175) Armenian Arguments to Prove the "Genocide"

The following is an Armenian "FAQ" that I have encountered in a number of Armenian web sites. I was intrigued, because normally Armenian web sites totally ignore irrefutable historical facts that completely turn the Armenian "proof" for genocide on its ear (such as the process of the Malta Tribunal, what amounted to a post war "Nuremberg Trial" for war crimes). However, this FAQ boldly addressed many of the viewpoints from the Turkish side, which really makes it an IAQ ("Infrequently Asked Questions"), all the more reason to examine them. My own comments follow, in yellow.

"Useful Answers to Frequent Questions on the Armenian Genocide"

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The following document (save items in {curly brackets}) comprises pages 27-31 of the booklet What Every Armenian Should Know, which was written by Dr. Dennis R. Papazian and published by the Armenian Research Center in 1991. The booklet is still available for purchase from the Armenian Research Center for $5, postage included.
If you want to reply to falsehoods on the Armenian Genocide, you can find the answers below. Use them to construct your own letters. Save this booklet for reference.

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1. Forget the Armenian Genocide. Why should we be concerned with something that happened 75 years ago and 8,000 miles away?

Professor Dennis Papazian

Genocide is a crime against humanity, and there is no statue of limitations on genocide -- not even one 75 years old.

The fact that a major crime against humanity takes place 8,000 miles away from the United States makes it no less a crime. Was Hitler justified in killing Jews because he was 5,000 miles away? Should American troops not defend Saudi Arabia because Saddam Hussein is 9,000 miles away?

It was the old Ottoman Empire that committed the crime, but present-day Turkey becomes an accomplice after the fact by its expensive campaign of denial, denial not only for itself but for the old Ottoman Empire. This principle of becoming an accomplice by the cover-up of a crime is part of the rule of law.

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By all means, Genocide is a crime against humanity. It is, in fact, the most deplorable of crimes... all the more reason why it would be the responsible and ethical thing to do to get one's facts straight before claiming there was a genocide.... as far as Genocide is defined by the U.N. convention on genocide. Nobody is arguing there was great suffering and massacres of Armenians. Unfortunately, Dr. Papazian probably doesn't utter a peep about the suffering and massacres (at the hands of Armenians) of Turks and other Muslims. (I didn't order his booklet, but something tells me he would prefer to overlook the murders committed by Armenians, who acted much more in the spirit of genocide when they had the upper hand.)

Ah. So I see present-day Turkey is merely an "accomplice" in this alleged crime; the Ottoman Empire pulled the trigger, and today's Turkey is driving the getaway car. Does anyone know of an incidental, small-fry accomplice who has been the target of such a colossal campaign of defamation, hate and even assassination? (Armenian terrorists murdered many present-day, innocent Turkish diplomats and their family members in the 1970s and 80s, along with others who happened to be in the way.)

Denial is the right of a party accused of a crime who knows they did not commit the crime. Because someone is accused does not make that someone automatically guilty. I don't know what the Turkish government spends to defend the truth in its "expensive campaign of denial," assuming the financially-troubled Turkish government has so much money burning a hole in its pocket to spend in such a manner. (I am aware the Turks spend considerable dollars as grants to American universities, which doesn't guarantee them anything. They also pay big fees to individuals in lobbying circles to try and counter the exceptionally powerful Armenian and Greek lobbies.) I don't even know where these expenditures go... are there full-scale ads, TV programs and movies being produced to defend the Turkish viewpoint? (Especially against all the ads, TV programs and movies presenting the Armenian viewpoint?) The only rebuttals I'm aware of are mainly made by ordinary Turks, whenever there is another unfair charge against the Turks, in the unending stream of charges. Are there actual figures to prove this "expensive campaign," or is Dr. Papazian playing fast and loose with the facts? If anybody is spending money on this issue, it's definitely the Armenians. Armenians Act; Turks React.

"The Armenian American community is just like Enron! They have poured millions of dollars into trying to buy American politicians." â€” Samuel Weems

2. What have Americans to do with the Armenian Genocide?

America was the first country to recognize the Armenian Genocide and continued to recognize it until misguided officials sought favor with the Republic of Turkey by joining in an ugly, and quite unnecessary, distortion of history.

The Armenian Genocide was witnessed by hundreds of American missionaries in the Ottoman Empire who worked among the Armenians and have testified to their destruction by the Ottoman government.

The Genocide was also witnessed by American consular officials, stationed in the areas inhabited by the Armenians, who reported it to the American ambassador in Istanbul.

The American Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Henry Morgenthau, Sr., confronted the Young Turk leaders, and then he telegraphed the American Secretary of State calling the Turkish action an attempt at "racial extermination."

The American Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan, wired U.S. Ambassador Morgenthau to continue the strongest possible protest to the Ottoman government on behalf of the Armenians.

The Armenian Genocide was well-reported in the American press, and the U.S. Senate held hearing which affirmed its reality.

President Woodrow Wilson agreed to draw the boundaries of a free Armenia and sent a message to Congress asking for permission to establish a U.S. mandate over the new state.

[I ask this] "Not only because it [the mandate] embodied my own convictions and feeling with regard to Armenia and its people, but also, and more particularly, because it seemed to me to be the voice of the American people expressing their deep sympathies. At their hearts, this great and generous people [the Americans] have made the case of Armenia their own. The American people raised millions of dollars to aid the victims of the Genocide. Our older citizens will remember aid to the "starving Armenians."
President Herbert Hoover wrote in his Memoirs:

Probably Armenian was known to the American school child in 1919 only a little less than England ... of the staunch Christians who were massacred periodically by the Mohammedian (sic) Turk, and the Sunday School collections of over fifty years for alleviating their miseries. . . .

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Whew!

