Re: “In appeal, lawyer asserts genocide teaching skewed”, By Jonathan Saltzman, Globe Staff / March 3, 2010,
To: Jonathan Saltzman, Globe Staff, jsaltzman@globe.com .
Dear Mr. Saltzman,
Please take a good look at the photos here: www.ethocide.com . Do these people look like “poor, starving Armenians” to you?
Do they, in your honest opinion, substantiate, in any way, shape, or form, that “unarmed, non-combatant, helpless Armenian cut down by the Turk” myth?
You’ve been duped!
We all have been duped by the Armenian falsifiers and Turk-haters (AFATH).
WHO WOULD INSIST ON TEACHING ONLY ONE SIDE OF A CONTROVERSY?
These photos of Armenian revolutionaries, armed-to-the-teeth, and their Turkish victims, censored in Boston and went untold for a hundred years, their suffering unacknowledged and un-commemorated, and un-grieved, explain why Turkish Americans strenuously object the racist and dishonest teachings forced on the education system by Armenian extremists of Massachusetts.
First, let us all agree that it is a controversy. After all, if the debate still continues after a hundred years, what would you call it?
Next, let us all agree that an issue is controversial because there are those who disagree with one side’s claims and produce their own facts, figures, and arguments. After all, if all agree on a given issue, would there be “the other side of the story”? And if there is no dispute, would there be controversy?
Now that we all agree, without taking sides, that the Turkish-Armenian conflict is controversial, then the question begs to be asked is: “Why on earth would anyone want to teach our children only one side of it?
Would you agree if only one side (the side that you oppose) of a controversy–like abortion, gun control, Iraq war, Afghanistan war, financial meltdown, poorly performing economy, health care, gay marriage, stimulus package, social security, unemployment, any one of million other issues–is forced down the throats of your children at school?
That is where we are with this issue. The arrogant Armenian lobby mobilized the Armenian community in 1998 to force the legislature to force the education department to teach our children Armenian version of history only, based on distortions, hearsay, forgeries, hate and vengeance.
When the responsible opposing views were also included, as they should in any civilized society, the Armenian intolerance and politicians’ weaknesses weighed in again to censor the other side of the story. This is nothing less than a frontal attack on free speech by Armenian hate groups.
The question is, will you stomach it?
A FRONTAL ATTACK ON FREE SPEECH BY ARMENIAN HATE GROUPS
Selection of obviously biased contents, clearly provocative symbols, incredibly misrepresented people, locations, dates, causalities, all converging in a dishonest and racist version of history by Armenian pressure is hardly the civilized way of teaching history to our children. Schools are not meant for propaganda waged by the loudest or dominant political groups. That would change this country to Nazi Germany, Soviet Union, or Taliban’s Afghanistan. This is America where we, the people, can courageously take sides in controversies, freely present our opinion, and teach our children universal facts in a non-partisan, non-sectarian ways . Our freedom of speech is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, not to be stumped every time Armenian extremists make a racist demand.
Most of the true scholars, researchers, and historians publicly rejected on 19 May 1985, in New York Times & Washington Post, the Armenian characterization of WWI events as genocide, instead called it “…inter communal warfare fought by Christian and Muslim irregulars…”. The signatories included world renown names like Prof. Bernard Lewis of Princeton, Prof. Stanford Shaw of UCLA, Prof. Justin McCarthy of Louisville, and many others.
In fact, so many of the true scholars were refuting the Armenian claims that the Armenian lobby was forced to create new avenues to buy credibility: genocide scholars. These are mostly retired professionals, psychiatrists, lecturers on US Government, English teachers, writers, authors, and others, all posing as authorities in history although most are not even historians, and all organized through the Armenian lobby, financed in part by the Cafesjian Foundation and organized by the notoriously anti-Turkish Zoryan Institute (like Taner Akcam of formerly U. of Minnesota, now Clark U.)
EVEN THE U.S. CONGRESS’ OWN RECORDS REFUTE ARMENIAN CLAIMS
Even the U.S. Congress’ own records from those times and dates clearly corroborate the Turkish position on the conflict—though perhaps in an unintended way:
a- “American Military Mission to Armenia” (General Harbord) Report 1920 and the Annex Report Nat. Archives 184.021/175 –which does not mention any “race extermination” but, on the contrary, refers to “…refinements of cruelty by Armenians to Muslims…”
b- Joint U.S. CONGRESS RESOLUTION NO. 192, APRIL 22, 1922 relative to the activities of Near East Relief ending 31 December 1921 which has unanimously resolved that a total of 1,414,000 Armenians were alive (which makes killing of 1.5 million Armenians an impossibility, since the total Armenian population was around 1.5 million at the time.)
c- George Montgomery, a member of the U.S. delegation at the Paris Conference, had presented a detailed tabulation in 1919, showing a total of 1,104,000 Armenians alive, apart from those who had already immigrated to other countries.
