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The Turmoil of a War That Would Not End
Turks and Armenians between the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (December, 1918) and the Treaties of Gümru, Moscow, and Kars (October, 1921)
Between 1917 and 1918, the collapse of the Russian Czardom robbed the Western powers of their great Eastern ally, thus giving the Central Powers a little breathing-space. Armenian irregulars continued fighting on the eastern Anatolian and Egyptian-Arabian fronts and attack ing the Turks, Austrians, and Germans with rhetoric. During this period, the Armenians became a factor to be reckoned with in the battle against the Ottoman Empire, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Germany, who were all putting up a tough defense. Now, negotiations were finally held that had a certain real foundation. The concessions made to Czarist Russia in the Sykes-Picot Agreement had served the Czar's interests, not those of the ever-hopeful Armenian extremists (extremist not only in their political methods, but also in their exaggerated expectations). Communist-Bolshevist Russia would long remain an unknown entity. (No one could have guessed that its politics would differ in absolutely no way from those of the Czars; the Armenians suspected this least of all!) So after the collapse of the Czardom, everything that had been promised to the Czars in the Sykes-Picot Agreement was now promised to the Armenians. It was thus reasonable to expect them to distinguish themselves a little bit more in the fight against the Ottoman Empire! Lloyd George, in his well-known flowery style, described Armenia as a land "soaked with the blood of innocents". Little did he know that he was telling the truth but that the blood was mostly that of Muslims, who in fact had many more dead to mourn than the "Christian" Armenians. Lloyd George was just as much a hypocrite as Wilson and Clemenceau. They had all picked out a "roman tic" victim and then dropped her by the wayside as soon as she ceased to be useful.
When the "peace conference" - which was actually nothing but a dictate-preparation conference - began meeting in Paris in January of 1919, it appeared as if the Armenian extremists' hour had arrived. The Armenians sent two delegations to the "peace conference". One was led by the professional emigrant Boghos Nubar, who had been working towards the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire for many years. The other was from the Republic of Armenia (the existence of which had only been made possible by the Turks after the Treaty of Baku on May 28, 1918).
The two delegations immediately began "auctioning" - outbidding each other in demands for territory and underbidding each other in rational arguments. They were apparently confusing politics with a carpet bazaar, where the important criteria are the pattern, the number of square meters, and the age of the desired item. Their demands became so excessive that even such inveterate carpet-lovers as the Allied rulers lost interest in making a real offer. After all, it did not have to be an Armenian carpet. Those of the Turks were much older, more valuable, and more reliable. After the Armenian delegation led by Boghos Nubar started things off by demanding an Armenia in eastern Anatolia, the joint delegation (the group led by Avetis Aharonian from the Republic of Armenia had in the meantime merged with Nubar) worked its way up to territorial claims stretching from the Black Sea, with Trabzon as a harbor, all the way to Cilicia. The Armenian population of this "Greater Armenia" would not even have accounted for a fifth of the total population of the region - and that is based on the figures from 1914! Moreover, even
The routes between Anatolia and central Asia (the cradle of the Turkic people) are 15.000 years old. If any nation can claim "squatter's rights" to Eastern Anatolia, then it is the Turks.
Reproduction of the letter from Boghos Nubar to the French foreign minister. (The first page is shown in its entirety; from the second page, only the salutation and Boghos Nubar's signature are shown.)
if back then in 1914 the entire Armenian population of the world had gathered in eastern Anatolia, there still would not have been an Armenian majority in the region.
But so what? In the nineteenth century, the various Armenian churches had wrestled over who was the "most Armenian". Later, the Dashnaks and Hunchaks both wanted to carry off the palm in the fight to be the best terrorists.
And now, the delegation from the Republic of outbidding each other in the same way. As mentioned above, their "common memorandum" claimed not only the "six vilayets" of Van, Bitlis, Diyarbakr, Karput, Sivas, and Erzurum (in which the Armenians had never in history had a majority), it also laid claim to Trabzon, Karabagh (where virtually no Armenians had ever lived), Sansegur, and large parts of Georgia, as well as Cilicia.
At the same time, the reputation of the Armenians as a nation of peace-loving victims who had been defenselessly and helplessly murdered (or rather exterminated) by the bloodthirsty Ottomans was shaken. The reason: The young, autonomous Armenian Republic could not think of anything better to do than start a whole series of wars of conquest. The president of the "Armenian National Delegation" sums up, in a letter to French Foreign Minister Stephen Pichon, why the Ottomans, who were fighting on five fronts at the same time and were also confronted with internal Armenian rebellions, had to defend themselves by moving the Armenian population out of the endangered areas:
Monsieur le Ministre,
I have the honor, in the name of the Armenian National Delegation, of submitting to Your Excellency the following declaration, at the same time reminding him that the Armenians have been, since the beginning of the war, de facto belligerents, as you yourself have acknowledged, since they have fought alongside the Allies on all fronts, enduring heavy sacrifices and great suffering for the sake of their unshakeable attachment to the cause of the Entente:
In France, through their volunteers, who started joining the Foreign Legion in the first days and covered themselves with glory under the French flag; In Palestine and Syria, where the Armenian volunteers, recruited by the National Delegation at the request of the government of the Republic itself, made up more than half of the French contingent and played a large role in the victory of General Allenby, as he himself and his French chiefs have officially declared; In the Caucasus, where, without mentioning the 150.000 Armenians in the Imperial Russian Army, more than 40.000 of their volunteers contributed to the liberation of a portion of the Armenian vilayets, and where, under the command of their leaders, Antranik and Nazerbekoff, they, alone among the peoples of the Caucasus, offered resistance to the Turkish armies, from the beginning of the Bolshevist withdrawal right up to the signing of an armistice."
(The letter bears the date on which it was received in the French Foreign Office - December 3, 1918). In this manner, Boghos Nubar explained that the Armenians had waged constant war with the Ottoman Empire from November 1, 1914 right up to the signing of the Armistice of Mudros on October 30, 1918 and had thus been, in his eyes, "de facto belligerents".
The Wars of the Republic of Armenia
The Georgians became the young Armenian Republic's first victim. The origins of the Georgian-Armenian conflict go all the way back to the beginning of the Armenian immigration in the sixth to the fourth centuries B.C. Wars and feuds between Georgians and Armenians had broken out again and again.
A preliminary climax was reached in 1920 when the Armenians pushed beyond Alaverdi and advanced all the way to the northern Iori region. If the Georgians had given in to the Armenian demands, it would have meant the end of Georgia . . . the Georgian capital would have been completely surrounded by "Armenian" territory. The claims to the Iori region were as extravagant as the claims to Kars, Erzurum, and Adana, but they were even more disturbing because they affected a weak neighbor who was already struggling with a thousand problems as a newly independent state.
For certain regions along the Iori, the ruling Dashnaks had at least a small excuse - there were indeed a few Armenians north of Tiflis. But just like everyplace else where Moslems had once ruled, the Armenians here were a minority among majorities. No legitimate claims could grow out of such a situation. The Armenian army under General Dor did not, however, even restrict itself to "incorporating" Armenian farms and villages. It pushed its way directly into areas in which there were no longer any Armenians at all. Armenian units advanced right into the precincts of Tiflis. It was not until this critical stage of the war that the Georgians finally managed to rouse themselves to determined resistance and repel the Armenian invasion.
At any rate, the Armenian advance on Tiflis had opened the eyes of the now astonished world public. For the first time, people realized that the neighbors of the Armenians were not dealing with a "persecuted, innocent, unarmed, pacifist, Christian" nation, but rather with an unfortunate people in the hands of a terrorist organization. This organization, the Dashnaktsutiun, fought indefatigably for power and land, without regard for the boundaries of the areas in which Armenians actually lived. It was undoubtedly this same excessiveness which eventually destroyed all the Greater Armenian dreams - first in eastern then in southern Anatolia, and finally in the Caucasus.
The next victim of the aggression of the young Armenian Republic was its neighbor to the east, Azerbaijan. The British pulled their troops out of the Caucasus region in August, 1919, but not without leaving their Armenian protégés with large quantities of the most modern weapons. The only place in the Caucasus where Allied forces were still located was Batum. From this base, the British were still participating heavily on the side of the Armenians.
The withdrawal of Allied forces from the Caucasus led immediately to open hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The lands claimed by the Armenians included not only Turkish territory and areas settled by Muslims (Turks, Kurds, Circassians), but also pieces of Azerbaijani land, mainly residential areas and pasture lands of the Tatars. Nakhichevan and the mountains and valleys of Karabagh soon became the sites of determined Tatar resistance to the Armenian occupation. The uprisings of the Muslim population soon struck the district of Erivan itself. (We must not forget that the Muslims were originally in the majority
In the spring of 1919, the Armenians launched an expansionist campaign into Anatolia. Their first attack was directed against Oltu.
The war of aggression which "Christian" Armenia waged against Christian Georgia in 1920 had territorial expansion as its aim. We can only hope that that was the last time an army will set out under the sign of the cross to subjugate a Christian neighbor.
throughout the region, including of course the area of the later "Republic of Armenia".) Norashen was conquered by the rebellious Tatars, and - according to the Armenian accounts - "the defenseless Armenian village population" was massacred by the Tatars.
There is no mention of the first act of this drama, in which Armenia had occupied Karabagh and Nakhichevan. . . The worst display of Armenian ferocity came in Zangezur, where forty (!) Muslim villages were razed to the ground and the population was wiped out in the course of a "punitive expedition". The bloody, cruel fighting lasted until the end of the winter of 1920 and drastically weakened Armenia as well as Azerbaijan. The dawning of the Bolshevist age in the Caucasus was now approaching, and the countries of the region had had little chance to enjoy their shortlived independence – which had only been made possible by the Ottomans. Azerbaijan, greatly weakened by the war with Armenia, fell to the Soviets in April of 1920. With Soviet help and arbitration, Zangezur and Karabagh became Azerbaijani, thus ensuring the survival of the local Moslem populations. Then came the Armenian campaign against the Turks.
