Tag: Sari Gelin

  • MANY SCHOLARS CHALLENGE THE ALLEGATIONS OF GENOCIDE:  PART IV

    MANY SCHOLARS CHALLENGE THE ALLEGATIONS OF GENOCIDE: PART IV

    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 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:
    ***

    ANDREW MANGO

    Researcher, author and historian, University of London. PhD in Persian Literature, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).
    Mango is the brother of the distinguished Oxford historian and Byzantinist Professor Cyril Mango. Mango lived in Istanbul in his early years and worked as the press office of the British Embassy in Ankara until 1947. He moved to the United Kingdom in 1947 and has lived in London ever since. He holds degrees from London University, including a doctorate on Persian literature. He joined BBC’s Turkish section while still a student and spent his entire career in the External Services, rising to be Turkish Programme Organiser and then Head of the South European Service. He retired in 1986.
    Major Publications
    * Turkey and the War on Terrorism (2005)
    * The Turks Today (2004)
    * Atatürk: The Biography of the Founder of Modern Turkey (2000)
    * Turkey: The Challenge of a New Role (1994), Discovering Turkey (1971)

    Relevant Publications
    * The Turks Today (2004)
    * Atatürk: The Biography of the Founder of Modern Turkey (2000)
    Source: Atatürk: The Biography of the Founder of Modern Turkey

    “The decision to deport the Armenians had been taken by the CUP government in Istanbul in April 1915, when Mustafa Kemal was busy defending the Gallipoli peninsula. The Armenians were drawn to the Russians as fellow-Christians and likely protectors. Armenians from Russian Transcaucasia fought in the Russian Army, where they were joined among their kinsmen in Turkey. There were also Armenian risings behind Ottoman lines. The CUP leadership, shaken by the defeat at Sarikamis and fearing disaster in the Dardanelles, exaggerated the extent of Armenian subversion. In any case, Armenians were deported not only from the war zone, but also from the rest of Anatolia and even Thrace, with the exception of communities in Istanbul and Izmir.” P. 161

    Source: The Turks Today

    “The Armenians found it hard to reconcile themselves to the loss of their historic home, even though they had been a minority there. After the Second World War, nationalists in the Armenian diaspora demanded that Turkey should recognize the elimination of their people from Anatolia as an act of genocide. To bring their demand to the attention of the world, violent Armenian nationalists launched a campaign of assassination against Turkish diplomats. It failed in its purpose, and Armenian nationalists concentrated their efforts on securing from various national parliaments resolutions recognizing the genocide of their people (…) As for the genocide campaign, Turkey holds that claims and counter-claims should be examined by historians and not by politicians. In any case, Turks and other Muslims have also been expelled from lands where they used to live and have been killed in hundreds of thousands.” Pp. 22-23

    Source: Sari Gelin: The True Story

    “The objective of the Armenian allegations is political. This is clear and they have more than one aim. One aim is to keep the Armenian nation which is spread all over the world together. The genocide allegations have become elementary, fundamental to the Armenian identity. The second aim is to make the faults of the Armenian nationalist be forgotten. Whatever happened to the Armenians was the result of miscalculations of their nationalist leaders.”
    Source: Speech given on March 15, 2001, meeting of the Society for the Promotion of Democratic Principles in Istanbul.

    “Their prosperity grew until, by the middle of the 19th century, they became one of the richest communities of the Ottoman Empire, prominent not only in trade and professions, but also in the service of state…. Armenian nationalism did not become a political force until after the defeat at the hands of the Russians in 1878. Armenian nationalists aimed at creating an Armenian state in an area which had a predominantly Muslim and largely Turkish population.”

    Source: Turkey and the War on Terror: For Forty Years We Fought Alone, London, Routledge, 2005

    “Western press comments explaining the murder of innocent people in terms of an inter-communal conflict that had taken place 70 years earlier sought excuses for what was inexcusable. […]

    ASALA tried to rewrite history with the bomb and the gun, but succeeded only in adding a new bloody chapter to it. Later, Armenian nationalists used Western parliaments in an absurd attempt to rewrite history by legislative process.” P. 13

    ***

    ROBERT MANTRAN

    Robert Mantran (1917-1999), was professor of Turkish studies at Aix-Marseille University (1961-1985), and a member of the Institut de France (elected in 1990).

    Major Publications
    * Istanbul dans la deuxième moitié du XVIIe siècle. Essai d’histoire institutionnelle, économique et sociale, Paris, Maisonneuve, 1962.

    * Istanbul au siècle de Soliman le Magnifique, Paris, Hachette, 1965, 2nd edition, 1990

    * L’Expansion musulmane. VIIe-XIe siècles, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 1969, 2nd edition, 1991.

    * L’Empire ottoman, du XVIe au XVIIIe siècle. Administration, économie, société, London, Variorum, 1984.

    Relevant Publications

    * Histoire de la Turquie, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 1952, new editions 1961, 1968, 1983, 1988, 1993.

    * Histoire de l’Empire ottoman, Paris, Fayard, 1989 (edition).

    * Histoire d’Istanbul, Paris, Fayard, 1996.

    Source: Histoire de la Turquie, 1993

    “On the Eastern front, an expedition leaded by Enver finishes as a serious defeat (December 1914); the Russian offensive which follows is supported by the local Armenian population; during the Winter and the Spring, exactions are committed against the Turkish inhabitants, and an Armenian State is even proclaimed (May 1915); because the threat of extension of the Armenian secession, the Ottoman government orders in May 1915 the evacuation of the Armenian populations from Van, Bitlis, Erzurum to Irak, and from Cilicia and Northern Syria to central Syria. Legal guarantees are given to Armenians about the right to return to their homes, and about their goods, but these guarantees have been not respected by some military; in July 1915, the reconquest of the lost lands by Ottoman Army is accompanied by revenge violence: the evacuation and the regaining control provoked the death of several thousands of Armenians.” Pp. 108-109

    ***

    JUSTIN MCCARTHY

    Professor of History and Demographer, Louisville University. Ph.D. in history, University of California, Los Angeles.
    McCarthy’s areas of expertise include the histories of the Ottoman Empire and the Balkans. McCarthy served in the Peace Corps in Turkey, from 1967-1969. He also taught at the Middle East Technical University and Ankara University during this time. He earned his Ph.D. at University of California, Los Angeles in 1978. He has also received an honorary doctorate from Boğaziçi University. He is currently teaching at the University of Louisville.
    Major & Relevant Publications
    * The Armenian Rebellion at Van (2006)
    * Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922 (1996)
    * The Ottoman Peoples and the End of Empire (2001)
    * Muslims and Minorities: The Population of Ottoman Anatolia and the End of the Empire (1983)
    * The Armenian Uprising and The Ottomans,” Review of Armenian Studies, Volume: 2, No. 7-8 (2005), p. 50-73.
    * The Population of Ottoman Armenians, in Türkkaya Ataöv (ed.), The Armenians in Late Ottoman Period, Ankara, TBMM/TTK, 2001; reprinted in Justin McCarthy, Population History of the Middle East and the Balkans, Istanbul, The Isis Press, 2002, pp. 279-296.
    Source: Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922

    “Not coincidentally, the Armenian revolt in the eastern Anatolia began as soon as the Russians realized that the Ottoman Empire would go to war. Before Russia declared war on 2 November 1914, Armenian guerillas had already begun to organize into guerilla bands. In preparation for revolt, Armenian revolutionaries had stored vast stockpiles of weapons, largely provided or paid for by the Russian government. These were kept primarily in Armenian villages and were obviously well-hidden from Ottoman authorities, an indication of the lack of Ottoman control in the region before the war… With weapons stored for the expected revolution, Ottoman citizen Armenians began to arm themselves and organize on both sides of the border. Bands were formed in the Kars-Ardahan-Artvin border regions (which had been taken from the Ottomans in 1878) and in Van, Erzurum, and Bitlis vilayets. P. 185

    “At first, Ottoman military units, mail deliveries, gendarmerie posts, and recruiting units were attacked in Mus, Sitak, Susehri, Zeytun, Aleppo, Dortyol, and many other areas… Between five hundred and six hundred Armenian rebels occupied the Tekye Monastery and fought a bloody, day-long pitched battle with Ottoman troops and gendarmes, escaping from Ottoman troops at night… In Diyarbaki Vilayeti, a combination of Armenian villagers and Armenian deserters formed bands and attacked Muslim villages and Ottoman troops. Unprotected Muslim villages were assaulted and Muslims massacred, although the murders could not compare to what was later to befall the Muslims of the east. – P. 186

    “Armenian plans to take eastern cities were brought into force once the war began. For the sake of understanding the chronology of massacre and counter massacre in the region, it should be understood that these and other revolutionary activities took place well before any orders for deportation of Armenians were given.” P. 187

    “The Ottoman response to the Armenian Revolution was approximately the same as that taken by other twentieth-century governments faced with guerilla war: isolate the guerillas from local support by removing local supporters. The Ottomans knew that Armenian rebels were freely supported by Armenian villagers as well as by Armenians in the eastern cities that were home to leaders of their revolution. They, therefore, decided on a radical action: forced migration of the Armenian population in actual or potential war zones. The first orders to that effect went out on 26 May 1915…

    “The intentions of Istanbul were clear – to move and resettle Armenians peacefully. The only verifiable Ottoman documents on the subject indicate at least a formal concern for the Armenian migrants. Elaborate procedures were written in Istanbul and forwarded to the provinces. These covered the sale of refugee goods, the settling of refugees in economic positions similar to those they had left, instructions on health and sanitation, and the like. In short, all looked fine on paper. Articles 1 and 3 of the Resettlement Regulations show where problems arose: Article 1. Arrangements for transportation of those to be transferred is the responsibility of local administrations. Article 3. Protection of lives and properties of Armenians to be transferred en route to their new settlements, their board and lodging and their rest is the responsibility of local administrations en route. Civil servants in all echelons are responsible for any negligence in this regard. Pp. 193-94

    The greatest threat and cause to mortality to Armenians came from the nomadic tribes who raided Armenian convoys. The few gendarmes detailed to the convoys, for example, could not protect them from armed attacks by Kurds. While the tribes did not usually engage in mass slaughter of Armenian migrants, they did kill large numbers of them and abducted their women. They probably caused the greatest mortality by stealing what the Armenians needed to subsist. Despite the regulations, little food was provided to the migrants, who were expected to feed themselves. But the tribes took their sustenance, and starvation was the result. P. 195

    Source: Symposium, Marmara University, Istanbul, 2005

    “The Blue Book written by Viscount Bryce and Arnold Toynbee has been used as proof that Armenians and the victims of the Jewish Holocaust suffered the same fate in history. This book has been said to be a product of British intelligence designed to promote and promulgate lies during World War I. Britain had set up the war propaganda bureau at Wellington House for the sole purpose of promoting lies and misinformation on Germany and the Ottoman Empire. The British were in full co-operation with American missionaries in Anatolia and the American Embassy in Istanbul conjured a so-called Armenian genocide based on gossip, hear-say and erroneous information. The real purpose behind this exercise was to create and strengthen an image in the minds of British military officers that the Turk were evil, horrible and untrustworthy”.

    Source:The Armenian Rebellion at Van

    “The Armenians of Van had revolted against the Ottoman government putting their trust in the Russians, who betrayed them. They and the Russians had driven the Muslims from the province. The Armenians in turn had been driven out. Theirs was the final exodus. Surviving Muslims returned. Neither side, however, can truly be said to have won the war. More than half of Van’s Armenians had died, as had almost two-thirds of its Muslims.” P. 2

    Source: Anatolia 1915: Turks Died, Too . . . See Appendix 6 . . . Anatolia 1915: Turks Died, Too . . . , Published in the Boston Globe, April 25, 1998

    “During World War 1, Anatolia, the Asiatic section of modern Turkey, was the scene of horrible acts of inhumanity between Armenians and Turks. For many decades, the history of the conflict between the Turks and the Armenians has primarily been written from the viewpoint of the Armenians. It is a viewpoint that emphasizes the deaths of Armenians but completely ignores the deaths of Turks.
    The Armenian position has been effectively publicized. Every year in Congress, a group of representatives attempts to pass a bill that says the Turks were guilty of genocide. Newspapers feature articles on events in Turkey in 1915 as if they were today’s news. Over the weekend, the Public Broadcasting System carried the historical visions of Armenian producers all across the country. Unfortunately, effective publicity does not ensure accurate history. What has been presented as truth is, in fact, only one side of a complicated history that began more than 100 years before World War 1.”

    Source: Armenian-Turkish Conflict, Speech given by Dr. Justin McCarthy at the Turkish Grand National Assembly, March 24, 2005
    “The forced exile of the Muslims continued until the first days of World War I: 300,000 Crimean Tatars, 1.2 million Circassians and Abkhazians, 40,000 Laz, 70,000 Turks. The Russians invaded Anatolia in the war of 1877-78, and once again many Armenians joined the Russian side. They served as scouts and spies. Armenians became the “police” in occupied territories, persecuting the Turkish population. The peace treaty of 1878 gave much of Northeastern Anatolia back to the Ottomans”.

    Source: The Population of Ottoman Armenians”, in Türkkaya Ataöv (ed.), The Armenians in Late Ottoman Period, Ankara, TBMM/TTK, 2001; reprinted in Justin McCarthy, Population History of the Middle East and the Balkans, Istanbul, The Isis Press, 2002, pp. 279-296.