NUMBERS DON’T LIE, ARMENIANS LOBBYISTS DO
29 March 1919 report to the Paris Peace Conference by the subcommittee on atrocities, chaired by the U.S. secretary of State Lansing, lists Armenian losses as “…more than 200,000…” Even this number is exaggerated as they got their information from the Armenian church, not exactly an impartial source.
After meticulous research through the archives, the Turkish Historical Society documented the deaths of 54,000 Armenians using Ottoman police reports filed on site, of which number only about 8,400 are reported as victims of massacres. The paragraphs a, b, and c jointly clearly point to the THS number being closer to reality.
Who, then may have jacked this number of Armenian casualties from the original 54,000 first to 200,000 in 29 March 1919 (Paris Peace Conference;) then to 600,000 in May 1919 (in a poster created by Armenians soliciting money in U.S. churches;) and finally to the current 1.5 million?
Take a guess!
ARMENIAN FALSIFIACTIONS CONTINUE
Armenians did not suffer alone, millions of Turks, Azeris, Kurds, Jews, Circassians, Persians also lost their lives during the same period from similar causes, including massacres by Armenian rebel bands. Take a look at the photos of Armenian revolutionaries, armed-to-the-teeth, here: www.ethocide.com . Do they look like the “poor, starving, unarmed, helpless Armenians” myth promoted deceptively and incessantly?
The mound said to contain Armenian skulls was that Vereshagin painting of 1871 protesting the brutalities of the Prussian war, still hanging in a museum in Moscow today, with which the Armenians duped the world into thinking that those were the skulls of Armenians killed by Turks. When the Armenian lies were finally exposed by Prof. Turkkaya Ataov in 1983, no apology was issued by the Armenian lobbies.
Same falsification with the alleged Hitler quote: it is also a shameless hoax. Even the most cursory search in the internet will readily reveal many sources showing Princeton historian Heath Lowry’s extensive work exposing the Armenian falsifications.
That the frequently used infamous Hitler quote is a hoax is beyond suspicion. It suffices to read a few lines from the article “Historian of Armenian Descent Says Frequently Used Hitler Quote Is Nothing But a Forgery”, that appeared in The Armenian Reporter Vol. XVII, NO. 40, on August 2, 1984, where an Armenian historian advises his fellow Armenians not to use this fake quote again. “…Dr. Robert John, a historian of Armenian heritage from New York City stated, according the news article, that a commonly used quotation of an alleged statement by Adolf Hitler about the Armenian massacres was a forgery and should, therefore, not be used…” The complete article available at :
Many other such fabrications, meticulously documented in recent a book by Ataov, are the reasons why we would be careful, if we were Massachusetts educators or Supreme Court judges, not to take any Armenian claims, let alone who lies in the alleged mass grave, at face value. (Would you buy a used car from someone who claims a bogus genocide with fabricated evidence?)
OTTOMAN TOLERANCE AND THE “MILLET SYSTEM”
It is a matter of historical record that the Ottomans had established one of the most tolerant administrations in history, with its “millet” system where the faith-based groups were organized in self-ruling, autonomous “millets”. When the Jews of Iberia were persecuted during the 1492 Spanish inquisitions and were told to convert to Catholicism, or leave, or get killed, no country in Europe would offer sanctuary to Jews for fear of retaliation by Catholic Rome. No country, except the Ottoman Empire, that is. Since than many other persecuted peoples have freely come to the Ottoman lands and prospered there in the centuries since.
Turkey continued this fine tradition when German Jews in 1930, secular Iranians in 1980s, Iraqi Kurds in 1990s, and many others have also been saved. Armenians’ passionately deliberate misrepresentations, embrace of intimidation, harassment, and even terrorism directed at dissenters, and willingness to teach their children hate for all things Turkish speak volumes about the Armenian psyche and character, don’t they?
