655) XV: Armenians Establish American Colony British Say There Was No Genocide: Secrets Of "Christian" Terrorist State Armenia

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In the preface to volume III, Hovannissian speaks of the Karabagh movement in 1988. He states "it was both gratifying and ironic when I – the historian of the Armenian republic-was elected in 1990 to membership in the esteemed Academy of Sciences of Soviet Armenia, now the national Academy of Sciences of Armenia. The implications of that act were profound». Hovannissian goes on to add that "it was my goal, therefore, to bring the Armenian Republic out from the shadows and to free it from partisan stereotypes through a comprehensive history on multilingual and multiarchival research» (1).

Like so much that came out of Soviet Russia, the overall plan sounds fantastic, but when tested against reality, much was lacking. What Hovannissian says sounds good, but in reality, his words often are slanted and distorted, when compared to the facts. Hovannissian notes that with the "American withdrawal from active participation in the Eastern settlement and French ambitions in Cilicia rendered Armenian visions of a grand state from sea to sea an elusive fantasy» (P 22) The truth of the matter is there were more basic reasons which prevented a Greater Armenia from "sea to sea" – such as not a single Allied nation supported this pie-in-the-sky, baseless scheme and the Allies had good reasons not to do so.

"The London conference first addressed the Armenian issue during its tenth session, on February 16, by which time Millerand had already returned to Paris» (This just shows how important the Allies thought this matter really was. Some didn’t even stick around to hear the arguments).

Leading the discussion, Curzon stated that there were political and geographic aspects to resolving the Armenian question. Politically, the Allies were solemnly pledged to the creation of an independent Armenia; this had been one of the objectives for which they had fought. The nucleus of that state already existed in the form of the autonomous Armenian republic around Erevan, which had recently been granted recognition by the Supreme Council. It remained to be determined what other land should be added to that state. A `Greater Armenia` or an even more compact territory (P 23).

The Allies didn’t fight World War I for the creation of a Greater Armenia…an independent Armenia…or for the creation of any Armenia! This was not a single Allied goal when, nation by nation, they entered the war. This allegation by Hovannissian is pure hogwash. On February 17, 1920, the Allies appointed the Armenian Commission. Two members from each of the European nations were named to hear the claims of the Armenian delegation. And what wild claims this commission would hear.

The commission asked the Armenians to draw the boundaries they wanted on a map. A line was drawn starting at Tireboli [Tripoli] on the Black Sea and extending southward over Cheft-Kelkit to the frontier of Kharput vilayet. The question was asked of the Armenian delegation `if they could take possession of the territories they claimed` Aharonian replied that it could be done if the Allies provided the kind of assistance they had shown Poland. Kammerer retorted that Poland was in Europe and the situation was different there. No one would offer troops for the Armenians. Aharovian, nonetheless, insisted that the Armenian army could occupy the territories if it was given weapons, ammunition, and equipment for 50,000 men and afforded the prestige of advancing under the flags of the Allied Powers (P 27).

The Armenians wanted the Allies to supply a fifty-thousand-man army. Since a recent report reflected Armenia had only thirteen thousand troops, where did they think they would get the additional thirty-seven thousand soldiers? This is an example of yet another inflated exaggeration made by this rogue terrorist state. To think, this bunch of thugs had the nerve to ask for the right to march into another nation’s land, flying each of the European Allies flags, is preposterous.. The Armenian leaders said this would give them "prestige," but the truth of the matter was that the scheme was designed to have these flags fired upon, so the Armenians could drag the European Allies into their little dirty wars.

"At the second meeting of the commission, the Armenian leaders claimed they had 800,000 of their people ready to move into that part of the Ottoman Empire to be awarded Armenia» (P 29) The following is a list of where the dictators "claimed" their people would come from:

• 295,000 western Armenian refugees in the Caucasus

• 100,000 Armenians in the Turkish interior

• 120,000 Armenians from Georgia

• 120,000 from Azerbaijan

• 50,000 from Bessarabia, the Crimea, the Don, and otherparts of Russia.