    “It is commonly believed that the Armenians of Ottoman Anatolia were nearly all deported to the Arab provinces, and that high Armenian mortality was a result of the deportation. This was not the case. Because some deportees who were sent to Syria and Iraq moved to Egypt and Europe during and after the wars and some returned to Anatolia, it is impossible to estimate the number of the deportees with absolute accuracy.
    It can be seen, however, that the largest group of Armenian refugees were those who fled to the Southern Caucasus. These were not deported to Syria or Iraq. They fled north in three waves: The Russian army invaded eastern Anatolia in May of 1915, relieving the Armenians of Van, who had seized the city from the Ottomans. When the Russian army was temporarily forced to retreat from Anatolia, the Armenians of the region the Russian had conquered accompanied them. The Russians returned in 1916, conquering most of eastern Anatolia, and many Armenians returned to their homes. In 1918, the Ottomans advanced, and Armenians departed for the Southern Caucasus once again. Many of these returned after the Ottoman surrendered to the Allies in October of 1918, but they left once again when Turkish Republican forces retook the region in 1920. The 400,000 refugees in the USSR in Table five were survivors of a much larger group. Contemporary accounts indicate that the refugees starved to death in great numbers, even being forced to resort to cannibalism. Well in excess of 500,000 must have gone north.
    In addition, many, perhaps most, of the Armenians who went to Europe and the Americas were never deported. Those who fled to Iran were likewise not deported. It can thus be seen that most Anatolian Armenians were not deported, although their fate as refugees was misery and death. More Armenians were forced migrants from the eastern Anatolia war were deported, and they unquestionably suffered highly mortality. Muslims joined in their suffering. When the Russians and Armenians advanced it was the turn of the Muslims to flee. More than a million Muslims were forced migrants.” P. 289

    “There were 1,465 million Armenians in Ottoman Anatolia in 1912, before the war began. […] At war’s end, 881,000 remained alive, a loss of 584,000 or 41%. […] To put the Armenian loss into perspective, it should be noted that the Muslims of the war zone suffered equally horrific loss: The Muslim population of the Van Province decreased by 62%, that of Bitlis by 42%, that of Erzurum by 31%. Not coincidentally, these were the provinces of greatest conflict between Ottoman and Russian armies and between Muslim and Armenian civilians.” P. 290

    “The massive mortality in Anatolia was the product of total war in which no quarter was ginve, as well as years in which no crops were harvested and disease ravaged population already ravaged by hunger. All shared starvation and disease; each side killed the other mercilessly. It is no wonder that death tolls were so high. Those who elevate the mortality of one group or ignore the mortality of another mistake the lesson of the times, which is not of persecutors and the oppressed, but of general inhumanity.” P. 291

    “Before the Armenians could be turned into rebels their traditional loyalty to their Church and their Community leaders had to be destroyed. The rebels realized that Armenians felt the most love and respect for their Church, not for the revolution. The Dashnak Party therefore resolved to take effective control of the Church. Most clergymen, however, did not support the atheistic Dashnaks. The Church could only be taken over through violence.

    What happened to Armenian clergymen who opposed the Dashnaks? Priests were killed in villages and cities. Their crime? They were loyal Ottoman subjects. The Armenian bishop of Van, Boghos, was murdered by the revolutionaries in his cathedral on Christmas Eve. His crime? He was a loyal Ottoman subject. The Dashnaks attempted to kill the Armenian Patriarch in Istanbul, Malachia Ormanian. His crime? He opposed the revolutionaries. Arsen, the priest in charge of the important Akhtamar Church in Van, the religious center of the Armenians in the Ottoman East, was murdered by Ishkhan, one of the leaders of Van’s Dashnaks. His crime? He opposed the Dashnaks. But there was an additional reason to kill him: The Dashnaks wanted to take over the Armenian education system that was based in Akhtamar. After Father Arsen was killed, the Dashnak Aram Manukian, a man without known religious belief, became head of the Armenian schools. He closed down religious education and began revolutionary education. So-called “religious teachers” spread throughout Van Province, teaching revolution, not religion.

    The loyalty of the rebels was to the revolution. Not even their church was safe from their attacks.

    The other group that most threatened the power of the rebels was the Armenian merchant class. As a group they favored the government. They wanted peace and order, so that they could do business. They were the traditional secular leaders of the Armenian Community; the rebels wanted to lead the Community themselves, so the merchants had to be silenced. Those who most publicly supported their government, such as Bedros Kapamaciyan, the Mayor of Van, and Armarak, the kaymakam of Gevas, were assassinated, as were numerous Armenian policemen, at least one Armenian Chief of Police, and Armenian advisors to the Government. Only a very brave Armenian would take the side of the Government.

    The Dashnaks looked on the merchants as a source of money. The merchants would never donate to the revolution willingly. They had to be forced to do so. The first reported case of extortion from merchants came in Erzurum in 1895, soon after the Dashnak Party became active in the Ottoman domains. The campaign began in earnest in 1901. In that year the extortion of funds through threats and assassination became the official policy of the Dashnak Party. The campaign was carried out in Russia and the Balkans, as well as in the Ottoman Empire. One prominent Armenian merchant, Isahag Zhamharian, refused to pay and reported the Dashnaks to the police. He was assassinated in the courtyard of an Armenian church. Others who did not pay were also killed. The rest of the merchants then paid.
    From 1902 to 1904 the main extortion campaign brought in the equivalent, in today’s money, of more than eight million dollars. And this was only the amount collected by the central Dashnak committee in a short period, almost all from outside the Ottoman Empire. It does not include the amounts extorted from 1895 to 1914 in many areas of the Ottoman Empire.”

    “A historian first discovers what actually happened, then tries to explain the reasons. An ideologue forgets the process of discovery. He assumes that what he believes is correct, then constructs a theory to explain it. The work of Dr. Taner Akçam is an example of this. He first accepts completely the beliefs of the Armenian nationalists. He then constructs an elaborate sociological theory, claiming that genocide was the result of Turkish history and the Turkish character. This sort of analysis is like a house built on a foundation of sand. The house looks good, but the first strong wind knocks it down.
    In this case, the strong wind that destroys the theory is the force of the truth.” “The plan of the Armenian Nationalists has not changed in more than 100 years. It is to create an Armenia in Eastern Anatolia and the Southern Caucasus, regardless of the wishes of the people who live there. The Armenian Nationalists have made their plan quite clear. First, the Turkish Republic is to state that there was an ‘Armenian Genocide’ and to apologize for it. Second, the Turks are to pay reparations. Third, an Armenian state is to be created. The Nationalists are very specific on the borders of this state. The map you see is based on the program of the Dashnak Party and the Armenian Republic. It shows what the Armenian Nationalists claim. The map also shows the population of the areas claimed in Turkey and the number of Armenians in the world. If the Armenians were to be given what they claim, and if every Armenian in the world were to come to Eastern Anatolia, their numbers would still be only half of the number of those Turkish citizens who live there now. Of course, the Armenians of California, Massachusetts, and France would never come in great numbers to Eastern Anatolia. The population of the new ‘Armenia’ would be less than one-fourth Armenian at best. Could such a state long exist? Yes, it could exist, but only if the Turks were expelled. That was the policy of the Armenian Nationalists in 1915. It would be their policy tomorrow.”

    ***

    MICHAEL E. MEEKER

    Anthropologist, Professor Emeritus, University of Washington, Ph.D. University of Chicago.
    Major Publications
    * A Nation of Empire: The Ottoman Legacy of Turkish Modernity (2002)
    Source: Meeker, “A Nation of Empire”: The Ottoman Legacy of Turkish Modernity” (2002)

    “The Germans and Ottomans had been at war with the British, French, Italians, and Russians for a little more than a year. A great Ottoman victory, credited to Mustafa Kemal, had recently been achieved at Gallipoli. But all kinds of disasters were looming in the eastern provinces of Erzurum, Van, and Trabzon. Already, the imperial government had begun to deport the Armenian minority into the Syrian Desert, where many would die without provisions or shelter. Very soon, the Muslim majority would also suffer massive casualties and extraordinary hardship as a consequence of Russian offensives followed by Ottoman counteroffensives” P. 287

    ***

    HIKMET OZDEMIR

    Research professor at the Turkish History Council in Ankara, Turkey.

    Relevant Publications
    * The Ottoman Army 1914-1918 Disease & Death on the Battlefield (May 2008)
    Source : The Ottoman Army 1914-1918 Disease & Death on the Battlefield (May 2008)

    “In 1915, during the first year of the war, the number of Ottoman Armenians subjected to deportation due to security reasons was 500,000 whereas the Russian Armenians who took advantage of the Russian invasion of East Anatolia forced 1 million Muslims to flee from Caucasus and East Anatolia to safer areas in central Anatolia.”
    P.125

    “In the spring of 1915, the Ottoman government used its constitutional powers and decided on the relocation of some of its Armenian subjects to Syria.” “Deaths” occurring in 1915 started after the “victims” were sent into exile, many of whom lost their lives from starvation and disease.” P.136

    “Another nuance that needs to be taken into account is the fact that a considerable portion of the Armenians subjected to deportation by the Ottoman government during the Great War consisted of individuals who had joined foreign armies as “volunteers”, in particular the Russian Army. In addition, a large number of Ottoman Armenians are found to have migrated to other countries and become citizens of those countries.” P.137

    ***

    STEPHEN POPE

    Stephen Pope is a former Oxford modern-history scholar who has authored four well-received reference books dealing with history.

    Major Publications
    * The Dictionary of the First World War, St. Martin’s Press, 1996
    * The Dictionary of the Second World War, Pen and Sword, 2004
    * The Green Book, London, Hodder and Stoughton Ltd, 1991.

    Relevant Publication
    * Dictionary of the First World War,Pope, S. and Wheal, E. A. (2003). Barnsley; S. Yorkshire: Pen & Sword Books
    Source: Dictionary of the First World War,Pope, S. and Wheal, E. A. (2003). Barnsley; S. Yorkshire: Pen & Sword Books.

    “Armenian Massacres: Allied term describing the Turkish government’s wartime deportations of Armenians from their homelands in the northeast of the Ottoman Empire. Neutral estimates suggest that between 1 and 1.5 million Armenians were living in Turkey in 1914, with perhaps another million inside Russia. Unlike other large racial minorities within the Empire, including their traditional Kurd enemies, Ottoman Armenians had no officially recognized homeland, but most were scattered near the Russian Caucasian frontiers.

    Despite these drawbacks a militant Armenian nationalist movement had blossomed since the turn of the century, armed and encouraged by the Russians, and several minor coups were repressed by the Young Turk government before 1914. Denied the right to a national congress in October 1914, moderate Armenian politicians fled to Bulgaria, but extreme nationalists crossed the border to form a rebel division with Russian equipment. It invaded in December and slaughtered an estimated 120,000 non-Armenians while the Turkish Army was preoccupied with mobilization and the Caucasian Front offensive towards Sarikamish.

    The Turks began disarming Armenian civilians under Ottoman control after a force of 2,500 rebels took Van in April 1915 and proclaimed a provisional government. An Ottoman order in June required all civilian non-Muslims to take up support duties near the battlefronts, but exemptions spared Greeks and the Catholic Armenian business community in Constantinople, effectively restricting the order to Orthodox and Protestant Armenians, who were subject to a military enforcement operation until late 1916.

    Deportees were often given only hours to prepare, and left without transport or protection on long journeys to infertile, ill-supplied resettlement regions. Many died from starvation or exposure; many more were killed en route by hostile tribesmen (usually Kurds), some of whom colluded with Ottoman officials in search of a ‘final solution’ to the Armenian question.

    Released through Armenian contacts with the Western press, especially strong in the United States, news of the catastrophe prompted the Turkish regime – which never openly associated itself with excesses against Armenians – to blame general supply and transport shortages for an estimated 300,000 deaths. Allied propaganda claimed more than a million had died, but modern consensus puts the figure at around 600,000.

    An uneasy peace was imposed on frontier Armenians by the occupying Russian Army from 1916, but rebel forces resumed control in late 1917, killing perhaps another 50,000 non-Armenians. Subsequent attempts to restore Turkish administration caused sporadic fighting in early 1918, until the Treaty of Batum (26 May 1918) between an exhausted Turkey and a new Armenian Republic brought a period of recovery. Thousands more civilians then died attempting long journeys back to their liberated homes.” P. 34

    ***

    MICHAEL RADU

    Senior Fellow and Co-Chairman Center on Terrorism, Counter-Terrorism, and Homeland Security, Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) Ph.D. in international relations from Columbia University.

    Dr. Michael Radu is FPRI Senior Fellow and Co-Chairman of its Center on Terrorism, Counter-Terrorism, and Homeland Security. He joined FPRI in 1983, and has since studied terrorist and insurgent groups worldwide. Various agencies of the U.S. and other governments have called upon his expertise, and news media around the world regularly use him as an expert source, including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Newsweek, and Associated Press.

    Major Publications
    * Dangerous Neighborhood: Contemporary Issues in Turkey’s Foreign Relations (2002)
    * Dilemmas of Democracy and Dictatorship: Place, Time and Ideology in Global Perspective (2006)

    * Europe’s Ghost: Tolerance, Jihadism and Their Consequences (forthcoming)

    Relevant Publications
    * Dangerous Neighborhood: Contemporary Issues in Turkey’s Foreign Relations (2002)
    * The Dangers of the Armenian Genocide Resolution, 2007, FPRI E-notes. See A Copy as . . . Appendix 7 . . . The Dangers of the Armenian Genocide Resolution . . .
    *Source: The Dangers of the Armenian Genocide Resolution, 2007

    “Central to the issue is the definition of events during World War I in the Ottoman Empire. A few key facts are clear. One is that many hundreds of thousands (over a million, according to the Armenian lobby) Armenians in Eastern Anatolia died at that time, of exhaustion and famine as well as killed by Kurdish villagers and Ottoman soldiers. It is also a fact that the Armenian community and its leadership in Anatolia at the time took arms against the Ottomans, in open alliance with the latter’s traditional enemy, Russia. Invading Russian troops and Armenian irregulars, whose occupation of the city of Van was the immediate cause of the deportation of Armenians, also engaged in indiscriminate violence, albeit on a smaller scale, against the mostly Kurdish population of the area; and all that during a war in which the very fate of the Ottoman Empire was being decided.

    Whether the Ottoman authorities were guilty of “genocide” in a legal sense is doubtful, since the term itself did not exist in international law until after World War II; in a moral sense, doubts could also be raised, since if “genocide” means intentional destruction of a specific group because of its nationality, religion, race, etc., the survival of the Armenian community of Istanbul, outside the conflict area, is hard to explain. But leaving all this aside, there is one reality that cannot be ignored. That is that whatever happened in 1915 happened under the Ottoman Empire, not under the Turkish Republic, established in 1923. Thus contemporary Turkey is no more responsible for the events of 1915 than Russia is for Stalin’s annexation of the Baltic states or the Federal Republic of Germany for the pre-1914 colonial abuses of the Wilhelmine Empire.”

    ***

    JEREMY SALT

    Visiting Associate Professor in Middle Eastern History and Politics, Bilkent University
    Ph.D., Middle Eastern History, Melbourne University, 1980. Middle Eastern Studies.
    Relevant Publications
    * Imperialism, Evangelism and the Ottoman Armenians, 1878-1896, Routledge Press, 1993
    * The Unmaking of the Middle East: A History of Western Disorder in Arab Lands, University of California Press, 2008.
    Source: The Unmaking of the Middle East: A History of Western Disorder in Arab Lands, University of California Press, 2008.

    “In 1909, agitated by “greatly exaggerated” stories of the activities of Armenian revolutionaries, Muslims turned on Armenians living in and around Adana. Perhaps eighteen thousand Armenians and two thousand Muslims died in this rekindling of the hatred and fanaticism that had torn the eastern provinces apart in 1894-96.” P. 50

    “Over almost a century the long Ottoman peace had been ruptured by ethno-religious nationalist uprisings, often backed by outside powers and often ending in war. In the two decades before 1914, Greece and the Ottoman state had gone to war over Crete (1897-98), where Muslims and Christians had massacred each other; in 1894-96 the Armenians were the chief victims of a complete breakdown of order across the eastern provinces of the empire and in Istanbul itself as the volatile “Armenian question” finally burst into flames; finally, in 1912-13, the attack on the Ottoman state by the four Christian Balkan states injected further toxins into the relationship between Christians and Muslims, just ahead of a great war in which battlefield defeats, uprisings, and the suspicion of disloyalty would lead to the dislocation of millions of people. Many were Muslims, fleeing or driven out of conquered territory, or in some cases moved away from the war zone (along with Jews) by the government for their own safety; a large number were Christians (Greeks and Armenians) “relocated” after acts of treachery and sabotage behind the lines.