Then there the forced comparison between the court-proven (Nuremberg, 1945) uniquely Jewish tragedy of Holocaust versus the long discredited, political, and unsubstantiated claim of genocide. Deportation is a misnomer, because the treasonous elements were moved from one part of the country to another temporarily, until the end of the war, hence the term TERESET, temporary resettlement. Therefore, mentioning the factual Jewish Holocaust in the same breath with the bogus Armenian genocide is an insult to the silent memory of six million Jews who were killed just for being Jews. Jews did not take up arms against their own government. They did not demand German territories to establish a Jewish state on them. They did not terrorize the German countryside. They did not kill their German neighbors to the tune of 524,000 German victims. They did not join the invading enemy armies during WWII. Armenian, on the other hand, committed all of those heinous crimes during WWI and got away with them. Judging by the Armenians’ ethocidal treatment of the conflict to this day, the Armenians are still getting away with murder.
CURRENT ARMENIAN MATERIAL TEACHES OUR CHILDREN HOW TO HATE
Current material fails to remind the impressionable students that Armenians actually resorted to a very bloody, very massive revolt in April 1915; killed more than 40,000 Muslims in cold blood; wrestled the city out of the Ottoman government forces , and turned it over to the invading enemy armies (Russians.) That was the equivalent of 9/11 for the Ottoman Empire. Why is it acceptable for the U.S. to cross the oceans to start a global war on terrorists in Afghanistan in 21st Century but not acceptable for the Ottoman Empire to move its terrorists from one corner of its land to another in the 20th Century?
And the 24 April 1915, billed by the Armenian falsifiers as the start of a genocide is actually the equivalent of Guantanamo for the Ottoman Empire when known Armenian terrorists and their suspected accomplices were arrested and incarcerated for questioning. If it is good for the goose now, it should be good for the gander, shouldn’t it? Please, no more blatant double standards.
Loaded terms like “death march”, “concentration camps” and claims like the Nazis learned from Turks, included in Armenian teachings, are more recent inventions and after thoughts by the Armenian lobby, not unlike the genocide scholars, genocide curriculums, genocide lectures at Holocaust museums and Jewish synagogues. All new, all cunning steps in a master propaganda scheme, all designed to establish “credibility by association”, all funded by the Armenian lobby.
Morgenthau, the career diplomat , historian, writer, quoted in the documentary, was actually none of those. He was a real estate agent and a developer from upstate new York who raised the most funds for Wilson in 1912 presidential campaign and was rewarded for his services by an ambassadorial post. He was a rabid anti-Turks and a Muslim hater. His book, published in 1918, was actually ghost –written by a Pulitzer Prize winner for him. Morgenthau never left Istanbul (except once for Jerusalem) but never set foot in Anatolia from where he reported. He could speak none of the languages of the era and area (Turkish, Persian, Arabic, Ottoman) so he relied on the translations and reports of his two male Armenian secretaries, Schmavonian and Andonian, hardly impartial sources of information.
Morgenthau simply relayed the embellished and exaggerated reports filed by Armenian revolutionaries, American missionaries and other biased parties who could not care less about Muslims’ suffering, either directly or through American consuls in the area. As any fair-minded, honest, truth-seeker can easily see, the deck was shuffled with a pro-Armenians and anti-Turkish bias from the start.
Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink’s assassination of 2007 is also mentioned in Armenian teachings, but not surprisingly, no word about the thousands of Turks who took to the streets condemning it. No mention, either, of the murder of Turkish Consul General Kemal Arikan in 1982 in Los Angeles or the fact that Armenians took to the streets to “celebrate it”! This is important, because both men were the same age when assassinated under similar circumstances by brain-washed youths, both married, and both had kids, both victimized by a similar hate crime. Yet, the Armenian victim (Dink) is glorified while Turkish victim is forgotten, dismissed, or ignored. Also ignored are more than 70 victims of Armenian terrorism and hate crimes since 1973. What is even more incredible that four of those victims were murdered in cold blood on American soil! No word on any of this in Armenian version of history, because most Armenians seem to think that Turks, being of the wrong ethnicity and religion, are certainly expendable sub-humans who deserve death.
BIAS & BIGOTRY IN THE TERM “ARMENIAN GENOCIDE”
If one cherishes values like fairness, objectivity, truth, and honesty, then one should really use the term “Turkish-Armenian conflict”. Asking one “Do you accept or deny Armenian Genocide” shows anti-Turkish bias. The question should be re-phrased “What is your stand on the Turkish-Armenian conflict?”
Turks believe it was an inter communal warfare mostly fought by Turkish and Armenian irregulars, a civil war which is engineered, provoked, and waged by the Armenian revolutionaries, with active support from Russia, England, France, and others, all eyeing the vast territories of the collapsing Ottoman Empire, against a backdrop of a raging world war.