• 10,000 from the North Caucasus

• 30,000 from the Balkans

• 10,000 from Egypt, the Sudan, and Ethiopia

• 30,000 from Karabagh

• 50,000 from the Armenian-American Colony

The Armenians said, they had not included in the numbers "any of the thousands of Armenian refugees still scattered throughout the Arab provinces or the several hundred thousand in Cilicia, Smyrna, and Constantinople» (P 33).

When one adds the 1,549,000 Armenians the American eyewitnesses saw go into the Arab countries this total comes to 2,349,000 plus the "several hundred thousand in Cilicia, Smyrna, and Constantinople”. The question must be asked again: Since Hovannissian states on page 8 of his volume 1, "The approximately 2 million Armenians of Turkey were even more widely dispersed than those of the Russian Empire" and since he claims 1.5 million of them were killed by Turks in what he calls a genocide, where then did these Armenian refugees who are supposed to populate the new Greater Armenia come from? Were they "resurrected"? Or better yet, were they really not dead in the first place? Hovannissian was discussing the eve of World War I. On page 4 he says “of the 2 million Armenians in the Romanov Empire in 1914...”. This quote ties down the time frame to just before the Ottomans kicked the Armenians out of their country, because the were disloyal during a war.

Note that the Armenian leaders told the peace conference they had fifty thousand Armenians from their "American Colony in America" who would return to their homeland. Why would the Armenian leaders establish an "Armenian-American colony"? The Armenians needed troops to help them with their wars but they sent their people to establish a colony in the United States? The answer is that the dictators needed to plant their people in America to lobby for money and American troops. Americans have been taken in by the Armenian leaders, whose plot continues to this very day.

In addition to their problem with Armenian refugee numbers at the London conference, the Armenians were faced with the fact that both Georgia and Azerbaijan appeared before the commission to present their own cases for territory and boundaries. Much of the land these two states wanted and had claim to included the lands the Armenians demanded.

The Armenian commission gave its report on February 27, 1920. The commission determined that "probably no more than 500,000 would return; even with the 1.2 million in the existing republic, the new country would have fewer than 2 million Armenians at the outset» (P 33).

"The commission concluded that the formulation of an Armenian state that included former Turkish territory could be realized only if the Turkish armed forces in the area were withdrawn...» (P 34) The most serious blow to the Armenians was the part of the report that concluded "a European force of from 15,000 to 20,000 men would be needed for two to three years to enforce the treaty» (P 35) The Allies doubted Armenia could establish a good army of its own and "doubting that the Allies would make such a commitment, stated Armenia would have to create a national army to do the job, with arms, munitions, money, and possibly volunteer staff officers provided by the Allies» (P 3 5) In other words, it was established that Armenians would need an Allied army for a few years to turn their dreams into reality and the Allies were simply not prepared to commit. Also, Armenian arguments of raising an all-Armenian army were not found credible.

There were two topics near and dear to the hearts of Armenian leaders: Getting free handouts from the Christian world and "reparations». The Armenian leaders told their stories of mass murder and massacres to the Armenian Commission and their claims were considered. They "petitioned the conference to accord reparations to individuals and communities that had been victimized by the Turkish government. Earlier, the Armenians had estimated their damages in the Ottoman Empire to be equivalent to 19 billion French franks and those in Russian Armenia to be equivalent to 5 billion. In a memorandum of March 3, the delegation explained that those statistics had been based on preliminary data and were subject to revision» (P 57-58) The Armenians were leaving the door open to ask for more if they could just get their first demand approved.

The Armenian leaders told the commission how it was that "no group had suffered more than the Armenians; they had been deported, robbed, plundered, violated, and massacred. It was only proper that the conference require the Turkish government to pay reparations and indemnities for the terrible physical, material, and moral devastation» (P 58) Needless to say, the Armenian leaders didn’t tell the commission they had started a rebellion within the Ottoman Empire and this is why they were “deported”.

