I find it important to mirror this work here to help truth-seekers gain one more access the information which is denied them by aggressive Armenian falsifiers, their usually anti-Turkish sympathizers, and other thinly veiled Turk-haters. Hate-based-propaganda and intimidation should not be allowed to replace honest scholarship and reasoned debate.
Nothing less than the freedom of speech of those who hold contra-genocide views are at stake. Tools most used to advance censorship of contra-genocide views are hearsay, forgeries, harassment, political resolutions, editorial freedom, and consensus, among others. The key to resolving this controversy is more knowledge as in more honest research, more truthful education, and more freedom to debate… not less.
Those scholars who take Armenian claims at face value urgently need to ponder these simple questions:
1) How can one study a country’s history properly without researching that country’s very own archives? Can one study China’s history without using Chinese archives? Or Russia’s past without using Russia’s documents? Or America’s history without researching American records? Or Ottoman Empire’s past without using Ottoman archives? Why were the Ottoman archives almost never used in Armenian arguments and claims? Are language barriers, bureaucratic hurdles, cost, and/or others convincing enough excuses in scholarly studies that span over decades? Or is it instant gratification that these (genocide) scholars who ignore Turkish archives really seek, not the truth?
2) How can one study a controversy by confining one’s views to only one side? Can one logically, fairly, or ethically argue that only one side of any controversy, say the abortion issue, is absolutely correct, flawless, and worthy of knowing, and that the other side should be totally ignored, even censored, and dissenters intimidated? How about gun control? Immigration? Taxes? Iraq War? Gay rights? and many other such controversial issues? Can one be confined, or asked to limit oneself, to only one side of the debate and categorically and eternally dismiss the other? Can this be turned into a discriminatory policy, as it is often attempted in the Turkish-Armenian conflict and controversy? Where exactly does the freedom of speech come into play here? If I, as an individual, who holds a contra-genocide view, am slandered, intimidated, and harassed by “cyber bullies”, physically threatened for my views by some “opinion thugs”, and often censored by “consensus mobs”, then is this not a blatant attack and destruction of my constitutional right to freedom of speech? Does consensus make such mental persecution right and claims allowed to stand truthful? In short, does might make right?
3) Why do those conceited genocide scholars who love to get on their high horses and preach good morals to others, fail to scream murder in the face of that terrible human tragedy in Azerbaijan which victimized a million Azeris, including women and children, in Karabagh and western Azerbaijan? Is it because the perpetrator of this inhumanity is Armenia (their client state,) and the Armenians ( their paymasters) that they choose to look the other way?
4) If the study of genocide is designed to teach humans how to recognize, avoid, and fight back against potential 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 –as the 1948 UN Convention requires— does not exist, yet, and for consistency, let me re-name this tragedy man’s inhumanity to man and pogrom.) The question remains, why did all the genocide study in the world fail to stop Armenia from committing one between 1992-1994? Can you see the heart wrenching irony here?
Here is what truly honest scholars and historians say about the bogus Armenian genocide:
—————–
Part II
YOUSSEF COURBAGE
Director of Research, National Institute of Demographic Studies, Paris, France.
Major Publications:
* Christians and Jews under Islam, (1992), Fayard
Relevant Publications:
* Christians and Jews under Islam, (1992), Fayard
Source: Philippe Fargues, Youssef Courbage “Christians and Muslims under Islam”, (1992)
“The Turkish argument, recently put forward, acknowledges that deportation took place but describes it as “relocation”. It also admits the size of the operation – 703,000 people of both sexes and of all ages according to the official Ottoman source – that is almost 70 per cent of Armenians.” However, it regards the deportation as a fact of war, inevitable given the Armenian collusion with the Russian enemy. This argument also accepts that more than 300,000 Armenians died, but disputes that they did so at the hands of Turks. Far from being a massacre orchestrated from on high, the deaths were a side-effect of the war, a consequence of epidemics or debilitation during the exodus, or a result of battles between armies and rival militias.” Pp. 110-111
***
PAUL DUMONT
Director of the Turkish Studies Department of Marc-Bloch University of Strasbourg.
