31 July 2007
During decades, the Armenians have forgotten with stubbornness, denied fiercely, and even hidden carefully to the public opinion a whole part of historiography that questions their vision their vision of the dramatic events that took place in 1915-1916.
Shut in a logic that consider their memory to be sacred, the Armenians do not see anymore, do not listen anymore, and do not hear anymore.
They proclaim as truth a selection of facts among others. This provides them the role of heroes and victims, hiding by this way another memory, which of the crimes committed on the Moslem populations.
1 300 000 people have been exterminated by the Armenians, who have joined massively the ranks of the Russian army since the beginning of the First World War, thus making themselves responsible of betrayal towards their homeland, the Ottoman Empire, which these people held on together for centuries.
The negation of these atrocities and the refusal to recognize their responsibilities in the cataclysm of 1915 take the fanatic Armenian racism to a deadlock and prevent an expected peaceful reconciliation. At this point, putting an end to the “Armenian amnesia” is today an absolute necessity of humanity.
Through this study, we hope that we’ll finally help modestly the Armenians find their memory.
The reason behind today’s Armenians historically baseless complaints conflicts with the fact that the Armenians have been entitled with the identity of being a “citizen” of the Ottoman community. These Armenian citizens of Ottomans were the milestones of development of the Ottoman State. The Armenians maintained their presence in everyway of life as a printer, doctor, senior official, teacher, author, poet, theater player, jurist, merchant, painter, etc.
The Ottoman history records 29 pashas, 22 ministers, 33 deputies, 7 ambassadors, 11 consuls general and consuls, 11 academicians and 41 senior officials. Some of these Armenians also held the crucial and key positions in the ministries of Foreign Affairs, Finance and Commerce and Posts.
All these deny the pronouncements of today’s Armenian fanaticism. Because, although there was not a distinction between these Armenians and the other citizens of the Ottomans as for prosperity and life standards, the Armenian community was protected for centuries and saved their identity and freedom.
The followings show the reflections of unfounded and groundless bases of hatred of a deceived structure on today.
“To the inhabitants of Zeytun
O! Tenderly and lovely mother, who do you wish to see?
Come here, don’t be afraid, come close
And without weeping any tear, look courageously
At your beloved child whose wound is bleeding
Let the Turkish mothers cry
And go to Zeytun to give the joyful news
The sun rose, O inhabitants of Zeytun! Quick on horseback!
Arms up, and ahead! Let’s walk ahead!
The ones fear and lethargy holds back are not one of us.
Enough slavery, enough serfdom.
Let us try to enjoy a little the bitterness of the Turks!!”
Verse of the Armenian poet Bechiktachlian (September 1862)
“During a meeting of the Armenian National Assembly, in the last autumn, Mr. Sdépan Papazian, the author presumed the statistical figures presented to the Berlin Conference, took on violently to the patriarch to have communicated to the Embassies of the statistical figures without having consulted first the National Assembly, what consequentially drew the attention of the opinion to the enormous differences between the figures of Berlin and those supplied more recently by the patriarchy and to provoke remarks on the doubtful character of these two series of figures (…)
In the list of Berlin, by an apparently dishonest manipulation of the official figures, looked for purpose was to prove that, according to these figures, the Armenian population of Erzurum and Van (including Erzurum and Hakkari) amounted to in 1 150 000 souls. I demonstrated afterward that the real number did not exceed doubtlessly 450 000. As for the figures supplied by the Patriarch in the embassy in 1880, they indicated a population of 373 500 Armenians.” (Report of the commander Trotter, specialist of demographic questions in the Embassy of England in the Ottoman Empire, on February 15, 1882)
The aim of the Armenian committees was to foment outbreaks and to do terrorist acts; the foreign powers would come to help after appropriate conditions were established, and it happened as that…
“The aim of the Armenian revolutionaries is to foment outbreaks, to induce first the Ottomans to react to their violence and to encourage next the foreign powers to intervene.
The aims of the revolutionary committees are to arouse a general discontent and to force the Turkish government and the population to react violently, that would draw the attention of the foreign nations to the Armenians’ imaginary suffering and encourage them to intervene to right the situation.” (Letter of the British ambassador Currie to the Foreign Office, on March 28 of 1894)
“The members of Dachnak and Hintchak parties have terrorized their own compatriots, they have irritated the Moslem populations with robberies and wild actions; they have incapacitated all the efforts to implement reforms; all the events in Anatolia find their origins in the crimes committed by Armenian revolutionary committees.” (Note written on March the 4th of 1896 by the British vice-consul in Van)
The strategic calculations centered on the Russian and British axis and then turned into a rivalry, gave the Armenian issue an international character. The Armenians, encouraged with the situation and in deed with the aim to establish their promised state, built up “the Armenian revolt movements and terrorism” on two main Armenian terrorist organizations’ axle namely Hintchak and Dachnak in the second half of 1800s.
“In 1895 and 1896, the Armenian revolutionary committees have created such a suspicion between local and Armenian populations that it has become impossible to apply the slightest reform in those regions. The Armenian priests preferred to spread nationalist ideas, sticking them on the walls of the monasteries rather than apply themselves to religious education, and to set the Christians against the Moslems rather than carry out their religious tasks. The revolts that took place in 1895 and 1896 in several Turkish provinces have not been induced by some extreme poverty of the Armenian countrymen, nor by the Moslem attacks. Actually, these countrymen were considerably richer and more prosperous then their neighbors.” (General Mayewski, Russian consul general in Bitlis and Van, “Statistics of the provinces of Van and Bitlis”, 1897, pages 11-13)
“Governed by their patriarch, seconded by an ecclesiastical committee, an administrator and an Audit Office, things that the Turks, who used to be their friends, acknowledge, the Armenians would be far from being miserable if, basing their arguments on religious differences or on old historical memories, they dreamed too about the independence conquered by the Greeks, the Bulgarians, the Serbs; if in 1827 first, in 1896 and in 1897 next, unhappy to still be raias (Moslem or Catholic countryman recorded in the Ottoman census register as a farmer), they had not refused to submit to the military service or to pay the tax that exempt the Christians and the Jews from doing it; at last, if they had not shown ideas in which socialist and even anarchist tendencies were thought to be found. The Turks are tolerant, they are the most indifferent masters the world have ever known, and, may be, the Christian religion is nowhere freer than in their country. Public worship is free; churches and convents stand on here, they are self governing, they prosper here without inhibition, as we’ve seen it in the Mount Athos. In the streets of their cities, they have the priests, carrying ostentatiously the last sacrament to the ones about to die, escorted and protected by soldiers in arms; at last, concerned about the mystery of their private life, they respect the others’ ones, whoever they are, Latins or Orthodox, Armenians or Jews. The oppression they are accused of is no more than a legend as old as the crusades and it would always be easy to find, if not an excuse, at least an explanation for the violent events, it’s true they are, of what is called their ‘Fanaticism’.” (“Around the Mediterranean: European and Asian Turkey – From Salonica to Jerusalem”, Marius Bernard, H. Laurens, Paris, 1899, page 82)
Starting with the Russian tsardom increasingly became an important state in the world’s power balance from the first half of the 19. century, Russia seemed to perceive typically the territory of the Ottoman State as a natural enlargement area and trying to lean down to south and southwest from the back of Ottomans. This situation made Russia interested in the Gregorian Armenians together with the Orthodox Greeks; England and France also became a partner for this strategic interest by means of ‘Islahat Fermani’ (imperial reform decree). For this reason, an imaginary Armenia in Eastern Anatolia was promised to the Armenians.