Armenians, on the other hand, totally ignoring Armenian agitation, raids, rebellions, treason, territorial demands, and Turkish victims killed by Armenians, unfairly claim that it was a one way genocide.
GENOCIDE ALLEGATIONS IGNORE “THE SIX T’S OF THE TURKISH-ARMENIAN CONFLICT”
While some in unsuspecting public may be forgiven for taking the blatant and ceaseless Armenian propaganda at face value and believing Armenian falsifications merely because they are repeated so often, it is difficult and painful for someone like me, the son of Turkish survivors on both maternal and paternal sides.
Those seemingly endless “War years” of 1912-1922 brought wide-spread death and destruction on to all Ottoman citizens. No Turkish family was left touched, mine included. Those nameless, faceless Turkish victims are killed for a second time today with politically motivated and baseless charges of Armenian genocide.
ALLEGATIONS OF ARMENIAN GENOCIDE ARE RACIST AND DISHONEST HISTORY
They are racist because they ignore the Turkish dead: about 3 million during WWI; more than half a million of them at the hands of Armenian nationalists. And the allegations of Armenian genocide are dishonest because they simply dismiss the six T’s of the Turkish-Armenian conflict:
THE SIX T’S OF THE TURKISH-ARMENIAN CONFLICT:
1) TUMULT (as in numerous Armenian armed uprisings between 1877 and 1920)
2) TERRORISM (by well-armed Armenian nationalists and militias victimizing Ottoman-Muslims between 1882-1920)
3) TREASON (Armenians joining the invading enemy armies as early as 1914 and lasting until 1921)
4) TERRITORIAL DEMANDS (where Armenians were a minority, not a majority, attempting to establish Greater Armenia, the would-be first apartheid of the 20th Century with a Christian minority ruling over a Muslim majority )
5) TURKISH SUFFERING AND LOSSES (i.e. those caused by the Armenian nationalists: 524,000 Muslims, mostly Turks, met their tragic end at the hands of Armenian revolutionaries during WWI, per Turkish Historical Society. This figure is not to be confused with about 2.5 million Muslim dead who lost their lives due to non-Armenian causes during WWI. Grand total: more than 3 million, according to Prof. Justin McCarthy.)
6) TERESET (temporary resettlement) triggered by the first five T’s above and amply documented as such; not to be equated to the Armenian misrepresentations as genocide.)
VERDICT WITHOUT DUE PROCESS AMOUNTS TO LYNCHING
Those who take the Armenian “allegations” of genocide at face value seem to also ignore the following:
1- Genocide is a legal, technical term precisely defined by the U.N. 1948 convention (Like all proper laws, it is not retroactive to 1915.)
2- Genocide verdict can only be given by a “competent court” after “due process” where both sides are properly represented and evidence mutually cross examined.
3- For a genocide verdict, the accusers must prove “intent” at a competent court and after due process. This could never be done by the Armenians whose evidence mostly fall into five major categories: hearsay, mis-representations, exaggerations, forgeries, and “other”.
4- Such a “competent court” was never convened in the case of Turkish-Armenian conflict and a genocide verdict does not exist (save a Kangaroo court in occupied Istanbul in 1920 where partisanship, vendettas, and revenge motives left no room for due process.)
5- Genocide claim is political, not historical or factual. It reflects bias against Turks. Therefore, the term genocide must be used with the qualifier “alleged”, for scholarly objectivity and truth.
HISTORY IS A MATTER OF SCHOLARSHIP, NOT CONVICTION, CONSENSUS, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS
History is not a matter of “conviction, consensus, political resolutions, political correctness, or propaganda.” History is a matter of research, peer review, thoughtful debate, and honest scholarship. Even historians, by definition, cannot decide on a genocide verdict, which is reserved for a “competent court” with its legal expertise and due process.
POLITICAL LYNCHING OF THE TURKS BY ARMENIANS TODAY
What we witness today amounts to lynching of the Turks by Armenians to satisfy the age old Armenian hate, bias, and bigotry. Values like fairness, presumption of innocence until proven guilty, objectivity, balance, honesty, and freedom of speech are stumped under the fanatic Armenian feet. Unprovoked , unjustified, and unfair defamation of Turkey, one of America’s closest allies in the troubled Middle East, in order to appease some nagging Armenian activists runs counter to American interests.
Those who claim genocide verdict today, based on the much discredited Armenian evidence, are actually engaging in “conviction and execution without due process”. Last time I looked in the dictionary, that was the definition of “lynching”.
Isn’t it time to stop fighting the First World War and give peace a chance?