Prof. Dumont was director of the French Institute of Anatolian Studies from 1999 to 2003, and is co-editor of the review Turcica.
Major Publications:
* Jewish Communities in Turkey During the Last Decades of the Nineteenth Century in the Light of the Archives of the Alliance Israelite Universelle , in B. Braude and Bernard Lewis (ed.), Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire, vol. I, New York, Holmes & Meier Publishers, pp. 209-242.
* Mustafa Kemal invente la Turquie moderne, Bruxelles-Paris, Complexe, 1983.
Économie et société dans l’Empire ottoman, Paris, éditions du CNRS, 1983 (co-edition with Jean-Louis Bacqué-Grammont).
* ‘La période des Tanzimat et La mort d’un Empire’ (with François Georgeon), in Robert Mantran (ed.), Histoire de l’Empire ottoman, Paris, Fayard, 1989, pp. 459-522 et pp. 577-528
* Les Sociaux-démocrates bulgares et le Bureau socialiste international. Correspondance. 1900-1914, Sofia, Mikom, 1996.
* Vivre ensemble dans l’Empire ottoman. Sociabilités et relations intercommunautaires. XVIII e – XIX e siècles, Paris, L’Harmattan, 1997 (co-edition with François Georgeon).
* Du socialisme ottoman à l’internationalisme anatolien, Istanbul, Isis, 1998.
* Ottomanism, National Movements and Freemasonry, Yapı ve Kredi Yay, 2000; second edition, 2007 (in Turkish).
Relevant Publication:
* La mort d’un Empire (with François Georgeon), in Robert Mantran (ed.), Histoire de l’Empire ottoman, Paris, Fayard, 1989
Source: The Death of an Empire (1908-1923), in Robert Mantran (ed.), Histoire de l’Empire Ottoman, Paris, Fayard, 1989
“Tracking down, within the multitude of papers from both sides about this question, the inaccuracies, questionable assertions, or even forgeries, is not very difficult. In particular, it seems established today that some of the essential objects put in the file by the accusation [i.e. the Armenian side] – for example, the Blue Book prepared for the British government by Bryce and Toynbee or the Memories of Na’im Bey published with the aid of Aram Andonian – can not in any way be considered as irrefutable documents. Didn’t Toynbee himself admit the Blue Book had been ‘published and spread only as war propaganda’? And the authenticity of the alleged telegrams of Ottoman government, ordering the destruction of Armenians is today seriously contested. […]
However, it is important to underline that the Armenian communities are not the only ones to have been ground down by the plague of the war. In the spring of 1915, the tsarist army moved to the region of the lake of Van, dragging behind it battalions of volunteers composed of Caucasus and Turkish Armenians. […] For each of the provinces which suffered from the Russian occupation and from the Armenian militias’ acts of vengeance, an important demographic deficit appears in the statistics (of Muslims) of the post-war years — adding up to several hundred thousands of souls.” Pp. 624-625
***
BERTIL DUNÉR
Senior Researcher, The Swedish Institute of International Affairs, Stockholm, Sweden.
Major Publications:
* The Global Human Rights Regime, Studentlitteratur, 2002
* World Community and the Other Terrorism, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2007
* Military Intervention in Civil Wars: The 1970’s, Palgrave Macmillan Publishers, 1985.
Relevant Publications:
* What Can Be Done About Historical Atrocities? The Armenian Case . . . [See Appendix 5 A] . . . What Can Be Done About Historical Atrocities . . . , International Journal of Human Rights, Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 217–233, Summer 2004
Source: What Can Be Done About Historical Atrocities? The Armenian Case. International Journal of Human Rights, Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 217–233, Summer 2004.