The evidence that Armenians rely on is truly appalling. No wonder the British, who wanted to wipe Turkey off the face of the earth after World War I... and after a desperate attempt to justify their wartime propaganda of Turkish brutality against Armenians, acquitted every single Ottoman official they locked up for two and a half years. The kind of hard "evidence" Dr. Papazian offers is what they likely examined, and fortunately the British had a high enough regard for the Law to find every single official among one hundred and forty four accused... innocent. Innocent, not only of a state-sponsored systematic extermination, but of ANY war crime.

It's despicable for current thinkers to rely on the testimony of missionaries. Missionaries failed to convert Turks; their resulting axe to grind combined with their already built-in bias against Muslims led to their documented fired-up charges in blind sympathy with the Armenians, their fellow Christians who were more open to conversion to Catholicism and Protestantism. (The amazing religious tolerance of the Ottoman Empire makes the Muslim-Christian issue irrelevant to the tragic events that transpired. If anybody is going to be dogmatic and zealous about the religious issue, it's going to be your ordinary missionary!) The testimony of these completely discredited missionaries simply is not admissible in this "courtroom."

U.S. Admiral KirklandÂ¹s opinion on American missionaries was published in the New York Herald on August 18, 1895:

"Rear-Admiral Kirkland, commanding the European station, whenever he speaks upon the subject, is empathic in his condemnation of the missionaries in Turkey. He says that he has found that one of the most prominent Sunday-school teachers in Syria spent three years in the Penitentiary at Pittsburgh, Pa., and that, taken altogether, they are a bad lot. The cause of all the trouble, Admiral Kirkland asserts, is that, relying upon the protection of the American government, the missionaries defy local laws, and do not merit the dispatch of a warship at every appeal made by the missionaries, most of which appeals are not true."

"The Genocide was also witnessed by American consular officials." Who were Ambassador Morgenthau's assistants? ARMENIANS!

It was precisely the false reports of missionaries and Armenians that pulled the wool over the eyes of Ambassador Morgenthau, who needed little persuasion to conclude Turks were beasts, since he thought little of the Turks to begin with. (It was so easy to be racist against the Turks when everything that was reported about the Turks was negative. Gee. Sounds like I'm describing exactly what is going on today.)

Oh, I see. Thanks to the writings of the extremely objective American Press and the thoughts of the equally objective U.S. senators, we can now rest assured that there was indeed an Armenian "Genocide."

I've got to hand it to the Armenians. Their strategy has been diabolically clever. Let's see, now...

"The West so strongly identifies with the Christianity issue, why don't we Armenians act against the Turks, causing them to react... and then we'll get our missionary friends to convince the West that these rotten Muslims are slaughtering us poor, innocent Christians. Luckily, our Armenian friends in the American consulate completely have the already biased Ambassador Morgenthau's ear, and anything he says is going to pyramid into the perceived truth. American Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan will believe what Morgenthau will have to say, President Woodrow Wilson â€” who is a preacher's son â€” will believe what William Jennings Bryan will have to say, and everyone else... from U.S. senators to the entire U.S. media will finally buy into the story, followed by the American people themselves. After all, racist American immigration policy has prevented Turks from settling within the United States, and nobody is going to speak for the Turks. And no "Christian" American is going to care to find out whether what they have been hearing is the actual truth. After all, everyone knows about the horrors inflicted upon Christians by the "Terrible Turk."

Hey, we can make whatever outrageous claims we want, because we completely have the Americans' ear. We'll certainly be able to get around fifty million dollars from American churches and charitable organizations, along with fifty million dollars as a loan from the U.S. government (at 5% interest, which we will renege on, later; it's not like they're going to miss such a paltry sum, since we will easily get close to two billion dollars in aid from our American Christian friends, once Armenia becomes independent again in around seventy years*), to help our newly formed dictatorship that rose from the ashes of World War I, upon land we got once we systematically murdered the Muslims who used to live in those lands for many centuries. Then we'll betray our friends in the West by joining the Bolshevik Revolution!

(Another example: British Naval Commander Harry Lake stated that the Armenians betrayed Great Britain by joining the Bolshevik Revolution and this was "an act of treachery" after the Armenians had begged hundreds of thousands of dollars of military aid from his country.)

Regarding President Herbert Hoover's quote... his subjective mind had already been made up regarding how evil those "Mohammedian" (sic) Turks were, and the quote speaks for itself. What interests me is the President's revelation of how well-known the Armenian cause had become in America, and his supporting statement of all the money Armenians had hoodwinked out of their religious brethren so far away. As President Hoover learned more about the Armenians, he had something to say that wasn't very flattering, however.

(*A recent example: U.S. aid to Armenia for fiscal year 2003 will be $90 million....thankfully, down from 2002's $103 million.)

3. All these Americans who reported the Armenian Genocide were biased against us. They were not telling the truth.

There was no reason for the Americans to lie. America was a neutral power during the time of the Armenian Genocide. In fact America never did go to war against Turkey but kept up diplomatic relations so that it could intervene on behalf of the Armenians.

Anyway, who are the Turks to accuse the Americans of lying?

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People who are "not telling the truth" could do so because they fervently believe they are telling the truth... not because they consciously desire to "lie." For example, Ambassador Morgenthau must have believed in the villainy of the Turks not only because his trusted Armenian aides were telling him fabricated stories (he trusted his Armenian secretary enough to help write his own letters and/or memoirs!), and not only because the biased U.S. Consuls were filling his ear with wild tales fabricated by their own trusted Armenian aides and the zealous missionaries, but because Ambassador Morgenthau already had a pre-existing negative disposition toward the Turks. The Turkish stereotype of being cruel and inhuman is so strong, an alternate meaning of the word "Turk" in English dictionaries means "cruel and inhuman." This is why any Westerner's account of the so-called "genocide" was suspect; not because they were necessarily liars (although a number of the missionaries were flat out lying, since religious fervor has a way of distorting minds), but because the second-hand accounts they had been hearing were so readily believable, based on their strong prejudices. This prejudice is exactly what the Armenians were counting on (and still are counting on), in pulling the wool over the eyes of Westerners.