French delegate Albert Kammerer adamantly pointed to the legalist difficulties involved in allowing Turkish subjects to claim reparations. He argued that Turkey would be sufficiently punished by the loss of extensive territories and the transfer without compensation of government properties therein. The commission supported Kammerer’s position that reparations on an individual basis should be waived. In its final report on March 27, the finance commission noted that it was "unanimously of [the] opinion that no special provision for reparation for minorities should be included in the financial clauses of the treaty» (P 59-60).

In plain language, the European Allies evaluated all the facts, heard the begging by the Armenian leaders and their demand for reparations and then gave them zero dollars for their made-up claims of damages. Hovannissian evaluated the Allied decision differently in his slanted and biased opinion as he writes, "Reparations for Armenian losses and suffering, however, were brushed aside» (P 60).
The question must be asked of Hovannissian, "What did you expect when your Armenian leaders started a rebellion that led to your people in the war zone being kicked out of the country? A reward for your shameful treason?" Isn’t it odd that Armenians continue to whine, beg, and plead for reparations from Turkey today, after more than eighty-five years have passed and they have had their day in court and lost, just as they lost wars? Turkey wasn’t even an independent republic until 1923, eight years after the Ottomans removed Armenians from the war zone.

The following information is of interest to prove (1) the word of the Turks is good and (2) the word of the Armenians Isn’t.

Provisions for the protection and rights of minorities were included in all treaties of peace with the defeated powers and in separate treaties with the states awarded territories detached from the defeated countries. In each case, the government entering into the treaty with the Allied powers agreed to guarantee all inhabitants – without distinction of birth, nationality, language, race, or religion – full and complete protection of life and liberty and equality in legal, civil, political, and economic rights. The minority communities were to enjoy the freedom to maintain cultural, religious, charitable social, educational, and political institutions and to use their native languages therein (P 60).

To visit Turkey today is to see for one’s self that the Turks made good their word throughout the years and everyone enjoys the freedoms guaranteed in the peace treaty. In Armenia, however, there is no religious freedom other than afforded to the nation’s "official" church. There are more Armenian "official" churches listed on the church’s official web site in Turkey than there are in Armenia. There is not a single Muslim mosque open for prayers on a regular basis anywhere in Armenia. Clearly they have broken their word and broken the peace treaty they signed in 1920. Plainly the word of the Armenians regarding these basic freedoms is just no good.

Look for a moment at the alleged "war crimes" the Allies considered and acted upon. The Allies considered actual evidence as they had actual control of all the Ottoman records. Only four individuals were ever charged and one of the reasons for these charges was "brutalities committed against prisoners of war» (P 67) These four men were sentenced to death. The British were in control of all Ottoman records as they occupied the capital, Istanbul. Justin McCarthy, in his Congressional testimony, stated that the British "were forced at the time to admit that they could find no evidence of an organized genocide against the Armenians».

Justin McCarthy wrote a book titled Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922. In Chapter Six, "The Final War in the East," Professor McCarthy reports it was true some Ottoman troops did do terrible things to Armenians. He states his research showed that "some Ottoman officials themselves took part in the robbery of Armenians, sometimes even the killing of Armenians. The Ottoman government recognized this and tried many Turks for actions against Armenians. Kamuran Gurun has found documents listing convictions of 1,397 persons for crimes against Armenians. Some were executed for their crimes...”.

The Armenians didn’t have clean hands either. There is no record that a single Armenian was ever tried much less convicted for the terror campaigns and murder of three times more Turks killed than the Armenians lost. The Armenians never ever talk about all the rape, pillage, plunder, and murder their people did to the Turks. Both sides did harm the other. The only difference is the Ottomans did try to stop their officials and tried them for crimes against Armenians. The Armenians never administered this same justice to their people who committed crimes against Turks. This is more evidence there was no Ottoman government effort to commit “genocide” on Armenians. Just the opposite is true – the Armenian government and the Armenian Church, by silence, condoned and/or ordered the massacre of innocent Muslim civilians time and time again.

