ethnic cleansing. When they discovered this, they tried to punish the perpetrators.
Unfortunately, some of the perpetrators remained in power or acquired even higher positions. Third, there was no pre-planned genocide in Turkey, as in the case with the holocaust. No pre-1914 Ottoman government could have had foreknowledge of the outbreak of the First World War or the circumstances under which the deportations would be accomplished. Mainstream Ottoman politics included normal Armenian participation until war began. There is not only no evidence that the CUP government deliberately planned for genocide before 1914, it is also highly unlikely. It would suggest that it intended to carry out the mass murder of an ethnic group something for which there was no precedent in modern history. Moreover, if there had been plans and these were leaked out, intense international opposition possibly leading to an invasion of the Ottoman Empire by other European Powers would have been the result.
Viewed in this light, it seems most implausible that the genocide of the Armenians was preplanned.
Fourth, the historians who question the intention of the Turks to commit genocide are often excellent historians like Bernard Lewis and Gilles Veinstein with some documentary evidence on their side. They are not mendacious anti-Semitic crackpots who enunciate Holocaust denial. And lastly, the CUP never adopted an all-embracing secular, universalistic, quasi-messianic ideology in the style of Nazism and Communism. It remained rooted in traditional (although modernizing) nationalism and a vision of an Islamified Turkey. The events can be read as a botched, wartime panic, overreaction, with premeditation most unlikely and the scale of killings arguably exaggerated.
Let us try to put these qualifications into perspective. Even if the Armenian massacre cannot be compared to the German Holocaust, even if not all members of the CUP government knew that some of their colleagues were bent on solving the Eastern question once and for all, the fact remains that between 600.000 and 900.000 Armenians died of murder, starvation, and exhaustion. Have the Turks really confronted themselves with these dark pages of their past?
Are the Turks Handling this Issue Well?

More and more Parliaments are adopting resolutions that state Turkey should accept the genocide claim if it wants to become a member of the EU. Turkey is unable to present its side of the story. The reasons are simple: even if the Turks did not commit genocide, they still behaved rather badly. Killing between 600.000 and 900.000 Armenians remains a horrible thing. [10] The rich Armenian American lobby will not find it very difficult to shed light on these black pages of Ottoman history even if the Armenians themselves were not exactly innocent either.
From a political and psychological perspective, the Turks are simply on the receiving end. We also have to stress the asymmetrical power relations between Turkey and the EU. It is clear that Turkey gains economically and politically more from the EU than vice versa, at least this is how the EU perceives it. This implies that everything that enhances Turkish position in the world is more than welcome for Ankara. And Turkey’s position would undoubtedly become much better if the Armenian Question could somehow be removed from the international agenda. What could be done?

The Turkish proposal that both countries set up a joint commission of historians to determine whether the massacres carried out between 1915 and 1917 constituted genocide did not trigger a parallel Armenian reaction. Turkey had proposed this idea earlier and also than it did not strike a chord in the Armenian camp.

It is difficult to see whether this proposal in itself could really settle the issue. The nature of historical debate is incompatible with the idea of international dispute settlement. Historians will always disagree on controversial issues like this. Moreover, many relevant archives are destroyed or lost. Hence, historical truth is almost always incomplete and unsatisfactory from a legal point of view. Every historian who wants to rescue Talât Pasha’s tarnished image with new sources will always have to take the existing sources into account. The result will be trench warfare between historians that could easily last for decades.

The solution has to come from pragmatic and flexible diplomacy. Unfortunately, the existing domestic political consensus that Turkey did not commit genocide does not give much room for maneuvering. The only way to break out of this mould is to have charismatic political leaders try to convince Turks on the street that only a flexible approach will serve their interests. It will become more difficult for Turkey to become part of the EU if the Armenian shadow continues to haunt world opinion. The electorate has to be informed about this unpleasant fact.

It is clear what the Armenians want: reparations, border revisions and recognition of the genocide claim. What can Turks do? It will not be easy to open up the border since it is also linked to the highly explosive Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. As a result of the war against Nagorno-Karabakh independence, Azerbaijanis were driven out of Nagorno-Karabakh, as well as territories adjacent to Nagorno-Karabakh; and these are still under control of the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenian military. [11] This conflict as well as the Armenian constitution’s non-recognition of Turkey’s eastern borders and territorial integrity and the attempt to seek international recognition of the 1915 genocide, led Turkey to close its frontiers with Armenia in 1992.

Since the closed border has hurt the interests of both Turkey and Armenia it seems to offer a starting point for negotiations. Both trade from Georgia to Turkey and from Armenia to Moscow via Georgia is highly inefficient because of taxes, bribery and corruption.
Consequently, this suboptimal trade route has impeded economic growth in the north-eastern

Turkish border region. And the closure has also failed to arrest Armenian trade through Georgia and Iran. In this context a bargain, at least on paper, may be possible. If Armenia would be prepared to recognize Turkey’s borders and territorial integrity, Turkey should respond by normalizing economic and diplomatic relations with Armenia – which would boil down to the opening of its eastern border for trade with Armenia and the opening of its airspace for the transit of goods, including aid, to Armenia. [12]

It seems wise not to make progress in the negotiations dependent on the issue of the so-called Armenian genocide simply because here the positions are almost impossible to reconcile. A reconciliation committee of historians will undoubtedly talk for years. The Turks will presumably try to find a formula in which the word genocide is substituted by tragedy and offer to honor every year the victims on both sides.