“Turkey does not deny the reality of massacres, although it maintains that the campaign has seriously exaggerated the death toll. However, Ankara categorically refutes the accusation of genocide. It maintains that the Armenians were victims of inter-communal conflict during the Ottoman Empire’s dying years in the midst of the First World War and stresses that Turks as well died en masse in this internecine war. Moreover, it maintains that there is no proof that the killings were organized or financed by the state: on the contrary, it suggests that the lack of central organization was to blame.” Pp. 219-220
“However what happened at the Sub-commission meeting in 1985 was not (UN) recognition of the Armenian genocide, although it is frequently portrayed that way – far from it. The special rapparteur’s does not seem to stick to the definition study. The special rapparteur’s study also lacks weight for a different, perhaps even more important, reason. It should be emphasized that neither was there any recommendation to the superior Commission on Human Rights to adopt a resolution.” P. 222
“The Armenian campaign seems to go against the principle of universality. Note that this is not to question that it is easier to exercise pressure on some, relatively weak, states than on others, and that the strength of the target and the power resources available have to be considered when the kind of action to take is decided upon. Here we are talking only of manifested interest, in terms of resolutions and statements, which is not a matter of strength and resources available.” P.224
“However a link in the reverse direction should perhaps not to be excluded, the Armenian question being an instrument rather than a goal. For instance, the president of the rightist movement for France has stated that: “Turkey’s obstinate refusal to recognize the massacres of 1915 is an additional element upon which to refuse Turkey’s entry into the European Union. It can be assumed that for this organization the more pressing question is to keep Turkey out of EU and the Armenian question is an instrument to this end.” P.225
“A well known French political figure, Phillip Douste-Blazy has stated “I believe that today an ambiguity should be raised: recognition of the responsibility of the government of 1915, does not lead to the culpability of the Turks of 1999. There does not exist in [the body of criminal laws], even for most odious of the crimes, those against humanity, of hereditary culpability.” P.223
“Another well-known French politician Bertrand Delanoe makes a similar point “Modern Turkey cannot evidently be held as the party responsible for the facts which have occurred in the convulsions at the end of the Ottoman Empire.“ P.228
***
GWYNNE DYER
Historian, military analyst and journalist, Ph.D. in Ottoman military history, The King’s College London.
Gwynne Dyer is one of the few Western scholars to have done research in Ottoman military archives. Dyer has worked as a freelance journalist, columnist, broadcaster and lecturer on international affairs for more than 20 years, but he was originally trained as an historian. Born in Newfoundland, he received degrees from Canadian, American and British universities, finishing with a Ph.D. in Military and Middle Eastern History from the University of London. He served in three navies and held academic appointments at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and Oxford University before launching his twice-weekly column on international affairs, which is published by over 175 papers in some 45 countries.
Major Publications:
* War: 1985, documentary television series
* Ignorant Armies: Sliding Into War in Iraq (2003)
Relevant Publications:
* The Turkish Armistice of 1918, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 8, No. 2 (May, 1972), pp. 143-178
Source: Turkish ‘Falsifiers’ and Armenian ‘Deceivers’: Historiography and the Armenian Massacres
“When more work is completed on the period, I believe that historians will come to see Talat, Enver and their associates not so much as evil men but as desperate, frightened, unsophisticated men struggling to keep their nation afloat in a crisis far graver than they had anticipated when they first entered the war (the Armenian decisions were taken at the height of the crisis of the Dardanelles), reacting to events rather than creating them, and not fully realizing the “tent of the horrors they had set in motion in ‘Turkish Armenia’ until they were too deeply committed to withdraw. As for the complicity of ordinary Turks with their leaders, hatred and revenge and blind panic were the motives for the behaviour of the Ottoman army and the Muslim Population of eastern Anatolia in the Armenian massacres, scarcely creditable motives, nor ones an Armenian is likely to forgive, but common enough in all nations and even understandable in the Turkish situation in the East in 1915. The ‘final solution’ attempted by the Ottoman government at the end of 1915, and all the succeeding bouts of mutual slaughter between Turks and Armenians down to 1922 grew out of those original decisions in early 1915, the history of which is yet to be written.” P. 107
Source: The Turkish Armistice of 1918, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 8, No. 2 (May, 1972)
***
EDWARD J. ERICKSON
Researcher, Birmingham University, retired Lieutenant-Colonel, PhD in Ottoman Military History, The Leeds University. Erickson is the author of numerous books and articles on the Ottoman Army during the early twentieth century.