“In 1894, Mr. Cambon, the French ambassador in Constantinople, was saying that it was impossible to find a solution for the Armenian problem. Actually, a solution for this question, the most important of all these cropped up in Turkey, can not be thought up. The struggle between Turks and Armenians has its own character. The Armenian know that they won’t be able to realize their national aspirations, staying subject to the Turks. The present situation is the logical consequence of the upholding principle of the Ottoman Empire. (…) The Armenians are scattered in the Islamic ocean and they lap in the middle of its waves. (…) Today, the English peril takes over from the yesterday’s Russian peril. The Armenians are the scouts of the enemy in ambush, who is waiting for the opportunity to attack.” (Article appeared in the Armenian magazine Armenia (published in Turin), in its number of June 1914)
“On August 21, 1914 – numerous Armenians of Paris marched past spontaneously in Champs-Elysées, before going to the bureau of recruitment of the Invalides.” (French newspaper Excelsior, August 22, 1914 issue)
With Serbia and Belgium, the number of the Alliance allied States had come to six. But who is the seventh allied? (…) It’s the Armenians. These have taken part in the World War since its beginning. (…) They have thrown themselves into the fray with enthusiasm, without waiting for us to invite them and without any bargaining. (…) Admiring, since the beginning of the hostilities, the Alliance organization, they gave their regard and their faith, that they always shown us, free rein and they immediately run up to the fight. They are still fighting. Hundred thousand of them are in the Russian army, more than twenty thousand are fighting wit the Caucasus army, and a lot of the Armenian volunteers are in the ranks of the Alliance, on the French front.” (Article appeared in the newspaper Daily Chronicle, September 23, 1914 issue)
The voluntary Armenian troops in the World War I. took part in Russian ranks…
“During the Caucasus campaign, the Armenian committees have brilliantly played a great part in the Russians’ glory. The soldiers of Antranik are the ones who have taken Saray and Bachkale for the Russians. The attack against Beyazit was launched too by the troops of Antranik and it’s the Armenian volunteers who, at Samson’s disposal, keeping the Turks from doing an encircling movement in Azerbaijan, have saved the Russians from a bloody failure.
The most important of the Russian newspaper, the Novoie Vremia, mentions with praises the Armenians’ love for the Russians and the Christendom. (…) The important struggle today supported by the Armenians, the sacrifices they forced themselves to make for the Russian cause, will bring them everyone’s regard. (…)” (Letter of the “Yervantoni Committee”, appeared in the Armenian newspaper Asparez (published in the United States), No. 350, April 23, 1915 issue)
The baseless images of the claims reflected to the Western public opinion memory have been embroidered consciously since 1800s, but two of the terrible dimensions of the issue, such as “revolt” and “the Armenian atrocities”, have been ignored.
“There are only 1 500 Turks left in Van, the rest having been exterminated.” (Gotchnak, Armenian newspaper published in the United States, May 24, 1915 issue)
The rebellious movements and the First World War brought the decree of temporarily relocation of the unprotected citizens to the regions out of war due to military reasons. Moreover, there were orders for the protection of the Armenians in that decree, not to kill them as it is claimed.
“When these Armenian residents of cities and above-mentioned villages which must be deported will be moved towards their new places of residence and more particularly on the way, care will be taken of their prosperity, their lives and possessions will be protected; it will be necessary to arrange, after their arrival, for the coverage of their food by the Fund for the refugees until their definitive installation in their new lodgings. Distribution of lands and possessions will also be planned according to their previous financial situation and usual necessities; for those of them for whom a supplementary help would be necessary, the government will consider building houses, supplying the farmers and the artisans with grains, tools and material.” (Decree of the Cabinet. Archives of the Presidency of the council, Istanbul. Report of the Cabinet, Vol. 198, decree 1331/163, in the middle of May on 1915)
“Concerning the Armenian revolutionaries’ tactics, one cannot expect to think up something more diabolic. Killing Moslems in order to punish innocents, robbing in the middle of the night villages that have just paid, the same day, their taxes. (…) The Armenian revolutionaries prefer robbing their own coreligionists rather than fighting against their enemy; it’s in order to make their compatriots murder that the Armenian anarchists in Constantinople do bomb attacks.” (Sir Mark Sykes, “The Caliph’s Last Heritage”, London 1915, pages 409-418)
The Armenians fought against the Ottoman Empire as fully equipped and openly.
“…I exterminated the Turkish population in Basar-Gechar without any discrimination. Sometimes you think of bullets not to spend… I was just sometimes doing that. I was gathering the surrendered survivors from the clashes. While those, whom I crammed into wells, were waiting to be fired on them, I was having people found heavy rocks around and dropping them onto those in the wells! The children beneath were already dying immediately…” (An expression of a Dachnak officer while explaining the situation in Beyazit-Vaaram region: State Archive of Armenia f:67, d:44)
“At the moment, 80 000 Armenian soldiers are fighting with the Russian forces against the German and Austrian armies, and 40 000 against Turkey. Thousands of Armenian volunteers, run from everywhere, are spilling their blood in the Turkish and Persian borders to assure the Allies of victory. Here are the Armenian revolutionaries, so well informed of the Ottoman soldiers’ state of mind. Being aware of the most important strategic points, they did the Russian advanced guards important favors.
The liking shown to the Allies by the rebel Armenia will be acknowledged and appreciated after the victory of the Alliance.” (Armenian newspaper Yeridasarat Hayasdan, June 25, 1915 issue)
“The Russian government took a decision that will have a good reception from all the Armenian circles: he appointed Aram Manoukian, the leader of the revolutionary movement, governor of Van.
Aram Manoukian was born in 1877, in the Caucasus, in the city of Chousta. (…) At the beginning of the war, Aram rose up in arms and took the lead of the rebels of Van. Russia, who is now in possession of the province, appointed Aram governor, wishing to satisfy the Armenian element who have taken part so brilliantly in the war against Turkey.” (French newspaper Le temps – Paris, August 13, 1915 issue)
“We could form volunteer Armenian gangs and send them to the war. So we could express our high gratitude to Russia who showed us so much benevolence.
We’ve heard that some persons, who can’t stand the criticism and basing their argument on childish factors, advise to end this organization instead of agreeing to it and trying to develop it. It is nothing more than a crime!
We won’t put an end to the Armenian volunteers’ organization. We won’t put an end to it. No! On the contrary, we’ll extend and strengthen it. We’ll be everywhere, in the front as advanced guard, and to the end, to the annihilation of the enemy, our place will be next to Russian Cossacks. (…) The Armenians will be of the ones who will put Turkey, in the throes of death, out of its misery, at its final moments. Turkey, dying, must see it by itself and read this page of its damned history before closing the eyes.
Today, our main enemy are the Turks. These who, openly or secretly, are opposed to the volunteers’ organization or are trying to limit this force, must be considered as traitors and enemies from the inside. (Article signed Sabah-Gulian and appeared in the Armenian newspaper Inkenavar Haydasdan (“Independent Armenia”), No. 25, June 19, 1916 issue)
The Armenians efforts to found the independent Armenia by means of establishing committees and associations with the incitement of the Western states such as Russia, England and France, who intended to share the Ottoman State, resulted in killing of millions of Turks.
Under these circumstances, hundred thousands of extremist Armenians, who gathered under the framework of the Armenian organizations, which gave acceleration to their murders with the burst of First World War, betrayed the Ottoman army on the Caucasus front, and stroke them on rear and fought with Russians.
So, the Ottoman State decreed for a temporary relocation of the Armenians in some regions, who helped the Russians’ overtaking some of the Ottoman provinces such as Van, Kars and Erzurum.