The Armenians complain to this day that there was a widespread Turkish campaign to massacre their people. Where is the proof? Certainly there was no real proof within the Ottoman records because the British had control of all these records and they scanned them with a fine toothed comb in the three-plus years they occupied Istanbul, the Ottoman capital. Certainly there was no proof within Armenia or anywhere else. Where are the mass graves of Armenians who were massacred? There are none. However, while there are much fewer Turkish monuments to Turkish victims persecuted by the Armenians, one can visit today, inside Turkey, several of the mass graves where massacred Turks are buried. Isn’t this a telling comparison?

There was even more bad news on the way for Armenia’s dictators. The Allied Supreme Council met in San Remo on April 18, 1920. Hovannissian complains, "It was on the question of Armenia alone that the San Remo conference veered away from the decisions of the London conference. Paced by Lloyd George, the Supreme Council first divested itself of the responsibility to furnish the armed forces needed to execute the Armenian section of the treaty, then considered ways to roll back the proposed Armenian boundaries without losing face» (P 71).

This is yet another case of how the bandit Armenian leaders were slow learners. The Allies understood they had no duty or obligation to provide many thousands of soldiers, Allied boys, to protect the greedy Armenians` land-grab attempt. The Armenians, on the other hand, over and over again, felt everyone owed them. Such unrealistic and unreasonable Armenian expectations continue to this day.

The Allies looked at the situation this way:

As for Armenia, the Allies shared the strong American sentiments about the establishment of an independent state and wanted to award it as much territory as might reasonably be claimed for the present needs and future expansion. Yet they also had to be guided by practical considerations such as the Turkish military occupation of much of the affected region and the hostility of Armenian’s Caucasian neighbors. In view of the non-participation of the United States, the sources to which the Armenians could turn for help would be very limited. It would therefore not be in their interest to be given lands they could not occupy or administer without creating such strains as to endanger the security of the whole state. The Allied Governments are conscious of allocating to Armenia territories up to the maximum of her potentialities, if not up to the maximum of her claim or of their sympathies (P 75)

The Allies made a finding of fact regarding the lands Armenia would obtain that had belonged to someone else for many hundreds of years. Under the circumstances, anyone in the civilized world would have been grateful to the Allies. Not the Armenians.

"Allied frustration with the Armenian problem spilled over the afternoon of April 20, when the Supreme Council at San Remo virtually abandoned the Armenians without even the customary expressions of sympathy and good will». The Allies finally had their fill of demands, begging and always having Armenians under foot, wanting something for nothing. The Allies concluded that if they gave in and protected the bandit Armenians, "four divisions of about 15,000 men each would have to be deployed to take control of the territories to be awarded the Armenian Republic, and eight divisions would be assigned for the protection of minorities and Turkish disarmament». When the Allies totaled these needs to give Armenia what it wanted they found "there were currently only nineteen allied divisions available for these duties, a short fall of eight divisions existed» (P 79)

British Prime Minister Lloyd George contended that the Armenians should be able to fight their own battle, just as the Greeks had done. "If they were not in a position to defend their own frontiers, then he thought that there was no use for a nation of that kind in the world and not one of the allied governments, in those circumstances, would be prepared to assist them to the extent of even a single battalion. Relieved that Lloyd George had taken the lead, Nitti and Millerand readily endorsed the strategy of assisting the Armenians with arms and material but not with soldiers» (P 80).

Italian Prime Minister Francesco Nitti said it well: "The allies should not give Armenia ‘something which, in her own interests, she had better not have`. Lloyd George added that neither the United States, nor anyone else would send a large army against Mustafa Kemal. `It was not right, he thought, for the Great Powers to negotiate treaties which they knew they could not, and had no intention to, carry out.`" (P 83)

The free world can be thankful that Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk) was leading nationalist forces to establish modern-day Turkey. This giant of a leader did as much as any single individual to stop the flood of communism westward. The Armenians were cutting deals with the Communists and cooperating with them. Think what would have happened had the Armenians been given the lands that are modern Turkey. Soviets would have access to "warm ports" and probably would never have collapsed. The Soviets could have even attacked Cyprus and Turkey. Consider what would happen if the Soviets had complete control of Cyprus in the eastern Mediterranean. To the east, a client state Syria. To the west, a Russia-leaning Greece and an Italy with a strong Communist party and many followers. To the south, another Communist client state, Libya, as well as Algeria. Talk about a "domino effect». An Allied mistake in 1919 or 1920 of giving in to Armenians greedy demands would have changed the course of history.