Perhaps the Turkish government can intensify their efforts to restore Armenian historical artifacts. It is, however, unlikely that these concessions will satisfy the Armenians. Perhaps EU pressure on Ankara to establish cordial relations with all its neighbors including Armenia will be helpful at the end of the day. If the EU would be willing to negotiate a Neighborhood Agreement with Armenia with substantial benefits for Armenia conditioned upon progress in relations with Turkey, this would help too. [13]

Again, however, it seems wise to limit the negotiations initially to a deal on opening the border in exchange for acceptance of Turkey’s existing borders. If, however, at the end of the day some deal could be arranged on the so-called Armenian genocide this would surely increase Turkish diplomatic leverage inside the EU. After all, Turkish EU membership has not become easier after the referenda in France and the Netherlands. Turkey’s membership will also be the subject of referendum in numerous countries. A majority of the Western European population is known to reject the idea of Turkey joining the EU. However opposition diminishes when the question is posed taking into account that Ankara would meet all the criteria after lengthy negotiations amounting to 10 years or more. The Turkish government has taken some courageous steps concerning Cyprus. If it can also maintain the momentum for political and economic reform, as well as improving Turkey’s relations with Armenia and the Kurds, these will have a positive impact on public opinion in Europe.
It is often claimed that Turkey needs accession negotiations to keep the pressure on domestic reforms. Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy and some Austrian politicians, however, still favor a special arrangement. Perhaps the geopolitical argument that Europe would actually benefit from including Turkey in the Union will, in the end, prevail, but that is far from certain. If this analysis is correct, Turkish politicians have to be up to the challenge of keeping momentum for reform even without the prospect of full EU membership. That challenge requires a fundamental shift in domestic Turkish politics and discourse. Fortunately, Turkish politicians do realize that reform is not only needed for EU accession but also for the sake of Turkey itself. In fact they recoined the Copenhagen criteria as the Ankara criteria. Unfortunately, other Turkish politicians have a habit of accusing the Turkish government of a sellout whenever Ankara makes a concession. This political culture makes it harder to adopt flexible diplomacy.

Atatürk’s dictum that a Turkey contemplating pan-Turkish or Muslim dreams will only produce disaster is still valid. [14] Turkish politicians must accept that the EU will never accept new member countries that do not seem able to establish normal relations with their neighboring countries. And Turkish politicians must not only accept this but also try to inform their voters about this. It will be extremely difficult to sell this to the Turkish public. At the end of the day, all foreign policy is domestic politics. Only courageous statesmen can break out of this mould.

REFERENCES:

[1] Aisha Labi, “Academic Conference in Turkey on Armenian Question is Cancelled under Government Pressure,” Academe Today: The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Daily Report, 27 May 2005, )

[2] Aisha Labi, “Despite Late Challenge, Scholars Finally Hold Meeting in Turkey on Armenian Genocide,” Academe Today: The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Daily Report, 26 September 2005, )

[3] Vahakn N. Dadrian, The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia, (Providence/Oxford: Berghahn, 1997).

[4] I follow here the verdict of the Dutch Professor Erik-Jan Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History (London/New York: Tauris, 2004), pp. 114-117. A number of provincial party chiefs assisted in this extermination, which was organized primarily through the Te..kilat-ı Mahsusa under the direction of its political director (and CUP central committee member) Bahaettin..akir. Some provincial governors like Dr. Mehmet Re..it in Diyarbakır, were themselves instigators of large-scale persecutions, but there were also governors and army officers who refused to cooperate. These were overruled or replaced.

5 Russia and Austria-Hungary had been involved in intensive discussions on the ‘Eastern Question’ since late 1875. Austria considered the survival of the Ottoman Empire as a vital interest. If Ottoman control faltered Austria had to take over control of these areas. In Russia, however, Ottoman decline was seen as a chance to express Pan-Slav solidarity with the southern Slavs.

[6] Erik-Jan Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History (London/New York: Tauris, 2004), pp. 116-117.

[7] Andrew Mango, Atatürk (London: John Murray, 1999), p. 161.

[8] Henry Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story, (New York: Doubleday, Page & Co, 1918), p. 307-309, 321-323.

[9] This section is based on: William D. Rubinstein, Genocide, (London: Longman, 2004), pp. 127-146.

[10] These figures are calculated by Justin McCarthy, Death and Exile; the Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922, (Princeton: Darwin Press, 1995). Zürcher seems to accept his calculations: Turkey a Modern History, (London: Tauris, 2004) p. 115.

[11] With the alleged support of Soviet/Russian military forces, Azeris forced out tens of thousands of Armenians from Shahumyan region (a region adjacent to Soviet era Nagorno-Karabakh that joined self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh Republic in 1991)

[12] See: Michael Emerson and Nathalie Tocci, “Turkey as Bridgehead and Spearhead: Integrating EU and Turkish Foreign Policy,” Turkish Political Quarterly (Fall 2004), pp. 153-197. See especially pp. 168-171.

[13] Emerson (2004), p. 170.

[14] Andrew Mango, The Turks Today (London: John Murray, 2004), p. 33.