It can be said that the decree of relocation eliminated the possible failure in inner control of the Ottoman troops in some degree, who were fighting on several fronts. Such as, it is a known fact that while the Armenians were joining in the Russian armies and fighting against the Turkish ones, they raided their compatriot Armenians’ villages who did not want to participate in the revolts, and murdered them with unbelievable tortures. Although it is tried to be forgotten by the Armenian historians, the nuance and details of the issue concentrated in this direction in the historical documents are that of relocation, which means a temporary movement, aimed to distinguish “loyal” and “betrayed” groups and to protect the Armenian citizens.
Moreover, in a prevailing wartime, the only and important reason for relocation was that it had been done wholly according to the military motives. With this meaning, it must be seen as a “usual self-defense of any country”. As a matter of fact, in the World War II., the US exercised an “obligatory settling until the end of war” to her 400 thousand Japanese origin citizens to keep them together in the borders of a state, like as Ottomans’ decision.
“(…) The pro-Armenians always manage to belong to the upper class, frightening the public by repeating ceaselessly, and by exaggerating the number of victims. Apparently, they appreciate to its just value an old oriental proverb: ‘Give to a lie an advance of 24 hours, and you will need 100 years to catch up with it.’” (C.F. Dixon-Johnson, “The Armenians”, Northgate, Blackburn, on 1916)
“The Armenians have been, since the beginning of the war, de facto belligerents –since they fought alongside the Allies on all fronts- in Palestine and Syria, where the Armenian volunteers, recruited by the Armenian National Delegation at the request of the French government, made up more than half of the French contingent. In the Caucasus, where, without mentioning the 150,000 Armenians in the Imperial Russian Army, more than 40,000 of their volunteers offered resistance to the Turkish Armies.” (Letter from the leader of the Armenian National Delegation, Boghos Nubar to the French minister of Foreign affairs, S. Pichon, on November 30, 1918. In this letter, he urges the allies to remember the ‘services’ of the Armenians in the World War I.)
“The awakening of a revolutionary state of mind among the Turkish Armenians resulted from Russian stimulations.” (Hairenik, newspaper of the Armenian Dachnak Party, June 28, 1918 issue)
“Although it is not documented enough, we think the Turks are aware of that, whatever they do, they will always be found unjust, will be despised, will be deprived of anything and will pay the price; the coalition, which is never admitted by all the peoples called of Christian, will never give up the war. And they also know that these pitiful Armenians will never abandon to be wicked and two-faced informers against them.
(…) The Christian peoples and then Christian rulers, who want to fish in turbid waters, have not hesitated to send provocative agents to them. (…) I claim that their murder stories have always been wildly exaggerated and the details have been made so ugly.”
(…) In the preceding chapter, I told a Turkish anecdote; here, I will tell an essentially Armenian one. In an Asian city, during the 1896 massacres, the French Consul, who had sheltered as many Armenians as possible at the Consulate under the French standard, came up to his terrace to see what was going on in the neighborhood; when two bullets came from behind him, turning he realized in a flash, an Armenian who had been aiming at him from a window of a neighboring house. Apprehended and questioned, the sly aggressor answered: ‘I did that so that the Turks would be accused, and with the hope that after the murder of the Consul, the French would rise against them.’” (Pierre Loti, “The Massacres in Armenia”, Paris, 1918, pages 22-29)
“Damaging the credit of the Armenians equals to weakening anti-Turkish cause. It seems very difficult henceforth to defeat those that present the Turks as a people noble and swamped with misfortunes. Present situation (betrayed by the Armenians, the English are forced to evacuate Baku in 1918) will strengthen the camp of their defenders and will harm not only the prestige of the Armenians but also that of the Zionists and the Arabs.
To accept in the internal and outside opinion the necessity of settling Turkish problem in a radical way, the treatment imposed by the Turks to the Armenians constitutes the main winning card which is at the disposal of the government of Her Majesty.” (Arnold J. Toynbee, memorandum of September 26, 1919 (referenced English official document: FO 371/3404/162647, page 2))
“I shall keep the immortal to recollection of your bravery and your ardor. Generous France will proudly remember that It had the honor to entrust the Sons of Armenia with a prize of bayonets which they handled with enthusiasm: may the blood shed and the public heroism not remain sterile.” (The Commander-in-chief of the Troops of occupation of Oriental Djihan, on August 19, 1920, General Gourand)
The Armenian propaganda was built on forming terrorist organizations and getting sympathy by using holly Christian religion. Surely, the documents shown as an example of an inhuman tragedy are also entirely “false” on the same ground. As a matter of fact, closing eyes to the facts and the archives will be real denying of the realities.
“I see that reports are being freely circulated in the United States that the Turks massacred thousands of Armenians in the Caucasus. Such reports are repeated so many times it makes my blood boil. The Near East Relief (an American humanitarian organization) has the reports from Yarrow and our own American people which show that the first reports are absolutely false. The circulation of such false reports in the United States, without refutation, is an outrage and is certainly doing the Armenians more harm than good. I feel that we should discourage the Armenians in this kind of work, not only because it is wrong, but because they are injuring themselves.
In addition to the reports from our own American Relief workers that were in Kars and Alexandrople, and reports from such men as Yarrow, I have reports from my own Intelligence Officer and know that the Armenian reports are not true. Is there not something that you and the Near East Relief Committee can do to stop the circulation of such false reports?” (Admiral Mark Lambert Bristol served as the Commander of the U.S. Naval Detachment in Turkish waters and as the U.S. High Commissioner to Turkey during the years 1919-1927. His reports are housed in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. The following is an excerpt from Bristol’s letter dated March 28, 1921 to Dr. James L. Barton, the Secretary of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions)
Many of the Ottoman officials were arrested and exiled to Malta by the occupation forces as a punishment for war crimes because of the stories and claims of so-called massacre against the Armenians; however, no evidence could be found against these persons neither in the capital of Ottomans, which was under occupation, nor in England and America, and finally they were released.
“I regret to tell you that there is no evidence against the Turks who are under arrest in Malta… There is not any concrete incident that could be presented as hard evidence! The reports, in no way, seem to constitute any useful additional information to support the information on Turks already available to Her Majesty’s government.” (The British Ambassador to Washington, R.C. Craigie’s message to Lord Curzon on July 13, 1921. PRO.FO.371/6504/E.8519)
“The countless pamphlets which were discovered everywhere the Armenians used to be, the provocative brochures, the weapons, the ammunitions, the explosive and other materials, prove well that uprising had been planned long time ago. This had been prepared, supported and had been financed by Russia. A project of Armenian attempt against high-ranking servants of the State and the officers was discovered in Istanbul at the last minute. Given that all the Moslems at an age to carry weapons were mobilized in the Turkish army, the Armenians would have been able to very easily massacre the civil populations remained defenseless. Because the Armenians did not content themselves with skirmishes on sides and rear of the army grappling with the Russians: they also swept all the Moslems they found on their passage. The cruelties of the Armenians I witnessed exceeded by far those attributed to the Turks.” (German General Bronsart von Schellendorf, article appeared in the newspaper Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, on July 24, 1921)
“Activities carried out in the Ottoman Empire by the American missionaries are generally well enough known. On the other hand, one does not always realize the impact they had on American public opinion. The American missionaries discovered very quickly that the Moslems did not change religion so that, deprived of any possibility of proselytism among the Turks, they channeled all their energy towards the religious, educational and medical work in aid of Christian minorities, in particularly the Armenians. During a half a century, the missioners were our main source of information about the situation in the Near and the Middle East and they modeled the American public opinion on this subject.