By the same token, Western accounts that fly totally in the face of the Armenian "Genocide" are comparatively much more reliable. Why? Because almost all Westerners have grown up with a negative impression of Turkey and the Turks. Since the Crusades, the Turks have been regarded as the enemy (and not without reason; when the Ottoman Empire was at the height of its powers, Western Europe cringed in fear of the Empire's westward expansion; did you know the croissant was invented by the Austrians â€” and not the French â€” as a way to put the bite into the Turkish crescent, during one of the times the Turks were at the gates of Vienna?). It would take a mighty strong and honorable Westerner to shake off his or her deeply-rooted biases against Turks and Muslims; therefore, Westerners who argue against the "Genocide," especially around the time of World War I, would have absolutely no reason to not tell the truth.

Take for example the case of Americans Captain Emory Niles and Mr. Arthur Sutherland. The only reason why they were sent to eastern Anatolia was because of American sympathy for the Armenians. To their surprise, the people they discovered to be suffering were not the Armenians, but the Turks! In "Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922 ," Professor McCarthy writes, "...Despite their prejudices, they reported evils perpetrated by Armenians."

"Anyway, who are the Turks to accuse the Americans of lying?"

Translation: the Turks are less than human, and have no right to defend themselves against false accusations. Thank you, Dr. Papazian, for holding back your racial hatred and your regard for the Turks as less than human, so that you could make your points in a scholarly and objective fashion.

4. Why not leave historical questions to the historians? Why should the issue of the Armenian Genocide be fought out in Congress?

The Turks have adopted the line of "leave Armenian history to the historians" because they are losing their propaganda battle. The issue of the Armenian Genocide is not a question of historical truth, that has been settled; it is rather an issue of morality and the acceptance of the truth.

History is too important to leave to historians. By leaving the Armenian injustice of World War I uncorrected, the stage was set for the Holocaust of World War II. The abandonment of the Armenians was not lost on Hitler. Hitler said before sending his troops into Poland, "Go, go kill without mercy. Who today remembers the extermination of the Armenians."

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Well, thank goodness we have this Armenian scholar to teach us about "morality and the acceptance of the truth." "History is too important to leave to historians." Hmmmmmm. ("Historical questions should be left to historians": Armenian Patriarch Mesrob II, 2001.)

I wonder what the way could have been to "correct" the "Armenian injustice of World War I"? Let's see... at the end of World War I, the Armenians did try to get the Americans to give them three-quarters of a billion dollars and to send 70,000 American troops to secure the area of their "ancient homeland." Would that have done the trick?

Regarding this "propaganda battle"... I don't know whether I would term the totally open field the Armenians have enjoyed for the longest time to tell their lies and distortions as a "battle." I would call that a "propaganda slaughter."

The main reason why the Turks have been keeping quiet on the issue after the end of World War I is because Ataturk realized love and brotherhood is the true course for humanity, espousing Peace at home and in the world. What good would it have done to teach Turks to hate the Armenians who betrayed their country and murdered so many of their fellow Turks? (Love and peace is a Christian message as well, a message Armenians have not done a very good job of following.) As a result, there was no propaganda from the Turks. The only propaganda has come from Armenians, Greeks, and other Turcophobes.

When Armenians took up arms on the genocide issue again (right after the Turks intervened in Cyprus, as they were legally entitled to do, once Greece threatened "enosis" or union with the Greek mainland; if the Turks hadn't stepped in, no Turkish Cypriot would be alive today. Of course, this episode is recognized in the West as a ruthless Turkish invasion; score another point for the powerful propagandists), murdering hundreds of Turkish diplomats and others around the world, the Turks finally had to speak up. Once again, Armenian action, Turkish reaction. Let's not forget, however, that this "propaganda" playing field is far... far... from even. So Dr. Papazian is correct; the Turks entered this propaganda battlefield from way behind and they have certainly been losing in a big way. This loss has nothing to do with the issue of truth... the American Indians were also gigantic losers in their "propaganda battle," for the longest time.

Oh, there is that Hitler quote again. Sometimes I wonder if it wasn't for Adolf Hitler, would the Armenians have ANY "proof" to support their claims for genocide? You can visit the section on this web site that goes into this quote business in depth. What intrigues me here is that Dr. Papazian is straightforward in revealing the reason why Hitler made that quote, assuming he actually made it. The quote's powerful value for the Armenians is in proving the connection between the Armenian "Genocide" and the horrific Holocaust. However, the alleged quote was directed toward the Poles, not the Jews. "The Final Solution" did not come into play until some three years later.

Another point regarding the Turks' "losing the propaganda battle," the professor need bear in mind: after the Armenians have had a tremendous monopoly on the battlefield with no one to oppose their views for the longest time, the Turks have only begun to fight. The battle will be an extended one, as the Turks have many roadblocks ahead of them... undoing people's deeply-ingrained belief systems and anti-Turkish prejudice will not be easy to overcome. (C. F. Dixon-Johnson reminds us of an Eastern proverb a few paragraphs below: Give a lie twenty-four hours start, and it will take a hundred years to overtake it .) But I believe in the truth, and the truth shall prevail. As far as the usage of the word "propaganda," make no mistake: the Armenians mostly offer propaganda; the Turks mostly offer the truth.

5. Why should America acknowledge the Armenian Genocide now?

America is the moral leader of the world. We must set the record straight, to rehabilitate America's innocence, extricate the U.S. from an ugly distortion of history, and to restore America's respectability in the eyes of our European allies who, accepting the truth, are amazed at Americas hypocrisy.

No principled Turk should be offended by the truth. After all, a large number of Armenian survivors of the Genocide owe their lives to devout Turks. To be a patriotic Turk does not require hating Armenians or distorting history.