    The overriding aim of most Christian civilians was probably to keep out of harm’s way, but uprisings and rebellions by a minority threw a pall of suspicion over all. Of the numerous Armenian groups that took up arms against the state, the Tiflis-based Federation of Armenian Revolutionaries (the Dashnaks) was the best organized and most dangerous from an Ottoman point of view. Founded in 1890, the Dashnaks advocated extreme violence (against Armenian “traitors” as well as Turks and Kurds) with the aim of establishing an Armenian state that would stretch from the Caucasus into the eastern Ottoman lands. …

    When the Ottoman Empire entered the war alongside the central powers at the end of October 1914, the Dashnaks and other Armenian political organizations were still operating freely in Istanbul and across the eastern provinces, but armed uprisings from behind the lines made their suppression in 1915 inevitable. Many young Armenians who had been drafted into the military deserted, joining insurgent bands engaged in general acts of sabotage or crossing a porous eastern border to join forces with Caucasian Armenians fighting in the Russian army or in the volunteer units formed alongside it for the specific purpose of “liberating” the “Armenian provinces” of the Ottoman Empire in the name of a common Christianity. Uprising, desertions, and reports of Armenian collusion with the Russians prompted the military command to issue orders in February 1915 that Armenian conscripts should be removed from the ranks of the military and paramilitary forces and formed into labor battalions instead. …

    In the first half of 1915 the Armenian insurrection across the eastern provinces intensified. By April Van, Bitlis, Erzurum and Sivas provinces were sliding into complete chaos, confirmed daily in reports coming in from the military command and provincial authorities of pitched battles, attacks on jandarma (gendarmerie) posts, the ambush of supply convoys and convoys of wounded soldiers, and the cutting of telegraph lines. What was happening could no longer be described as disparate uprisings; it was rather a general rebellion, orchestrated principally by the Dashnaks and encouraged by Russia. The victims included not just soldiers or jandarma or officials but the Muslim and Christian villagers who were the victims of massacre and counter massacre. …

    At this critical juncture, between April 13 and 20, thousands of Armenians inside the walled city of Van rose up against the governor and the small number of regular and irregular forces garrisoned in the city. The extent to which the rebellion was coordinated with the Russians remains an open question, to which the answer must lie buried somewhere in the Russian state archives, but the effect was to weaken the Ottoman campaign in eastern Anatolia and Persia. …

    The weapons in the hands of the rebels, including the latest machine pistols, rifles, bombs and large stocks ammunition, plus the digging of tunnels between houses, were the proof that preparations for conflict had been made over a long period of time and that the uprising was not simply a spontaneous defensive response to Ottoman “repression” (through the murder of two Dashnak leaders as the result of the governor’s “brutal and illegal” policy) or harassment of Armenian women, as claimed by the missionaries. Indeed, the Armenian charge of Ottoman repression and the Ottoman charge of Armenian rebellion (treachery, as the Ottoman government regarded it) were equally true. The government, the Armenian committees, and Muslim and Christian civilians sucked into the conflict as active participants or as innocent victims were now all fully caught up in a Darwinian struggle for the survival of a stricken empire on one hand and the birth of an Armenian state stretching from the Caucasus into eastern Anatolia on the other.” Pp. 58-61

    “Armenian bands consisting of local Armenians and armed Armenian “volunteers” from across the eastern borders were by now moving from one village to the next, slaughtering and destroying. The men of Zeve took up defensive positions to prevent the village from being overrun but after a morning of fighting were overwhelmed. A general massacre followed. Almost all the Muslims –men, women and children- were killed. The only survivors were six women and a boy of eleven who was saved by the intervention of an Armenian friend of his father’s. … No records were kept, but the evidence of survivors indicates that in all the villages attacked by the Armenians “the slaughter was nearly complete”.

    The Ottomans managed to recapture Van in early August before being forced to retreat at the end of the month. Retribution and revenge killings followed, but this time the Armenians were the victims as their Russian protectors retreated. Tens of thousands of Russian and Armenian soldiers and Armenian civilians streaming out of the province in the direction of the Persian border were harassed by Kurdish tribes as they struggled over mountain passes. Thousands were killed. …

    The uprising in Van precipitated a series of decisions taken by the government in Istanbul. The first was put into effect on April 24, when the offices of the Armenian political committees in the capital were closed down, documents were seized, and more than 230 Armenians were arrested. The second decision developed in stages. On May 2, as fighting continued in an around the city of Van, Enver Pasa proposed that “this nest of rebellion be broken up” by “relocating” the Armenian population across the border into the Caucasus (from which large numbers of Muslims had fled or had been driven out) or into other parts of Anatolia. On May 26 the military high command informed the Ministry of the Interior that it had started to remove Armenians from Van, Bitlis and Erzurum and a number of villages and towns in the southeast. They were to be resettled south of Diyarbakir, but only up to the point where they would constitute no more than 10 percent of the local population. The same day Talat Pasa, the minister of the interior, informed the grand vizier of the decision to move the Armenian population from the Van, Bitlis, and Erzurum vilayets (provinces) and from areas in the southeast corner of Anatolia around the cities of Maras, Mersin, Adana, Iskanderun, and Antakya.

    The following day the cabinet adopted a Provisional Law Concerning the Measures to be Taken by the Military Authorities Against Those Who Oppose the Operations of the Government during Wartime. This law, ratified by the parliament when it reconvened on September 15, authorized the military to arrest Armenians suspected of treachery and to move populations. On May 30 the government issued a series of regulations dealing with the practicalities of the “resettlement”. It was to be organized by local authorities; the Armenians could take movable property and animals with them; they were to be protected en route and provided with food and medical care; on arrival they were to be housed in villages built with proper concern for local conditions but at a distance of at least twenty-five kilometers from railway lines, and only up to the point where they constituted no more than 10 percent of the local population.

    It soon provided impossible to move the Armenians in accordance with these instructions. The army had first claim on food, medicine and all means of transport; it is doubtful whether the government would have been organizationally and administratively capable of shifting so many people in any circumstances, let alone at such short notice; and the Armenians would be passing through regions where Kurdish tribes and other ethno-religious groups badly affected by the war would not hesitate to take surrogate revenge for the crimes committed against Muslims. On the grounds of military necessity, however, a directive had come from the military command that the bulk of the Armenian population had to be moved. What could not be done had to be done. The outcome was calamitous. In the coming months hundreds of thousands of Armenian men, women and children were wrenched from their homes, from the Black Sea region and the western provinces as well as the eastern, and moved southwards toward Syria. Thousands died before they reached their destination, dropping dead by the roadside, succumbing to starvation, exposure and disease (typhoid and dysentery being two of the chief killers), or massacred in attacks on their convoys; the desperate scenes in and around the transit camps, of starving and dying people, of filth and stench, were described by American, German and Austrian officials.

    The survivors of the relocation reached the Arab provinces in a state of complete distress. They were resettled in various parts of Syria. Large numbers were moved to camps set up near Ras al Ain, to the northeast of Aleppo, or along the Euphrates River valley to the southeast. The famine that killed hundreds of thousands of Syrians during the war was at its height when they arrived. By the summer of 1916, between fifty-five thousand and sixty thousand people were said (by a German consul and an American oil company employee distributing relief) to have been buried around the camp at Meskene after being “carried off by hunger, by privations of all sorts, by intestinal diseases and typhus which is the result”. Thousands more were massacred. How many it is not possible to say with any precision: even if the estimates of foreign aid workers, consuls, missionaries, survivors, and local people were not blown up for propaganda purposes, they are not reliable enough for historians to be able to arrive at anything like firm figures. Many were reported killed by Circassians or Kurdish jandarma at the Ras al Ain camp, in the desert northeast of Aleppo, in the spring of 1916. A German missionary visiting the region the following year thought the motive was greed.

    In 1916 a large number of Armenians who were being moved onward to Mosul from Deir al Zor because they had reached the 10 percent limit of the local population set by the central government died from heat and exposure or were murdered near the River Khabur. Survivors said the killers were Kurdish jandarma, Circassians, Chechens, and Arabs. Whether the local governor was complicit in these killings or whether the Circassians and Chechens living along the Khabur River, who had a reputation for religious intolerance and no doubt had bitter memories of Christian mistreatment of Muslims in the Caucasus, had acted “on their initiative” is something that has never been resolved. …

    More than one hundred thousand other Armenians were moved southwards through central Syria to Damascus and points farther south in the Hawran region. Many settled in the towns. Some (even at Meskene) found work as agricultural laborers or artisans or with the railway. At Raqqa (along the Euphrates) thousands of Armenians were living in houses “which the kindness of the governor has procured for the most poor”, while others squatted in a camp on the opposite bank of the river. Within months the situation had worsened because of lack of food and the outbreak of a typhus epidemic. …

    Of the numbers of Armenians who were moved southwards through central Syria, an estimated 20,000 out of 132,000 still died, but there were no massacres. Overall, it is impossible to separate the numbers of Armenians who were massacred from those who died of other causes, but on the accumulated evidence of foreign consuls and aid workers there is no doubt that the death toll from starvation and disease was enormous. Given that the Armenians were in a much worse situation than the large number of Syrians who were already dying from the famine gripping the entire region, this was inevitable.

    As news reached Istanbul that Armenians were being massacred on the way south, the government ordered the provincial authorities to catch and punish those responsible, “but the fact that these orders were repeated on numerous occasions would seem to indicate that they had little effect on the killing.” On September 28, 1915, continuing reports of attacks on the convoys by Kurdish tribesmen, along with shortages of medicine and food and transport problems, compelled Talat Pasa to seek a full government inquiry. The following day the Council of Ministers set up a special investigative council, involving the Ministries of the Interior, Justice and War, which it directed to work together in investigating the crimes that had been committed. The Finance Ministry was ordered to fund their work. Hearings were held across the eastern provinces, followed by court-martials, at which more than one thousand civilian officials or military personnel were found guilty “of organizing or failing to prevent the attacks” on the Armenians or of stealing their property. Muslims were also put on trial for crimes against Muslims. The sentences included imprisonment and some executions.

    Estimates of the numbers of Armenians who were “relocated” between May 1915 and February 1916 range from just under half a million (the figure counted from Ottoman archival statistics) to just over seven hundred thousand. Estimates of the number who died during the entire war (not just in 1915-16) that were made when it was over, even by sources hostile to the Turks and the Ottoman government, ranged from six hundred thousand to eight hundred thousand. In recent decades, Armenian writers have based their arguments on figures of one million or 1.5 million dead. The differences in estimates illustrate a general problem with statistics dating back to the late nineteenth century, when the number of Armenians who lived in the Ottoman Empire (or who died there) were often exaggerated for political purposes. Muslims were undercounted for the same reason. Only the Ottoman government actually counted the population, but even its figures stand in need of adjustment. Justin McCarthy, a specialist in Ottoman demographics, has put the Armenian population of the whole empire in 1912 at 1,698,301 of which number 1,465,000 lived in Anatolia. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians survived the war. Herbert Hoover’s estimate of 450,000 to 500,000 Armenians fleeing from “Turkish Armenia” into “Russian Armenia” is consistent with other figures. Many settled in Syria, and others managed to leave the region altogether, emigrating to the United States and many other countries. Taking all of these factors into account, McCarthy has arrived at a total wartime Ottoman Armenian death toll from all causes of 584,000 or 41 percent of the Ottoman Armenian population. If the Armenian patriarchate population estimate of about two million is to be accepted over the official census figures, the number of dead would be increased by about 250,000, on McCarthy’s calculations, bringing the total Ottoman Armenian death toll from all causes for the entire war to a maximum of slightly more than 800,000. It will be noted that these figures are in line with the estimates made at the end of the war. Other computations put the number of Armenian dead at no more than 300,000, but the fluctuations remain enormous, even between historians who share the same basic point of view about what happened.

    … Captain C. L. Wooley, a British officer traveling through “Kurdistan” after the war, was told by tribal leaders that four hundred thousand Kurds had been massacred by Armenians in the Van-Bitlis region alone. Two volumes of recently published Ottoman documents –mostly the reports of refugees, police, jandarma, and provincial officials- covering the period from 1914 to 1921 indicate that this Kurdish estimate of Kurdish dead through massacre by the Russians and/or their Armenian protégées is probably fairly accurate. Counted on a village-by-village or town-by-town basis, with the names of the killers often being given, the number of Muslims who were massacred across the region is put at 518,105. Hundreds of thousands of others died from the same starvation, disease and exposure that were killing the Armenians. The killing of civilians began well before the “relocation” was ordered and clearly had a powerful influence on the decisions that were taken by the government in Istanbul. In November 1914, Armenian bands operating in the Saray and Baskale regions near the Persian border raped, slaughtered and plundered and in at least one village drove the villagers into a mosque and burnt them alive. This individual episode is fully consistent with the documentary evidence of atrocities committed by Armenians over a period of years and recorded in gruesome detail in the documents coming out of the Ottoman archives. Even allowing for the possibility of lies or exaggeration, the evidence is both consistent and overwhelming. There is too much of it, coming from too many places over too long a period of time, to be credibly denied. …

    The suffering of the Muslims was “special” in its own terrible way: there certainly was a holocaust in the eastern Ottoman lands, but it devoured Muslim Kurds and Turks just as greedily and cruelly as Christian Armenians.

    The Muslims suffered tremendous loss of life (the Muslim population of Van province fell by 62 percent, of Bitlis by 42 percent, and Erzurum by 31 percent) but could survive the ravages of war because they were an overwhelming majority (more than 80 percent of overall) in the territory that the Armenian national committees wanted to incorporate into an independent Armenian state. The Ottoman Armenians were a small minority and could not survive losses of such magnitude. The wartime suffering of the Muslims in this region, against the historical background of Russian expulsion of Muslims from the Caucasus since early in the nineteenth century, suggests that had Russia stayed in the war their future would have been bleak in the extreme. The entire region and its civilian population were devastated by the big war and the secondary ethno-religious conflicts fought out across the length and breadth of eastern Anatolia, from the Black Sea down to the Mediterranean, spilling over into northwest Persia and the Caucasus across to Baku and continuing for years after 1918. …

    The withdrawal of Russia from the war and the renunciation by the Bolsheviks of all territorial claims abruptly ended Armenian hopes for a state that would include the eastern lands of the Ottoman Empire. The Dashnak gamble on a Tsarist victory had failed. The withdrawal of Russian troops and the return of the Ottomans precipitated the flight of thousands of Armenians into the Caucasus, where fighting between Turks and Armenians was to continue for two more years. By the end of the war the ancient Armenian presence in eastern Ottoman lands had virtually come to an end.