(…) Received arms wide-open by the Armenians, it is not surprising that they adopted their cause. The reports they sent to America and the conferences they held, when they went there for vacation constituted plans in favor of the oppressed Christians and denounced the Turkish oppressors. The congregations which supported these missionaries lined up in their point of view without no distrust and developed under the aegis of our Churches a powerful anti-Turkish current opinion.” (E. Alexander Powell, “The Struggle for Power in Moslem Asia”, New York, 1923, pages 27-28)
“(…) We (the Armenians) jointed to Russia unconditionally. Because we were sure of the government of the Czardom would bestow us an autonomous Armenia. But, we understood that we had attached too much importance to unauthorized persons’ promises. After a time we couldn’t see the facts due to the effect of hypnosis; we all were in a dream.
However, it is important that we couldn’t find suitable measures to improve our situation from inside and outside before and after the War we participated with the promises given to us (World War I.)… We couldn’t take the administrative measures to establish order in the regions we occupied, and obliged to take up arms. We sent armies, set on fire and demolished, and massacred…” (Hovhannes Kachaznuni, the first Prime minister of the Armenian State, cited from the book titled “There was nothing to do for Dashnaksutyun”, April 1923)
“According to the terms of the Constitution 1908, the government of Enver could indeed mobilize the Armenians as well as the Turks in age to be in the armed forces. But an armed opposition started immediately, notably in Zeytoun. At the oriental border, the Armenians began to desert to pass in the Russian armies and the government of Enver, doubtful of the loyalty of those that stayed, separated them from the fighting forces to allocate to battalions of engineers… In April 1915, Lord Bryce and ‘Friends of Armenia’, in London, began to collect money to arm these deserters. One can’t claim that the Russians remained indifferent in front of the supplement of these volunteers. Finally, at the end of April, they seized Van… And, having massacred the Turkish population, they delivered what remained of the city to the Russian army…” (Clear Price, “The rebirth of Turkey”, New York, 1923)
“For nearly a century, the American missionaries have been maintaining contacts with the Armenian minority. (…) It is by this canal that one learnt in the United States the troubles from which suffered the Armenians under the Hamidian regime (…) But the missionaries were not able to or did not want to explain to their coreligionists that the Turks bore exactly the same troubles. As a result, instead of giving to the Americans an impartial image of the situation of all the peoples of the Empire, instead of explaining clearly that it was Hamidian regime who was the oppressor and the Turks suffered as much as the Armenians, the missionaries drew the attention of America only on the misfortunes of the Armenians.” (Clear Price, “The rebirth of Turkey”, New York, 1923, pages 79-80)
“One can not claim that the Russians remained indifferent facing the supplement of these (Armenian) volunteers. Finally, at the end of April, these last ones seized Van, one of the bastions of the provinces of the East, and having massacred the Turkish population, they delivered what remained of the city to the Russian army, in June of this same year. News from Van moved to Turks, exactly in the same way as when they learnt the occupation of Izmir by the Greeks in May, 1919. The rumor of the Armenian uprising spread immediately through Asia Minor. In this time, the military status had abruptly returned to the detriment of the Enver’s government. Russian victories at Sarikamich were taking on new dimensions, waves of Turkish refugees moved towards the west and the center of Asia Minor. The English had started the campaign of the Dardanelles, so close to Istanbul, and Bulgaria had not yet entered the war. It would have been irrational to choose this moment, seen the course of events, to take large-scale measures against the Armenians if an absolute necessity had not risen. Measures were effectively taken (and the order to move Armenians was given then).” (Clear Price, “The rebirth of Turkey”, New York, 1923, pages 86-87)
“The histories of atrocities were largely exaggerated. Some of the most recent massacres never occurred. One of the correspondents of a press of an American charitable organization said openly to some friends that he could send to America only anti-Turkish bulletins because that was what brought money!”
“Now I can readily understand and make allowance for the public’s error and misconceptions, for it has had, after all, no means of knowing that it has been systematically deceived, but I can find no excuse for those newspapers which, clinging to a policy of vilifying the Turk, failed to rectify the anti-Turkish charges printed on their columns even when it had been proved to the satisfaction of most fair-minded persons that they were unjustified. A case in point was the burning of Smyrna in September, 1922.
There was scarcely a newspaper of importance in the United States that did not editorially lay that outrage at the door of the Turks, without waiting to hear the Turkish version, yet, after it had been attested by American, English, and French eye-witnesses, and by a French commission of inquiry, that the city had been deliberately fired by the Greeks and Armenians in order to prevent it falling into Turkish hands, how many newspapers had the courage to admit that they had done the Turks a grave injustice?” (E. Alexander Powell, “The Struggle for Power in Moslem Asia”, The Century Co., New York & London (1923), pages 32-33)
“Turks had behaved the Armenians very well for years until the Russians began to manipulate the Armenians as a pawn absolutely for their political aims. Russians, as being Christians, made use of the Armenians. (Lieutenant colonel T. Williams, member of Parliament from Labors Party, London, 25 ii 1924, Vol. 170)
“In April, the Armenian revolutionaries seized the city of Van and established there an Armenian general staff under the command of Aram and Vardan. On May 6th, they delivered the city to the Russian army, having clean the district of Van of all the Moslems… Among the most notorious Armenian leaders was Karekin Pasdermadjian, a former member of the Turkish parliament known under the name of Garo. He had taken the leadership of the Armenian volunteers when hostilities between the Turks and Russians had begun. It is known that the attempts of the Turks at the beginning of the war to gain the support of the party Dachnak against the Russians had failed, the Armenian congress of Erzurum having declared itself neutral in September, 1914. Nevertheless, thousands of Russian bombs and weapons which were in the hands of the members of the party, constituted an evident proof denying this neutrality. The Turks attributed the Russian occupation of the North of Asia Minor by to the activities of the Armenian groups which had seriously hindered the defense of the country.” (Felix Valyi, “Revolution in Islam”, London, 1925, pages 233-234)
“When hostilities had effectively begun, the representative of Erzurum, in the Ottoman Assembly, Garo Pasdermadjian, passed in the other camp, in Russia, with almost all the Armenian officers and soldiers of the 3rd army. A bit later, he returned with them. They began to set on fire villages and to strike mercilessly of their knives all the peaceful Moslems around. As an inevitable consequence of these bloodthirsty excesses, the Ottoman authorities immediately disarmed the Armenian policemen and soldiers who were still in the army (probably because they had not managed to escape). They were sent to battalions charged with road works and transport of material in mountains. This indefensible massive desertion of Armenian troops and the massacres which they committed following their return in the sectors of Bach-Kale, Saray, and Beyazit, quickly alarmed the Turks, and aroused their apprehension, because the other Armenians living in provinces bordering Van and Erzurum could rebel in the same way and attack. Indeed, it is exactly what happened some weeks after my arrival when the Armenians of the province of Van rebelled en masse (…)” (Rafael de Nogales, “Four years beneath the Crescent”, New York, 1926, page 45)
“We took with us 3000 Turkish soldiers arrested by the Russians and left to us (Armenians) when the Russians abandoned fights. During our retreat of Karaklis, 2000 of these poor devils were cruelly put to death. I was disgusted but I could not make any actual protest. Some of them were burned alive.” (Leonard Still, “Men are like that”, BOBBS. Co. Indianapolis, 1928)
“The objective of the Armenian Revolutionary Union (Dachnak) was to obtain economic and political freedom in Turkey by means of the rebellion. Terrorism was adopted since the beginning, it was for the Dachnak committee of the Caucasus a policy or strategy to reach its purposes. In their program adopted in 1892, in the column ‘Means’, ‘Method 8’ was described this way: ‘Make war and subject the government, the officials and the traitors to terrorism’; ‘Method 11’, ‘Subject the governmental institutions to the destruction and to plunder’. (…) The purpose of these riots was to make sure that European powers would intervene in the Ottoman internal affairs.”