Meanwhile, back in San Remo the Armenian bandits were begging for more land. They said, for example, that they "could not exist without Erzurum, to which large numbers of exiled Armenians, including many now in Cilicia, would return as soon as the boundaries were secured» (P 84). They went on to claim "Erzurum was the natural capital of Armenia and dominated the entire Armenian plateau. A viable state was inconceivable Without that fortress city» (P 85).

The Armenians said, Kemal’s army was a poor thing "greatly inferior to what was imagined" not numerous, ill-treated, and ill-equipped. The Armenians, on the other hand, had an army in being of 25,000 to 30,000 trained by the Russians. In two or three months there would be 40,000. All they asked for was clothing, munitions, equipment, officers and the right to march under the Allied flags; and if these were granted to them, they had every hope that the Armenian army would be able to march in a few short days time to occupy the Province. Further, he was practically certain that the Armenians, reinforced as he had indicated above, would not only be able to take Erzurum but would also be in a position to capture other Provinces, though these might occasion them a certain amount of difficulty, more especially the Province of Van (P 85).

Here is what the Allies were told when their own military experts responded to these wild Armenian dreams. French Marshal Foch replied that the Armenians, who had been oppressed for centuries, had no administrative or military organization of any value. There were four skeletal Turkish divisions and considerable Turkish military and administrative resources in the territories assigned to Armenia, and it seemed unlikely that the ill-equipped Armenian army could conquer territory from an enemy force that controlled the lines of communication. In the absence of outside assistance, the Armenians would be unable to take possession of Erzurum or other pans of Turkish Armenia. Foch also warned that the use of Allied flags and military personnel could drag the allied Powers into an undesired armed expedition (P 86).

The Armenians continued to beg: "If the treaty assigned Erzurum to Armenia, Armenia would at least have a legal title to it, and the law had some force of realization in its very nature» (P 86). The British spoke of the realities and Lloyd George stated "the Allies had to be practical. The real danger in conferences was that they lived in a world of illusions and did not face facts. Conferences were inclined to think when they had framed resolutions and adopted clauses they had solved difficulties.` Possession of Erzurum could not be decided in a conference. The city would have to be taken by force, and blood would be spilled. If Armenia could not exist without Erzurum, then it could not exist al all» (P 86)

The Armenians continued their quest for land. Irrespective of decisions on the mandate and frontiers, the message continued, there remained the need for external help to defend the state and financial aid to enable it to constitute an orderly administration and develop its military resources. The Allied Powers had decided to provide arms and ammunition, but they could not spare troops for this purpose unless Armenia can obtain immediate assistance from some other power she shall be forced to rely in the main so far as military defense is concerned upon the forces which she already possesses augmented by such instructions and munitions as the Allies can supply. The formation of a volunteer corps in the United States or elsewhere would be a major incentive to Armenian patriotism... (P 88-89).

That’s one way to try to get the United States involved in the Armenian leaders dirty little war. Americans can be thankful the government voted no. "The need for credits was even more urgent. (The Armenians seem to always put money ahead of everything and everyone else.) The Council of the League was prepared to recommend to the League Assembly that it give a collective guarantee of loans to Armenia, but doing so would take some time. Moreover, the League would not have jurisdiction to appeal to the United States, `where sympathy for the future Armenian state is most sincere and active, where the burdens entailed by the war are believed to be less prodigious`” (P 86).