    The numbers of Armenians who died during and after the relocation, the causes of death, the identity of those who killed them (bandit gangs, tribal Kurds or Circassian refugees out for revenge, and the jandarma or soldiers who were supposed to be protecting them) or plundered the convoys as they moved south into Syria and Mosul, the culpability of senior officials, the role of the special operations force known as Teskilat-i Mahsusa, and the intentions of the Ottoman government remain subjects of acrimonious debate to this day. A few months before the end of the war, and his flight to Berlin, where in 1921 he was assassinated by a young Armenian, Talat admitted to a friend that the relocation had turned into a complete disaster. Given that he remains at the center of continuing accusations by Armenian historians and propagandists and those who support their case that the Ottoman government met at some point in 1915 and decided not just to relocate the Armenians but to wipe them out, his voice should perhaps be given a posthumous hearing:

    … At a time when our armies were in a life or death struggle with enemies who were vastly superior in both numbers and equipment the Armenians, who were our fellow countrymen, had armed themselves and revolted all over the country and were cooperating with the enemy for the purpose of striking us in the rear. What other choice was there but to remove this race away from the war zones? There was absolutely no other solution. This was not at all an easy task. For that reason, therefore, while this policy was being carried out, some instances of bad management and evil deeds took place. But one cannot blame members of the government like myself for such instances which took place in far away provinces and of which we had no knowledge.” Pp. 62-69

    ***

    STANFORD SHAW

    Professor Emeritus of History, UCLA.

    Professor Stanford Shaw was one of the most prolific Ottoman historians in the world. He received his B.A. at Stanford in 1951 and M.A. in 1952. He then studied Middle Eastern history along with Arabic, Turkish and Persian as a graduate student at Princeton University starting in 1952, receiving his M.A. in 1955. He received his Ph.D. degree in 1958 from Princeton University with a dissertation entitled The Financial and Administrative Organization and Development of Ottoman Egypt, 1517-1798. Stanford Shaw served as Assistant and Associate Professor of Turkish Language and History, with tenure, in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and in the Department of History at Harvard University from 1958 until 1968, and as Professor of Turkish history at the University of California Los Angeles, where he was founding editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Middle East Studies. After retiring from UCLA, he taught for nearly a decade at Bilkent University in Ankara.

    Major Publications
    * The Financial and Administrative Organization & Development of Ottoman Egypt, 1517-1798 (Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J., 1962)
    * Ottoman Egypt in the Age of the French Revolution (Harvard University Press, 1964)
    * The Budget of Ottoman Egypt, 1005/06-1596/97 (Mouton and Co. The Hague, 1968)
    * Between Old and New: The Ottoman Empire under Sultan Selim III. 1789-1807 (Harvard University Press, 1971)
    * Ottoman Egypt in the Eighteenth Century (Harvard University Press)
    * History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turk (2 volumes, Cambridge University Press, 1976-1977 with Ezel Kural Shaw)
    * The Jews of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic (Macmillan, London, and New York University Press, 1991)
    * Turkey and the Holocaust:Turkey’s role in rescuing Turkish and European Jewry from Nazi persecution, 1933-1945 (Macmillan, London and New York University Press, 1993)

    Relevant Publications
    * History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey (2 volumes, Cambridge University Press, 1976-1977) (with Ezel Kural Shaw)
    * From Empire to Republic: The Turkish War of National Liberation 1918-1923:
    A Documentary Study (I – V vols. in 6 books, TTK/Turkish Historical Society, Ankara, 2000
    Source: Shaw, S.J. and Shaw, E.K. (1977). History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey. Vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    “Frustrated in their hopes of dominating Southeastern Europe through a Bulgarian satellite, the Russians sought an alternative instrument to chisel at the Ottoman Empire and turned to one of the minorities that had not sought to revolt against the sultan, the Armenians. There had been no difficulty with the Armenians previously because they had been integrated fully into traditional Ottoman society, with their own Gregorian millet maintaining religious and cultural autonomy under the Armenian patriarch of Istanbul.

    The international crisis that culminated at the Congress of Berlin contributed to changes in outlook within the Armenian millet. The achievement of independence by Bulgaria and Serbia stimulated many Armenians to hope for the same. The Russian invasion of eastern Anatolia in 1877 was spearheaded by Armenian officers and administrators who had risen in the czar’s service since his absorption of the Caucasus earlier in the century. They contacted many of their brothers in the Ottoman Empire to secure their help against the sultan. The mass of Ottoman Armenians remained loyal subjects, but the deeds of the few who did not left a feeling of mistrust. This was magnified by Patriarch Nerses’ efforts at San Stefano and Berlin to gain European support for an Armenian state in the east as well as subsequent Russian efforts to develop Armenian nationalism as a means of undermining the Ottoman state. The Armenians as well as the Ottomans thus became pawns in the struggles for power in Europe.

    With Russian encouragement, most Armenian nationalists emphasized political goals. When the European powers did not pay attention to their demands for autonomy or even independence, they turned from persuasion to terrorism in order to achieve their ends. Armenian revolutionary societies sprang up within the sultan’s dominions, particularly at Istanbul, Trabzon, Erzurum and Van, among wealthy Armenians in the Russian Empire, and also in the major cities of Europe, publishing periodicals and broadsides and sending them into Ottoman territory through the foreign post offices.

    The Armenian nationalists became increasingly violent, using terror to force wealthy Armenians to support their cause and to stimulate Muslims to the kind of reprisals that would force the governments of Britain and Russia to intervene. They strove to undermine the sultan’s faith in his Armenian officials by forcing the latter to support the national cause. The revolutionary nationalists formed their own terror bands in the east, attacking Ottoman tax collectors, postmen and judges, massacring entire villages, and forcing the Armenian peasants and merchants to hide and feed them on pain of death. But on the whole, their numbers were too small, the mass of Armenians too disinterested, and Abdulhamit’s provincial police too efficient for them to make much headway. The Muslims were kept from responding in kind, though the sporadic Armenian raids increasingly poisoned the atmosphere and made it more and more difficult for Armenians and Muslims to live side by side as they had for generations.

    With the failure of the Armenian revolutionaries inside the Ottoman Empire, the stage was left to those outside. … Their (Hunchak and Dashnaks) programs involved the creation of action groups to enter Ottoman territory, terrorize government officials and Armenians alike, and stimulate massacres. This would bring about foreign intervention and help the nationalists secure an independent, socialist Armenian republic, presumably in the six east Anatolian provinces from which all Muslims would be driven out or simply killed.

    Revolutionary literature was sent into the empire, again through the foreign postal systems; bombs were exploded in public places; officials were murdered at their desks, and postmen along their routes. Within a short time, despite all the efforts of the government to keep order, the Hunchaks had what they wanted, reprisals from Muslim tribesman and villagers.

    It should be recalled that Armenian terrorism came just when millions of Muslim refugees were flowing into the empire from Russia, Bulgaria and Bosnia Terrorism and counterterrorism went on for three years (1890-1893), with the government acting sternly, albeit sometimes harshly, to keep order. …

    The winter of 1895-1896 witnessed large scale suffering throughout Anatolia as general security broke down, but little could be done until the army was brought in during the spring. In Istanbul, the Armenian terrorists, still hoping to force foreign intervention, struck again. On August 26, 1896, a group of Armenians took over the main Ottoman Bank in Beyoglu. … Soon after, a second group forced its way into the Sublime Porte, wounding several officials and threatening the Grand Vezir with a pistol. … Another bomb was thrown at the sultan as he was going to the Aya Sofya mosque for the Friday prayer, with more than 20 policemen guarding him being killed. … To reduce the tension and prevent further clashes the sultan soon afterward decreed a general amnesty and began to appoint Christian administrators in the east, even though the Christians were minorities in most of the districts involved. …

    With the provocations soon forgotten, relations between Muslims and Armenians in the empire for the most part returned to normal. … By 1897, then, the Armenian Question was exhausted and lay dormant until World War I. It is interesting to note, however, that during these last years the Armenians of the empire actually increased in population and as the empire lost territory in the Balkans, they became a larger percentage of the total population.” Pp. 200-205

    “The Entente propaganda mills and Armenian nationalists claimed that over a million Armenians were massacred during the war. But this was based on the assumption that the prewar Armenian population numbered about 2.5 million. The total number of Armenians in the empire before the war in fact came to at most 1,300,000 according to the Ottoman census. About half of these were resident in the affected areas, but, with the city dwellers allowed to remain, the number actually transported came to no more than 400,000, including some terrorists and agitators from the cities rounded up soon after the war began. In addition, approximately one-half million Armenians subsequently fled into the Caucasus and elsewhere during the remainder of the war. Since about 100,000 Armenians lived in the empire afterward, and about 150,000 to 200,000 immigrated to western Europe and the United States, one can assume that about 200,000 perished as a result not only of the transportation but also of the same conditions famine, disease and war action that carried away some 2 million Muslims at the same time.

    Careful examination of the secret records of the Ottoman cabinet at the time reveals no evidence that any of the CUP leaders, or anyone else in the central government, ordered massacres. To the contrary, orders were to the provincial forces to prevent all kinds of raids and communal disturbances that might cause loss of life. …

    Those who died thus did so mainly while accompanying the retreating Russian army into the Caucasus, not as the result of direct Ottoman efforts to kill them.” Pp. 315-317

    “The Ottomans were unable to react more actively to the Arab revolt or the expected British push from Egypt because they were diverted by a Russian campaign into eastern Anatolia. … The worst massacre of the war followed as over a million Muslim peasants and tribesmen were forced to flee, with thousands being cut down as they tried to follow the retreating Ottoman army toward Erzincan…

    Armenians throughout the world also were organizing and sending volunteer battalions to join the effort to cleanse eastern Anatolia of Turks so that an independent Armenian state could be established.” Pp. 322-323

    “Following the revolution a truce was signed between the (Transcaucasian) Republic and the Ottoman Empire at Erzincan (December 18, 1917) but the Armenian national units began a general massacre of the remaining Turkish cultivators in the southern Caucasus and eastern Anatolia, leaving over 600,000 refugees out of a former population of 2,297,705 Turks in the provinces of Erzurum, Erzincan, Trabzon, Van and Bitlis before the war.

    With the truce clearly violated, Enver responded with a general offensive. … On February 14 Kazım took Erzincan, forcing the thousands of Armenian refugees who had gathered there to follow their army back into the Caucasus. … When the Armenians at Erzurum refused to surrender, he took it by storm (March 12), thus breaking the Armenian hold in the north and forcing those concentrated at Van in the south to retreat without further resistance.

    Peace negotiations with the Transcaucasian Republic began at Trabzon. … The Armenians pressured the Republic to refuse, however, so that hostilities resumed and the Ottoman troops overran new lands to the east as the Russians retired. Thousands of Armenians who had retired behind the battle lines expecting a victory which would enable them to settle in new homes in eastern Anatolia now were forced to flee into Armenia proper. Erivan became so crowded that “anarchy, famine and epidemic” were the result.” Pp. 325-326
    “Although Armenian and Greek exiles and their supporters tried to instill anti-Muslim sentiments and national aspirations into the political life of the countries where they settled – particularly in the United States, France and Britain – Turkey effectively countered their claims by pointing out that what massacres had occurred in the past were the result of minority terrorism and not of government policy and that in any case the Republic could no more be held responsible for the actions of the sultans than could the commissars of the Soviet Union for the repressive policies of the czars.” P.430

    ***

    NORMAN STONE

    Professor of Modern History and the Director of the Center for Russian Studies, Bilkent University.

    Following his First Class Honours degree in History from Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge University, Norman Stone undertook extensive research in Austrian archives while living in Austria and Hungary (1962-1965). He was offered a research fellowship by Gonville and Caius College where he later became an Assistant Lecturer (1967) and Lecturer (1973) in the Faculty of History, specializing in Russian history. In 1984 he was appointed Professor of Modern History at Oxford University. Norman Stone joined Bilkent University in 1995 and currently teaches the history of Central-Eastern Europe. He wrote a regular column for the Sunday Times between 1987 and 1992, and made extensive contributions to the media as a book reviewer and a BBC commentator on current affairs in Europe and Russia. During the same period he served as Margaret Thatcher’s foreign policy advisor on Europe. Trustee of the Margaret Thatcher Foundation (1992 to present) and member of several professional societies, Professor Stone is currently working on a book about the Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe.

    Major Publications
    * The Eastern Front, 1914-1917 (Charles Scribner, 1975)
    * Europe Transformed, 1878-1919 (Harvard University Press, 1983 – awarded the Fontana History of Europe Prize)
    * Czechoslovakia: Crossroads and Crises, 1918-88 (Palgrave Macmillan, 1989)
    * Hitler, the Final Report (Harper Collins, 1995)
    * World War One: A Short History (Penguin Books, 2007)

    Relevant Publications
    * Statement Concerning the ‘ADL Statement on the Armenian Genocide’
    Source: Stone, N. (2007). What has this genocide to do with Congress? The Spectator, London.

    “The latest row concerns the adoption of a resolution by the House of Representatives branding the Armenian massacres of 1915 as genocide. What on earth causes Congress to bring up this subject now, almost a century down the line, and relating to an Ottoman empire that has long ceased to exist? And why on earth should these public bodies lecture historians as to what they should be saying? One basic cause seems to be simple enough: money.

    Ever since 1878 the Armenians had become more and more restive and the nationalists started to make the running — even murdering prominent Armenians who dissented and who said (as did the Patriarch in 1890) that it would all end in disaster. In the spring of 1915, just as the Russian army (with an Armenian division in tow) came over the border, there was a revolt, encouraged by the Russians and the Armenians who lived under the Tsar.

    Many prominent Armenians in Turkey also encouraged or organised rebellions because, with the British about to land at Gallipoli and the French training an Armenian legion on Cyprus, they expected the Turks to collapse. In the eastern city of Van the Muslim quarter was smashed, and many inhabitants were killed. The Ottoman government then decreed that Armenians — with many exceptions — should be deported out of areas where they could damage the defences, or sabotage the telegraph lines and railways. The deportees were sent to northern Syria, but on the way they were sometimes attacked by wild tribes, in some cases with the connivance of officials.

    In 1916 — and this surely tells against ‘genocide’ — the Ottomans tried 1,300 of these men and even executed a governor. About half a million Armenians arrived in the south-east and a very great number then died of the disease and starvation that were so prevalent at the time. Muslims also died in droves. In addition, the figure given for overall losses by the Armenian representative at the Paris peace treaties was 700,000 — not 1.5 million as has been widely claimed.