Shortly before the Armistice of Mudros on October 30, 1918, the Republic of Armenia had been created under Ottoman protectorate. As soon as the Armistice was signed, the Armenians began pushing their way back into eastern Anatolia. The remarkable interregnum which (chronologically as well as geographically) encompassed the Caucasus and eastern Anatolia, appeared to deal all the trumps to the Armenians. The local Islamic units, some of which were under Tatar command, had very limited financial and material means. They could not withstand the combined strength of the British and Armenian forces. In April of 1919, the Armenians made it as far as Kars with British help. While Oltu and Ardahan came under British administration (at least outwardly), the new colonial masters left Kars entirely to the Armenians. At the same time, the Armenians occupied Islamic Nakhichevan. It was then, in April of 1919, that the young Armenian Republic found itself at the preliminary height of its power. The final objective could only be to use Kars as a bridgehead for the occupation of Trabzon in the North (thus obtaining access to the Black Sea) and then to try to join up with the French-Armenian invasion troops moving north from Adana. This would result in a "Greater Armenia" stretching from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean (as was loudly demanded at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919). That the Armenians, even back in the days when their number had been at its greatest, only made up a sixth of the population of the region; that even in their strongest vilayet, in Van itself, they only accounted for a third of the population ... So what? Kars was the starting point for expansion - to Erzurum and Sivas in the West, to Trabzon in the North, and to Adana in the South. It was the cautious cleverness of Mustafa Kemal and the military genius of Kazm Karabekir that combined to thwart these Armenian plans.
The Armenian offensive against its Christian neighbor, the Republic of Georgia, had the same sort of expansionist objectives as the Armenian war against Azerbaijan. Such aggressive actions destroyed not only Armenia's image as a "peace-loving martyr nation", but also countless churches and monasteries in the contested regions.
A Georgian eagle. It was only with the help of international intervention that the Georgians were able to withstand the Armenian war of aggression of 1920.
The Reconquest of Kars and the End of Armenian Expansion
In the last days of August and the first days of September, 1920, a "Congress of the Peoples of the East" was held in Baku on the invitation of the International. At this congress appeared a united front of all the peoples of the Caucasus and the Turkic peoples living in and around the Caucasus.
All the tribes and ethnic groups represented - great or small - seemed to have a common motive: fear of Armenian rule. In the case of the Soviets, there was also of course the intent to bring the Republic of Armenia under Soviet-Russian control, just as Russian Armenia had been totally under the control of the White Czars. For the Armenians, nothing really changed in the end.
After having shed a tremendous amount of Islamic and Armenian blood, the Armenians landed right back where they had almost always been - dependent on another state. The only difference was that now they would be under the Russian Bolsheviks instead of under the Czars. Meanwhile on the international front, the young Armenian Republic had lost all credibility. The incessant wars with their Georgian and Azerbaijani neighbors had destroyed the illusion of the "unarmed, peaceful martyrnation". In constructing this illusion, the Armenian extremists had shown great skill in making the world forget their decades of terrorist activity. The same Dashnaks who had once led terrorist groups were now in charge of an entire (though admittedly small) state machinery.
On June 27, 1920, Armenian troops attacked Tuzla, not far from Oltu. When they were beaten and had to retreat, they launched an artillery attack on Oltu (June 30, 1920). On July 8, they advanced to Dügün Tepe, and a few days later they were in Cambar. Immediately thereafter, they set their sights on the border regions of Nakhichevan and Kagizman and advanced as far as Kulp.
After a careful and conscientious period of preparation, Kazm Karabekir launched a counter-offensive in September of 1920. The Turks had only very old-fashioned, second-hand weapons and no air force whatsoever. The Armenians possessed a small squadron. On September 29, the Turks retook
In April of 1919, the Armenians occupied Kars with British help. They made it their key position for the assault on Anatolia. Their objective was to win access to two seas: in the north at Trabzon and in the south at Adana. This would mean a "Greater Armenia" stretching from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. The Armenians had always been a small minority in this region.
Sarakamish, and on October 1 they reached Kagzman, just eighty kilometers south-east of the key fortress of Kars. The assault on Kars began on October 27, and three days later the fortress, complete with a tremendous booty, was in Turkish hands. Among the prisoners taken were a cabinet minister, three generals, six colonels, and twelve provincial governors . . .
The captured Armenian minister of war, Aratov, finally realized that the drive to the Black Sea and the Mediterranean was now nothing more than a dream . . . luckily not a bloody one. A few days later, the Turks reached Gümrü-Alexandropol, and on November 6 the Armenians asked for a truce. Unfortunately, the fighting flared up again a short time later, but then in the night between the 2nd and 3rd of December, 1920, there was finally peace: the agreement of Gümrü was signed. Three months later, the agreement of Gümrü (Alexandropol; today "Leninakan") was signed once again in Moscow. By this time, the Soviet Russians were already the only ones who had any say in the matter. The countries named in the "Treaty of Moscow", Armenia and Georgia, were neither invited nor even asked for their opinion. They were once again Russian subjects. It is also interesting to note that the agreement of Gümrü was signed not only in Moscow, but also in Kars on September 22, 1921, after approval by the Grand National Assembly. On September 26, 1921, general peace talks among the Caucasus countries opened in Kars. Along with the Russian delegation, there were representatives from Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Armenia. Turkey was represented by Kazm Karabekir.
The negotiations ran until October 13, and then there was yet another treaty-signing. On that day, peace finally came to the war-weary eastern Anatolia-Caucasus region. Except for some minor Armenian terrorist attacks, that peace has survived all the vicissitudes of history, including the dangerous situation during World War II. After that war, it looked as if the Soviet Union, like the Czarist regime before it, wanted to try once again to snatch Kars and eastern Anatolia. Luckily, the people of that area, who still had such vivid memories of the tragic events of 1915 and everything that followed, were spared a new war. The Treaty of Kars, dated "October 13, 1921, 1-2 p.m.", is filled with details concerning the validity of borders (which all remained unchanged) and the nullification of any other agreements applying to this treaty. (Even the dictate of Sevres and the Peace Treaty of Lausanne did not affect the Treaty of Kars.) The treaty also contains a clause, legally signed - even by Armenia - which reads as follows:
"15. The governments signatory to the agreement (Russian S. S. R., Armenian S. S. R., Azerbaijan S. S. R., Georgian S. S. R. and Turkey) are engaged in dedaring a general amnesty restricted to the citizens of the other side 'pour tous les meurtres et delits commisen temps de guerre' (for all the murders and offenses committed in time of war) ..." And the Armenians were indeed "de facto belligerents" from August of 1914 on, that has been established based on the information provided by the Armenians themselves. In truth, they had been "de facto belligerents" since 1878 when the Armenian "leaders of the people" thought they could neutralize the Ottoman Empire with Russian help.
An Equally Tragic Sequel on the Southern Front
The murderous Armenian uprisings of Mush and Van in 1915 had amounted to the opening of another front against the Ottomans within the borders of the Empire. Under these circumstances, the Ottoman government had seen it necessary to protect the threatened part of Anatolia by moving the Armenians elsewhere. Several hundred thousand Armenians ended up in Syria. Almost as soon as the Armistice of Mudros was concluded, these people started streaming back to their original homes. Their intention now was to found a new Cilician-Armenian state, but in the region where they wanted to have this state they were just as much a minority now, after the war, as they had been before it. Since it is not possible to go into the events of this secondary theater of war in more detail, a description of a single episode will have to suffice. This episode illustrates the dimensions of a campaign that was supposed to "recall the tradition of the Crusades" (and unfortunately did so): After the French- Armenian invaders had been thrown back by the Turks, Mersin and Taurus were once again in the hands of their inhabitants, who were not about to have French-Armenian rule forced upon them. A gang of Armenian fanatics, however, decided to declare the region between the Sehun and Jehun rivers "self-governing".
The ringleader of this ridiculous operation was Mihran Damadjian, a terrorist who had grown old disgracefully. He had won his first bloody laurels inciting rebellions in Sasun.
When the French tried to put him in his place, he declared an "independent Armenian state of Cilicia" on August 5, 1920. With a handful of blindly loyal followers, he occupied the 'Palais des Gouverneurs' of Adana in terrorist fashion. As representative of the "Armenian National Delegation" (whatever that might have been in Cilicia), he declared himself "Armenian governor under French protectorate". This unfortunate farce ended an hour later, when the French commanding officer asked him and his "government" in no uncertain fashion to end "cette comedie ridicule" as soon as possible. The French ended their Cilician adventure shortly there after. On December 11, 1918, a French battalion made up of four hundred Armenians had occupied Dörtyol, the notorious region of Armenian rebellion surrounding Musa Dagh and Zeitun.
On January 20, 1920, the French began pulling out of Marafl. (On February 6 the patriarch in Istanbul sent a telegram to Paris saying that two thousand Armenians had been "massacred" by the Turks; on February 25, Reuters sent a telegram around the world saying that the Turks had slaughtered 70.000 [seventy thousand!] Armenians in Marafl . . .) It is true that the fighting on Turkey's southern flank was taking on a genuine warlike character, even if the situation did not resemble the rumors that Reuters was peddling, apparently still in the tradition of wartime slander.
The fighting was in fact taking place between the best equipped Armenian units and recently resurrected Turkish troops led by their efficient government in Ankara. They made up for their lack of equipment and means of transport with love for their country. On October 20, 1921, an agreement was signed between the Turkish government and M. Franklin-Bouillon, representing France. It called for the unconditional withdrawal of French troops. The overwhelming majority of the Armenian population, which had just moved back to Cilicia in 1918, joined the French in their withdrawal. This happened in spite of the fact that the Armenians in the South of Turkey were a valuable part of the Turkish community and would have been just as welcome as the Armenians were everywhere else in Anatolia.
All the facts indicate that the emigration en masse of the Armenians from Cilicia was planned and programmed with a single goal in mind. Someone wanted to prove to the "dumb, incompetent Turks" that things "simply would not work" without the Armenian element. Trade –especially international trade - would surely fall apart permanently. But what happened was just the opposite. The tremendously capable Armenians settled by the hundreds of thousands in all the nations that were founded out of the old Ottoman Empire. (They had not been moved out in 1915; they had just been moved around]) None of these other nations, however, could possibly stand compari
The gate of the dtadelle of Van. The treaties of Gümrü, Kars, and Moscow (1920 and 1921) assure Turkish sovereignty over eastern Anatolia.