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I'm not saying there aren't Turks who hate Armenians. I am saying I have yet to meet one. Turks are raised to look upon Armenians as their brothers. The two peoples share too much over the course of many centuries for this not to be so. This is a terrible, terrible claim Dr. Papazian is making, and one that is not (surprise!) rooted in the truth in any way.

What the Turks hate are not Armenians, but the total lack of integrity their extremists generally have in saying whatever suits their purposes... when it comes to slandering Turks. This has nothing to do with hating Armenians. If the Turks hated Armenians, the Armenians who are happily living in Turkey would get out of Turkey, but fast. Meanwhile, how many Turks or Muslims are living in Armenia? Probably enough to count on one hand, figuratively speaking.

The Armenians on the other hand... and I'm generalizing here; I've certainly met beautiful Armenian people who have warmth and love in their hearts... are taught poems as children to hate Turks. Hating Turks is taught in their churches. It's almost like the Armenian identity isn't complete without hating Turks. I remember when in college I passed by the open door of the Armenian club (there wasn't any Turkish club at the college, because there were hardly any Turks), and I overheard one of the students say if a Turk happened to be anywhere around, he would tear the Turk to pieces. This fellow is not the exception to the rule... he is the rule. It is very, very sad.

Armenians would do well to listen to Dr. Robert John, a historian of Armenian descent whose findings (at least at one time) revealed the Hitler quote to be a forgery: â€œHate hurts the hater and hated. We (Armenians) are still living in the haze of distortions and actual horrors which occurred so long ago.... The time has come to stop psychologically damaging ourselves... with a continual conditioning of hate, neither should spurious guilt be visited upon others. These negative preoccupations and obsessions are obstructing our evolution.â€�

I don't understand what Dr. Papazian is referring to in his first paragraph, about rehabilitating "America's innocence," and extricating "the U.S. from an ugly distortion of history." Is he trying to suggest the U.S. has been misled by Turkey in some way?

I don't have to be an American to see America as a "moral leader" in many situations... but to love one's country or tribe does not supersede the truth, even in America's case. Certainly the Ottoman Empire has committed wrongs, especially as a superpower during periods of its existence... and America, as a superpower, is not off the hook, either. There have been times when America has not been so "innocent." Around the time of the Armenian "Genocide," for example, American troops committed atrocities against the Philippine people. In a more recent example, the American military's handling of the "Highway of Death" (or the "Turkey Shoot") during the Gulf War violated the Geneva Convention. I'm not trying to knock America here, just reminding the reader that it's the rare country with no blood on her hands. Something to keep in mind, before a nation rushes in with moral judgment on another. For example, French politicians buckled under to their huge Armenian-French community by giving their opinion that the "Genocide" indeed occurred. I wonder how much debate went on in that Parliamentary room to come up with a similar resolution, regarding French action in Algeria, where hundreds of thousands of Algerians were reportedly killed?

6. There is more than one side to every story.

Truth is not divisible by two. Is there another side about Hitler who gassed Jews, about Stalin who starved Ukrainians, or about Pol Pt (sic) and the Khmer Rouge who massacred Cambodians? Of course not. Genocide is so blatant an evil that it has no other side to the story.

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True. However, it would help to first prove the Armenian "Genocide." And in order to do so, you cannot ignore indisputable facts presented by the other side.

7. It is your word against ours.

The Turks themselves have confessed in earlier times. Prime Minister Damat Ferid Pasha placed the blame squarely on the Young Turk Party. Mustafa Kemal Pasha {Ataturk} said {in a 1926 interview with a Swiss reporter that} the Young Turks "should be made to account for the lives of millions of our Christian subjects who were ruthlessly driven en masse from their homes and massacred. . . ."

After the war, the Turks held courts-martial to prosecute and convict the perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide. Several were sentenced to death.

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I must confess, out of all the papers I have read by Turks supporting the Turkish viewpoint, I have never come across an "It is your word against ours" kind of explanation. Not to say such an explanation has never been offered, but I would be surprised at the reason for such a justification... when there is such a wealth of documented facts that support the Turkish viewpoint. In other words, one needn't take the Turkish word for it (and one wouldn't, anyway... since Turks are already viewed as the guilty party on this issue by the West, thanks to Armenians and their supporters providing their concocted version, unopposed, for about a century). All that matters are the facts.

I have tried to avoid putting up articles written by Turks at this web site, preferring to concentrate on Western sources... realizing people who seek the truth would be distrustful of a Turk's claims, concluding a Turk would not be very objective. However, since Turks are on the defensive regarding the matter of the Armenian "Genocide," I notice Turkish scholars and writers are a lot more meticulous about backing up their sources.

Armenians have been spoiled, knowing that whatever charge they hurl can usually be accepted at face value, since their audience already has a built-in bias against the "barbaric" Muslim Turks. This is why their facts and figures usually don't add up.

I've only run into these quotes from Turks of the period recently, and from Armenian web sites. Here is the quote, in fact, of "Grand Vezir Damad Ferid Pasha" (perhaps a more accurate title than "Prime Minister") from an Armenian web site:

(He described the treatment of the Armenians as...)
"A crime that drew the revulsion of the entire humankind."

Assuming this is the quote Dr. Papazian is referring to, I have only to ask... where is this quote from?

(Let's not forget Damad Ferid Pasha led the post war Allied-occupied Ottoman government that was anxious to make the previous administration look as despicable as possible. This was a beaten, puppet government that signed a treaty spelling the end of the Turkish nation; the Turkish people overthrew them, while kicking out enemy occupiers.)