“When world war burst in Europe, the Turks dashed into feverish preparations to join the Germans. In August, 1914, The Young-Turks asked the Dachnak convention, then taking place in Erzurum, to apply the former agreement of 1907 and to lead the Armenians of Russia to rebel against the Russian State. Dachnakistes refused, but they assured that, if a war happened to burst between Turkey and Russia, they would support Turkey as loyal citizens. In return, they stated that they were not responsible for Armenians of Russia (…) However, the leaders of the Turkish Armenian section of Dachnakistes did not keep their promise of loyalty towards Turkey when the latter went to the war.
(…) Their actions were influenced by the interests of the Russian government and they did not take at all into account the dangers which this war was going to arouse for the Armenians of Turkey. Caution had been completely abandoned without due consideration. Even the decisions of their own agreement of Erzurum were forgotten and an appeal was lunched so that the Armenian volunteers go to fight against the Turks on the Caucasian front.” (K. Sdepan Papazian, “Patriotism perverted”, Boston, 1934)
“One of the (Armenian) revolutionaries told Dr. Hamlin, the founder of Robert Collage, that the Hentchak bands would watch their opportunities to kill Turks and Kurds, set fire to their villages, and then make their escape into the mountains. The enraged Moslems will then rise, and fall upon the defenseless Armenians and slaughter them with such barbarity that Russia will enter in the name of humanity and Christian civilization and take possession.” (William L. Langer, Professor of History, “The Diplomacy of Imperialism 1890-1902”, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1935, Volume I, page 157)
“Having carrying out the minimum of their duty as Ottoman citizens, the Armenians encouraged the operations of the enemy. There is certainly in their ambiguous attitude no act of allegiance! But which Occidental would have the right to accuse them when a tradition taught by Europe turned the insubordination of the Christian subjects of the Sultan to a most sacred obligation? Insubordination often sanctioned with the granting of autonomy or of sovereign power. How to deny nevertheless that to the eyes of the Turks, according to the law of all the countries, the behavior of the Armenians facilitating in full war the task of the opponent can be called anything else but crime of high treason?
(…) Committees (Armenians) divided on internal questions came to an agreement to facilitate the advance of the Russian armies: they used to hamper the retreat of the Turkish troops, to stop supply convoys, to form franc-tireurs bands. There were desertions en masse in the eastern provinces, the Armenians formed thus several battalions supervised by Russian officers. Local revolts took place here and there; the leaders showed the example; two Armenian representatives of the Turkish Chamber ran away to Russia. This created a whole lot of hatred literature: ‘let the Turkish mothers lament… Let us try to enjoy a little the bitterness of the Turks…’ Armenian fault does not make any doubt.” (Philippe de Zara, “Mustafa Kemal, the dictator”, Paris, 1936, pages 159-160)
“At the beginning of the fall of 1914 when Turkey had not yet entered the war but had already been making preparations, Armenian revolutionary bands began to be formed in Transcaucasia with great enthusiasm and, with especially, much uproar. Contrary to the decision taken during their general meeting at Erzurum only a few weeks before, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation had actively participated in the formation of the bands and their future military actions against Turkey. (…) The Armenians had embraced whole-heartedly without any compunction. (…)
In an undertaking such gravity, fraught with most serious consequences, individual agents of the Transcaucasian Armenian Revolutionary Federation acted against the will of our superior authority, against the will of the General Meeting of the Party…
In the Fall of 1914 Armenian volunteer bands organized themselves and fought against the Turks because they could not refrain from organizing and fighting. This was an inevitable result of a psychology on which the Armenian people had nourished itself during an entire generation: that mentality should have found its expression, and did so. We had created a dense atmosphere of illusion in our minds. We had implanted our own desires into the minds of others; we had lost our sense of reality and were carried away with our dreams (…)” (Hovhannes Katchaznouni, the first Prime Minister of the independent Armenian Republic (1918-1922), “The Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnagtzoutiun) Has Nothing To Do Any More”, the Armenian Information Service (edited by Arthur A. Derounian), New York, 1955)
“(…) When war burst, the Armenians of the eastern provinces entered secretly into relationship with the Russian authorities of the Caucasus; a clandestine network was created, which allowed to send volunteers from these Turkish provinces to the Russian army.” (M. Philips Price, “History of Turkey”, London, 1956, page 91)
“The Armenians incited confusions and committed terrorist acts. (…) Excitement and terror were necessary to raise the spirit of the people. The party was aiming at terrorizing the Ottoman government, thus contributing to reduce the prestige of the regime while working for its total destruction. Hentchaks wanted to eliminate all the Turkish and Armenian personalities working for the government, as well as all the spies and the informants. To allow them to realize all these terrorist actions, the party organized a specific branch completely devolved to the execution of acts of terrorism. The most convenient moment to start the general rebellion which would allow to realize immediate objectives was the engagement of Turkey in war.” (Louise Nalbantian, “The Armenian Revolutionary Movement: The development of Armenian Political Parties through the nineteenth century”, Berkeley, Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1963)
“Even in cases of minor importance, one can not totally trust the testimonies of the people. When prejudice, emotion, passions, patriotism get involved in feelings, testimonies lose any value. (…) The histories of atrocities were repeated day after day, and diffused by means of posters, with brochures, with letters and with speech. People enjoying a great reputation and who, at other times, would have had scruple, for lack of proofs, even to condemn their worst enemies, would not hesitate to be the indicters and to attribute to an entire people the most atrocious crimes one can imagine. (…) A circular was prepared by the War ministry asking the officers to report on the misdeeds of the enemy. According to this circular, exactness was not an essential condition: probability was enough.
(…) The most popular lies in England and in America were those concerning atrocities. No war can do without it. One considers that to libel the enemy is a patriotic duty.” (Arthur Ponsoby (British Deputy from 1910 till 1918, his book published in 1928 describes propaganda methods used during Firs World War), “Falsehood in War-Time”, New York, 1971, pages 20-22)
“Armenians again flooded the czarist armies, and the czar returned to St. Petersburg confident that the day finally had come for him to reach Istanbul. Hostilities were opened by Russians, who pushed across the border on November 1, 1914, though the Ottomans stopped them and pushed them back a few days later. A subsequent Russian counter offensive in January caused the Ottoman army to scatter and the way was prepared for a new Russian push into eastern Anatolia, to be accompanied by an open Armenian revolt against the Sultan…
Armenian leaders in Russia now declared their open support of the enemy. It would be impossible to determine which of the Armenians would remain loyal and which would follow the appeals of their leaders. As soon as the spring came, then, in mid-May 1915 orders were issued to evacuate the entire Armenian population from the provinces of Van, Bitlis and Erzurum, to get them away from all areas where they might undermine the Ottoman campaigns against Russia or against the British in Egypt, with arrangements made to settle them in towns and camps in the Mosul area of Northern Iraq. In addition, Armenians residing in the countryside (but not in the cities) of the Cilician districts as well as those of North Syria were to be sent to central Syria for the same reason.