A hub of Anatolian-Middle Eastern civilization. The water blocked by the Keban Dam near Elaz¤ comes from the sources of the Euphrates, while the source of the Tigris is located right on the south-east edge of Lake Keban. Archeologists have found evidence of an early neolithic culture in the area, proving beyond a doubt that the culture of the Hurrians, which came from Asia and is closely related to Urartian culture, developed first in Anatolia and spread out from there to the Caucasus and Iran.
son with the progress made in Turkey. Only Turkey has managed to build the road to a safe, peaceful present, with a virtually certain option on an even better, peaceful future. The other states, Syria and Lebanon in particular, have meanwhile sunk into a sea of blood and terror (of which no small part is contributed by Armenian terrorists).
Speaking of Lebanon:
The French supreme commander in Cilicia, General Dufieux, was a notorious Turk-hater. Right up to the last moment, he avoided making contact with even a single Turk. He left Adana on November 24,1921. Just before his departure, he visited the French war cemetery, and as he laid down the obligatory wreath he said sadly: "To the French soldiers who sacrificed their blood in vain."
He could almost have been saying those words vicariously for all the French people who wish to remember the victims of terror in Lebanon and the victims of the Lebanese disaster. The incomprehensible waves of terrorism from Lebanon have in the meantime reached France and Paris, claiming countless innocent victims.
They are in fact all exclusively victims of a French policy that held that France could win power and influence in the Ottoman Empire (and thus in Syria and Lebanon as well) by tolerating and even supporting Armenian terrorism. Meanwhile, countless Armenian bombs have gone off in Paris, killing many innocent French citizens. For the most part, these bombs came from Lebanon, a country which was once propped up artificially by France in order to gain influence in the Ottoman Empire.
The Armenian terrorists and their Shüte accomplices regard this slaughter of the French people of today, who had absolutely nothing to do with the tragedy of Lebanon, as their "legitimate" contribution to a belated campaign of vengeance. The Turks of today, however, had even less to do with the events for which they must "pay". They are much less guilty than the French for the present situation in the Middle East. The French did, after all, at one time help the Russians and the British and the American missionaries drive the unfortunate Armenians into the inferno of rebellion and civil war . . .
On Wednesday, December 1, 1921, Turkish troops advanced to the coast, and the solemn transfer of authority from the French to the Turks took place in Adana. This meant that the unfortunate civil war on the southern front, which had flared up again so cruelly after the French intervention, was finally over. There was still the Turkish western front, however. Since the beginning of their invasion on May 15, 1919, the Greeks had managed to capture half of western Anatolia and were now preparing for the conquest of Ankara.
The Peace of Gjrumri (Alexandropol; Today Leninakan) of December 2, 1920 The severe fighting between the troops of Kazm Karabekir and the Republic of Armenia brought heavy losses. The fighting first ended with the truce of November 6, which the Armenians had requested after the Turks had taken Kars and advanced to Gümrü.
After some tough preliminary negotiations and renewed Armenian attacks, the most modernly-equipped Armenian army was defeated near Shahtahti on November 15. The Armenians now appealed once again for a truce. The peace negotiations of Gümrü began ten days later. On December 2, 1920, these negotiations produced a peace treaty between Turkey and the Republic of Armenia which is still valid and binding today. (Shortly thereafter, on March 16, 1921, the Turks signed the Treaty of Moscow, since Armenia was, as it had almost always been in its history, not a sovereign state itself, but rather under Russian sovereignty. Armenia had already made an agreement on October 11, 1920 with the Soviet-Russian representative Legrand, saying that "Armenia accepts the mediation of Russia in solving its territorial problems." In other words, Armenia had signed away its sovereignty in foreign policy matters to Moscow.) The Treaty of Alexandropol-Gximru establishes the borders between Turkey and its Armenian neighbor quite clearly, including of course the border north-east of Mount Ararat. Ararat is the highest peak in Turkey. Nevertheless, the Soviet Republic of Armenia still includes Ararat in its coat of arms. This is nearly as absurd as it would be for the British to include Kilimanjaro in their coat of arms, simply because they once held sovereignty there.
The Treaties of Gümrü, Moscow and finally Kars
The severe fighting between the troops of Kazm Karabekir and the Armenians brought heavy losses. The war with the Armenian ended with the truce of November 6, 1920, which the Armenian aggressors had requested after the Ottomans had taken Kars and advanced to Gümrü. After some tough preliminary negotiations and renewed Armenian attacks, the most modern-equipped Armenian army was defeated near Shabahti on November 15. The Armenians now appealed once again for tuce. The peace negotitions of Gümü began ten days later. On December 2, 1920, these negotiations produced a peace treaty between Turkey (still the Ottoman Empire) and the Republic of Armenia. (The full text is easily available in the Mavi Boucuk Archives and in my book "A Myth of Terror" (internet), in English and French in form of a facsimile with the signatures of Kazm Karabekir and Alexandre Khatissian. Gouvernement d´Erivan s´´engage á considérer et declarér nul le Traité de Sèvres... (The Government of Yerevan declares the Treaty of Sèvres for null and void.)
Some time later, on March 16, 1921, the Turks signed the Treaty of Moscow. Armenia had made before an agreement on October11, 1920 with the Soviet-Russian representative Legrand, saying that "Armenia accepts the meditation of Russia in solving its territorial problems".
The Treaty of Gümrü established the borders between Turkey and Armenia, including, of course, the border northeast of Mount Ararat. Ararat is the highest peak of Turkey.
Nevertheless Armenia still includes Mount Ararat in its coat of arms. This is a similar absurdity as if Serbia would show the Greek Mount Athos in its flag, because there exists a Serbian monastery there.
The final act was a meeting at Kars, in order to definitely ratify the Treaty of Moscow. It "sealed" the Turkish-Armenian border of today, October 13, 1921. The Armenians did everything to get Ani in vain. Since that day they denounce Turks to have destroyed this place, which is not true but one of the innumeral Armenian allegations.
Typical for these circumstances Armenia had meanwhile occupied Zangezur, an old an integral part of Azerbaijan, inhabited mainly by Azeris, but at least Karabagh and Nakhichevan could be saved. Anyhow, Armenian and Russian forces occupied May 1992 in a dirty war of aggression Karabagh and Lachin - but definitely not for ever.
The End of the Armenian-Greek Invasion
When the devastating Armenian uprisings in eastern Anatolia (especially in Van) forced the Ottoman government to order the relocation of the Anatolian Armenians to the safe southern provinces, the Armenian populations of Istanbul and Izmir were explicitly excluded, because there did not appear to be any danger in those areas. In the spring of 1919, it became clear how much better it would have been for everyone concerned if the Armenians of Izmir had also been moved sooner, since they did everything they could to harm their Turkish compatriots in the course of the Greek invasion. Certain Armenians truly distinguished themselves in the first days of the Greek occupation of Izmir with acts of violence against the Turks.
When the terror in Izmir got totally out of hand, the Greeks were finally forced to take action against their own supporters in order to stop the murdering and looting. Two Armenian agitators were among those condemned to death. The report of the Bristol Commission, which can be found in the Library of Congress in Washington, contains an assessment of the situation by an Allied officer. He speaks explicitly of Armenian gangs pillaging the Turkish villages in the area between Izmir and Istanbul, particularly around Yalova and Gemlik. These gangs also "cleaned" the area of Turks, since it was to be ruled only by Greeks and Armenians in the future.
Later, the leader of the Turkish delegation brought up these incidents expressly at the Lausanne Peace Conference -and no one contradicted him. The surprise Greek attack against the Turks began on May 15, 1919 with the ambitious invasion of western Anatolia. At last, the "Great Greek Empire" would rise again - after two thousand years! - on the soil of Anatolia, which had long since become Turkish. The Allies had given their advance "blessing" to the adventurous Greek operation. That did not mean, however, that they would stand by the victims of this megalomania when it foundered. This was soon made vividly clear by the fate of the Greek and Armenian refugees.
The Greek aggression was carried out using the most modern weapons and tremendous capital outlay, with the result being that the expeditionary forces soon reached Haymana - i.e., the city limits of Ankara, the new capital. At this point, the aggression became life-threatening for Turkish Anatolia. The sound of canon on the battlefield could be heard constantly in Ankara. The government did not consider surrendering, but rather moving - or fleeing -to Sivas. The Greeks had, however, overstretched their expansionist capacity. Starting from the gates of Ankara, the Turks gradually won back territory. After eleven days of fighting (from August 21 to September 2, 1921), they broke the spearhead of the Greek attack outside Ankara. The defenders drove the aggressors back to the west. The Turks may have been barefoot and miserably equipped, but they were victorious nonetheless. France realized very quickly that the tide was turning and hurried to establish good relations with Ankara. Foreign Minister Henri Franklin-Bouillon rushed to Anatolia, thus letting it be known that his future negotiating partner was in Ankara - not in Istanbul where a powerless Ottoman government was still feigning sovereignty.
France thus accepted the new Turkish "National Pact" and at the same time made it clear that they considered the dictate of Sevres null and void.
This was the same France that had once been the most stubborn and brazen of all the powers in goading the Armenians on to terrorism and war. But back then the goal had been to weaken the Ottoman Empire. The French quickly changed their tune when it became apparent that they could not get the better of the Turks in this fashion. The "cause of the Armenians" fell into oblivion overnight, just like the "Great Greek Empire", which also self-destructed by overstretch ing its opportunities.