    Genocide? First of all, much depends on your definition. If we take the classic version, then there are serious difficulties. The British occupied Istanbul for four years and had a run of the archives. The law officers could not find evidence to convict the hundred or so Turks whom they had arrested.”

    ***

    HEW STRACHAN

    Chichele Professor of the History of War, University of Oxford.

    Professor Hew Strachan is a Scottish military historian, well known for his work on the administration of the British Army and the history of the First World War. He was educated at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge with a B.A., 1971 and M.A. 1975. Professor Strachan is Chichele Professor of the History of War at All Souls, Oxford University. He was Professor of Modern History at the University of Glasgow from 1992 to 2000. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Royal Historical Society. He was appointed a deputy lieutenant of Tweeddale in 2006. He is a member of the Academic Advisory Panel of the Royal Air Force Centre for Air Power Studies.

    Major Publications
    * European Armies And The Conduct Of War (London, 1983)
    * Wellington’s legacy: The reform of the British Army 1830-54 (Manchester, 1984)
    * From Waterloo to Balaclava: Tactics, technology and the British Army (Cambridge, 1985)
    * The Politics of the British Army (Oxford, 1997)
    * The Oxford Illustrated History of the First World War (Oxford, 1998)
    * The First World War: Volume 1: To Arms (Oxford, 2001)
    * The First World War: A New Illustrated History (London, 2003)
    * The First World War in Africa (Oxford, 2004)
    * Relevant publications: The Oxford Illustrated History of the First World War (Oxford, 1998)
    * The First World War: Volume 1: To Arms (Oxford, 2001)
    * The First World War: A New Illustrated History (London, 2003)
    Source: The First World War: Hew Strachan (New York, 2004)
    “In 1894-6 Armenian revolutionary activity had culminated in violence which had been bloody and protracted. Moreover, it was a movement which enjoyed Russian patronage. In 1914 both Sazonov, the foreign minister, and the governor-general of the Caucasus sketched out plans to foment revolt. At least 150,000 Armenians who lived on the Russian side of the frontier were serving in the Tsar’s army. Enver persuaded himself that his defeat at Sarikamish had been due to three units of Armenian volunteers, who included men who had deserted from the Ottoman side. The Ottoman 3rd Army knew of the Russian intentions and anticipated problems as early as September. Its soldiers began murdering Armenians and plundering their villages in the first winter of the war. On 16 April 1915, as the Russians approached Lake Van, the region’s Ottoman administrator ordered the execution of five Armenian leaders. The Armenians in Van rose in rebellion, allegedly in self-defence. Within ten days about 600 leading members of the Armenian community had been rounded up and deported to Asia Minor.
    …The best that could be said of the Armenians’ loyalty to the Ottoman Empire were characterized by attentisme, and the possibility of a rising in the Turkish rear was one which the Russians were ready to exploit. Significantly, the first note of international protest was prepared by Sazonov as early as 27 April, although it was not published until 24 May. In it he claimed that the populations of over a hundred villages had been massacred. He also said that the killings had been concerted by agents of the Ottoman government.
    This became the crux. On 25 May 1915, Mehmed Talat, the minister of the interior, announced that Armenians living near the war zones would be deported to Syria and Mosul. His justifications for the decree were rooted in the needs of civil order and military necessity, and it was sanctioned by the Ottoman council of ministers on 30 May. The latter included provisions designed to safeguard the lives and property of those deported. But three days earlier the council had told all senior army commanders that, if they encountered armed resistance from the local population or ‘opposition to orders…designed for the defence of the state or the protection of public order’, they had ‘the authorisation and obligation to repress it immediately and to crush without mercy every attack and all resistance’.
    It is impossible to say precisely how many Armenians died. Part of the problem is uncertainty as to how many were living in the Ottoman Empire in 1915 in the first place. Calculations range from 1.3 million to about 2.1 million. The difficulty of dispassionate analysis is compounded, rather than helped, by the readiness of Armenians and others to use the word ‘genocide’. In terms of scale of loss such a word may be appropriate: estimates approaching a million deaths are probably not wide of the mark. In terms of causation the issue is more complex. The initial violence was not centrally orchestrated, although it was indirectly sanctioned by the pan-Turkish flourishes of Enver and others. Once it had begun, it did, however, provoke the very insurrection that it had anticipated. The violence of war against the enemy without enabled, and was even seen to justify, extreme measures against the enemy within.
    By this stage –late May 1915- the Turkish leadership was ready to give shape to the whole, to Turkify Anatolia and to finish with the Armenian problem. It defies probability to suppose that those on the spot did not take the instructions from the council of ministers as carte blanche for rape and murder. The hit squads of the Teskilat-i Mahsusa set the pace. This was most certainly not a judicial process, and it did not attempt to distinguish the innocent from the guilty or the combatant from the non-combatant. The American consul in Erzurum, Leslie Davis, reported from Kharput, the principal transit point, in July that ‘The Turks have already chosen the most pretty from among the children and young girls. They will serve as slaves, if they do not serve ends that are more vile’. He was struck by how few men he could see, and concluded that they had been killed on the road. Many thousands of Armenians also succumbed to famine and disease. Mortality among the 200,000 to 300,000 who fled to the comparative safety of Russia rose to perhaps 50 percent, thanks to cholera, dysentery and typhus. The Ottoman Empire, a backward state, unable to supply and transport its own army in the field, was in no state to organize large-scale deportations. The Armenians were put into camps without proper accommodation and adequate food. Syria, whither they were bound, was normally agriculturally self-sufficient, but in 1915 the harvest was poor and insufficient to feed even the Ottoman troops in the area. The situation worsened in the ensuing years of the war, the product of the allied blockade, maladministration, hoarding and speculation. By the end of 1918 mortality in the coastal towns of Lebanon may have reached 500,000.” Pp. 112-114

    ***

    (To be continued)

  • Turks and Azerbaijanis in Washington

    Turks and Azerbaijanis in Washington

     
     
    <
    1/10
    >

     
     

    [ 25 Apr 2009 12:03 ]
    Washington. Zaur Hasanov – APA. Members of Washington-based Turkish and Azerbaijani Diaspora organizations with the help of the local Americans prevented Armenians from rallying outside the Turkish embassy, APA’s US bureau reports.

    Turks began to gather outside the embassy and prevented Armenians from assembling in front of the embassy.

    By 2008, Armenians gathered outside Turkish embassy in the US and commemorated the “victims” of the April 24 “genocide” every year. Beginning from last year, the representatives of Turkish and Azerbaijani Diaspora organizations, as well as Turkish supporters did not allow Armenians to realize their plan.

    APA’s US correspondent reports that the Armenians attempting to approach the embassy from 3 till 7 (Washington time) brought schoolchildren to the area by buses. Despite this, only 100 Armenians could gather.

    Turkish and Azerbaijani activists held posters reflecting the occupation of Nagorno Karabakh, victims of Khojaly genocide and UN resolutions and sang Turkey’s anthem and “Sari Gelin” song.

    At the end of the demonstration, Turkish ambassador to US Nabi Shensoy expressed their gratitude to the participants for their help to expose Armenian lies. Mr. Shensoy especially noted the participation of Azerbaijani activists and spoke about brotherhood between Azerbaijan and Turkey.

  • Taste of Anti-Armenian Policies

    Taste of Anti-Armenian Policies

    By Appo Jabarian

    Executive Publisher / Managing Editor

    USA Armenian Life Magazine

    Friday,  March 6, 2009

    The London Times published on Feb. 28 a news report covering an unprecedented legal and political development in Turkey. Serdar Kaya, a Turkish father, a doctor by profession, is suing the Turkish Education Ministry for forcing his 11-year-old daughter to watch a “racist” and “disturbing” film denying that Ottoman Turks committed genocide against Armenians in 1915 with graphic allegations of Armenian “atrocities against Turks.”

    “My daughter was very disturbed and frightened by the documentary and kept asking me if the Armenians had cut us up,” said Dr. Kaya who is suing the ministry and the child’s school for “inciting racial hatred.”

    “There are many mass graves, bones and skulls in the DVD. They have interviewed old granddads who inspire confidence and compassion. When they say things like ‘They cut off his head’ and ‘they used it instead of firewood’, that is bound to stay with the children,” Serdar Degirmencioglu, a psychologist, told the Armenian newspaper Agos when news first broke that the documentary was being shown to primary school children – including ethnic Armenians in Turkey.

    “You go and kill more than a million Armenians, wipe the traces of Armenians from Anatolia, grab their property, and then show children videos about ‘What the Armenians did to us’ … We are cutting these children off from the rest of the world,” said Ahmet Altan, editor of the independent newspaper Taraf. Altan is one of Turkey’s brightest writers. He has published several novels and essays which brought him fame and independence.

    Back in 2001, speaking of Turkey’s shaky foundation as a state, Altan said to The Middle East magazine that “‘three corporations are betraying their vocation: the journalists, the historians and the men of law’. If they did not behave the way they did, Turkey would be in a different situation. Why the historians? ‘The State is founded on an initial lie: We are told lies on the foundation of the Republic, on Mustafa Kemal, on the Turks, the Kurds, the Armenians. It is forbidden in Turkey to debate on these matters.’ And what about the journalists? ‘They lied too much, and they continue,’ answered Altan. ‘I have been in this job for 27 years, I started from the bottom and climbed to the top. I can say that the Turkish press is coward: it comes out to hide the truth.’ And what about the men of law? ‘The judges and the lawyers should have rebelled and told the people the truth: the Turkish law is full of articles which go against the international law. The Turkish law considers the man as an enemy’ concluded Altan.”

    The Education Ministry alleges that it has stopped the distribution of the documentary, Sari Gelin (Blonde Bride), named after an Armenian folk song. But it has apparently not recalled it and critics say that it remains part of the curriculum.

    This is the same DVD that caused Turkey an embarrassing international defeat and fiasco back in June 2005. An initial insertion of 500,000 of the same Turkish DVD’s in TIME Europe was financed by Ankara Chamber of Commerce. Later, the TIME editors acknowledged that they were duped into thinking that the Turkish DVD was intended to promote tourism in Turkey. But it turned out to be a propaganda ploy to deny the facts of the Armenian Genocide. In February 2007 TIME was compelled to spend the monies received from Turkey to correct its mistakes. TIME Europe apologized to Armenians and paid to duplicate and insert 550,000 DVD’s of “The Armenian Genocide” documentary produced by a French company. TIME affixed these DVD’s on a full-page announcement, all, courtesy of TIME Magazine.

    Do you remember then Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul being shocked to see the TIME DVD on his flight? In March 2007 Harut Sassounian, The Publisher of The California Courier, wrote: “Several Turkish newspapers reported on Feb. 26 (2007) that Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul was shocked when he saw an Armenian Genocide DVD in a copy of the TIME magazine on his plane. Gul and members of his delegation were returning to Turkey on February 11, after spending several days in Washington, D.C., lobbying against the pending Congressional Resolution on the Armenian Genocide. On their Lufthansa Airline flight, they discovered that the TIME magazine issue handed to them included a DVD as well as a full-page announcement on the Armenian Genocide. Gul was reportedly very upset that Armenians were carrying out propaganda activities even on his plane. He said he would conduct an investigation.”

    And now, at last, Ankara is subjected to a far-reaching legal action by an ethnic Turkish father against his own government’s denialist propaganda at home. Turkey’s militarist policy of brainwashing its schoolchildren to the point of racist paranoia has finally backfired on the Turkish “Deep State.”

    After many decades of attempting to force a gag rule on the Armenian Genocide issue in foreign capitals, Turkey is finally getting a taste of its own poisonous anti-Armenian policies.

    **********************************************************************

    —————-  YORUM BY SUKRUNSERVER AYA —————-

    Turkey Gets Taste of its

    Poisonous Anti-Armenian Policies

    By Appo Jabarian

    Executive Publisher / Managing Editor READER’S REPLY COMMENTS!

    USA Armenian Life Magazine

    Friday,  March 6, 2009

    The London Times published on Feb. 28 a news report covering an unprecedented legal and political development in Turkey. Serdar Kaya, a Turkish father, a doctor by profession, is suing the Turkish Education Ministry for forcing his 11-year-old daughter to watch a “racist” and “disturbing” film denying that Ottoman Turks committed genocide against Armenians in 1915 with graphic allegations of Armenian “atrocities against Turks.”

    What kind of explanation or Armenian reaction can you show for the Armenian schools boys girls in the same age dressed in soldier uniforms being taught how to kill Turks?

    https://armenians-1915.blogspot.com/2007/04/1637-media-scanner-readers-letters-to.html Can you give me a reciprocal objection from any Armenian? Can you ?

    “My daughter was very disturbed and frightened by the documentary and kept asking me if the Armenians had cut us up,” said Dr. Kaya who is suing the ministry and the child’s school for “inciting racial hatred.”

    “There are many mass graves, bones and skulls in the DVD. They have interviewed old granddads who inspire confidence and compassion. When they say things like ‘They cut off his head’ and ‘they used it instead of firewood’, that is bound to stay with the children,” Serdar Degirmencioglu, a psychologist, told the Armenian newspaper Agos when news first broke that the documentary was being shown to primary school children – including ethnic Armenians in Turkey.

    “You go and kill more than a million Armenians, wipe the traces of Armenians from Anatolia, grab their property, and then show children videos about ‘What the Armenians did to us’ … We are cutting these children off from the rest of the world,” said Ahmet Altan, editor of the independent newspaper Taraf. Altan is one of Turkey’s brightest writers. He has published several novels and essays which brought him fame and independence.

    Rather than depending on what Messrs. Altan “blow” without reading even Armenian historians, why don’t you elaborate on what your own Armenian historians have written in black and white, on your revolutionary, treason, killings and similar barbarities? Before you address the public, read Akaby Nassibian, A.A. Lalaian, Garekin Pastermadjian, Hovannes Katchaznuni, your memorandum to Paris Conference in 1919, bylaws of ARF etc?

    You can reach my book plus many genuine documents at below link! Or were the old heroes or Armenian book writers also “denialist” or “paid agents” because what they wrote contradicts your claims?

    Back in 2001, speaking of Turkey’s shaky foundation as a state, Altan said to The Middle East magazine that “’three corporations are betraying their vocation: the journalists, the historians and the men of law’. If they did not behave the way they did, Turkey would be in a different situation. Why the historians? ‘The State is founded on an initial lie: We are told lies on the foundation of the Republic, on Mustafa Kemal, on the Turks, the Kurds, the Armenians. It is forbidden in Turkey to debate on these matters.’ And what about the journalists? ‘They lied too much, and they continue,’ answered Altan. ‘I have been in this job for 27 years, I started from the bottom and climbed to the top. I can say that the Turkish press is coward: it comes out to hide the truth.’ And what about the men of law? ‘The judges and the lawyers should have rebelled and told the people the truth: the Turkish law is full of articles which go against the international law. The Turkish law considers the man as an enemy’ concluded Altan.”