Major Publications:
* Ordered To Die: A History of the Ottoman Army in the First World War (2000)
* Defeat in Detail: The Ottoman Army in the Balkans 1912-1913 (2003)
* The Sultan’s Army: A History of the Ottoman Military, 1300-1923 (forthcoming)
Relevant Publications
* Ordered To Die: A History of the Ottoman Army in the First World War (2000)
* Armenian Massacres, New Records Undercut Old Blame, The Middle East Quarterly, Vol. XIII, Number 3, Summer 2006
* The Armenians and Ottoman Military Policy, War in History, Spring 2008
Source: Ordered To Die: A History of the Ottoman Army in the First World War (2000)
“There is a huge body of historical literature concerning the “Armenian genocide” that maintains that the Young Turks, in particular, Enver, Talat, and Cemal, intentionally sought to exterminate the Armenian citizens of the Ottoman Empire. This case against the Young Turks rests on the premise that they intended to racially purify the empire by purging or exterminating its minorities, particularly the troublesome Christian Armenians. Moreover, the literature maintains that under the pretext of wartime emergencies and threats to national security, the Young Turks took advantage of circumstances to conduct genocide against the Armenians. Using a combination of methods ranging from massacre to starvation, the Young Turks then deliberately and intentionally caused the deaths of several million Armenians. Much of this literature is emotionally charged and a large percentage of it is directly generated by the descendants of the survivors of the events. The genocide itself has, over the past eighty years, become a highly political issue in most western countries, as Armenian descendants seek legislative condemnation of the modern Turkish Republic. Because of this trans-generational campaign to establish that an Ottoman genocide (defined as an intentional and systematic attempt to exterminate a people or a race) against its Armenian subjects occurred, balanced and objective discourse on this subject becomes difficult.” P. 95
“Compounding the implementation of these policies was the continuing Armenian Rebellion, which included bombings, assassinations, and the wholesale slaughter of Muslim Turkish villages. In some places the rebels even gained the upper hand. The rebels in the city of Van were ultimately relieved by advancing Russian forces. At Musa Dag in Cilicia, highly organized Armenians fought the Turks for forty days. These events were bound to inflame an already angry Turkish population and bureaucracy. In spite of this, the Ministry of the Interior continued to muddy the organizational waters by establishing further regulations that safeguarded the homes of the deportees. According to the ministry, the homes of the deportees were to be sealed and possessions left behind were to be cared for. If the Armenians’ homes were used as temporary lodging for Balkan immigrants, the new occupants would be liable for any accrued taxes and for damages. Certainly there were many mixed messages with all of their associated and unsaid complexities to be found in the rapidly evolving legal mechanisms which governed the deportation and relocation of the eastern Anatolian Armenians. The ponderous and complex wheels of the relocation process now began to grind the Armenians into dust.” P. 103
“In the end, hundreds of thousands of Armenians died during the Armenian Rebellion and deportation of 1915-1916. A similar number of Muslim Turks also died during the Armenian revolts and during the Russian occupation of Erzurum, Van, Erzincan, Trabzon, and Malazgirt. To be sure, many Armenians, particularly leaders and men of military age were immediately killed or massacred early on before entering the deportation flow. Many more, especially the elderly and the infirm, died en route from apathy and neglect, or were murdered outright, as the deportees were passed from local official to local official in an ambulatory pipeline that resembled a decaying daisy chain. Finally, the geographic constraints imposed on where the Armenians could ultimately be allowed to settle imposed long term starvation as they were sent to arid locations outside the fertile and well-watered route of the Baghdad Railroad. It was a recipe for disaster with profound historical, moral, and practical consequences which persist into the present day.” P. 103
Source: “Armenian Massacres, New Records Undercut Old Blame”, The Middle East Quarterly, Vol. XIII, Number 3, Summer 2006
“Clearly, many Armenians died during World War I. But accusations of genocide demand authentic proof of an official policy of ethnic extermination. Vahakn Dadrian has made high-profile claims that Major Stange and the Special Organization were the instruments of ethnic cleansing and genocide. Documents not utilized by Dadrian, though, discount such an allegation.”