In August, 1922, after careful preparation, the Turks began their assault on the Greek invaders. The Greeks, in the meantime, had formed a hedgehog defense in Anatolia and were putting all their chips on "victory". King Constantine himself even visited the Anatolian theater of war on June 13, 1921. In a gesture that was truly pregnant with symbolic meaning, he set foot on land in the same spot where the Crusaders had come ashore centuries earlier (also in vain). On September 2, 1922, Turkish troops liberated Eskiflehir. A week later they were in Manisa, which the Greeks burned before their departure. They did the same a short while later to Izmir. The Turks were to be left with nothing but "scorched earth". Just before Mustafa Kemal's victorious forces marched into Izmir, a devastating fire broke out in the Armenian quarter of the city. 25,000 buildings, which amounted to half of the entire city, were reduced to ashes. Fire brigades ran around helplessly, searching in vain for water supplies. The cisterns were empty, the fire hoses cut, and the water supplies cut off. This "holokauston" was the greatest "burnt-offering" ever made in the lands of the ancient world. It may well have been the work of the Dashnaks.
If so, it is second only to the annihilation of Van (spring, 1915) on the list of most appalling Dashnak terrorist acts ever to plague the world. The arsonists naturally spread the rumor throughout the world that the Turks had laid waste to the second largest, second richest, and second most beautiful city in Anatolia - on the day of their triumphant entry!
The world public swallowed this nonsense, just as they had swallowed the earlier atrocity reports with great satisfaction. The tale of the "Terrible Turk" was a sure-fire hit. On October 11, 1922, the victorious Turks and the defeated Greeks signed the Armistice of Mudanya. (Mudanya is a town near Yalova where the Armenian irregulars had wreaked havoc during the Greek occupation.) This armistice brought the "‹stiklal Harbi", (The Turkish War of Independence), to a triumphant close. The government of His Majesty the Sultan - still prisoner of the Allies in Istanbul - sent its regards. The peace negotiations in Lausanne began on November 22, 1922. ‹smet Pasha, the victorious general at ‹nönü, was leader of the Turkish delegation. He now emerged as a talented diplomat after already having proved himself on the battle fields of Anatolia. He succeeded in presenting the Turkish delegates as negotiating equals. He made it clear that nationalisms. Consequently, the word "Armenian" is not even hinted at in the Treaty of Lausanne.
The horrific end of the Greek war of aggression with the Turks: A flood of refugees flee the burning city of Izmir. Many people lost their adopted homes, both in Greece and in Anatolia, in the wake of these events. The calculations of the Greek aggressors were just as far off the mark as those of the Armenian terrorists.
When Lord Curzon finally brought up the subject of the Armenians (apparently because he felt it was his obligation - they certainly did not interest him anymore, having served their purpose as useful pawns for the Allies), ‹smet ‹nönü cut him short:
"As regards the internal political factor, that is to say, the natural desire of minorities to free themselves, there is occasion to observe that the Ottoman Empire, reduced to essentially Turkish provinces, no longer contains any minority which can form within it an independent State. Until the principle of nationalities receives an equal application everywhere, separatist movements, designed to liberate parts of the Ottoman Empire containing a consider able number of non Turkish inhabitants, could perhaps be justified. The situation is entirely different today. Just as the Greeks established at Marseilles could not reason ably think of creating there an independent Greek State or of annexing it to their Mother-Country: in the same way the Greeks or Armenians in Turkey could not legitimately desire the same thing in Turkey."
The Greek Prime Minister Venizelos also thought he had to touch upon the Armenian issue in his speech. This was the same man who was responsible for all the bloodshed caused by the Greek invasion of Anatolia and the subsequent debacle of that war of aggression.
(It was he who bore responsibility for the entire refugee tragedy!) ‹smet ‹nonü broke him off:
"... Without any doubt, M. Venizelos pretends not to see that the occupation of Asia Minor has been a source of new miseries for the Armenians. This poor community was forced to enlist and to join the ranks of the Greek army . . . The Armenians were sent to the front and were forced to shoot at the Turks.
After the defeat many pillages occurred. Moreover, the Greek authorities engaged in propaganda to attribute these offences to the Armenians. Later, when the Greeks left Asia, they dragged the Armenians along. It is necessary to accept that the last government in the world which can have the audacity to pity the Armenians in front of everybody is the Greek Government which has directly created these misfortunes for the Armenians." When Lord Curzon began blathering about "three million Armenians who once lived in Asia Minor", Inonü answered him by saying that in the entire
May 15 1919: The Greeks invade Anatolia. On this day the first troops with excellent equipment landed in Smyrna / Izmir in order to conquer the western part of Anatolia, as far as Ankara, to make their dream named "megali idea" - the idea of a great Greek kingdom - true. May 1920 they occupied Bursa, July 1920 Edirne. Indeed, with all their help from Britain and France, they reached the outskirts of Ankara but were defeated finally by Ismet Inönü and his brave soldiers.
September 9, 1922, the Turkish forces re-conquered Izmir. Just one day before the Armenians set fire. The Turks should not enter a still blossoming ancient town and perfect modern harbour, but ashes. (When the Germans retreated from Russian soil 1944/45 they also left behind "verbrannte Erde"... scorched earth). This is the simple truth, an answer to the old question: C U I B O N O ? Whose benefit? (Cicero/ Lucius Cassius).
course of world history there had never been a population of three million Armenians in Anatolia. (1.5 million was the actual figure before the outbreak of World War I.) Inonü remarked bitterly that the Armenians own revolutionary committees had recently forced the Armenians of Cilicia to leave their homeland and follow the retreating French forces to Syria. The ulterior motive behind such forced emigration was the belief that the Turkish economy would completely collapse without the Armenian infrastructure and the Armenians' experience in international trade. This belief was quickly refuted by reality.
When on January 6, 1923, the subject of the Armenians came up again, ‹nönü declared: "It is entirely the Allies who bear the responsibility towards the Armenians. It is the Allies who turned the Armenians against Turkey and used them as a political tool . . . It is the Allies who delivered the Armenians up to hunger, epidemics, and finally emigration. We are not to blame for this, but rather the powers of the Entente. If the Armenians deserve compensation for everything they have endured, you give it to them!"
After this dramatic day, the issue of the unfortunate Armenians, who had let themselves be seduced by the promises of the Allies, was not brought up again at the conference. The Russians had created a diabolical pretext by inserting an Armenian clause at San Stefano and at Berlin (1878).
Since the words "Armenia" and "Armenian" do not appear in the text of the Treaty of Lausanne, that pretext was finally destroyed. This was to the benefit of those Armenians who remained in Turkey and now live there as citizens like all other people in the Turkish community, with the same rights and responsibilities as everyone else.
On July 24, 1923, the powers signed the Treaty of Lausanne. The Armenian delegation had already left Lausanne on February 2 when they recognized the futility of their efforts and the helplessness of their "allies". For the sake of completeness it should be mentioned that the Soviet Russians, who had total control over Russian Armenia again since the founding of the "Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic" on November 29, 1920, were - through their foreign minister, Chicherin - talking of a "national foyer for the Armenians" on the Volga or in Siberia. In the thirties, Stalin turned this cynicism into horrifying reality when he started a large-scale relocation of the Armenians to - of all places - the Altai region, the original homeland of the Turks.
There is one thing that is usually overlooked in connection with the Armenian tragedy - Article 31 of the Treaty of Lausanne. It contains the stipulation that every former citizen of the Ottoman Empire who had acquired a new nationality through the establishment of the new independent states could come to Turkey as a Turkish citizen any time within two years. Article 31 naturally
Old Smyrna - Izmir: A shelter for all religions, races: a perfect harbour for all. These were the happy and prosperous days of Ottoman Smyrna, where Turks, Armenians, Jews and inmummerabe foreign businessmen enjoyed a happy and prosperous life. During the turmoils of spring 1915 nobody was deported from Smyrna, the Ottoman authorities believed in the loyalty of their subjects, all together around 200 000 people, approximately half of them of Greek or Armenian origin.
A Greek stamp, printed 50 years after his death. (1986). The portrait under the new - and old - circumstances could not be better illustrated: Venizelos bears a kind of an Armenian clercyman´s headgear. A strange coincidence. Or a historical remark? (Remember: in our days started the notorious cooperation between Greece and Öcalan´s murderous PKK and the criminal ASALA).
applied to all the Ottoman-Armenian citizens who had been relocated during the war, or who - for whatever reason - did not happen to be on Turkish soil after the war. Article 31 was tailor-made for the Armenians who had been relocated and now wanted to move back to Turkey. In accordance with this clause, every Armenian who had once been an Ottoman citizen had until July 24, 1925 to come to Turkey as a Turkish citizen with the same rights as every other Turkish citizen. All talk of "expulsion" is thus unfounded, especially in light of the fact that the Armenians had never even been moved out of the Ottoman Empire after the uprisings in eastern Anatolia; they had simply been moved to less threatened provinces within the Empire.
“Finally, Peace with Turkey”
Reads the caption under the “leading personalities” at the Peace Conference of Lausanne. The treaty between the powers of the Entente, Greece and Turkey was ratified in Lausanne on July 24, 1923. The delegates (beginning with the third one on the right): Alexander Stamboliyski (Bulgaria), General Pellé (France), ‹smet Pasha (‹nönü, Turkey), the hostile Swiss Federal President Scheurer, Sir Horace Rumbold (Great Britain), M. Diamandy (Romania), the Marchese di Garriona (Italy) and Ambassador Ochiai (Japan). On the far left, the delegates of the “Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes”, who did not sign. The Turkish delegation had brought about an unprecedented favourable conclusion to the treaty thanks to the prudent, skillful and self-confident leadership of ‹smet Pasha. This result might first of all be attributed to the fact that his manner rendered him as a not inferior, but a party with equal rights.
The folder of Housepian´s story is a web of simple lies, it has absolutely nothing to do with the historical truth: In September of 1922, Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk), the victorious revolutionary leader of Turkey, led his troops into Izmir, as a flotilla of 27 Allied warships - including 3 American destroyers- looked on. The Turks soon proceeded to indulge in an orgy of pillage, rape and slaughter that the western powers anxious to protect their oil and trade interests in Turkey, condoned by their silence and refusal to intervene. Turkish forces then set fire to the legendary city and totally destroyed it. There followed a massive cover-up by tacit agreement of the Western Allies. By 1923 Smyrna's demise was all but expunged from historical memory.” Expunged from historical memory? Izmir is a blossoming city, full of activities, economical power, seat of NATO, modern harbour, shelters the most important fair of the Middle East....