The bottom line was the Europeans were not going to give one dime to the bandit Armenians. Note that if the U.S. Congress did ratify the League of Nations and became a member, then the Council of the League would recommend to the League Assembly that it give a collective guarantee of loans to Armenia. Since no other country had even the fraction of resources in the post-World War I Europe, this would mean the United States would be left "holding the bag" for the Armenians. Armenians would get loans, which the League of Nations would guarantee, and the United States would pay the loan, since Armenia didn’t even have a cent to its name.

On April 19, 1920, the Allies summoned the Turkish delegation to Paris to receive the terms of the treaty of peace no later than May 10. The Turkish government was then in a state of great turmoil. Prince Damad Fend Pasha had again become grand vizier and, denouncing the Turkish Nationalists in no uncertain terms, had dissolved the pro-Nationalist Ottoman Parliament. Yet he was unable to gain Allied, particularly British, support for the `bloc` policy of offering a lenient or conciliatory peace treaty to rally moderate elements around the sultan and against Mustafa Kemal. During the San Remo conference, the Supreme Council had reaffirmed the detachment of the Arab provinces, Thrace, and much of Turkish Armenia and had effectively removed Smyrna from Turkish control. The onerous financial, economic, and military controls remained virtually unchanged.

Dispersal of the Ottoman Parliament and the flight of many deputies into Anatolia gave Mustafa Kemal the desired justification to organize a new legislative body and to establish a counter government. The legislature, known as the Grand National Assembly, opened in Angora (Hovannissian is trying to say Ankara) on April 23, 1920 (P 106).

The timing could not have been worse for the sultan’s government. "Announcement of the terms of peace, produced shock, depression, and outrage in Turkey. Damad Ferids` prestige fell further, and many who had previously withheld support from the Nationalists were driven into the arms of Mustafa Kemal» (P 107). The Ottomans responded to the harsh demands for peace by stating Turkish armies had not advanced or caused death and destruction beyond the borders of the Ottoman Empire. Damad Ferid invoked the right of self-determination, protesting that this principle, which had been upheld by President Wilson and the League Covenant, was being violated by the detachment of large areas of Turkey [he means the Ottoman Empire] and the imposition of such controls as to impair seriously the sovereignty of the rest of the country. These unjust terms would cause deep resentment not only among the Turkish people but throughout the entire Muslim world (P 109).

One has to wonder about the resentment "throughout the entire Muslim world" today because the United States joined with Russia to help Armenia attack Muslim Azerbaijan, and capture 20 percent of the this neighbor’s lands and forcibly remove more than a million Muslims from their "historic homeland». Is it any wonder that Arab Muslim oil producing states have run up the price over the past ten years, because almost 1 million Muslims have been forced to live in tent refugees camps.

Regarding the peace treaty:

Armenia, it was acknowledged, should be given certain conditions to exist, but Turkey should not be deprived of those same conditions. To award ethnically Turkish districts to Armenia would violate the principle of self-determination and create a source of future conflict. Moreover, if Turkey was deprived of the vital transportation route extending from Trebizond to Erzurum and Bayogit, the interior provinces would be isolated and suffer famine. The boundary of the Armenian state should extend no farther west than the Russo-Turkish frontier of 1914, although Armenia could be granted access to a Turkish port by means of a special convention supervised by an international commission (P 1 09)

The Italians expressed interest in the Ottoman counter proposal but all the other European Allied leaders "showed little patience with the Turkish `requests`"(P 109)

Thus, history tells us that by the Allies being as arrogant and unreasonable as they were during the peace negotiations of 1919-1920, they drove the Ottoman population almost entirely to the Nationalists` side, lead by Mustafa Kemal, a brilliant military commander. This tilted the independence war in favor of Turks and gave birth to the modern nation of the Republic of Turkey in 1923. If the Allies had responded to the last sultan’s "requests" positively, history would have unfolded differently.

The bandit Armenian leaders, ever ready to stick out their hands to ask for something for nothing again, "asked that the draft treaty by amended to make provisions for indemnities and reparations for Armenia» (P l 11) For the second time the Allies said no. Twice the Armenians asked that damages from the Ottomans be included in the peace treaty and twice the Allied powers said no.