Source: The Armenians and Ottoman Military Policy: War in History, Spring 2008
“In fact, armed revolts by the Armenians soon broke out in many areas of south-eastern Anatolia. There is no question that the Russians supported the Armenians inside the Ottoman Empire with money, weapons and encouragement. Externally the Armenian National Council formed druzhiny (or regiments) from the enthusiastic volunteers, who were eager to invade the Ottoman Empire. The ‘Ararat Unit’ composed of the 2nd, 3rd and 4th Druzhiny was assigned to capture the lakeside city of Van. The events most associated with the beginning of the insurrection occurred when insurgents seized the most of Van in a fierce attack on 14 April 1915.” P. 153
” Beginning in July 1915, the full-blown insurgencies erupted in Antep, Antioch, Karahisar, Maraş, Urfa, and Zeitoun. This forced the Ottomans to move large-scale (regimental and divisional level) counter-insurgency operations using inexperienced forces. The newly formed 41st Infantry Division was diverted from coastal and area defense duties to counter-insurgency missions to deal with these and later participated in the famous assault of Musa Dagh. The following month, the equally inexperienced 23rd and 44th Infantry Divisions would join in attacks on Zeitoun, Urfa and Tarsus. Later, troops were sent to Karahisar to quell an uprising there.” P. 165
“The Ottoman leadership and staff knew a great deal about the Armenian threat prior to 30 May, 1915 (the date of region-wide relocation order). They knew that the British, French and Russians were in direct contact with the Armenian revolutionary committees and were planning coordinated combat operations against the Ottomans. The Ottomans had solid evidence on large Armenian weapons caches in key city locations. There were number of terrorist incidents and guerilla attacks by Armenians on Ottoman lines of communications. There were reports of Armenian desertions from the army and thousands of armed Armenians were reported in the hills. There was an uprising in Zeitoun. An Armenian insurrection began when well-organized insurgents seized the city of Van, and Armenian regiments with the Russian army assisted in its capture. The Allies landed at Gallipoli on 25 April and in early May the Russians began a major offensive toward Erzurum supported by Armenians. Armenian agents had come ashore numerous times on the Mediterranean coast. Lastly, the Ottomans knew that their local forces and jandarma were unable to quell the gathering insurgency. […]
The records show that the Ottoman leadership and military staff engaged in a kind of threat-based thinking based on Armenian capabilities. Was there reason for concern and threat-based thinking? The record indicates that the Ottoman lines of communications in Eastern Anatolia were acutely vulnerable and that the Armenians had the capacity to destroy those lines. Any interruption to the flow of logistic, even for a short time, to front-line forces in combat would have been a critical concern for the Ottoman army. The records also clearly shows that the Ottomans were unprepared to deal with a large-scale insurrection and shifted from a localized to a generalized campaign of counter-insurgency warfare. Finally, with so few regular forces available to suppress the insurrection, a strategy for the relocation of the civilian population was consistent with the counter-insurgence practices of that period. […]