I don't know much about the Ataturk quote at this point; the same Armenian web site claims it appeared in the August 1, 1926 of The Los Angeles Examiner... which gives the quote legitimacy. However, because I'm aware many outrageous and fabricated things were printed in the U.S. Press regarding the Armenian "Genocide," I have trouble accepting anything at face value, unless there is believable substantiation. Did Ataturk really say this? If he said it, were his words translated correctly? After all, Ataturk surely knew better than to believe "millions" of "Christians" were massacred... there weren't that many millions of Armenians in the empire to begin with. I am curious to learn more. (A Turkish professor refers to this episode as an Armenian falsification; he has conducted research to discover whether the Swiss reporter existed, and he could find nothing in the records of Switzerland to verify his existence.)

In the meantime, evidently there has already been an established pattern of "scurrilous works in which Ottoman officials were falsely quoted as ordering hideous deeds." (Most of the Turkish quotes in this Armenian web site pointed to an Armenian source. A few I recognized as from the pages of Ambassador Morgenthau's ghostwritten book, Ambassador Morgenthau's Story... but the "quotations" of that book were meant as "re-enactments," and not the actual words spoken. To present statements in quotation marks when they weren't the actual words spoken, by the way, is an unacceptably dishonest practice â€” particularly in a historical work.)

Dr. Papazian is referring to the trials held by the puppet Turkish government during the Allied occupation of Istanbul, where any and every crime was confessed to. No fair-minded person would give credence to the findings of a kangaroo court.

What is much more convincing is that DURING the war, the Ottoman administration tried Turkish soldiers who had committed crimes against the Armenians during the relocations, and actually executed a number of them. (Twenty in 1915. Not to mention the sixty-two who were executed by the post-World War I Ottoman kangaroo courts, along with over thirteen-hundred individuals punished in other ways; while the findings of these courts were not valid, because people were trying to save their political necks during the Allied occupation, it still says a lot that the government would even attempt to try its guilty. Did Armenia try its murderers at any time? Quite the contrary, the "Jew-Hunter" Dro was celebrated by Armenia's patriarch and president in 2000.) What kind of a genocidal government would give orders to annihilate a segment of the population and then seriously punish the people in charge of carrying out the orders?
...The Turk never deigns to explain his own case while "the pro-Armenians always manage to hold the field, appalling the public by incessant reiteration and exaggeration as to the number of victims, and apparently valuing to its full extent the wisdom of the old Eastern proverb give a lie twenty-four hours start, and it will take a hundred years to overtake it". (British writer, C.F. Dixon-Johnson, in his 1916 book, The Armenians)

8. Why do Armenians get all the sympathy, Turks died too. Perhaps some three million Turks died during the period of the alleged genocide against the Armenians.

It is doubtful that three million Turks died in World War I. Turkish propagandists usually use the more correct, but still deceptive, expression "three million Muslims." Yes, three million Muslims probably did die in WW I, but so did twenty million Christians.

The Turks died, unfortunately, because their own government led them into World War I against the European Allies. Many Turkish Muslims also died fighting Arab Muslims, who were seeking their freedom from Ottoman oppression, and Indian Muslims who where with the British Middle East army in Mesopotamia. All this Muslim blood, then, is on the head of the Ottoman Turkish government and not on the victimized and helpless Armenians.

There were only around three million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, most of them old men, women, and children, and they can hardly be blamed for the death of three million "Turks or Muslims."

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Ah, but you see, Dr. Papazian, the Armenians were far from "victimized and helpless"... they led an armed revolt against their own nation. How very shameful of you to perpetuate this false Myth of Innocence when the treachery of the Armenians is an indisputable fact. American General Harbord (not exactly a "pro-Turk" kind of guy) reported that â€œwhere Armenians advanced and retreated with the Russians, their cruelties unquestionably rivaled the Turks in their inhumanity.â€� (American Military Mission to Armenia, June 1920.) A British colonel reported that the Armenians â€œmassacred between 300,000 and 400,000 Kurdish Muslims in the Van and Bitlis districts.â€� (FO 371/6265/E23: Report by Colonel Stokes, 24.2.1920. The sources for these two quotes are from Sam Weems' well-documented book, ARMENIA) Don't forget to read Armenian leader Boghos Nubar Pasha's open claims in that telling 1919 letter to The Times of London, if you still believe the Armenians were so "victimized and helpless."

I wonder how Dr. Papazian spells "Lack of Credibility"? (I'm aware he knows the meaning of "Misplaced Credulity"...)

Three million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire? Try again. (Three million was the worldwide Armenian population, just before the war.) Take a look at the census page. Professor Richard Hovannisian goes beyond the non-Armenian census-consensus, but even he (in Vol. 1, pg. 2 of his "The Republic of Armenia") says the number of Armenians was two million. Perhaps Dr. Papazian knows better, since Prof Hovannisian offers no proof for his figure.

Three million mostly made up of women, children and old men? (Poor, poor, innocent Armenians.) What happened to the rest of the men? I guess Dr. Papazian is suggesting many of the younger men went off to join the Russian army and volunteered to fight in other capacities (205,000 Armenian fighters, by Boghos Nubar Pasha's count; Turkish professor Yusuf Halacoglu claims "pertinent documents" [letters from Armenians are provided as examples] â€” in his "Realities on the Armenian Immigration, 1915" [TTK Publications, Ankara, 2001] â€” demonstrate 50,000 Ottoman Armenian soldiers deserted to join the Russians, and many thousands of "Armenian soldiers went to America to be trained in the US Army to fight against the Turkish Army.") That still wouldn't account for the remaining huge gap of not-so-old-men, so your guess is as good as mine. (What it sounds like, I think, is that the Turks were supposed to have rounded up all the Armenian men, and killed them off. If so many Armenian younger men died, how could the worldwide Armenian population... almost all of whom trace their roots to the Ottoman Empire... have mushroomed to seven million [an Armenian site claims ten million] in the next 85-90 years? After it took them thousands of years to reach a worldwide population of three million, BEFORE they all got "exterminated," through the "Genocide.")