Look at what the British Embassy in Ankara, Turkey, said in a press release dated July 23, 2001:

“... The British Government of the day and successive British Governments viewed the massacres of 1915-1916 as an appalling tragedy. We understand the strength of feeling on this issue given the loss of life on both sides. But we do not believe the evidence demonstrates that the events should be classified as `genocide`, which has a specific meaning under the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide” (2).

Responding to a parliamentary question in February, the then Foreign and Commonwealth Office Minister Baroness Scotland told the House of Lords "The Government, in line with previous British Governments, have judged the evidence not to be sufficiently unequivocal to persuade us that these events should be categorized as genocide as defined by the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide as defined by the 1948 UN Convention on genocide, a convention which is in any event not retrospective in application. The interpretation of events in eastern Anatolia in 1915-1916 is still the subject of genuine debate amongst historians. (3)

What the British are saying is nothing less than remarkable:

There was loss of life on both sides. Why then is the Turkish suffering always ignored and never even once acknowledged by the Armenians, not even by Armenian history professors? Isn’t this religious-ethnic discrimination based on bias? Isn’t this selective morality? Isn’t it an insult to the silent memory of the millions of Turkish dead who cannot rise and defend themselves in these pages against shameless and manipulative Armenian allegations of genocide?

Events should not be classified as "genocide». The term "genocide" was coined in 1948, some thirty-three years after the event, drawing from the terrible experience of Jewish Holocaust of Nazi Germany, and it is neither retroactive nor applicable to the Turkish-Armenian civil war. Armenians know this full well, which is why they do not dare sue Turkey in the international court. Such courts need hard facts and evidence. The British occupied Istanbul for four years (1918-1922). They had complete access to all Ottoman documents and scanned them diligently to find the "smoking gun" or anything remotely similar to use in courts of law. The British found nothing and they had to let the Ottoman leaders, who had been detained on the Island of Malta awaiting trials, go free. That should have been the end of that. But the Armenians kept the lucrative propaganda machine pumping "poor, starving Armenians" stories in the Christian world – unopposed by any Muslim, of course.

3. Armenians, enjoying the highest living standards under Turkish rule since Seljuk Empire (tenth to twelfth centuries) and then Ottoman Empire (thirteenth to twentieth centuries) for close to a millennium, even bestowed with the honor of "the most loyal nation" by the sultan in the multi-religious, multi-ethnic Ottoman Empire, resorted to violence and aggression between 1890-1922 to overthrow the Turkish rule and establish Armenia on lands with Muslim majority. Propaganda, agitation, and terror, in that order, were used to provoke the Turks into a retaliation, which, according to Armenian plans, would trigger a military intervention by the Christian allies (Britain, France, Russia, and so forth). Once the allies won, Armenians reasoned, they would turn the eastern parts of the land "from sea to sea" over to the Armenians. Armenian atrocities and Muslim victims were largely ignored by Western sources (Christian diplomats, missionaries, news reporters, military agents, and so forth). Armenian para-military hoodlums (Armenian Revolutionary Federation and Hunchaks) slaughtered countless Muslims, until regular Armenian armies under various uniforms (deserters from the Ottoman, volunteers in Russian and French) took over this gory task enthusiastically. When the Allies did win the war in 1918, Armenians wanted their reward: reparations and land from the Ottoman Empire. Neither came. The French and the British did not even so much as give the Armenians a place at the Paris Peace Conference, which started in January 1919. They were not sold on the Armenian claims. The civil war provoked by Armenian betrayal cost Turks and Armenians dearly.

The Peace Conference drew to a close. Hovannissian objects to the fact Armenia, above all others, didn’t get enough free stuff and protection. He writes: "During the San Remo conference and in its aftermath, the Allied heads of state successfully divested themselves of most obligations relating to the Armenians using the escape hatches afforded by the League of Nations and the president of the United States, they had made it clear that they would use no armed force to assist the Armenians in establishing a united republic and expanding into territories to be awarded them in the treaty» (4).