Nothing can justify the massacres of the Armenians nor can a case be made that the entire Armenian population of the six Anatolian provinces was an active and hostile threat to Ottoman national security. However, a case can be made that the Ottoman judged the Armenians to be a great threat to the 3rd and 4th Armies and that genuine intelligence and security concerns drove the decision. It may also be stated that the Ottoman reaction was escalatory and responsive rather than premeditated and pre-planned. In this context, the Ottoman relocation decision become more understandable as a military solution to a military problem. While political and ideological imperative perhaps drove the decision equally, if not harder, these do not negate the fact that the Armenians were a great military danger.” Pp. 166-167
***
PHILIPPE FARGUES
Professor, American University in Cairo-Egypt, PHD in Sociology ,Sorbonne University
Major Publications:
* Christians and Jews under Islam, (1992), Fayard
Relevant Publications:
* Christians and Jews under Islam, (1992), Fayard
Source: Philippe Fargues, Youssef Courbage “Christians and Muslims under Islam”, (1992)
“The Armenian community was in 1915-16 brutally deported from Turkey to the Arab periphery. If any Armenians remained in Anatolia after the deportation and slaughter, the erroneous policies of the Russians, Americans and French at the war soon hastened their disappearance.” P. 109
“An American scholar who reconsidered the issue in the 1980s has carefully examined the Ottoman data with the aid of modern demographic methods. He estimated the Armenian population at 1.6 million and concluded that there had been no deliberate falsification, but rather a normal under-estimate arising from enumeration techniques of the time. If we deduct this from the 77,000 Armenians counted in the 1927 census, we find that the population was reduced by about 1.5 million people as a result of the massacre itself as well as emigration (whether enforced or voluntary) and conversion.” P. 110
“The Turkish argument, recently put forward, acknowledges that deportation took place but describes it as “relocation”. It also admits the size of the operation – 703,000 people of both sexes and of all ages according to the official Ottoman source – that is almost 70 per cent of Armenians.” However, it regards the deportation as a fact of war, inevitable given the Armenian collusion with the Russian enemy. This argument also accepts that more than 300,000 Armenians died, but disputes that they did so at the hands of Turks. Far from being a massacre orchestrated from on high, the deaths were a side-effect of the war, a consequence of epidemics or debilitation during the exodus, or a result of battles between armies and rival militias.” Pp. 110-111
***
MICHAEL M. GUNTER
Professor of political science, Tennessee Technical University, PhD in International Relations, The Kent State University.
Gunter has written more than 75 articles in scholarly journals and books including Middle East Journal, American Journal of International Law and World Affairs. He has authored nine books about the Kurdish people of Turkey, northern Iraq, Syria and Iran, and two of those books were among the first analyses in English of the Kurdish unrest in the Middle East. Gunter’s forthcoming publication is on the Armenian issue.
Major Publications:
* The Kurds Ascending: The Evolving Solution to the Kurdish Problem in Iraq and Turkey (2007)
Relevant Publications:
* Pursuing the Just Cause of Their People: A Study of Contemporary Armenian Terrorism (1986)
* Turkey and the Armenians in Multidimensional Terrorism: Ed. by Martin Slann & Bernard Schechterman (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc., 1987), pp.57-71.
* The Armenian Terrorist Campaign Against Turkey: Orient (Deutsches Orient-Institut) 24 (December 1983), pp.610-637.