Is it really deceptive to use the word "Muslim" when describing the casualties of the Ottoman Empire? (I hope Professor Papazian isn't suggesting the usual figure of 2.5 million to 3 million Turkish Muslim dead includes the lives of Muslims who were fighting against the Ottoman Empire. Well... of course he is. And, as usual, without any proof whatsoever.) What is a Turk, anyway? Over the period of seven centuries, in an empire that encompassed three continents, bloodlines became wildly mixed. This is why you get blond, blue-eyed Turks, as well as the dark-skinned Turks, along with Turks who look a little "Chinese." Perhaps this is why many Armenians enjoy perceiving Turks as less-than-human, since Turks are not as "racially pure" as Armenians. (Yes, yes, that was a cheap shot. However... the Armenians did rush into Hitler's arms during World War II, buying into the racial purity jazz â€” consequently having a hand in wiping out the Jews. Only when the war started going against Hitler did they have second thoughts. Loyalty and Armenians... like Oil and Water.)

Additionally, since a good bulk of the Armenians' victims were the Kurds (300,000 to 400,000 alone in the two districts mentioned a few paragraphs above)... since Ottoman Kurds had the misfortune to be living among the Ottoman Armenians who embarked on their campaigns of ethnic cleansing to make way for a "New Armenia" (and this supports the often-mentioned claim that many of the massacres committed against the Armenians were by the Kurds, in retaliation)... using a more inclusive term like "Muslim" (rather than "Turk") is certainly more correct. If Dr. Papazian was honorable, he would be more careful before using unfair words like "deceptive."

On the other hand, does it become deceptive to use the word "Turk" when describing the non-Turkish Muslims who suffered at the hands of the Armenians? The word "Turk" signifies nationhood as well as race. A Kurd who lives in Turkey is as much a Turk as a Kurd who lives in America [and has become a citizen] is an American. All those Armenians living in France who have obtained French citizenship... are they also not French? (Well. Perhaps that was an unfair example. The "Armenian-ness" of the Armenians usually supersedes their loyalty to the nation they happen to be living in.)

I believe the figure of Armenian dead hovers around the 600,000 mark... I trust Professor Justin McCarthy's meticulous and objective research, for one. There are other sources that come close to this figure, some from folks not all that friendly to the Turks. (The Armenians themselves claimed this figure of 600,000 dead, after the war's end.) It's also generally agreed two and a half million "Muslims" died, mostly from famine, disease and the general deplorable wartime conditions. (Exactly like the bulk of the 600,000 Armenians died... NOT all from massacres.) How many of the 2 1/2 million "Muslim" dead died directly at the hands of massacring Armenians? If we take the more conservative figure of the murdered Kurds above (that is, 300,000), and if we figure there were at least a few "ethnic Turks" who were butchered... what would be your estimate? A figure that I've seen tossed about is around 600,000. I'd say that sounds believable. This means if 600,000 Turks/Muslims were killed directly by Armenians, and 600,000 Armenians died from all causes combined... then more Turks were killed by Armenians than Armenians were killed by Turks. Just like some Armenians love to brag.

9. The Armenians were killed in a civil war, or an ethnic feud; it was not genocide.

When the armed government of 25 million people turns on and exterminates an unarmed minority of three million old men, women, and children, it is hardly an "intercommunal struggle", "an ethnic feud", or "civil war"; it is nothing more or less than genocide.

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So now this total number of "unarmed minority of three million old men, women, and children" has found itself actually exterminated.

(Yawn.)

By the way...

The Ottoman census had the pre-war Turkish-Kurdish Muslim population at a little over 13 million, nearly half the 25 million number Dr. Papazian is claiming here.

10. Why pick on Turkey? Turkey is a "model modern Moslem country."

Since when do model countries deny their citizens human rights and religious freedom?

Turkey's thinly veiled military dictatorship with its long history of human rights abuses, its repression of the legitimate aspiration of the Kurds for cultural autonomy, its historic antagonism towards the Arabs, and its invasion of Cyprus, hardly make Turkey a "model modern Moslem country."

If the Turks are disliked and feared by most Europeans, the Kurds, the Arabs, the Greeks, and the Armenians, perhaps there is some reason. The Turks ought to throw off their atavistic ghazi mentality, modernize their feudal agrarian economy, and outgrow their penchant for military government and abuse of human rights.

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I'm beginning to visualize Dr. Papazian's veins sticking out from his temples, with all this unrelenting fury.

It is true, the Turks are disliked by most Europeans (I don't know about "feared"; perhaps back in the 15th Century), and a lot of it has to do with Europe's being a Christian club, along with swallowing the snow job of anti-Turkish diatribe for many years, engineered significantly by the Turk-hating Armenians. (And Greeks, the Europeans' main darlings.) As a result, Turkey has been an easy whipping boy for all kinds of ill-doings. Under such an atmosphere, human rights reports become especially believable for people who have been subjected to anti-Turkish messages. The Turks have made considerable changes in the area of human rights in the last few years, although they probably still have a long way to go before equaling the spotless record of civility that serves as.... ohhhh, say.... Armenia's example.

I'd say the Arabs don't like the Turks either, mostly for Turkey's having allied herself with the West. The Kurds are a whole different topic, and it's getting tiresome to address all the mindless charges being hurled here. Let's just say the late President Turgut Ozal was (half) Kurdish. It would be difficult to become the top leader if one is of a minority that is repressed. It has become a clichÃ© to claim Kurds are repressed, but they certainly are allowed to speak their own language (although Turkish is the language of the country; just like English is the language of America, even though there are many Spanish speakers), and have their own newspapers and radio stations in Turkey. Again... if anything can make Turkey look like the oppressive bad guy, who cares about the truth.