Specific instructions were issued for the army to protect the Armenians against nomadic attacks and to provide them with sufficient food and other supplies to meet their needs during the march and after they were settled. Warnings were sent to the Ottoman military commanders to make certain that the people not to use the situation to gain vengeance for the long years of Armenian terrorism. The Armenians were to be protected and cared for until they returned to their homes after the war.” (Prof. Dr. J. Stanford Shaw, “History of The Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey”, Cambridge University Press (1977), Volume II, page 315)
“The promises given to the Armenians by British are similar to the ones given to the Arabs in Syria, Palestine and Mesopotamia. These promises were given to encourage the war efforts of Armenians, to affect them for the favor of England and to cause an internal collapse of the enemies (the Ottoman Empire) by provoking the separatist trends of the ethnic minorities under rule of those neutral states. (H.A. Arslanian, British War Guarantees, 1917-1918, Journal of Contemporary History, Volume 13, 1978)
“One understands the Armenians’ bitterness to have been the only ones to have been unable to take advantage of such a big disaster (collapse of the Ottoman Empire). One would simile maybe of their utopian dreams if they were not so sad and so bloody and, it is necessary indeed to admit, if they had not set up the stake on which they finally burned, especially by helping the Russians with all their forces in the war against the Turks with whom they had lived in harmony during centuries, and not without taking immense profits.” (Jean-Paul Roux, “The History of the Turks”, Fayard, Paris, on 1984, page 306)
“The intrigues of the foreigners, their encouragements, their promises pushed all the Christians to the uprising, to the liberating murder. Europe, which manipulated them in secret, congratulated itself on it; it sang them with Byron and Hugo, painted them with Delacroix; by romanticism, when the romantic school triumphed, it saw in the Greek bandits who were the guerillas of the heirs of Praxitele and Socrates. She did no doubt consider the Armenians but as pawns to move on the chessboard and eventually abandoned them, even at the cost of speaking of genocide, crying with them, listening to their admirable propaganda. More skillful than Greek propaganda, it wrapped the Turks in a bloodstain intended to defile even the Republic, while at any case it should have splashed only Ottoman Empire: No one ever looked at it very closely. This Europe which de-christianized wanted to see only Christianity groaning under the opprobrium of Islam.” (Jean-Paul Roux, “L’Historie des Turcs”, Fayard, Paris, on 1984, page 304 (“The History of the Turks”))
“From the declaration of war, Zeytoun region is rebelled and has been a home of rebellion so important as in February, 1915, that the Russia’s ambassador in London will make an action with the English to furnish with provisions the 15 000 listed insurgents by a landing to Antakya (let us indicate – to underline the gravity of the matter- that at the same time, the Ottomans were already on the defensive in the Dardanelles).
From November 23rd, we are informed about the training of guerillas in the region of Van. On February 21st, a revolt burst in Bitlis and Mush, where it is reported (not by mere chance) the presence of the representative of Van, Papazian, who will pass to the Russians.
On March 20th, we have already said, the governor of Van indicated 2000 rebels in the region.
On April 22nd, the governor of Sivas cabled that ‘the Armenians armed 30 000 persons. 15 000 are enlisted in the Russian army and it is definitively established that 15 000 others are going to attack the Turkish army on its rear’.
On April 27th, more than 1000 deserters stopped at Diyarbakir, etc.
All these facts are established with General Staff’s official telegrams. And in these conditions, while the entire oriental Anatolia is in uprising, efforts are made to attribute crime to the Ottoman government to have taken counter-measures to assure the safety of its armies and the population remained loyal.
The propagandists of the Armenian cause know well that they can not do it. And that is why, in their stories of facts, they slide carefully on these revolts.
In all the countries, under all the regimes, the staff of the armies in the field evacuate towards the back the populations which live in the zone of fights and can bother the movement of the troops especially if these populations are hostile. Public opinion does not find anything to criticize to these measures, obviously painful, but necessary: during winter 1939-1940, the radical-socialist French government evacuated and transported in the southwest of France, notably in the Dordogne, the entire population of the Alsatian villages situated in the valley of the Rhine, to the east of the Maginot line.
This German-speaking population, and even sometimes germanophil, bothered the French army. It stayed in the South, far from the evacuated homes and sometimes destroyed until 1945. And nobody, in France, cried out for inhumanity.
Besides, the purely character of the deportation ordered in the Ottoman Empire results from the fact that the Armenian population of big cities, and notably that of Istanbul, could easily be controlled and was not aimed by the measures taken. The intention which guided the decisions taken by the Ottoman government is perfectly legitimate. (Georges de Maleville, lawyer and specialist of the Armenian question, “The Armenian Tragedy of 1915”, Editions F. Sorlot-F. Lanore, Paris, 1988, pages 61-63)
“Figures put forward by the Armenians increase moreover constantly from one year to the next, very widely until it exceeded the total of the Armenian population living in the Ottoman Empire in 1914! The truth is more moderate, and moreover it’s sinister enough. By basing itself on the official statistics of the Ottoman population in 1914, established by a ‘Service’ organized and managed at the time by an American, whose work was by no means disputed before examining the facts, we end at a figure of 300 000 victims. Still the later includes (we have already indicated it) the ‘missing’, that is, the Armenians that have taken refuge in the area of Van taking a stand with the Russians and withdrew with them to later settle down in Soviet Armenia. The figure missing 300 000 corresponds moreover exactly to that declared, exactly on December 11, 1918, by the leader of the Armenian delegation in a letter to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. (Archives of French Foreign affairs, Levant, 1918-1929, Armenia V.M.2, fo.47; moreover, George of Maleville, “The Armenian Tragedy of 1915”, Publications Fernand Lanore, Paris, 1988, pages 82-83)
“It is important however to underline that the Armenian communities are not the only ones to have been ground down by the plague of the war. In the spring of 1915, the tsarist army moved to the region of the lake of Van, dragging behind it battalions of volunteers composed of Caucasus and Turkish Armenians. (…) For each of the provinces which suffered from the Russian occupation and from the Armenian militias’ acts of vengeance, an important demographic deficit appears in the statistics of the post-war years – adding up to several hundred thousands of souls.” (“History of the Ottoman Empire”, Editions Fayard, Paris, 1989, page 624)
“Tracking down in the multitude of usual papers on both sides about the question of inaccuracies, questionable assertions, even forgeries, do not present difficulties. In particular, it seems established today that some of the essential objects put in the file by the accusation (that is, the Armenians) – for example, the Blue Book prepared for the British government by Bryce and Toynbee or the Memories of Na’im Bey published with the aid of Aram Andonian – can not any way to be considered as irrefutable documents. Didn’t Toynbee himself admit the Blue Book had been ‘published and spread only as war propaganda’?” (“History of the Ottoman Empire”, supervised by Robert Mantran, Fayard, Paris, 1989, page 624)
“My friend Franz Werfel, of Vienna, Austria, a writer, wrote a book entitled ‘The 40 Days of Mussa Dagh’. The story was told him by his friend, the Armenian bishop of Vienna and Werfel never doubted the Bishop’s account.
F. Werfel did not investigate what he wrote.
Years later, when the true facts about Mussa Dagh were established by the research of neutral investigators –which was never denied by Armenians- Werfel discovered that he had been duped by his friend, the Bishop, with a concocted story. Werfel confessed to me his shame and remorse for having written that story, in which he had blamed the Ottomans as the aggressors and the terrorists. Fifty thousand Armenians, residents of villages in and around Erzurum in Turkey, surreptitiously ascended a mountain called Mussa Dagh (dagh is Turkish for mountain) with arms, ammunition, victuals and water, sufficient to withstand a siege of many days.
Before ascending that mountain, they had captured hundreds of Muslim Turks and Jews, their fellow citizens and neighbors, with whom they were supposedly on good terms. They murdered them all in cold blood, for no other reason than they were Muslims and Jews. Thereafter, every night armed Armenian bands came down from that mountain and attacked the rear of Ottoman and German armies fighting the Russian invaders. This was at the very beginning of the First World War, and part of the secret plans made by the Russians and assigned to the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnak).