Source: “Pursuing the Just Cause of Their People”: A Study of Contemporary Armenian Terrorism
“Outraged over the alleged genocide of some 1.5 million Armenians by the Turks during WW I and the resulting loss of their ancestral homeland, Armenian terrorists in the past decade have murdered 30 Turkish diplomats or members of their immediate families, including 4 in the United States.” Pp. 1
“In a later study Professor Toynbee, although not denying the accuracy of the Blue Book, did write that it had been “duly published and distributed as war propaganda.” Pp. 14
“The Armenian claim that they were victims of a premeditated genocide does not ring true, however. Rather, what appears more likely is that there was an honest, though inaccurate, belief among the Turkish leaders that they were faced with a widespread and coordinated Armenian uprising from within at the very time their state was in mortal danger from without. Decades of what the Turks saw as Armenian provocations and even treason during previous wars, armed revolutionary activity between the wars, the creation of Russian-Armenian guerrilla groups in the invading Russian army during the present war, the defection of certain Ottoman Armenians to the enemy, the armed resistance to conscription on the part of Armenians in Zeytun, incidents of revolutionary acts and sabotage in the countryside, and the Armenian uprising in Van in reaction to the unjustified but probably unofficial policies of the local governor-all led the Turks to conclude they were in real danger from a fifth column. (Similarly, a much better organized U.S. government unjustly interned its citizens of Japanese descent at the start of World War II.)” P. 17
Source: The Politicizing of History and the Armenian Claims of Genocide, March 13, 2009, Letter to the Editor to New York Times
“Without denying the tragic massacres the Armenians suffered during World War I, it is also important to place them in their proper context. When this is done, the application of the term “genocide” to these tragic events is inappropriate because the Turkish actions were neither unilateral nor premeditated. As the testimony of Hovhannes Katchaznouni, the first prime minister of Armenia after World War I makes clear, some Armenians killed as many Turks as they could in a misguided attempt to strike for independence. Additional Armenian writers such as Louise Nalbandian, James Mandalian, and Armen Garo, among others, have also detailed how some Armenians had long fought against the Turks in the lead up to the massacres of World War I. Furthermore, such distinguished Western scholars as William Langer, Arnold Toynbee, and Walter Laqueur, among others, have also concurred with this judgment. Their positions along with others demonstrate that the Turkish actions were not unilateral, that the Armenians were not always innocent victims, and that what befell the Armenians was not entirely unprovoked. Sabrina Tavernise’s recent article in the New York Times “Nearly a Million Genocide Victims, Covered in a Cloak of Amnesia” jumps to the unwarranted conclusion of genocide because the number of Armenians within the Ottoman Empire declined by some 900,000 from 1915-17. However, this does not mean that all of these 900,000 Armenians died. Indeed, many survived as refugees, and eventually settled in other countries. Therefore, Tavernise misleads her readers by implying that Talaat Pasha’s figures documented that they all died.
As for the necessary attribute of premeditation to demonstrate genocide, there are no authentic documents that prove guilt. Although there are countless descriptions of the depravations suffered by the Armenians, they do not prove premeditation. The so-called Andonian documents that purport to demonstration premeditation are almost certain fabrications. As for the Armenian contention that the huge loss of Armenian lives illustrates premeditation, what then should be said about the enormous loss of Turkish lives among civilians, soldiers, and prisoners-of-war? Were these Turkish deaths also genocide or rather due to sheer incompetence, neglect, starvation, and disease? And if the latter were true of the ethnic Turkish population, all the more were they the fate of an ethnic group that had incurred upon itself suspicion of acting as a fifth column in a time of war. Even so Armenian communities in such large western cities as (Istanbul) and (Izmir) were spared deportation probably because they were not in a position to aid the invading Russians. Is it possible to imagine Hitler sparing any Jews in Berlin, Munich, or Cologne from his genocidal rampage for similar reasons? If as the Armenians allege the Turkish intent was to subject their Armenian victims to a premeditated forced march until they died of exhaustion, why was this tactic not imposed on all of the Armenians? More logically, the huge task of relocating several hundred thousand Armenians in a short period of time and over a highly primitive system of transportation proved simply beyond the capacity of the Ottoman government. Therefore, until historians can agree on exactly what happened, it seems reasonable not to politicize history with unsubstantiated claims of genocide.”
***
PAUL HENZE
Ph.D., Harvard University. Paul B. Henze served at the US embassy in Ethiopia, from 1968 to 1972. He left the administration in 1980, and became a consultant for the Rand Corporation and the Smithsonian Institution.
Major Publications:
* The Plot to Kill the Pope, 1983.
* Soviet Strategy and Islam, 1989 (with Alexandre Bennigsen and George K. Tanhman)
* The Horn of Africa, 1991.
* Turkey and Atatürk’s Legacy: Turkey’s Political Evolution, Turkish-US Relations, and
Prospects for the 21th Century, 1998.