    Mr. Altan is a shallow writer or big mouth, abusing the liberty he has been given by attacking his countrymen and, propagating slanders or lies or words that he has “never proved to be scholarly valid and true”.

    The Education Ministry alleges that it has stopped the distribution of the documentary, Sari Gelin (Blonde Bride), named after an Armenian folk song. But it has apparently not recalled it and critics say that it remains part of the curriculum.

    This is the same DVD that caused Turkey an embarrassing international defeat and fiasco back in June 2005. An initial insertion of 500,000 of the same Turkish DVD’s in TIME Europe was financed by Ankara Chamber of Commerce. Later, the TIME editors acknowledged that they were duped into thinking that the Turkish DVD was intended to promote tourism in Turkey. But it turned out to be a propaganda ploy to deny the facts of the Armenian Genocide. In February 2007 TIME was compelled to spend the monies received from Turkey to correct its mistakes. TIME Europe apologized to Armenians and paid to duplicate and insert 550,000 DVD’s of “The Armenian Genocide” documentary produced by a French company. TIME affixed these DVD’s on a full-page announcement, all, courtesy of TIME Magazine.

    And what reciprocal action has ANCA or Diaspora or Armenia has ever exhibited, other than making too many films continuously, based on mythological allegations or grand-ma stories?

    Do you remember then Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul being shocked to see the TIME DVD on his flight? In March 2007 Harut Sassounian, The Publisher of The California Courier, wrote: “Several Turkish newspapers reported on Feb. 26 (2007) that Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul was shocked when he saw an Armenian Genocide DVD in a copy of the TIME magazine on his plane. Gul and members of his delegation were returning to Turkey on February 11, after spending several days in Washington, D.C., lobbying against the pending Congressional Resolution on the Armenian Genocide. On their Lufthansa Airline flight, they discovered that the TIME magazine issue handed to them included a DVD as well as a full-page announcement on the Armenian Genocide. Gul was reportedly very upset that Armenians were carrying out propaganda activities even on his plane. He said he would conduct an investigation.”

    And now, at last, Ankara is subjected to a far-reaching legal action by an ethnic Turkish father against his own government’s denialist propaganda at home. Turkey’s militarist policy of brainwashing its schoolchildren to the point of racist paranoia has finally backfired on the Turkish “Deep State.”

    Why Ankara concerns you so much but you keep silent about the abuses and lack of freedom in Armenia?

    After many decades of attempting to force a gag rule on the Armenian Genocide issue in foreign capitals, Turkey is finally getting a taste of its own poisonous anti-Armenian policies.

    Your comments are full with venom already. There was never, any legally or even logically discussed or proven genocide, other than an excuse for your inflaming the diaspora and making continuous collections by selling grudge and hatred. That product is not endorsed, asked or supported by the Turkish Armenians living equally in Turkey, or some 50.000 illegal Armenians earning their livings in Turkey or the rest of Armenians in Armenia, who get your bragging excuses, instead of jobs, self-sufficiency and peace of mind with neighbors! You have deprived Armenia from taking part in the important projects of the area… The Protestant and Catholic Armenians do not even share their church with Gregorian Armenians of Turkey.

    March 9, 09

    Sukru S. Aya

    _____________________________________________


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  • How To End A Genocide Debate

    How To End A Genocide Debate

    POINT OF VIEW

    The frozen relations between Armenia and Turkey are now showing some signs of melting.

    By Grenville Byford | NEWSWEEK Published Feb 28, 2009 From the magazine issue dated Mar 9, 2009

    It’s almost April, so Washington is gearing up for another performance of the “Armenian Genocide Resolution Spectacular,” a regular event since 1984. Here’s the historical plotline: the Armenian-American lobby gets a few U.S. congressmen to sponsor a resolution recognizing the 1915 massacre of Armenians in what is now Eastern Turkey as a “genocide.” Then other members of the House are induced to support it. (Members of the House may not be history buffs, but they understand the importance of stroking a powerful domestic lobby.) Next, the Turkish government says Turkey is too important to be insulted like this. In response, the American administration, recognizing that Turkey is indeed a critical NATO ally whose Incirlik Air Base is vital to the Iraq mission, starts twisting congressional arms to abandon the resolution. Offstage, the Israeli lobby, generally keen to boost Turkish-Israeli relations (though less so this year), works against the resolution. Finally, the House leadership reluctantly shelves the whole thing and the curtain falls.

    Before staging this year’s performance, however, Congress should note that hitherto frozen relations between Armenia and Turkey are now showing signs of melting, and that this may be the first step toward reconciling the Turkish and Armenian peoples. In September, Turkish President Abdullah Gül attended a Turkey-Armenia football match in Yerevan at the invitation of Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan, who recently met with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Davos. The two foreign ministers, Turkey’s Ali Babacan and Armenia’s Eduard Nalbandian have also been meeting. Both have made optimistic noises.

    Progress has been possible because the Armenians have focused on the concrete issue of opening the Armenian-Turkish border-a vital matter to them since none of their other neighbors (Azerbaijan, Georgia and Iran) can offer a viable trade route to the West. Both sides have wisely avoided the genocide dispute, surely recognizing it will have to be dealt with eventually but that developing economic ties will make it easier to do so. Lingering in the background, however, is the Armenian diaspora’s passionate insistence that there was a genocide-and its mirror image in the fury of the Turkish people denying it. Right or wrong is not the point. No Turkish government could contemplate opening the Armenian border with this issue front and center, and Congress should recognize that a genocide resolution would put it there.

    In all probability, Turkey and Armenia can only resolve the genocide dispute if they recognize that “was it a genocide?” may be the ultimate question, but it is not the most important one today. To those aiming for reconciliation, two questions outrank it: what common facts can Turks and Armenians be brought to accept, and is the common ground sufficient for both sides to start binding up the wounds? To this end, Erdogan’s proposal to establish a joint historical commission should be pursued. Though Armenia has rejected the idea so far-largely because it is winning its argument on the world stage-the government has softened its stance recently. If the aim is reconciliation, persuading the Turks to abandon the blanket denial they are taught as schoolchildren is what counts.

    Progress is not as implausible as it sounds. In the early days of the Republic, Kemal Atatürk, who was not personally implicated, described the Armenian massacres as “shameful acts.” No ex-Ottoman officials were investigated, however, as Turkey needed the newly minted heroes of its War of Independence to have no stain on their characters. Today, Erdogan will accept an investigation. In return, Armenia must accept a reciprocal investigation into the Ottoman Armenians, who fought with the sultan’s Russian enemy, and their responsibility for massacres of Turks and Kurds. Weaving together these two violently opposed historical perspectives will take time and patience. As important as the final answer, however, is the development of empathy across the divide.

    Congress can help keep the path to reconciliation open if it is willing to deny the Armenian-American lobby the instant gratification of a genocide resolution. Surely doing so would be far better than repeating the exercises of the last 25 years over and over again until a resolution finally passes and all the House’s leverage over Turkey evaporates, along with most of the good will in the Turkish-American alliance, and maybe even the alliance itself. For its part, the Armenian diaspora might even support reconciliation if only as its second choice. Finally, good relations between Turkey and Armenia would further U.S. objectives in the Caucasus. The proposed hydrocarbon corridor through the Caucasus from Central Asia looks much more secure in the context of Turkish-Armenian friendship, and it might give Armenia the confidence to break with the status quo in the longstanding Nagorno-Karabakh dispute with neighboring Azerbaijan. Congress and others should recognize that this year holds real promise for the beginning of reconciliation between the Turkish and Armenian peoples. If nothing comes of it, Congress can always return to a resolution.

    Byford writes frequently on Turkish affairs and is a regular contributor to Newsweek.com.

    © 2009

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    Comments

    Posted By: vaspuragan @ 03/03/2009 11:44:49 AM

    About what “argument” are you talking Turkish karabash all those distorted explenations or falsifications will never convince the world that there has not been a genocide against Armenian Nation.Thousand of German,Austurian,Italian,french,British,Russian,American archives prouve historical truth of Armenian genocide, the premeditated extermination of Armenian people from Edirne to whole Anatolia and Western ARMENIA(OCCUPIED)now.All those nonsense polemics will not contribute to resolve the problem.And it is not a secret that Turkey will be obliged to pay financial compensation and handed over all Armenian territories which keep occupied.Already 30000 turks expressed their pain about the genocide of 1915.Instead of barking as turkish karabash you had better to ask pardon to Armenians you torkish converted muhachir-devshirme.

    *

    Posted By: vaspuragan @ 03/03/2009 9:51:00 AM

    “You go and kill more than a million Armenians,wipe the traces of Armenians from Anatolia, grab their property, and then show childeren videos about ‘ What the Armenians did to us’….We are cutting these childeren off from the rest of the world,”said Ahmet Altan, editor of independent newpaper Taraf.”There is a sick, abnormal tissue of Turkish society that poisoned by a nationalist, racist virus”, said Ufuk Uras, an independent MP.To that category belongs all those turkish deneyers who spread deniyelist poison in their comments.
    o

    Posted By: Lucrece @ 03/03/2009 10:02:08 AM

    “Taraf” is an ultra-leftist newspapers, and like many other left-wing extermists, they their proper country. The stupidies of Mr. Altan are supported by no kind of evidence. The arguments for support the so-called “Armenian genocide” were crushed, here and eslewhere.
    You do not use rational and scholar study of the past, but unwarranted assertions, for political purposes.

    Posted By: Lucrece @ 03/03/2009 10:06:03 AM

    Sorry : “they hate their proper country”.

    *
    Posted By: Lucrece @ 03/03/2009 3:49:45 AM

    “If you believe in a conspiracy of thousands of Armenian grandparents and that marches through the desert were told by them as ‘propaganda’ then that it your choice. By probability theories, the chance that thousands of Armenian grandparents repeated the exact same story in the exact same time period as being a random event is zero.”
    The Armenian witnesses did not say the same things. An Ottoman Armenian, who became an US citizen under the name of James K. Sutherland, praised, in his book “Adventures of an Armenian boy” (Ann Arbor Press, 1964) the policy of Jemal Pasha, governor of the Near East, vis-à-vis the Armenian displaced peoples. Yegisabeth Kasebian (born in 1900) corroborated, later the Sutherland’s testimony: http://www.tallarmeniantale.com/mahmut-granny.htm
    Edward Tashji, son of an Ottoman Armenian and an Ottoman Assyrian, defended during all his life the Turkish side, and justified his position by what his parents said to him.
    Hatchadurian Hatchik Abedi, an Armenian citizen, interviewed for “Sari Gelin” in front of the “Genocide” monument in Erevan (probably the last place in the World when you could imagine a pro-Turkish speech) said that the Turks were good for Armenians during the Ottoman period, including WWI; and that the killers of Armenians were Kurds. It is an exaggeration for the whole Anatolia (they were Turkish criminals and Kurdish brave peoples, for example in Mamuret-ül-Aziz), but correct for some regions.
    By this way: around 100 old Turks produced testimonies about Armenian atrocities, from 1963 to the late 1980’s; several hundreds of other Muslims testified during the WWI, interviewed by Ottoman jandarma, General Kazim Karabekir and the US investigators Emory Niles and Arthur Sutherland, these testimonies were, for a great part, corroborated by material and archeological evidences, as I already explained here. Do you think really that they were wrong?

    Posted By: artsakh @ 03/03/2009 5:15:45 AM

    Denial is a weakness of the human condition. It takes strength to admit to the mistakes of your ancestors and is a primitive defense mechanism. Germany accepted the Holocaust and now has the strongest economy in Europe. Turkey, even with its great strategic location, is a laggard in comparison despite staying out of WW II. Denying the past keeps a country rooted in the past and the mentality of the past, preventing progression to a full potential economically and democratically. If a Turk loves his country, he or she should accept the past, reject government propaganda, and move forward into the new millenium.
    +

  • Father sues Ministry over Armenian ‘genocide’ DVD

    Father sues Ministry over Armenian ‘genocide’ DVD

    From The Times
    February 28, 2009

    Father sues Turkish Education Ministry over Armenian ‘genocide’ DVD ‘ SARI GELİN

    Suna Erdem in Istanbul
    A father is suing the Turkish Education Ministry for forcing his 11-year-old daughter to watch a “racist” and “disturbing” film countering claims that Ottoman Turks committed genocide against Armenians in 1915 with graphic allegations of Armenian atrocities against Turks.

    The landmark case takes on what human rights activists have called the State’s militarist policy of brainwashing Turkey’s schoolchildren to the point of racist paranoia, aiming to preserve a nationalist status quo criticised by the European Union, which Turkey is keen to join.

    “My daughter was very disturbed and frightened by the documentary and kept asking me if the Armenians had cut us up,” said Serdar Kaya, an ethnic Turkish doctor, who is suing the ministry and the child’s school for inciting racial hatred.

    “There are many mass graves, bones and skulls in the DVD. They have interviewed old grandads who inspire confidence and compassion. When they say things like ‘They cut off his head’ and ‘They used it instead of firewood’, that is bound to stay with the children,” Serdar Degirmencioglu, a psychologist, told the Armenian newspaper Agos when news first broke that the documentary was being shown to primary school children – including ethnic Armenian Turks.
    The Education Ministry says that it has stopped the distribution of the documentary, Sari Gelin (Blonde Bride), named after an Armenian folk song. But it has apparently not recalled it and critics say that it remains part of the curriculum.

    Some MPs are bringing up the case in Parliament. The education union Egitim-Sen has condemned the film, and the History Foundation has dismissed it as baseless propaganda.

    Another lawsuit has been filed by a foundation set up in honour of the murdered Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink. The former editor of Agos was murdered in 2007 by a young nationalist whose links to a group of ultra-nationalists, codenamed Ergenekon, operating within the security forces and state bureaucracy are now being investigated. “In the whole of the documentary the word ‘Armenian’ has been used thousands of times and only with negative connotations,” the Foundation said.

    Mr Dink had been one of several high-profile intellectuals, also including Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel literature laureate, and Elif Shafak, the bestselling author, who had been sued by nationalist lawyers over comments and writings alluding to the mass Armenian deaths. “You can see that all those cases were part of a project of manipulation … There is a sick, abnormal tissue of Turkish society that is poisoned by a nationalist, racist virus,” said Ufuk Uras, an independent MP who backs Mr Kaya’s case.

    Many historians class the 1915 events as genocide, but even those who reject the term accept that hundreds of thousands of Armenians died when the Ottoman Turks deported them from eastern Anatolia. According to the International Association of Genocide Scholars, the death toll was “more than a million”.

    “You go and kill more than a million Armenians, wipe the traces of Armenians from Anatolia, grab their property, and then show children videos about ‘What the Armenians did to us’ … We are cutting these children off from the rest of the world,” said Ahmet Altan, editor of the independent newspaper Taraf.