While contemporary commentators praised them as “The Great Three” of the Peace Conference of Lausanne, with the hindsight afforded by history they appear rather miserable: Lord Curzon, a self satisfied, unreasonable and violent diplomat who infested Central Europe, just as he had earlier done in India in his capacity as viceroy of India; Benito Mussolini, at that time already prime minister of Italy, and M. Poincaré, the notorious warmonger and occupier of Rhineland (January 1923), indirectly one of the persons primarily to blame for the rise of the National Socialists in Germany.
Terrorism as Bloody Real Fantasy-War
Terrorism is the manner of fighting used in fantasy-war. Terrorism and fantasy-war are phenomena that induce some people to behave as if there really were a "war", with all the license to kill that comes with it. The "enemy" on the other hand (usually a country), almost always tends to deny what is happening, to suppress it, to act as if the fantasy declaration of war did not exist. If the authorities should ever happen to catch anyone from the terrorist enemy, they usually try to get rid of the demon, to set him free as quickly as possible in order to avoid burdensome extortion. France can be cited as one shocking example of this type of behavior, especially towards the Armenian terrorists. This kind of fantasy-war requires at least two opposing, organized groups. (It is apparently for this reason that some countries try to give the impression that they do not want to act in an organized manner). The state involved in a fantasy-war usually finds itself exposed to the attacks of a more or less extensive organization which arrogates certain attributes of an official government (full authority to enforce its "verdicts" - which means control over life, freedom, and death - extraordinary collection of taxes, influence or even control over the media). Terrorist groups perpetrate the most heinous crimes in the name of their "sovereignty"and their own standards of lawfulness, which they raise to the common norm and would like to see recognized as such. The fantasywars of the terrorists may lead to open, "real" war, ending in the defeat of one side - all too often the downfall of a state - or they may drag on, with the atrocities continuing for decades, or in the case of Armenian terrorism, for more than a century. Organizations such as the Armenian terrorist squads can be characterized by their special (albeit perverted) "love-relationship" to a certain "love-object". The Armenian terrorists want a grand Armenian state, even though such a thing only existed for a very short time two thousand years ago and was located on land where there has never in all of history been an Armenian majority.
Aside from that, they want revenge for a specific historical event which never took place, at least not in the form which they espouse. We are thus dealing here with a doubly irrational motive, and that obviously doubles the danger compared to other terrorist groups with at least a trace of realism and historical equipment. Terrorists - especially Armenian terrorists - live among us and build their own subculture with its own system of values. They are always looking for new converts, seeking people who prefer their terrorist anti-church to an Orthodox Armenian church or some other, peaceful Armenian organization.
The Armenians are a people of above-average intelligence, and through their hard work and ability they have also achieved above-average incomes and above-average levels of education. For these reasons, the cadres who are won over by the Armenian terrorist leaders distinguish themselves through their outstanding efficiency. They do their job so well that journalists, historians, filmmakers, and television executives timidly avoid doing anything to try to stop the criminals, even though they would have the influence and knowledge to expose Armenian terrorism and the false premises upon which it is based. That is one of the main reasons, if not the main reason, why there is a standard line tacked onto the end of every report of a new bomb or machine-gun attack carried out by Armenian terrorists. It is like a solidly ingrained ritual: "The terrorist organizati-
30.000 innocent victims of the PKK terror put not only the PKK but also their protectors and advisers in Yerevan and Athens in the dock.
Contemporary Armenian postcards with the "heroes" of terrorism. In the middle of the top row is one of the ringleaders of the raid on the Ottoman Bank, Papkenian.
Certain Armenian circles, particularly in the United States, maintain the "hero" cult surrounding contemporary terrorists as well as their spiritual fathers from the nineteenth century. The title of this book, Das Verbrechen des Schweigens, means "The Crime of Silence". The true crime of silence has to do not so much with the misfortune of the Armenian people - which has received a tremendous amount of publicity - but rather with the authors and historians who know the historical context but choose not to tell the truth because they fear Armenian terrorist reprisals.
on claiming responsibility for the attack cited the 1915 genocide as justification for the assault." This is a case where an ordinary public relations spot is purchased with blood instead of money! Simply dropping this inane, inexcusable sentence would already destroy the essential motive of the terrorist assassins: to have an event cited repeatedly in the media, although it never took place at all in this form. As long as it is so easy to "get the message across" however, we can be sure that terrorist attacks from these quarters will continue. In the "normal case" of human existence, the biologically based survival instinct plays an all-important role. It does a masterful job of suppressing the thought of death and a permanent "end". It uses a thousand mechanisms to fool us, with the final result being that humans live their lives from year to year as if there were no permanent "end", even though it could in fact come at any second. In some cases the idea of immortality helps, the hope (or certainty) that death is just a stepping-stone from this worldly, temporal life into the eternal one. In almost every human existence, death is seen as something awesome, some-thing to be put off as long as possible. Doctors occasionally do inhuman things in the name of this "putting-off", while priests pray and administer the sacraments for longer life and eternal life. Terrorists on the other hand have, in many cases, a nonchalant attitude toward life whether it be their own or someone else's. The people they kill are merely the rubble they must leave by the wayside as they pursue their goal, and their own death is a tribute which they would be honored to pay to their ideal, whether that be an "Armenian Utopia" or simple ven
Vicious propaganda comes in various forms. One of the most sinister is the hidden falsification. This pamphlet, "Der Volker - mord an den Armeniern vor Gericht" (The Armenian Genocide on Trial - the title is already a lie in itself), is adorned with a montage made up of a portrait of the accused, Talat Pasha, and a horrid mountain of skulls. Casual observers - and they are the ones who matter, for they are the majority - will inevitably make a connection between Talat and the crania on the cover. They may even assume that Talat is the villain responsible for this specter. The truth is quite different: The heap of skulls is taken from a painting by the Russian artist Vassili Vereshchagin (1842-1904), "The Apotheosis of War" (1871; Prussia-France). It was painted at a time when the "Armenian problem" did not yet exist - i. e., before the Russian dictate of San Stefano (1878).
geance, even if there is nothing real to avenge. There is, at any rate, an exceptional situation in human society where death occurs on such a large scale that men appear to lose all fear of it, as well as all sense of proportion.
In this exceptional situation, death is sometimes actually sought with great enthusiasm. Friends and relatives greet the death of a loved-one with rejoicing, pride, and approval - especially if the deceased managed to kill as many as possible of the "enemy" before his own death - if, for instance, he caused an airplane to crash or a passenger ship to sink or a city to be swallowed in flames. Such people are honored and highly decorated. Their superiors even lay diplomas and distinctions on their graves. It is war that publicly sanctions this primacy of death over life. It is war that makes it appear desirable for one society to wipe out another, for one highly advanced civilization to grind another into oblivion. Every single soldier in a war has the right to kill as many fellow human beings as he likes, the more the better as long as they are on the "other" side. The state of war makes it possible for highly decorated prisoners of war, who wear the proof of their killing capacity, so to speak, proudly on their chests, to be honored and respected even by the victorious enemy. A captured terrorist, a killer from the terrorist front who gets nabbed, also typically demands to be treated as a "prisoner of war" by those who nabbed him. This is not only because of the better prison conditions, but also because of the difficulty of obtaining a conviction and the high probability of an early release. Every terrorist is indeed (subjectively) at war, although it is his own personal fantasy-war. To carry on a real war, there must be at least two clearly distinguishable sides that have at least a limited degree of sovereignty.
In addition, at least one of the parties must recognize an "enemy". (In the case of the Turks and the Armenians, this last point is problematic, since the Turks still respect the Armenians very much and have a high opinion of them. Anyone who travels to Turkey can easily see this for him self.) There must also be a casus belli, a reason for war. This almost always forces even the most peaceable opponent to adopt a hostile stance similar to that of the enemy, if he wants to survive. The inferences to be drawn for the terrorist scene are clear: regardless of the pretexts under which they operate, the terrorists have in fact declared war on human society. In studying the development of Armenian terrorism, one is struck by the attitude adopted by some Armenian communities toward the terrorist scene. This is especially true in the United States and France, where the Armenians constitute an important, financially powerful, highly intellectual element of public life. Armenian clubs and associations in these countries are in some cases remarkably conciliatory, if not openly supportive, towards terrorism. It has even been known to happen on more than one occasion that a moment of silence has been observed in a public worship service for terrorists who had been killed or arrested.Similar expressions of sympathy and remembrance can be observed in the secular world. The frame of mind at work here cannot be entirely attributed to the fact that many Armenians are the victims of terrorist blackmail at the hands of their own terror organizations. Much more important is the exaggerated, largely false understanding of history, which is mainly propagated by certain newspapers and periodicals of the Armenian diaspora. The fact that one can often find gems like "ONE million dead in 1915" and then perhaps in the same publication "two or two and a half million victims" does not seem to bother the editors very much. Some Armenian intellectuals also show a remarkable intolerance towards scholars whose view of history differs from their own. Professor Justin McCarthy is the author of the tremendously important, scientifically irrefutable work Muslims and Minorities, in which the true population figures for Anatolia appear for the first time. He can only hold his lectures with massive police protection. The version of historical events presented in Stanford J. Shaw's History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey did not match the picture presented by certain Armenians. His house was bombed in an attempt to intimidate him and keep him from publishing further. This intimidation has reached the point where it is doubtful whether an Armenian publisher could be found today for a book like Louise Nalbandian's "The Armenian Revolutionary Movement". The book is thoroughly pro-Armenian, but it is also somewhat objective and contains a few critical words.
The Armenian Terrorist Organizations
The Armenian terrorists use the names of several different front organizations in carrying out their attacks. In spite of the seemingly bewildering multitude of acronyms and pretentious titles, however, everything can in fact be traced back to just two organizations. The oldest Armenian terrorist organization grew out of the Dashnak Party, which had been under the spell of the Russian anarchists and ultras from the beginning and reached maturity in Russian Armenia. The party was a response of the extremists to their own unsuccessful efforts to give the Armeni-They defend their murderers and assassins ... at first they force a 20 year-old lad into a capital offense.