Does anybody care to remember why Cyprus was "invaded"? Didn't it have something to do with a thug supported by the Greek junta overthrowing Archbishop Makarios, and pledging "enosis," or "union" with the Greek motherland? Weren't Turkish Cypriots getting massacred right and left in the years previous? Didn't Turkey, Greece and Britain previously arrange for a legal agreement permitting the two Mediterranean countries to step in when the lives of their variety of the Cypriots became endangered? Did not the Athens Court of Appeals (which is... in GREECE) declare in 1979 that the Turkish intervention in Cyprus was legal?

Gee, if Turkey is NOT a "model modern Moslem country," then what Moslem country is? Well, since the criteria Dr. Papazian offers is that a nation must not deny their citizens human rights and religious freedom (and he would be correct)... and since he asserts these freedoms are nonexistent in a "military dictatorship" such as Turkey (I guess he has spoken to many Turks to have concluded this... wait a minute. Is he actually claiming there is no "religious freedom"? Oh, boy) ... then I guess he is advocating we turn to another country to look upon as a model for Turkey to emulate. A country where these freedoms can be found in abundance. A country such as... Armenia.

A (November or early December) 2002 story in The Miami Herald written by Linda Brockman, reports on how a recent U.S. arrival, 27-year-old Bagrat Mochkarovsky, and fellow Jews (of whom only thirty or so were left in the entire country at the time) were treated in his native Armenia.

Mochkarovsky met his wife, Oksana, in his native country where she also suffered religious persecution. "Now I am free from terrible things," said Oksana, 34, who is hoping to get her work permit in 120 days. "Here, nobody beats me or tries to kill me. I'm free, and I don't worry for my children." ...In Armenia, Mochkarovsky was not free to practice the Jewish religion. Now he's making up for it. "Even if you were seen just walking with other Jews, someone would throw a stone."

At the turn of the 20th Century, over fifty percent of Yerevan, Armenia's capital, was Muslim. It wasn't long before the Muslims, like the Jews, became victims of Armenian ethnic cleansing. Talk about your human rights and religious freedom.

11. We have opened the Turkish archives. The Turkish archives do not prove there was an Armenian Genocide.

The Turkish archives covering the period of the Armenian Genocide are not opened to the public. They are only open to Turkish scholars and persons friendly to Turkey.

The Turkish archives have been closed so long that scholars have no idea of what is being purged. Furthermore, the work of the Genocide was done under the aegis of the Committee of Union and Progress, a shadow government similar to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and in particular by its Special Organization (Teskilat-i Mahsusa) under the notorious Dr. Behaettin Shakir who was sentenced to death in absentia by a Turkish court-martial following World War I. Will their records be opened?

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Well, probably during Dr. Papazian's visit to Turkey where he discovered firsthand that Turks have no human rights and enjoy no religious freedom, he also visited the Turkish archives. The librarian took one look at his face, concluded he wasn't friendly to Turkey, and suggested he get lost.

Thank you for your valuable opinions, Dr. Papazian, but it would be nice if you can back up your statements with actual facts. "The Turkish archives have been closed so long that scholars have no idea of what is being purged." How does Dr. Papazian know this? Of course, he doesn't know this.

Two American professors give a clear picture of the state of the archives in this article.

Regarding "the notorious Dr. Behaettin Shakir" ("notorious"? Dr. Bahaddin Şakir, a professor at the Imperial University of Medicine who joined the Young Turks â€” a teacher who [according to student Ali Rıza Altogan] was very good at giving lessons and performing autopsies, and who was murdered by two Armenian "Nemesis" assassins in 1922 Berlin â€” has never been connected with either the relocation of the Armenians or any massacres of Armenians, if the annoying little matter of coming up with real evidence makes any difference. Because the Armenians are desperate to find counterparts for Heinrich Himmler is not enough to classify a person as "notorious"), we already covered the findings of the post war kangaroo court, and the illegitimacy of the imposed sentences.

(By the way, Dr. Şakir was fond of Armenians. The family dentist was an Armenian, and the doctor had paid for the education and helped raise two Armenian orphans he had brought over from Anatolia. One of them grew up to be a musician with the Philharmonic Orchestra of Istanbul. When the Armenian terrorists snuffed out Dr. Bahattin Şakir's life [at the time the older of his boys was barely 10 years old] sons Alp and Celasin were deprived of a father.)

What Dr. Papazian is suggesting is that the archives of a nation can be rendered irrelevant if the caretakers shred the incriminating evidence. No argument there. However, if it's as easy as all that, why are the archives in Armenia closed? Seems to me like it would be so easy for the damning documents to be "purged," just so Armenia can open up its archives in order to look like they're not hiding anything. (I think the reason in Armenia's case is that if they purge all their damning documents, they wouldn't be left with much of an archive.) Moreover, let us not forget that when the Allies occupied Istanbul, all the documents were available to mainly Armenian researchers for at least the nearly two and one half years that the Ottoman officials were imprisoned in Malta. It's common sense to conclude that if anything wasn't purged by that time in the Turkish Archives, there would be no reason to purge anything now.

Very few have opposed the continued propaganda against the Turks. The lies that were told during wartime have had half a century and more to incubate. Now they are the accepted wisdom. Everyone thinks they know what the Turks did. In fact, what they know is what the British Propaganda Ministry and the missionary propagandists wanted them to believe.â€” Professor Justin McCarthy

12. American Admiral Mark Bristol's testimony proves there was no Genocide. Admiral Bristol proves that Morgenthau was lying.

Ambassador Morgenthau, who informed the world about the Armenian Genocide, was there when it happened. Admiral Mark Bristol, who became U.S. High Commissioner in Turkey after World War I, did not even arrive in Turkey until 1920. Since Bristol was not in Turkey during the Genocide, and the Armenians had already been killed, he had to ask the Turks what happened. Bristol could only talk to the executioners of the Armenians, the Turks. The Turks are hardly creditable witnesses to their own crime.

Bristol, a stern military man, liked the military junta ruling the post-World War I Turkey, and he eagerly talked about the "bad qualities" of the Armenians and Greeks. Do "bad qualities" justify a genocide? If so, that might put even the Turks and Americans at risk.