  • STOP BLATANT RACISM  AGAINST THE TURKS

    STOP BLATANT RACISM AGAINST THE TURKS

    POCKET GUIDE TO TRUTH

    Sources of information on alleged Armenian claims of Genocide

    against The Turks.


    In order to establish truth and to confront racist bias against Turks, read below the works and commentaries of scholars and researchers,

    Find out what former Armenian Premier Senin Ovanes Katchaznouni said during the 1923 Dashnak Party Conference in Bucharest-Romania, about the mistakes and misguided activities –treachery- of Armenian extremists and activists. Available from iletisim@kaynakyayinlari.com ISBN 975-343-438-3


    You may peruse www.tallarmeniantale.com, by author Holdwater & The “Armenian Research” Foundation or peruse


    Read on internet www.tallarmeniantale.com/c-f-dixon-BOOK.htm, written by a British officer in 1916 – the portrayal of Anatolian Armenians,

    Examine Guenter Lewy’s “The Armenian Massacres in Turkey, A Disputed Genocide” ISBN-13:978-0-87480-849-0 available on Amazon.com (Jewish author from USA)

    Read Sukru Server’s ‘GENOCIDE OF TRUTH’ freely available on Armenians-1915.blogspot.com or direct from ssaya@superonline.com ISBN 9789756516249

    An incredible account of one man’s quest for truth against Armenian fabrications and distortions of history!


    Prof. Salahi Sonyel’s “The Turco-Armenian Imbroglio” ISBN-0-9504886-6-6, available at Cyprus Turkish Association 0207 437 4940 kibristc@btconnect.com (Cypriot Turk author)

    films to watch are:


    “The Armenian Revolt 1894-1920” documentary DVD by Third Coast Films, P.O. Box 664, Clarion, PA 16214, USA, info@thirdcoastfilms.com (by an American Director) This is a MUST !!

    &
    “Sari Gelin’ documentary DVD through www.sarigelinbelgeseli.com info@sarigelinbelgeseli.com (maybe available on eBay) (by a Turkish Director)

    Read Prof. Turkkaya Ataov’s WHAT HAPPENED TO OTTOMAN ARMENIANS?

    ISBN 1=4243=1004-0 (obtainable from ssaya@superonline.com), (Turkish author) also read Sukru S Aya’s (ssaya@superonline.com) book ‘Genocide of Truth’ (İstanbul Ticaret Üniversitesi–2008) ISBN 9789756516249 or have a look at www.armenians-1915.blogspot.com by Turkish Armenians (including free downloadable books and automatic translation of site text into several languages),
    “MYTH OF TERROR’ by late Erich Feigl (1986)Zeitgeschichte/Bucherdienst Austria (Austrian Author) which contains the signatures of 63 foreign Academics refuting the Armenian claims

    for Armenian terrorism against Turks.. why Armenians are not talking about their terrorists?

    an interesting read (in 3 languages) of memoirs of a Russian Officer on Armenians at (click on the book for downloading) or access it and others at (from Turkish Military archives reputed to be richest on this issue)

    There are also several powerful books on this subject by the American author Justin McCarthy

    The TURKS ARE WILLING AND READY TO FACE THE ARMENIANS AT A PUBLIC INQUIRY AND DEBATE, FOR THE SAKE OF ESTABLISHMENT OF TRUTH. But are the Armenians are ready to do so? Have you asked them ..?

    The Turkish Government supports the establishment of an independent International commission to research the background of the Turco-Armenian relations during the 1st World War (see OSCE resolution) but the Armenians are refusing to participate!. Do ask them why..! If truth scares them, then let it be. Simply put, they are afraid of the truth surfacing and damaging the bond holding together their people.

    ————————————————————–

    Comments by neutral Scholars

    and

    Outcomes of Trials

    The Ottoman archives remain largely unconsulted. When so much is missing from the fundamental source material, no historical narrative can be called complete and no conclusions can be called balanced.”

    Prof. Jeremy Salt

    Armenian application of Genocide related claim and consequences thereof is

    “UNJUST” and “BEREFT OF ANY FOUNDATION”

    European Union, Luxembourg Council of Justice – case heard on the 17th December 2003 and an outcome of appeal of the 16th January, 2004

    The Middle East Journal 61.2 (Spring 2007): p348(2).

    The Armenian Rebellion at Van, by Justin McCarthy, Esat Arslan, Cemalettin Takiran, and Omer Turan. Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press, 2006. vii + 266 pages. 11 Maps. Notes. Appends. to p. 285. Bibl. to p. 291. Index to p. 296. $25.

    Reviewed by Edward J. Erickson

    This timely book follows and complements recent work by Donald Bloxham [The Great Game of Genocide, reviewed in The Middle East Journal (MEJ), Vol. 60, No. 1 (Winter 2006)] and Guenter Lewy [The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide, reviewed in MEJ, Vol. 60, No. 2 (Spring 2006)]. Both Bloxham and Lewy contend that there was an actual Armenian rebellion in 1915, which was encouraged and aided by the Allies, and aimed at the establishment of an Armenian state. Moreover, Bloxham asserts that ill-timed active collaboration with the Allies by Armenian nationalist leaders led their people into a disastrous confrontation with the Ottomans. The Armenian Rebellion at Van supports these contentions by showcasing them with a fascinating case study of the well-known uprising in Van, the eastern Anatolian city and province, in the spring of 1915.

    The authors begin with three chapters detailing the geographic, economic, and demographic setting of Van province, with attention to the origins and politics of the Armenian committees, especially those of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (the ARF or Dashnaks). Chapter four examines the rebellion of 1896. Chapter five, titled the “Development of the Revolution, 1897-1908,” outlines the growth of an armed Armenian movement by examining its leadership, tactics, arms smuggling, and Russian connections. Chapter six, on the period 1908-1912, briefly covers the deteriorating relations between the Young Turks and the ARF, while chapter seven covers the events preceding the outbreak of war.

    The heart of the book, chapter eight, is a detailed examination, at the tactical level, of what happened at Van in late March and April 1915. Using previously unavailable documents from the Ottoman military archives in Ankara, the authors offer a picture of a carefully planned and executed rebellion that was sponsored by and closely coordinated with the Russians, who launched an offensive aimed at seizing the city. The concluding two chapters explain the destruction of both the Armenian and Muslim communities in the province and present an analysis of why the Ottomans failed to suppress the rebels.

    So why read another book about the Armenians’? This book represents a massive revision of what is known in the West about the Van uprising. Of particular importance is a well-developed exposition of Armenian leadership, organizational architecture, professionalism in military training, innovative tactics, and weaponry that is integrated into an explanation of how the battles were fought. The authors assert that the rebels were not simply city residents reacting in self-defense but were instead well led, tightly organized, and dangerous. They present a convincing argument based on new archival information. The maps are unusually clear and include (for the first time) small-scale municipal maps of the city of Van as it existed in 1915. The book is a gold mine of new and detailed information.

    This reviewer found the overall tone of the book to be unusual in its fair treatment of the Armenians by Turkish scholars. Professor McCarthy and his Turkish co-authors present the Armenians as able practitioners of the art of insurgency and note that the Armenian leader “Aram Manukian must be counted as one of the geniuses of guerrilla warfare” (p. 258). Moreover, they conclude that the Armenian insurrections were instrumental in crippling the Ottoman strategic position in Anatolia, and they also reinforce Bloxham’s assertion that the Armenians were badly let down by their Russian allies. Unfortunately, there are minor factual errors in the text. For example, Ottoman casualties at Sankaml are overstated by 100% (p. 179) while the cited Turkish source (Turk Harbi) actually gives much lower numbers. The authors erroneously give the date of a critical order from Enver Pasha on security precautions as September 25, 1914 (p. 190), when the correct date is February 25, 1915. Incorrect information is given on the composition of the First Expeditionary Force (p. 210) that includes flawed British estimates of non-existent bis divisions. There is also a lack of clarity and completeness in citing the Turkish archives; the authors rarely detail what the document is. Instead, they choose to list only its archival call number. However, these are small issues in what is otherwise a very valuable contribution to the field.

    Specialists and interested readers alike will understand and appreciate this book. It is clearly written, and establishes an important corrective to the extant Western historiography. While it will certainly irritate the global Armenian lobby, this reviewer would encourage those seeking a balanced and informed understanding of these events to read The Armenian Rebellion at Van. It is well worth the price and highly recommended.

    Lt. Col. Edward J. Erickson, USA (Retired), International Research Associates, LLC

    ——————————————————————————————————————-

    The following are excerpts from a review essay by Masaki Kakiszaki, University of Utah, on a newly released book by Guenter Lewy, titled “The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide” University of Florida Press, 2005.   The full review is published in Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies, Spring 2007.

    Ethnic Cleansing or Genocide?

    by Masaki Kakiszaki, University of Utah,

    The full review is published in Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies, Spring 2007.

    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. (…) 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.

    (…) 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).

    (…) 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 (…) 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.

    (…) 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’. 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

    (…)  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’. 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.

    (…) 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.

    (…) 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. After a critical examination of the Armenian and Turkish historiographies, Lewy proposes an alternative explanation. He argues that ‘it was possible for the country to suffer an incredibly high death toll without a premeditated plan of annihilation’ 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. But he also criticizes the Turkish side for distorting the historical fact by translating the Armenian massacres into mere ‘excesses’ or ‘intercommunal warfare’.

    (…) 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. 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. 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 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’ (…) 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. These resolutions spotlight politics, not the truth, and are therefore debatable.

    (…) 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.

    (…) 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. 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. 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.

    ———————————————————————————————————

    BRITISH GOVERNMENT position vis-à-vis Armenian claims

    “that the evidence is not sufficiently unequivocal to persuade us that these events should be categorised as Genocide as defined by the 1948 UN Convention on genocide”

    Foreign & Commonwealth Office, London – dated the 22nd February, 2006

    ——————————————————————————————————————-

    To date, there exists NO legally binding United Nations resolution or International Court judgement to support the Armenian claims. In year 2000, The United Nations stated that they do not recognise -alleged- Armenian genocide. Farhan Haq, 05.10.2000, Spokesman for The UN Secretary General

    There exist recognition claims, which are NOT tried and tested at any International Court of Law. So far, the The Armenians have refused invitation for a legal trial of their claim!

    As stated, neither The UNITED NATIONS nor The INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE/HR accept Armenian claims. If the Armenians are right, why are they not pursuing their claim vigorously in a Court of Law?

    In addition to Swedish and Israeli Parliaments refuting the Armenian claims (whilst some other Parliaments accepting it on political grounds)

    Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe ‘OSCE’ accepts (2nd of July 2008) the Turkish thesis, re: the so called Armenian ‘Genocide’

    The motion says that “The OSCE Parliamentary Assembly encourages the formation of joint history commissions by historians and experts from the third countries in case of a research into political and military archives to scientifically and unbiasedly enlighten a disputed period in history in an effort to serve transparency and common understanding among the member states” But the Armenians are refusing to be part of such a commission..!! ask what are they afraid of? .. OSCE has 320 members from 56 countries around the world, so are they all wrong? read more at:

    Are you aware? that an attempt by the Armenians to manipulate the European Union resolution C-190 of 16th of June 1987 has been dismissed by The Court of First Instance of the European Communities {Luxemburg Council of Justice}

    ie. Original hearing – Case T-346/03, Krikorian et al. v. European

    Paliamente et al., Order of the Court of First

    Instance, 17 December 2003,

    Court found the claims for compensation manifestly unfounded and brought a verdict that the application was “unjust” and “bereft of any foundation”.

    Appeal – Case C-18/04 P, Krikorian et al. v. European

    Parliament et al., European Court of Justice,

    Lodged 16th January, 2004 , heard 29 October 2004. See also Case C-18/04, P(R), Krikorian et al. v. European Parliament et al., European Court of Justice,

    13 September 2004

    Original decision was later reconfirmed upon appeal to the European Court of Justice on 29 October 2004’

    Furthermore, it stated that the decision of the European Council was “completely political”, consequently it had not a sanction force, and that it could be changed at any moment. This was the justification that the decision of 1987 (and indeed the same for 2004) was not valid from a juridical point of view. Therefore, one can safely assume that the resolutions of 1987 and 2004 were designed to put unfair (racist) pressure on Turkey, they were unjust and bordering on blatant unfairness.. Subsequently, this will also have a conviction value for other similar cases in the future… but nasty and inhumane racism must stop now!

    read further opinion and references on:

    This is a proof that the Armenians failed and shall fail in the future in proving their case in an Independent International Court of Law.. This is so because the truth is different than what Armenians would like us all to believe and onus is on them to prove it otherwise; Henceforth, the politically and historically misplaced European resolution C-190 of 1987 (2004) is now ineffective, akin to being null and void. In the 21st century, the EU, on whatsoever ground, can not take sides in a conflict between a Muslim and a Christian country when the Muslim Turkey is doing its best and that the EU itself claims not to be a “Christian club” {quote AxisGlobe}

    THEREFORE,

    THE ATTEMPTED ARMENIAN LED GENOCIDE OF TRUTH AGAINST THE TURKS

    MUST STOP AND ARMENIANS MUST BE FORCED TO PROVE THEIR CASE,

    OR FACE CLAIMS OF BEING A PART OF BLATANT RACISM AGAINST TURKS

    ——————————————————————————————————————-

    Armenian claims of Genocide was then and is now

    ‘UNJUST AND BEREFT OF ANY FOUNDATION’

    Outcome of the British Malta Military trials

    of Armenian claims and subsequent acquittal of the 144 Ottoman Officers on alleged Armenian Genocide claims

    Quoting from British Ambassador, Sir A Geddes in Washington to Lord Curzon in London.. upon searching for evidence against captive Ottoman officers in American Governmental and private archives – 13th July 1921

    ” I have the honour to inform Your Lordship that a member of my staff visited the State Department yesterday, the 12th instant, in regard to the Turks who are at present being detained at Malta with a view to a trial… He was permitted to see a selection of reports from United States Consuls on the subject of the atrocities committed in Armenia during the recent war, the reports judged by the State Department to be the most useful for the purposes of His Majesty’s Government being chosen from among several hundreds. I regret to inform Your Lordship that there was nothing therein which could be used as evidence against the Turks who are being detained for trial at Malta. The report seems.. made mention of only two names of the Turkish officials in question… and in these cases were confined to personal opinions of those officials on the part of the writer, no concrete facts being given which could constitute satisfactory incriminating evidence. I have the honour to add that officials of the Department of State expressed the wish, in the course of conversation, that no information supplied by them in this connection should be employed in the court of law. Having regard to this stipulation and the fact that the reports in the possession of the Department of State do not appear in any case to contain evidence against these Turks which would be useful even for the purpose of corroborating information already in possession of His Majesty’s Government, I fear that nothing is to be hoped from addressing any further enquiries to the United States Government in this matter.”