Then they pretend to 'defend' the poor youth who sacrificed his life for a lifeless bloody myth! an minority within the Ottoman Empire a state of its own. These efforts were actually doomed to failure from the beginning, given the small percentage of Armenians in the eastern Anatolian population. These first Armenian terrorists bear an uncanny resemblance to the Shüte suicide squads. (Extensive accounts can be found elsewhere in this book of Armenian terrorism in the Ottoman Empire of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.) Their main heirs from an historical viewpoint, however, are the JCAG (Justice Commandos of the Armenian Genocide). The terrorist actions of the JCAG are regarded - as funny as this may sound - as being carried out by "conservatives". Their specialty appears to be the assassination of Turkish diplomats and their families. ASALA (Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia) is, by contrast, generally considered to be a Marxist terrorist organization, closely controlled by the Soviet Union. They see the existence of an "Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic" as the ideal and work for the "unification" of eastern Anatolia with the ASSR. It is only with some reservations that the Soviets can con done this objective, since they worry that a larger Armenia could easily become rebellious. They support the activities of the ASALA anyway, however, since they are directed against Turkey (which is also an important partner in the NATO alliance). For many years, the ASALA also enjoyed the hospitality and support of the Shüte terrorist groups in Lebanon. There appears to be a special affinity between the Armenian terrorists and the Shütes. This can be seen in the willingness (or longing) to die and in the radical nature of the attacks, where there is never any indication whatsoever that the fate of innocent bystanders has been given any consideration.In spite of this manifest spiritual closeness to the Shüte conception of the value of life (or lack thereof), the ASALA has proclaimed in their mouthpiece ARMENIA: "Our forces never strike against S. S. R. of Armenia, which is already liberated."
This corresponds entirely to the interests of the Soviet Russians. Just like their Czarist predecessors, they want access to the "warm waters", and that means using all available means to gain control over eastern Anatolia (as a bridge to the Gulf) and the Bosporus (as a gateway to the Mediterranean). In spite of the mass deportations of Armenians to Inner Asia under Stalin, the Armenian intellectuals have for the most part managed quite well under the Soviet system. The careers of such men as Anastas Mikoyan and Yuri Andropov, who rose to become Soviet head of state, are striking proof of this. The countless other terrorist groups which appear in the lists of crimes committed are nothing more than alternate acronyms for the "big two", which take on new names at will. They do this partly to fool the public about their true size and partly to satisfy the vanity of members who want to lead a "new" terrorist group.
The public should not let itself be fooled by occasional quarrels and jealousies (when, for example, JCAG and ASALA have to fight it out to determine who killed whom when and where). In this bizarre world of shadows and mirrors, unfair competition is just part of the whole unfair bloody trade. In the end there is only one goal: terror for terror's sake.
The Political Background of the Armenian Terrorist Organization ASALA
An unprecedented terrorist "summit" was held in Tahran in February, 1986, on the occasion of the seventh anniversary of the Ayatollah Khomeini's revolution. "Ismailian revolutionaries" - of the Iranian persuasion - met with leaders of the Lebanese Hezbollah movement, Hussein Moussavi's men of the Jihad organization, the Saudi Arabian Mujahedeen, the Shüte Amal grouping from Bahrain, delegates from the Moro gangs in the Phillipines and Libyan intelligence officers.
What especially concerned Western observers about this Teheran terrorists' conference was that the Armenians were also represented. Roughly 200,000 Armenians live in Iran. They have so far remained remarkably undisturbed by the fanatical Shütes of the Ayatollah. These Armenians are used extensively against Turkey. Iran officially maintains good relations with Turkey and depends heavily on goods transported through Anatolia. Since the improvement of Turkish relations with Iraq however, Iran has taken an anti-Turkish turn. The Armenians are once again serving as useful pawns for the rulers of a country which is only looking after its own interests. The ASALA was in the past kept under some restraint in Iran, but now they have official Iranian support to strengthen their cooperation with terrorist groups such as that of Abu Nidal. Observers point out again and again the astonishing parallels between Armenian and Shüte terrorist attacks. (The airport attacks in Vienna, Rome, and Paris are good examples.) The Armenian newspaper "GAMK", which is published in Paris, recently printed a major article promoting "armed struggle". GAMK asked the rhetorical question, "Is the effort to weaken the West related to the Armenian question?" The response said in part: "There are American and NATO bases in Turkish Armenia. Therefore, the United States will oppose and fight any force that tries to upset the stability of that region and to change the status quo. In other words, to liberate the Armenian lands we will have to deal not only with the Turkish government but also the Atlantic Alliance and the United States . . . When the Armenian liberation struggle intensifies, the U. S. government will impose tighter restrictions on the freedom' of Armenians inside and outside the United States and will employ every possible means to crush the Armenian liberation struggle. Either we give up the dream of liberating the Armenian lands and appease Turkey and the United States, or we fight to liberate the Armenian lands and upset Turkey, NATO and the United States ... A weakened NATO and a weakened United States would make it easier to liberate the Armenian lands . . . (and) would help free the Third World from the yoke of American imperialism." The strongest Armenian terrorist group, the ASALA, has always relied entirely on the Soviet Union. Lately however, they have also found very strong support from Iran. Two strongly Marxist-oriented splinter groups have recently broken off from the ASALA: the DFPMLA (Democratic Front of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of. Armenia) and the ARA (Armenian Revolutionary Army), until recently called the "Justice Commandos of the Armenian Genocide" (JCAG).
The ASALA enjoys widespread support in France, where the Armenians make up a very wealthy, influential group numbering more than 400.000. Some 5000 Armenians took part in a protest march organized by the ASALA in France, many of them sporting badges and flags of the terrorist organization. Many ASALA supporters are also associated with the Armenian National Movement led by Ara Toranian. A number of captured Armenian terrorists have acknowledged the support that the ASALA receives from George Habash's PFLP. The PFLP also supports Kurdish separatist movements in the Near East. Both the ASALA and the ARA have repeatedly demonstrated that they can operate worldwide, in cooperation with Palestinian as well as Kurdish extremist groups. Their stated goal of weakening the United States and its NATO allies, above all Turkey, strengthens the suspicion that it is ultimately the Soviets who are behind all the Armenian terrorist activities. (Source: "Confidential Early Warning", Vol. IV, No. 1, February, 1986. The validity of the arguments presented here was proven by the ghastly series of attacks of September, 1986. The ASALA was behind these attacks.
"Early Warning" is convinced that there is plenty of evidence available pointing to the Soviet Union as the "ultimate sponsor" of the Armenian terrorists.) An unparalleled glorification of terrorists can be found in the book, The First Genocide of the 20th Century by James Frazer (New York: T&T Publishing, Inc.) The assassins Arshavir Shiragian, Soghomon Tehlirian, Aram Yerganian, and Missak Torlakian are celebrated as "Armenian national heroes" - as if political murder, "execution" without trial or proof of guilt, ever did a nation any good.
Varujian Garabedian, the leader of the gang that committed mass murder at Orly Airport on July 15, 1983. Eight people were killed in that bomb explosion and sixty others were wounded. Many of the wounded will remain cripples for the rest of their lives. Garabedian was sentenced to life imprisonment. Some observers believe that Garabedian, operating under the alias Hagop Hagopian, could even be the head of the ASALA. The authorities have never been able to establish Hagopian's true name and identity.
Anti-Turkish horror propaganda has quite a tradition: Around 1576, Jacopo Ligozzi created a cruel miniature entitled Mufti - II Papa Delli Turchi (a mufti depicted as the "pope of Turkey" the word "mufti" stands doubtless for caliph) with a mostro thus insinuating that Turkish religious leaders were masters of "monsters". Who cares for the fact that all countries and peoples of the vast Ottoman Empire could not only preserve their languages but also their religions?
The strange heritage: without any artistic values the Armenians spread out all over the world their dirty campaign to drag the Turks through the mud.
Propaganda is all, facts are nothing. As early as 1919, the Armenians had released an American film full of lechery and voyeurism. The principal actress was an "Armenian girl, Aurora Mardiganian, who, "(oh wonder!)" escaped from Some examples of Armenian tirades of hatred: They poisoned worldwide public opinion. A myth of mental terror.
Julius Streichers "Der Stürmer" the most brutal sheet of the Nazis appeared as an excellent pupil of Armenian propaganda. By the way: Streicher was sentenced to death on the Nurenberg process, 1946. The knive´s inscription: TALMUD. Today they would write KORAN.
Even President George W. Bush fell victim of the Armenian mafia. Other pictures we can not show because they are absolutely indecent, if somebody is interested, search in internet.
Turkish soldiers and found refuge in the United States, and exhibited her experiences in front of the camera". The feature is supported throughout by quotations from the official report of the Bryce Commission on Armenia. Lord Bryce and Lord Gladstone attented a private exhibition of the film at the Queen´s Hall, probably in order to prevent anyone in the audience from shouting "Ireland" or "Boer massacre". Today, the Kurds are misused in the same way at the expense of the Turks and, again the source is Armenian know-how.
WATER and OIL
Turkey, the Energy Bridge of the Third Millenium
Let us begin with the less important ressource: oil and gas (we could definitely survive without oil and gas or other natural sources of energy, but never without water). In fact, three quarters of the proven oil and gas reserves of the world exist in the vicinity of Turkey. In this context, the reserves of the Caspian basin are an estimated 16 billion barrels of oil and 3.3 billion cubic metres of gas, potentially even greater. But not only this. There are the immense reservoirs of oil and gas in Central Asia which shall be transported via Baku and Turkey to the west.
This means more independence from Russia, a benefit for all of us. Turkey, being at the epicentre of the world´s energy fields, has the utmost importance in terms of eco-strategy. Turkey, an integral part and ally of Europe, with its modern and Western values, stands in the middle of the crossroads of three continents, three seas and a multitude of different cultures, religious heritages and political developments. In this highly vulnerable region, Turkey is Europe´s most reliable friend, despite having recently (and most probably also in the coming years) been at the geographical centre of most of the problems and disputes which have occupied the world agenda. Turkey is an energy bridge between Europe and Asia - which is, by the way, the "Eurasian" continent. Turkey is able to assure - due to its political stability and geographic proximity - new and independent access to international markets for Caspian and oil and gas and the treasures of Turkmenistan and Kazakhkistan. In this context, the Turkish proposal for the Caspian Sea-Mediterranean Sea pipeline project as the main export pipeline will not only create vital economic activity and interdependence among suppliers, consumers and all concerned transit countries, but will also create an atmosphere of peace, stability, prosperity and security; qualities so greatly needed not only in this sensitive, vulnerable region, but all over Europe.