The Turks were mystified. The Armenian attackers would disappear. Try as they did, at first the Ottomans were unable to trace the disappearing Armenians, but finally they discovered that Mussa Dagh was the hiding place. The Ottomans found the mountain fortress unassailable. They laid siege and waited 40 days before the Armenian rear guard conceded defeat and laid down their arms. But the Ottoman forces found the mountain empty. The large army had disappeared down the other side of the mountain where they had found an exit to the Mediterranean.
French and British men-of-war had been signaled and they picked up the main army, transporting the soldiers to Alexandria, Egypt, then under the control of the British. Less than 500, the rear guard who gave themselves up, were captured by the Ottomans. Yet, in telling the story to Werfel to write, the Bishop had claimed 50,000 victims captured and put to death –an invented story, just as the story of 1.5 million massacred in 1915. If 1.5 million Armenians lost their lives during that war, they died as soldiers, fighting a war of their own choosing against the Ottoman Empire which had treated them decently and benignly. They were the duped victims of the Russians, of the Allies, and of their own Armenian leaders.” (Albert Amateau, Notarized Statement, “Franz Werfel’s Confession & Armenian Betrayal”, Federation of Turkish American Societies, Inc., New York, 1992)
“There was an Armenian problem for the Turks because of the advance of the Russians and the anti-Ottoman population in Turkey, which looked for independence and which got on openly with the Russians coming from the Caucasus. There were also Armenian bands –the Armenians boasted of heroic exploits of the resistance-, and the Turks had certainly problems of maintenance of law and order in state of war. For the Turks, it was a question of taking disciplinary and preventive measures against a population not enough secure in a region threatened by a foreign invasion. But that repression was limited geographically, and it did not affect the Armenians living somewhere else in the Ottoman Empire.
No doubt that terrible things took place, no doubt that numerous Armenians –and also Turks- died. But no one will certainly ever know the precise circumstances and the balances of the victims. Imagine the difficulty one has to restore facts and responsibilities about the war of the Lebanon, which took place nevertheless not long ago and before the eyes of the world! During their deportation towards Syria, hundreds of thousands of Armenians died of starvation, of cold…
But if one speaks about genocide, it implies that there was a deliberate policy, a decision to annihilate systematically the Armenian nation. This very doubtful. Turkish documents prove a will of deportation, no extermination.”
1. There was no campaign of hatred and any demonisation aiming directly at the Armenians.
2. The deportation of the Armenians, although in large-scale, was not total, and in particular it does not apply to the two big cities of Istanbul and Izmir.
3. Turkish actions against the Armenians, although disproportionate, had not arisen from nothing. The fear of a Russian intrusion in the oriental Ottoman provinces, the fact of knowing that numerous Armenians saw the Russians as their liberators against the Turkish regime and the awareness of the Armenian revolutionary activities of the Ottoman Empire: all this contributed to create an atmosphere of anxiety and suspicion, aggravated by the situation growing despair in the Empire and by neurosis –how usual- by the wartime. In 1914, the Russians set up four bulky unities of Armenian volunteers and three others in 1915. These unities regrouped numerous Ottoman Armenians, of whom some were very known public persons.
4. Deportation, for criminal, strategic or other reasons, had been practiced during centuries in the Ottoman Empire. Ottoman deportations did not aim directly and exclusively at the Armenians. Example: under the threat of the Russian intrusion and the imminent occupation of this city, the Ottoman governor of Van evacuated hastily the Moslem population and sent it on roads without transport or food, rather than to leave it under the Russian domination. Very few of these Moslems survived this ‘friendly’ deportation.
5. Doubtless, it is very well known that there were also terrible atrocities concerning especially the destiny of Moslem villagers in the region of Van, fallen in the hands of the units of Armenian volunteers.
But, there is no credible evidence showing the Ottoman government had a decision or a plan aimed to exterminate the Armenian population. (Bernard Lewis, historian (University of Princeton –the USA), article appeared in Le Monde, January 1994)
“The reality of the massacres, and even their dimension are not questioned by anyone, including in Turkey. In fact, controversy concerns three principle points, of very different nature.
First of all, the figure of a million and a half victims which appears on the commemorative monument of Marseille, and which is ritually repeated, is today thrown rejected by numerous historians, close or not to the official Turkish theses. Far from being most minimalist, the American demographer Justin McCarthy, for example, estimates that the total of the Armenians of Anatolia did not exceed a million and a half persons on the eve of the world conflict, and that, considering the figure of the survivors, it is seen the figure of the Armenians would have died in Anatolia in 1915 is entirely exaggerated.
Second point: there were also very numerous victims among the Moslems throughout the war, not only because of the fights but also through actions led against them by Armenians, in a context of ethnic and national rivalry. If there are forgotten victims, they are well those ones, and the current Turks are entitled to denounce the partiality of the Occidental opinion in this regard.
Is it because it was only about Moslems that one neglects them, or because one would estimate implicitly that the final success of their congeners deprives them of martyrs’ status? How would we look at these same facts, if things had gone otherwise, if the Armenians had finally founded, on Ottoman rubbles, a durable State in Anatolia?
Documents produced by the Armenians as the Interior Secretary Talat Pacha’s and other higher Ottoman officials’ orders, which were also referred to as ‘Andonian documents’, are only fakes, as the historic criticism doubtlessly proved afterward.
It is possible that overwhelming charges were presented in the indictment of the war council against the Young-Turks’ ‘special groups’, after their fall, in Istanbul in 1919. One can not ignore these precise denunciations, or either take them at their face value, considering the excellently political character of this lawsuit. It was instituted against a revolutionary government which had driven the country to disaster, by its opponents succeeding in power and, especially, under the cup of the Allies. McCarthy speaks about two millions and a half of Moslem victims (mainly Turkish) for the whole war in Anatolia from 1914 till 1922, of whom a million were from the only zone of ‘Armenian vilayets’.
For lack of conclusive evidence, the historian defenders of Armenian theses advance several contemporary testimonies, emanating from survivors, from diplomats and from foreign missionaries of different previous origins. They are far from being unimportant and are even in the best irreplaceable cases. For all that, every rigorous historian knows the limits of a testimony – all the more susceptible to express a point of view ‘engaged’ in a context of generalized conflict.” (Gilles Veinstein, historian and professor at the Collège de France, article published in the magazine History, No. 187 of April, 1995)
“The British Government had condemned the massacres at the time. But in the absence of unequivocal evidence that the Ottoman administration took a specific decision to eliminate the Armenians under their control at that time, British governments have not recognized those events as indications of genocide. Nor do we believe it is the business of governments of today to review events of over 80 years ago, with a view to pronouncing on them. The events of 1915-16 remain a painful issue in relation to two states with which we enjoy excellent relations.” (Foreign Office spokesman, Baroness Ramsey of Cartvale (PA News, April 14, 1999)
“No British government, neither this one, nor those that preceded, judged convincing enough existing the proofs to persuade the various governments that the events of 1915 must be qualified as ‘genocide’ according to the definition given by the 1948 convention of the United Nations on the genocide, a convention elaborated in response to the Holocaust and application of which is not retroactive. The interpretation of the events in eastern Anatolia in 1915-1916 is still subject to a real debate among the historians.” (Statement of the Baroness Scotland, in the House of Lords, in the name of the British foreign office and the Commonwealth (AFP report of January 18, 2001))
“The French parliament followed the example of parliaments of the other countries such as Greece, Italy and Russia, and voted for a law according to which eviction and murder of a part of the 2,5 million Armenians by Turkey in 1915/1916 is considered as a ‘genocide’. To decide on a historic fact by a law is in the first place an enormous wasting of taxes and parliamentary energy, and secondly an insult to every historian. It is not up to the legislators but to the historians and to each individual to decide for him/herself on terms of categories that s/he wants to use to describe what took place in Turkey in 1915/1916. A free spiritual life holds on to the following principle: to inquire at first about the current legal situation in order to, in a second step, study the case in a scientific way without falling in the insult.” (Institute for a social triarticulation (Germany), in January 19, 2001)
“The federal Government judges that the consideration of massacres occurred in 1915-1916 may not, by definition, be only a subject of History and that it, consequently, concerns only historical research and the two countries involved, namely Turkey and Armenia.” (Statement of the German foreign office, March 23, 2001)
“We reject attempts to create a similarity between the Holocaust and the Armenian allegations. Nothing similar to the Holocaust occurred. It is a tragedy what the Armenians went through, but not a genocide. (Nobel prize of Peace and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres (Turkish Daily News, April 10, 2001))
“The British government of that time and those that followed considered the massacres of 1915-1916 as a horrifying tragedy. We understand the force of feelings for this problem, given the human losses of both parties. But we do not believe that proofs put forward give evidence that those events must be classified as “genocide” as defined by the Convention of the United Nations on the genocide of 1948. The events of 1915-1916 constitute a big tragedy, during which two parts underwent very heavy losses.” (Statement of the Embassy of Great Britain in Ankara (Official statement on July 23, 2001))
“Millions of Ottoman Empire citizens; from different religious and ethnic backgrounds, died from ethnic-communal violence, forced migration, disease and starvation during World War I, and the collapse of the Empire. (…) We share the Turkish Americans’ great burden of sorrow from the tragic events which befell their ancestors from 1912-1922.