    Nor did the British archives offer any tangible evidence, thus the acquittal of the wrongly accused.

    2007 – Armenian claims still stand unproven at any International Court or at the United Nations, but machinations leading to unfair propaganda, racist denigration of Turks and backdoor recognition attempts are still alive. Furthermore, these unproven Armenian claims are currently used as a convenient leverage against Turkey by whomever and whenever opportune!

    STOP BLATANT RACISM

    AGAINST THE TURKS

    And remember the 524,000 innocent Turks murdered by the Armenian terror gangs and soldiers!

    These are Armenian soldiers not Turkish!!??!

    200,000 Armenians were armed rather well by the Russians (fact attested to by Armenian Nubar Pasha at Paris Peace Conference in 1919) to murder 524,000 innocent Turkish lives

    Note: the date of this photo is October 1914 !! furthermore, Armenians started their treachery and commenced murdering innocent Turks in 1890s.

    Infact, they’ve been preparing the groundwork for treachery

    since the Turko-Russian wars of 1870s !! do also remind yourselves what the “charge of the light brigade’ in Crimea was all about !!

    Show us a country where grand treachery is not a capital crime! If it was a war of liberation, then they fought it against their own liberated countrymen and lost it badly and now call it ‘genocide’ as a misguided convenience ..

    (read Armenian Premier Senin Ovanes Katchaznouni’s memoirs)

    Of course, there is ample proof elsewhere that the treacherous Armenians, who were Ottoman citizens, armed themselves deliberately to commit grand treason against their own Government and called the unfortunate result “genocide’.

    Therefore, should they then not be responsible for their own actions and cruelty? What would have any Government done in the face of such treachery? If the native Indians of North America committed such acts against the American people during WW2, what do you think would have happened? What if British, French, German, Italian or any other nation was attached in such a cowardly way?

    And these are for further thought

    and a public debate with Armenians

    The Armenian problem started in 1878 not 1915 – Indeed Armenians had treacherous designs on Ottoman Turks since 1821 not 1915 .. history does not lie; but the Armenians seem to cherry pick dates with apparent impunity! They must face an Independent Council of World Historians to prove their case, or shut up !

    STOP BLATANT RACISM NOW

    Peruse and for further insight and hear direct from the Author of ‘GENOCIDE OF TRUTH’ S.Aya on ssaya@superonline.com

    Contrary to their claims, 200,000 Armenian traitors of circa 1915 were well armed by outside powers and that’s how Armenians rebelled and murdered 524,000 innocent Turks circa 1915 .. ask them why, but if you feel they are rather economical with truth, let us tell you how!

    The Azeri Jewish leaders cited research saying that some 3,000 Mountain Jews, along with tens of thousands of Azeris, were murdered in 1918 by the Armenian bandits and nationalists in the region of Guba .. how long is that soul destroying Armenian nationalist hatred against anything ‘Turk’ is going to last?

    What would you have said if 200,000 traitors armed by Nazis in the middle of WW2 rebelled, committed high treason, razed British cities and towns and murdered 524,000 innocent British men, women and children in cold blood? How would The British Government may have reacted to beginnings of an intended British Genocide?

    JEWISH HOLOCAUST By the way, there were the Armenian Nazi Brigade/s –Armenische Legion- from 1935 onwards (i.e. Armenian 812th Battalion of Wehrmacht of some 20,000 men, commanded by Drastamat Kanaian –aka Dro-), The Armenian National Council of 15th December 1942 sanctioned by Alfred Rosenberg –The German Minister of Occupied areas- ) even publishing their own magazine called MITTEILUNGSBLATT DER DEUTSCH-ARMENISCHEN GESSELSCHAFT (Berlin 1938 to end 1944) what do you think they did to the innocent Jews; for example Bucharest 1935, fifth column work?

    Find out what British thought of Armenians pre-WW2, on Foreign Office Document F.O 371/30031/R5337 …. ‘The Armenians (in Turkey) are extremely fruitful ground for German activities ……’ so who are these opportunistic people then ?

    “Wholly opportunistic, the Armenians have been variously pro-Nazi, pro-Russia, pro-Soviet Armenia, pro-Arab, pro-Jewish, as well as anti-Jewish, anti-Zionist, anti-Communist, and anti-Soviet – whichever was expedient.” [3] Sources: [1] Turkkaya Ataov: Armenian Extermination of the Jews and Muslims, 1984, p. 91. [2] C.J. Walker: _Armenia_ London, 1980, pp. 356-8. [3] John Roy Carlson (Arthur Derounian), _Cairo to Damascus_ Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1951, p. 438.

    ——————————————————————————————————————-

    THE INFAMOUS BLUE BOOK by Toynbee….

    COMMENTS , REALITIES & THE TRUTH..

    Subject: Re:

    Ara Baliozian was right when he asserted that Toynbee became a Turcophile, during the 1920’s.

    “What he left out was why the Turks distrusted and disliked Armenian and other Christian minorities so much. Later, Toynbee came to feel that this lop­sidedness was a betrayal of historical truth. His sympathies, in fact, reversed themselves, partly, at least, because he felt he had been unjust to the Turks, and needed to make atonement. At the time, however, though the human de­pravity he described was deeply repugnant to him, his conscience was clear. Emphatic denunciation of Turkish barbarity seemed fully justified, based as it was on carefully evaluated evidence.”

    William H. McNeil, Arnold Toynbee. A Life, New York-London-Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1985, p. 74.

    Yet at the very time when the agreement was being made, I was being employed by His Majesty’s Government to compile all available documents on the recent treatment of the Armenians by the Turkish Government in a ‘Blue Book’ which was duly published and distributed as war-propaganda. […] THIS IS THE INFAMOUS BLUE BOOK!!

    In attempting to express and explain the Turkish point of view, I am not seeking to suggest that it is right, or to deny the charges brought against the Turkish nation and Government for their treatment of subject peoples during the past century. Their crimes are undoubtedly exaggerated in the popular Western denunciations, and the similar crimes committed by Near Eastern Christians <Armenians and Greeks> in parallel situations are almost always passed over in silence. At the same time, the facts substantiated against the Turks (as well as against their neighbours) by authoritative investigation are so appalling that it is almost a matter of indifference, from the point of view of establishing a case, whether the embroideries of the propagandists are counterfeit or genuine. The point which I wish to make is that, if our aim is not simply to condemn but to cure, we can only modify the conduct of the Turks by altering their frame of mind, and that our only means of doing that is to change our own attitude towards them. So long as we mete out one measure to them, another to the Greeks <and Armenians>, and yet a third to ourselves, we shall have no moral influence over them.”

    Arnold J. Toynbee, The Western Question in Greece and Turkey, London, Constable and Co, 1922, pp. 50 et 227.

    “Robert F. Zeidner. He graduated from the American Military Academy in 1945, and while on duty in Ankara in 1957 he attended a kind of service program at Beirut American University. Dr. Zeidner was a communication officer during that time.
    The university administration gives a cocktail party honoring Prof. Toynbee and some others. During this get-together. Officer Zeidner approaches Prof. Arnold Toynbee and mentions that he came from Ankara. In response A. Toynbee says, ‘Oh really? Turks are very nice people. I have Turkish friends.’ [He says this in 1957].

    Officer Zeidner follows up in surprise, ‘Isn’t it controversial that you wrote those books <BLUE BOOKs> during World War I which said that Turks mercilessly killed the Armenians?’ Prof. Toynbee blushed, stood motionless for an instant, and then said ‘I was employed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and I obeyed orders. It was war propaganda material.’

    In 1959, Toynbee met Stanford J. Shaw in Harvard University. S. J. Shaw asked the same question than R. F. Zeidner, and Toynbee responded the same thing (Stanford J. Shaw, From Empire to Republic. The Turkish War of National Liberation, Ankara, TTK, 2000, tome I, p. 62, n. 21).

    Toynbee was an enthusiastic supporter of Kemalism, from 1922 to his death. The only article available online about this question, to my knowledge, is in French, unfortunately:

    In fact, Toynbee, after 1921, considered that the CUP government had criminal intentions, but that: 1) the Turkish people were not responsible: 2) the Armenian and Greek gangs were not less criminal. This position is very close to Ahmet Emin Yalman’s thesis (Turkey and The World War, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1930; Turkey in my Time, Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1956). Yalman was a Toynbee’s friend.

    From …. a friend of TRUTH ….. (a private correspondence ref: S S Aya Esq.)

    SO, HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED WHAT REALLY LIES BEHIND THE ALLEGED ARMENIAN GENOCIDE CLAIMS?

    An Essay by Ara Baliozian – Armenian view

    Speaking of Toynbee: it is widely known that he at no time denied the reality of the Armenian genocide, and this even after he acquired Turkish friends, heard their side of the story, became a Turcophile, and learned the Turkish language. The difference between Toynbee and our nationalist historians is that Toynbee exposed not only the criminal conduct of the Turks but also the blunders of our own leadership, something our historians have at no time dared to do; which may suggest they have not dared to say everything that needed to be said; in other words, their version of the past is only partly true (which is also how propaganda is defined). I feel therefore justified in suggesting that under the guise of supporting our cause, our nationalist historians and Turcocentric ghazetajis have succeeded only in damaging our credibility in the eyes of the world and thus reducing the issue to the status of political football.

    and a READER’S COMMENTARY to Ara Baliozian – Turkish view

    In reference to the above article of Ara Baliozian, for whom I have a great respect for his “straightness, frankness and depth of knowledge” and other than expressing my usual appreciation, agreement for nearly all of his comments and applauding his remark about “Pirates”, I would like to comment on the above sentence as regards Arnold J. Toynbee’s becoming a Turcophile! If Ara bey knows something realiable that I don’t know who led him to such a conclusion, I will be pleased to learn from him (like many other things I learned from him)! However, in view of the various references on Toynbee in my book GENOCIDE OF TRUTH (more than twenty times / sources) I would like to make the following comments, leaving judgment to the reader..

    A.  There is no doubt that young Toynbee’s first mission at “Wellington House” under Lord Bryce, was to prepare “documentary evidence to blame Turkey and convince USA to join WW1 for “humane reasons”. Between 1915-1922 Toynbee produced nearly twenty books, all heavily blaming the ENEMIES, the Germans and Turks. It is also a known fact that he worked for the British Intelligence Dept.

    B-  His masterpiece “The Blue Book” where he blamed Turks for all types of genocidal crimes, was a great success. However, I have noticed below serious flaws in the dependability of this book:

    1- The book was composed of the reports of US missionaries and/or other Armenian sources, sent in diplomatic bags by Ambassador Morgenthau, and they were all biased. Moreover, Morgenthau bears his signature on the Relief Report No.192 of April 1922, which contradicts his own book and the reports sent to form “The Blue Book”.

    2- On page 313 of my book there is a letter by Toynbee, to Prof. Margouliuth dated June 23, 1916 which is self explanatory regarding the UNRELIABILITY of his sources versus his mission!

    3- Toynbee was in the British delegation sent to Paris in 1919. His book and “all the references he had provided” were found UNSUITABLE TO MAKE A LEGAL COURT against the 144 Turkish detainees held in Malta, waiting to be put on trial for two years, and who were all returned to Turkey without any indictment.

    4- On page 316, there is a letter by Toynbee to Mrs. Ekmejian written in 1966, in which he confessed that “The Blue Book was written for popaganda purposes”.

    5- On page 317, there is a letter dated May 1, 1916 by US Foreign Office to him, confessing that the blanks cannot be filled and the documents used for reference are NOT ACCESSIBLE!

    Hence Baliozian’s statement that Toynbee “at no time denied Armenian genocide” is paradoxical to above references and it is the first time that I hear that “Toynbee later became so friendly with Turks, that he became a Turcophile”! I will appreciate to learn who were the “Turks that could make Toynbee change his idea just for favor”! Ara bey certainly knows better than all of us that “as years pass by, what you learn either proves that you were RIGHT in your first assessment or  WRONG!  I cannot object to the sentiments and observations of Ara bey, which are always “well intended” (like all of us working in this team). As Ara bey (and myself) notice that too many historians and fanatic writers, bragging on patriotism are damaging the “unearthing of simple truths, human failures” and final compassion which must prevail for future generations. “The Armenians in Istanbul are doing fine” but they are greatly disturbed by the parasitic commentaries coming from abroad “to save them“. A century ago, it was the Armenians from Russia who were so much depressed by the Tzarist regime, who set up Hunchaks and Dashnaks (1880-90s!!) outside of Turkey to save the “Armenians of Turkey” thus bringing nothing but disaster to all their folks. The great heroes “Andranik, Kanajan, Pastermadjian” all escaped to Britain and USA, instead of sharing the disasters they brought on to their own people! There are modern fiery patriots continuously blowing animosities to keep them in business and indispensable, getting rich on the continuous donations for the ‘holy cause’! So, my sincere mission is to save my local Armenian friends from overseas Armenian saviours!

    (Note: Last week I went to Surp Pirgıc Armenian hospital at Yedikule-Istanbul for some check-up and an MR appointment ten days later. Too bad that the outsider trouble-mongers were not next to me, to see how the Turkish patients-doctors communicate with Armenian doctors, staff etc. as has been the case in this institution for about 150 years! .. I therefore say “stop the outside crap and looking from a distance and seeing only what you want to see”!  Tell me “which country or nation is perfect and in full justice”! Watch “Sicko” by Michael Moore to learn how things work in USA, the heaven of human rights and democracy!) Speaking of “criminality” I have thousands of photos and writings about “Armenian crimes” which Ara avoids to admit. All humans are alike, and in this episode there are “no clean hands for any party or outside dooms-day pushers”! And how many clean hands do you see today in wars and man-made disasters? Best regards for all times and don’t believe everything you read (not even me) unless if you have “an indisputable proof”.

    Sukru S. Aya

    “This study may be interpreted as a token for humane values, common to all, such as decency, not lying – cheating – swindling – stealing – slandering etc. and promotes the need for trust, compassion, respect for other humans, disregarding their ethnicity, nationality or faiths, beyond their control or personal preferences!” Sukru S. Aya, author of ‘Genocide of Truth’ …

    The ‘Armenian Question’ 1878-1918: a Counter-Narrative
    Venue – London School of Economics, New Theatre East Building 30th January, 2008

    ‘Somewhere between three and four million Ottoman civilians are thought to have died during the First World War. The causes of death of both Muslims and Christians – massacre, malnutrition, exposure and disease – were the same for all but while the suffering of Christians, and especially the Armenians, has been firmly embedded in the western historical, political and cultural mainstream, the fate of the Muslims, nearly a century later, remains invisible and unexamined. The need is long overdue for deconstruction and recontextualisation of the ‘Armenian question’. Prof. J Salt

    STOP BLATANT RACISM

    AGAINST THE TURKS

    AND HELP WORLD COMMUNITY ESTABLISH TRUTH

    FOR THE NEXT GENERATION’S SAKE