According to the Faculty member of Yerevan Public University, Aram Arutunyan, "the Baku-Tbilisi-Ankara strategic bloc is a very serious danger for Armenia."
Immediately after the 25th of May, 2005 where oil was pumped into the pipeline for the very first time, the declaration of the Armenian Prime Minister, Andranik Margaryan indicates the highest degree of anxieties that are felt in this country. As a matter of fact, Margaryan stated that "the pipeline will have a negative effect on the balance of powers in the region" and that "Armenia is looking for alternatives to get the balance right once again". Via a new war of aggression? After all, Yerevan's anxieties, created by Armenia and Russia, are comprehensible, for in Southern Caucasus, a transportation system is being built without passing through Armenian soil. Besides the Baku-Tbilisi- Ceyhan pipeline, the Kars-Tbilisi Baku railway project will be functional very soon. That means: Armenia will gradually lose its regional advantages and ways of transportation of great importance for the country, while its neighbors will increase their economic power. According to political observers: "If Armenia had ended to occupy Karabakh, had cooperated with Azerbaijan and it had gone beyond the perspective of historical revenge in its relations with Turkey, the situation would have been a much more different for Armenia". The strange inherent similarity between the sons of William Tell and those of Haik:
Mythomaniac teachings on descent
The connection between the Swiss confederates with the Armenian terrorists and whippers-in is old, very old. And as will be shown in this account, they are both profoundly true to type. Geneva was the centre of the Armenian machinations, an historic city which has often provided a home for machinating anarchists, marxists, or nationalists, from Bakunin and Lenin to the anarchist murderer of the Empress Elisabeth, Lucheni, who with his deed in fact gave this mad woman her just deserts, for she had always given anarchists financial support from her own private purse.
Another name that belongs on this infamous roster is that of a certain Avetis Nazarbekian, "a dedicated revolutionary and propagandist". He and his heirs were responsible for innumerable murders and acts of violence, not to mention the deliberate defamation of the Ottoman Empire, the Kurds, and the Turks. Nazarbekian (1866-1936) wrote initially in Portugalian´s (another fanatic) "Armenia", finally separated and founded, together with six companions the Hunchak-Party in Geneva, August 1887. As usual in these days for these guys he had also contact with Uljanov ("Lenin") although without success, not because of different ideas about terror and murder, but because of different plans for the later develop-
The new railway is a way outside the aggressive Republic Hayastan, from Kars to Akhalkalaki and Tbilisi (Tiflis). In future the railway- connection between Turkey - Europe - and Baku - with the Asian links - will avoid Armenian territory, in order to avoid any contact with the warlords in Yerevan who occupy Azerbaijanian territory.
ment of an Armenian state as it was planned by Nazarbekian, while Lenin thought in Russian ideology.
Founding Members of the Social Democrat Hunchakian Party: Avetis Nazarbekian, Mariam Vardanian/Nazarbekian (Maro), Gevorg Gharadjian, Ruben Khan-Azat, Christopher Ohanian, Gabriel Kafian and Manuel Manuelian.
Nazarbekian´s dream was the creation of an independent absolutely Armenian "socialist" state, created at the expense of the already existing empires. His "speaking-trumpet" was a quite shrill organ, named "Hunchak", the bell. This "bell" was actually not a bell but a bomb.
Nobody will accuse the Swiss confederates of involvement in terrorist activities, but it is a fact that in the days of the PKK terror, even such a reputed newspaper as the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) declared its sympathy more or less openly for "the Kurds", without consideration for the fact that the overwhelming majority of "the Kurds" had no sympathy for the PKK whatsoever - after all, a huge number of Turks of Kurdish extraction had fallen victim to these madmen. Whatever the case, the NZZ were not at all shy of falsifications of any kind, whether home-made or adopted from elsewhere, as is shown unambiguously by two photographs from the newspaper.
On the left-hand picture, the falsifier went to the trouble of covering up the mountains in the background, but failed to see the window in the taller building, while cleverly covering up the buildings in the middle ...
It is of no importance whether these manipulations were carried out beforehand or whether they were done in the NZZ's workshop. In any case, even a semi-educated lector should have noticed these falsifications, and this was not the case, whether on purpose or not.
Where does this strange sympathy come from?
Does it perhaps have something to do with depth psychology, something to do with the mythical - or to put it more exactly, fictitious -
founders of the two states of Switzerland and Armenia?
I I. THE FACTS OF THE CASE
1. "On September 26, 1995, the Armenian Committee for the Commemoration submitted a petition to the Swiss councils, appealing to them to 'pave the way for the political steps necessary for the acknowledgement of the facts of the Armenian massacres, and for these to be recognized and condemned as genocide.' The petition claims that hundreds of Armenian intellectuals were arrested and executed in the Ottoman Empire in 1915, following which a planned genocide took place in which around 1.5 million Armenians died."
2. In reaction, the coordinating body for Turkish associations in Switzerland submitted the following petition to the Swiss councils on January 30, 1996: "We, the undersigned, condemn the smear campaign initiated by the Armenian Committee for the place nearly 100 years ago. The expression 'Armenian genocide' is tantamount to a massive distortion of the historical facts."
In its answer, Parliament condemned the "tragic events" of the time which, in the wake of mass deportations and executions during the uprisings and wars between 1894 and 1922, but particularly in 1915, had led to the deaths of an extremely large number of Armenians (with estimates ranging from 800.000 to 1.5 million).
After a survey of the historical events and of Swiss reactions at the time, Parliament declared that on August 29, 1985, the Subcommission for Human Rights of the United Nations, and on June 18, 1987, the European Parliament recognized the events as constituting genocide.
b) Motion made by Ziegler on June 11, 1998, run-
The statistic of 1.5 million Armenian fatalities in the civil war is entirely unfounded, and is in direct contradiction with the original data communicated to the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs by Boghos Nubar. The document can be found at the end of this reply. Furthermore, Justin McCarthy made an evaluation some years ago of the Ottoman and Armenian nationalist statistics in his book Muslims and Minorities, which contains a chapter on the subject with further detailed information. It is illuminating that the Armenian diaspora never has a word to say about the Muslim victims. It is a fact that more than two million Muslims who died of starvation, disease and attacks.
Has any Armenian politician ever bothered to bring that in to the argument?
ning as follows: "Parliament is invited to proceed as quickly as possible in the name of the country of Switzerland in the issuing of a public declaration relating to the atrocities committed by the Ottoman Government on the Armenian people in 1915, resulting in 1.3 million deaths, and in the recognition of these events as genocide."
Here the figures are rounded down somewhat.
Instead of the quite fantastic figure of 1.5 million appears the figure 1.3 million.
"The genocide against the Armenians before the courts: the Talat Pasha case": In 1980, following a commission from the "Society for Threatened Peoples", a book by Tessa Hofmann was published about the legal case against the Armenian student Soghomon Tehlirian, who lost almost his whole family at the time in question. The Armenian was in court for the assassination of Talat Pasha, the former Turkish minister of the interior. The case led to the consideration of the degree to which Talat Pasha had been responsible for the Armenian massacres from 1915 onwards."
The book contains not only the various statements made by eyewitnesses and experts but also a pictorial documentation. The book gives a very detailed, revealing and comprehensive account of the facts of the matter and the background to the case.
1. In accordance with Art. 261bis Abs. 4 StGB (StGB: Strafgesetzbuch = penal code): "whoever through word, writing, picture, gesture, deed, or in any other way belittles or discriminates against a person or a group of persons on account of their race, ethnic origin, or religion, in a way offensive to human dignity, or who denies, or makes light of, or tries to justify genocide for these reasons" shall be liable to punishment.
As has already been mentioned, those who stand
This powerful work of art standing in the middle of Eriwan is a representation of Haik. Who was that?
Originally, Haik was probably a pagan god. But after Christianization things moved fast and he mutated into a direct descendant of the Archpatriarch Noah - the fact that his name does not even appear in the Bible seems not to have been a problem. On that point the Haik are nothing if not generous, and even go so far as to call the country HAYASTAN. There are only a few countries (Columbia, Bolivia, Saudi Arabia) which are named after historical personalities. But after a figure from legend?
This question may at first seem superfluous or irrelevant, but this is not the case with HAYASTAN. In fact, it hits the nail right on the head in that the matter is quite irrational. The answer can only be: That is the politics of Hayastan and its diaspora, which is quite incomprehensible in rational terms.
accused are not historians and have no expert knowledge of the facts relating to the period. The only historical facts that they have at their disposal are drawn from the one-sided view of history formulated by the Turkish government and influenced by the Turkey's view of itself as a state. This general view has been consistently confirmed and corroborated by the media in public debate on the issue, as the expert's report has also attested. Given that the accused only had an ill-thought-out and ideologically-based knowledge of the history of the time in question, as is shown by their methods of proof, and thus neither acted en pleine connaissance de cause nor had any racist motivation, one cannot charge them with having acted deliberately.
As there is not sufficient indication of their subjective guilt, the accused are to be pronounced not guilty of racial discrimination.
This begs the question as to exactly which party in this case can be held to have had "an ill-thoughtout and ideologically-based knowledge of the history of the time in question"...
It is quite inconceivable that Switzerland, a country with a worldwide reputation as the home of the Red Cross and of numerous renowned international organizations, should give such one-sided and illconsidered support for such a deviant line of argument.
Or could the explanation lie in the old saying that the best form of self-defense is attack? During the Second World War Switzerland was quite happy to receive any amount of money from Jewish refugees (and this money is in part still deposited in Swiss banks), but refugees themselves were mercilessly turned away at the Swiss borders in their thousands; Turkey, on the contrary, although it was likewise under a very serious threat from Hitler and was surrounded by enemies, fulfilled its humanitarian obligation entirely, and neither rejected a single refugee nor ever handed a single refugee over to the Nazis.