(…) Whereas, recognition of the Turkish tragedy is crucial to ensuring against the repetition of future civilian wartime tragedies. (…)
Turks enjoy a long history of friendship by living in harmony with different ethnic groups and sharing a geographic and cultural heritage.” (Decree of Court of Common Council of the City of Hartford, Connecticut, proclaiming August 30, 2001, as “Day of Remembrance of the Turkish tragedy”)
“We recognize millions of citizens of the Ottoman Empire from different religious and ethnic backgrounds died from inter-communal violence, forced migration, disease and starvation during World War I and the collapse of the Empire.
(…)We share the Turkish Americans’ great burden of sorrow from the tragic events which befell their ancestors from 1912-1922. (…)Whereas, recognition of the Turkish tragedy is crucial to ensuring against the repetition of future civilian wartime tragedies. (Decree of the State of Alabama proclaiming August 30, 2001 as “Day of Remembrance of the Turkish Tragedy”)
“It is unacceptable to make a comparison between the Holocaust and the tragedy lived by the Armenian people. Holocaust is a unique phenomenon, because it was planned and aimed at the extermination of a whole nation.” (Rivka Cohen, ambassadress of Israel in Armenia (press conference, Yerevan, on February 8, 2002))
“… The Armenians were shamanist before they became Christians. Custom and tradition: same as Turkish custom and tradition except religion. For example, the reason of appointment of the Armenians to the top levels of the state administration and trust shown to them as at least as Moslems by then the Seljuk and Ottoman governments were not only due to the merits of the Armenians but also their resemblance mentioned above...
… Some of the states acted with the aim of to cause the Ottoman-Turkish Empire “collapse internally”, found the traitors inside the country and manipulated those ignoble people. Those were the enemies of the Armenian nation and still are…
… The Ottoman Armenians Patriarch, Ormanyan was sent to Europe in 1903 to prevent the Ottoman Armenians to become a means of political plots. The Patriarch Ormanyan visited England and France with a title of “the Ottoman Armenians’ Patriarch” and gave very effective speeches at ‘House of Commons’ and ‘French Parliament’, of which did not suit Europe’s interests; those speeches so much irritated some of the states such as the Britain and France, and also the tsarist Russia was disturbed by those speeches. As the Britain, France and Russia were the main plotters of ‘the Armenian revolt’, the Patriarch Ormanyan was given up by them. So then, the resistance movements (the Armenian organizations) were activated against the Patriarch Ormanyan indirectly. In fact, those organizations had been activated before 1903 and an assassination attempt against him had been failed.” (pages 86-87)
“… In 1830s, everlasting rivalry between the Latin Church and the Orthodox Church was going on by gaining dimensions. Then, what was the reason for Orthodox Russia’s interest in getting involved in the Armenian Catholics’ situation while there was ‘Vatican’!.. So, it was necessary to think of the reason why the Orthodox Russia became a guardian for the Catholic Armenians!... It is seen that the allegations of the Armenian Catholics that were put forward in those years and in recent years are both unfounded and imputed. The fact is that: the trio of tsarist Russia, France and Vatican, which were planning to capture the Ottoman Empire entirely, demolished the ‘belief of unity and integrity’ in the country with the aim of dividing and disintegrating the Turkish Armenians by such tactics, and then caused the death of a huge Empire…” (Levon Panos Dabagyan, ‘History of Turkish Armenians’, Istanbul, August 2003)
“I’m here in Turkey to reveal the lies of the Armenians… And all the related documents I’ve reached on this historical subject contain the evidences pointing out the Turkish genocide not the Armenians, contrary to the claims.” (A. Geffroy, French origin researcher, from press conference on August 18, 2005)
“We should not waste our efforts for declaring orders on the events in the past. Moreover, the American History Association has no position on the Armenian claims…” (James Sheehan, Director, the American History Association, cited from the statement to the news agencies on December 26, 2005)
“Only a few historians consider expression of the officials of a period without investigating them. For example, the historical weight of the Nuremberg trials bases on a very huge pile of genuine documents. If the records of the trial have been lost or those records were not subjected to outside investigation, the historical importance of the Nuremberg trials verdict would be bruised.
…In the phase of trial of the Ottomans, the courts established were deprived of basic requirements of the necessary process…The court never heard the witnesses all trial long, never heard the advocators of the Turkish side, and the legal proceedings based on one sided documents and witness…
An indictment is never an evidence of crime.
The claims indicating the ‘Teskilat-i Mahsusa’ was the perpetrator of the massacres or had connections with those massacres do not mostly base on directly to the documents. They largely depend on presumes that their readers sometimes can be questionable.
Gwynne Dyer, one of the researchers of the Ottoman military archives, describes the allegations of massacre and collaboration as ‘gossips’. Establishing scientific/legal links between gossips until new documents reveal is nothing else other than an unverified claim.
As a matter of fact, the Armenian National Union, which had been established under the leadership of the experienced statesman Bogos Nubar Pasha, bought those “false” documents and entrusted them to Andonyan to bring to Europe.” (Prof. Guenter Lewy, “Middle East Quarterly”, autumn 2005)
“The Armenians joined with the Russian army in First World War. They fought with the Russian army. On the other hand, it should not be forgotten that they revolted against their country and wanted to found a separate state. The Empire only took the necessary measures; and it had the legal right to do that as a state trying to establish law and order. Most of the states have experienced such a situation in the wars of this era. To talk about genocide, first of all there should be concentration camps and formation of a planned systematic towards massacre. But there wasn’t anything as such; most of the deported Armenians returned, and thousands of the Armenians stayed in Anatolia…Other than that, hundred thousands of Armenians preferred the opportunity to become citizens of America and France to have a well living away from a terrible life under war circumstances. And some others preferred leaving Anatolia with an anxiety of losing their wealth in the newly founded Republic, which they had obtained through the rights given them in the Ottoman Empire and large privileges as being Ottoman citizens…” (Andre Charrase, retired French general, Tv program “Yansima” at Cine-5, on January 8, 2006)