* Layers of Time. A History of Ethiopia, 2001, 2nd edition 2004.
Relevant Publications:
* The Roots of Armenian Violence. How Far Back Do they Extend?, in International Terrorism and the Drug Connection, Ankara University Press, 1984
Source: “The Roots of Armenian Violence”, 1984
“Bulgaria gained independence. Bulgarians were a people whom Armenians regarded as having a much less distinguished history than their own. If Bulgaria deserved to be independent, why not Armenia? Revolutionary nationalists who embraced such argumentation in the 1880s and 1890s willfully avoided facing the essential difference between their situations and that of the Bulgarians. Though there was serious controversy about Bulgaria’s proper boundaries, and though Bulgaria contained sizable minorities, the newly independent country was nevertheless a coherent geographical entity inhabited by a majority of Bulgarians. Nothing comparable existed in territories claimed by the Armenians. They were outnumbered by Muslims in every one of the six eastern provinces traditionally called Armenian. In the city of Erzurum, which many nationalists regarded as their natural capital, Armenians were a distinct minority. […]
So by the end of the 1880s, we see the roots of Armenian violence — and violence against Armenians — in full view. Violence became inevitable because the Armenian demands which were most vigorously pressed had become irrational, impossible of attainment. The irrationality did not deter the Czarist government from supporting Armenian extremists for their own political purposes even as they increasingly restricted the activities of Armenian nationalists in their own territories. […]
For an Ottoman bureaucracy pressed to meet demands for political and administrative reform among subject peoples as well as Turks, maintenance of order in outlying regions became increasingly difficult. Once clashes began to occur and other down, no one — government or local communities — possessed the physical strength, the political skill or the powers of persuasion to contain disaster. It was not only Armenians of the Ottoman Empire who were affected, but Muslims as well. Everyone lost.” Pp. 199-200
“When war broke out in 1914, the Russians again encouraged Armenian expectations and exploited the eastern Anatolian Armenians as a fifth column. In the end they did not intervene to protect Armenians when Ottoman authorities, in a life-and-death wartime situation, moved to deport them, nor were the Russians able to protect their collaborators against the vengeance of local Muslims when Ottoman authority collapsed. As had happened so often before during the preceding 150 years, Russia was willing to exploit Armenians for her own purposes but unprepared to make sacrifices on their behalf.
Armenian embitterment and chagrin at the disaster which intemperate and irrational nationalism brought on the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire have perished through three generations. Violence against Turkish officials in the 1920s proved to be a less characteristic reaction than the publicity campaigns and lobbying which long prevented resumption of U.S.-Turkish relations, though the U.S. had never actually declared war on the Ottoman Empire. […] They are many reasons to suspect that the campaign [of terrorism, after 1973] is a part of the massive effort to destabilize Turkey and destroy democracy there to which the Soviet Union devoted major resources during the 1970s — and which may still not have been entirely abandoned.
Armenian communities in many parts of the world — notably in France and the U.S. — have been remarkably equivocal about (if not openly supportive of) such terrorism. The terrorists are remembered in Armenian Church services and large sums are collected in Armenian communities for their defense when they are put on trial. The climate of this astonishing advocacy of violence is maintained by an emotionalized version of Armenian history which is propagated in the ethnic press, taught in cultural programs and pressed on school authorities for inclusion in curricula. Even in the 1970s it has been hard to find a more extreme version of what one American historian called ‘creedal passion’, which provokes populations to irresponsible behavior. Armenian-origin intellectuals and journalists have become viciously intolerant of non-Armenian-origin colleagues who do not accept their biases and who venture to question Armenian statistics or try to examine Armenian, Ottoman and relevant Russian historical records according to recognized standards of objectivity and respect of methodology.
One is driven to wonder, for example, whether an essentially honest example of scholarship such as Louise Nalbandian’s Armenian Revolutionary Movement, which originally appeared [in 1963] would even be published by a scholar of Armenian origin today.” Pp. 201-202
***
(To be continued)