This imposing monument shows William Tell, who never really existed, in spite of Friedrich Schiller's play and Giuseppe Verdi's opera. Schiller created another myth in his Don Carlos, and again, Verdi gratefully made it his own. Somehow, it all reminds one of that other masterpiece, the "Forty Days of Musa Dagh", in that although it has hardly anything to do with reality it still has a certain effect in reality.
The story of William Tell is a myth, and there is nothing wrong with that, whether we are talking about the Swiss with their legendary figure of Tell, or the Armenians (the Haik), whose "HAIK" gave them their "raison d'être". Confederates did in fact exist who defended themselves with the crossbow against those they considered to be enemies. Many Swiss know that, but for the majority it is probably a matter of indifference. Could it be that this foundational story has something to do with their absurd sympathy for the Haik?
German Federal Parliament, 15th term of office Printed matter 15/5689 / 15.06.2005
Proposal by the parliamentary groups: SPD, CDU/CSU, BÜNDNIS 90/DIE GRÜNEN and FDP (An excerpt containing the most important - and mostly grotesque - formulations.)
Remembrance and commemoration of the expulsions and massacres committed against the Armenians in 1915: Germany must make a contribution to reconciliation between the Turks and the Armenians.
It is proposed that the Bundestag approves the following: The German Federal Parliament bows its head to the memory of the victims of violence, murder and expulsion lost by the Armenian people before and during the First World War. It deplores the deeds of the Young Turk government of the Ottoman Empire that led to the almost complete extermination of the Armenians in Anatolia. It also regrets the shameful role of the German Reich which in spite of having been informed many times over of the organized expulsion and extermination of Armenians did not make one single attempt to stop the atrocities.
It is noble - even so late in the day - to bow one's head in memory of the Armenian victims. What the author of this pamphlet (it is no more than that) overlooks (or consciously fails to mention) is the fact that in the course of a civil war which was provoked by the Armenians, the losses incurred by the helpless Muslim population were many times greater than those suffered by the Armenians. Nobody wastes a thought on the Muslims who lost their lives. Is there not a single member of the German Federal Parliament who has read Justin McCarthy's book "Muslims and Minorities"? If not, is this perhaps because the book is only published in English?
ARMENIA: "A German pastor and the genocide He was an eye-witness of the genocide committed against the Armenians. His was the voice of conscience while other Europeans were silent. A number of people in Potsdam now wish to give him the honor he is due - but there is resistance ..." Where blind and naked ignorance Delivers brawling judgments, unashamed, On all things all day long. Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) Johannes Lepsius (* 1858 - † 1926)
A MASTERPIECE OF IGNORANCE
HE WAS NOT. HE WAS A SHAMELESS MANIPULATOR WHO HAD NEVER SET HIS FOOT IN THE EASTERN REGIONS AND HE FALSIFICATED REPORTS AND DOCUMENTS EN MASSE..
"In order to expose the murders, the pastor disguises himself as a carpet-dealer. During his travels through the Armenian areas he transcribes eye-witness reports and collects statistics. He combines these with his personal thoughts and polemic against the perpetrators to make up the documentation Armenien und Europa.." An eye-witness??
This man had never left Constantinople/Istanbul; all what he reported came from Armenian sources, similar to the reports which Morgenthau had received from his Armenian dragomans. These are the essential points in the Lepsius legend, never had left Constantinople which has hardly to do with reality and truth.
What can be found under the Internet address "chrismon- ARMENIEN Ein deutscher Pfarrer und der Genozid" is a classic example of the falsification and manipulation of historical fact, but this was obviously the source used by the authors of the parliamentary proposal.
Lepsius was himself never witness to a single act of violence. Everything he wrote or reported he had from the lips of his Armenian informants, just as was the case with Morgenthau, the Ambassador of the United States. The short section " ... the pastor as carpet-dealer" gives the truth away, which is that his documentation is only composed of "eyewitness reports ... personal thoughts". A document in the style of Aram Andonian, whose falsifications were later to cost Talat Pasha and subsequently many others their lives. The "chrismon" website gives the following commentary on the trial of Tehlirian, Talat Pasha's murderer: "The report of Lepsius contributes to the assassin's acquittal." That is the point where the present-day worldwide terror network took root.
With this act of commemoration the German Bundestag pays tribute to the efforts of all those Germans and Turks who, in difficult circumstances and against the resistance of their respective Governments, acted to save Armenian women, men, and children. A particular intention is to rescue from oblivion the work of Dr Johannes Lepsius, who fought energetically and effectively for the survival of the Armenian people, and to use the memory of his work as a means of improving relations between the Armenian, German, and Turkish peoples.
The author of this piece of writing may well be unaware that Pastor Lepsius was a cunning trickster, as is demonstrated by many pieces of evidence which are on the Internet for anyone to read who wishes. The author was clearly also unaware that Lepsius never spent any time in the crisisstricken areas. His source was the US Ambassador Morgenthau, who never set foot over the boundaries of the city of Istanbul and received his information exclusively from his Armenian interpreters. Add to these the incredibly cleverly written book by Aram Andonian and you have the three traps which even as clever a man as Franz Werfel fell into when he wrote his masterpiece "The Forty Days of Musa Dagh", which is almost certainly the source from which the members of the German Bundestag derives their "knowledge" of the matter.
But research into and assessment of these historical events is also of immediate significance for our own day, when the normalization of relations between the Republic of Turkey and the Republic of Armenia is of particular importance for the future of the whole region. It is urgently necessary that confidence-building measures, in the sense of the word as used in the principles of the OSCE. The opening of the border to Turkey, for instance, could contribute to the termination of Armenia's isolation and to the resumption of diplomatic relations.
At this point the arguments presented by the author or authors reach the culminating point of their at all times considerable ignorance. Anyone can see from a glance at the map that the Republic of Hayastan (Armenia) is not subject to any "isolation". The borders to Georgia (in the direction of the Black Sea) and to Iran to the south are quite open. The authors of this pamphlet are clearly also unaware of Armenia's ill will towards Turkey (non-renewal of the Treaty of Gümrü, resulting in the maintaining of positively absurd territorial claims; the inclusion in Hayastan's national coat of arms of Mount Ararat, which is clearly on Turkish national territory), as are the individuals most closely associated with the proposal, namely Müntefering, Merkel, Göring, and Gerhardt.
It is the responsibility of our educational policy to contribute to ensuring that research into and assessment of the expulsion and extermination of the Armenians is carried out as part of the work on the history of ethnic conflicts in the twentieth century.
Would it not be better to spare a little time to talk about the Bene.. Decrees and to commemorate the mass murder and expulsion of Sudeten Germans? And yet no steps are taken in this direction. The Czech Republic was admitted to the EU in spite of the continued validity of the Bene.. Decrees, which is a clear case of one rule for the rich and one rule for the poor. With respect to Turkey, Germany plays the judge without knowing the facts; with respect to the Czech lands, nothing is said even though everyone knows the facts. Is that pragmatism? Or it is perhaps plain injustice?
The German Bundestag appeals to the Federal Government:
- to contribute to the establishment of an equable relationship between Turks and Armenians through study and reassessment of the past, and to forgiveness and reconciliation in the present;
- to contribute to ensuring that the Turkish Parliament and Government, and Turkish society commit themselves unreservedly to study and assessment of their historical and present relations with the Armenian people;
- to contribute to the normalization of relations between Turkey and Armenia. Berlin, June 15, 2005
Franz Müntefering and parliamentary group, Dr. Angela Merkel, Michael Glos and parliamentary group,
Katrin Göring-Eckardt, Krista Sager and parliamentary group,
Dr. Wolfgang Gerhardt and parliamentary group Substantiation
Ninety years ago, on April 24, 1915, Istanbul's Armenian political and cultural élite were, at the orders of the Young Turks government which held power in the Ottoman Empire, arrested and taken to inner Turkey, where almost all were then murdered. On this date, Armenians all over the world remember annually all those expulsions and massacres to which Armenian subjects of the Ottoman Empire were already subjected at the end of the nineteenth century, and which then took place on a larger scale during the First World War.
The German press reported in April 2005 that on April 23, 1915, a total of 2,350 Armenians were arrested in Istanbul, deported and executed. Unfortunately, German precision had managed to add an extra nought to the number arrested, which in fact amounted to 235. And the real reason why they were arrested? The British-French fleet and a huge invasion army were entering the Dardanelles in order to storm the capital of the Ottoman Empire, where the Armenians had already made preparations for an uprising which was to take place behind the backs of the Ottoman defenders. The annual "ceremonies in commemoration of a genocide" which take place on April 23 are a slap in the face of historical truth. According to independent reports, over one million Armenians fell victim to deportations and mass executions. Numerous independent historians, parliaments, and international organizations designate the expulsion and extermination of the Armenians as genocide.
The honorable ladies and gentlemen of the Bundestag are recommended to read “Muslims and Minorities” by Justin McCarthy, if they read English. The legal successor to the Ottoman Empire, the Republic of Turkey, still disputes, in contradiction with the facts, that these events were planned, and claims that neither the mass loss of life of those who died en route towards their planned resettlement or the massacres were willed by the Ottoman Government. While it is admitted that the Armenians were treated harshly, the action taken is justified by the fact that first in 1878 and then in 1914/15 many Armenians had fought on the side of the Russians against Turkey, and that there was a serious danger of the Armenians would have turned against the Ottoman Empire. Other justifications proffered by the Turkish side include the violence perpetrated by Armenians on Turks during their armed resistance to the Turkish resettlement measures.
Muslims and Minorities
The Population of Ottoman Anatoliya and the End of the Empire Justin McCarthy
In the book they would find the contemporary Armenian and Ottoman statistics (even then there were such things) and realize that the figures for the victims (which range from "more than a million" to "millions") are simply absurd, because there were never so many Armenians living in the respective areas
End Of Part VI
Part VII -Final
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