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Wrong again, Dr. Papazian. The only place Ambassador Morgenthau was during the war years was the confines of his own consulate, and the environs of Istanbul; he relied on his Armenian aides and U.S. consuls (many of whom were influenced by the missionaries, and their own Morgenthau-like anti-Turkish racism) to tell him what happened, and it's so well known by now how much Armenians have a tendency to ... ehhhh..... "exaggerate."

Admiral Bristol actually arrived in Turkey in 1919, but... of course.... even this is past the time of the actual "1915" killings. (There was still a lot of mayhem going on in 1919 and after, particularly by the Armenians, however; an American officer accompanied Dro, for example, and witnessed these crimes first hand.) So what does Bristol do to get to the bottom of the matter? He asks Turks, "Excuse me, did you try to exterminate the Armenians?" When the Turks say no, that was good enough for Admiral Bristol.

Dr. Papazian. Please give your readers at least a little credit for intelligence.

How does one legitimately conduct an investigation after the purported crime has been committed? As an example, Niles and Sutherland, who also arrived in Turkey in 1919 (totally favoring the Armenian version of events, at first), reported:

"...The Armenians are accused of having committed murder, rape arson and horrible atrocities of every description upon the Musulman population. At first we were most incredulous of these stories, but we finally came to believe them, since the testimony was absolutely unanimous and was corroborated by material evidence. For instance, the only quarters left at all intact in the cities of Bitlis and Van are the Armenian quarters, as was evidenced by churches and inscriptions on the houses, while the Musulman quarters were completely destroyed. Villages said to have been Armenian were still standing whereas Musulman villages were completely destroyed"

When one studies the massacring nature of the Armenians before the war (here is a late 19th-Century report by a Russian general) and directly after the war (that is, during Bristol's time), it's not difficult to put two and two together. The nature and tactics of a people suddenly are not going to change, in an isolated period of the few years between 1914-1916. And it's not like the massacring nature of the Ottoman Armenians was completely unknown during the war, either. Ergo, any nation would relocate a treacherous citizenry during the heat of a desperate struggle, and a government-sponsored plan to exterminate the citizenry cannot become the lazily automatic conclusion for the truth-seeker. (Unless there is genuine evidence. And there is none.)

Admiral Bristol was a man of high integrity and a great American. Prof. Heath W. Lowry, in his article entitled "American Observers in Anatolia CA. 1920: The Bristol Papers" states as follows:
"Morgenthau was a confirmed 'Turcophobe' whose hatred for the Turks was matched only by his unabashed support for the Christian minorities under Ottoman rule. To anyone sharing Morgenthau's prejudices (including the minorities themselves), Bristol's evenhanded objectivity could only be interpreted as 'pro-Turkish'â€¦Bristol's insistence on the equality of Christian and Moslem alike, marked a drastic change from Morgenthau's championing of the Christian element. It is this fact which accounts for his being incorrectly labeled as 'pro-Turkish' and 'anti-minority'."

Peter Michael Buzanski is the author of a full-length study on Bristolâ€™s tenure in Turkey, entitled: "Admiral Mark L. Bristol and Turkish-American Relations, 1919-1922". He presents an analysis of Bristol devoid of rhetoric and argues convincingly that Bristol should not be judged from the "standpoint of the American Committee for Armenian Independence".

By the way, Dr. Papazian, regarding your ending sentence... please quit picking on the Americans.

13. The only reason that the Turks aren't allowed into the European Community is their Islamic religion.

What concerns the Europeans is not the religion of the Turks, but rather their values. Judeo-Christian culture, which characterizes the Western world, is dedicated to developing a moral society. Democracy and faith in the beneficent value of truth is the current manifestation of this aspiration. If the Turks were to thirst after justice and righteousness, values to which we in the West aspire, they would most certainly be welcomed in any society.

The first sign of this new morality would appropriately be for the present-day Turks to acknowledge the Ottoman genocide of the Armenians.

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So let's see now... Dr. Papazian first denies religion has anything to with the Europeans' rejection of the Turks. He then turns around and says it is the Turks' lack of Judeo-Christian values that is at the root of the Turks' problem. Since Turkey is predominantly Moslem, and therefore is incapable of developing a moral society... could that have anything at all to do with religion, after all?

There are many ways of determining morality, and it's unwise to classify one set of believers over another as being moral. In the last few centuries, which "culture" has been lopsidedly more responsible for the catastrophic death and destruction caused by wars?

We all owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. Papazian for teaching us how people can best prove their morality... the acknowledgement of genocide. Of course, first genocide must be proven before anyone should honestly acknowledge the false Armenian "Genocide." In the meantime, maybe the professor can explain why such a just and righteous people as the Armenians can't admit they gave the Turks/Muslims so much as a scratch (except in cases of "self-defense"), when they were clearly involved in a campaign of systematic extermination?

14. No one to date has been able to come up with creditable documentation of Hitler's alleged statement about the Armenians. Hitler never made the statement.

The Hitler statement, which the Turks have questioned, was authenticated by Dr. K.B. Bardakjian, at Harvard in 1985 from secret notes taken by German Admiral Wilhelm Canaris during Hitler's speech. {See K.B. Bardakjian, Hitler and the Armenian Genocide (Cambridge, MA: Zoryan Institute, 1985).}

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Whoa! An Armenian source. Well, that must prove it.

Why should "secret notes" be needed? Shouldn't the proof be in the speech itself? The exact date of when the speech was given is known. Admiral Hermann Boehm took down the most complete account of Hitler's speech, running twelve pages in translation, as introduced by German defense lawyers at Nuremberg.

This quote first appeared in the November 24, 1945 issue of the Times of London, basing its attribution to Hitler to an address given by him on August 22, 1939. Officers of the Nuremberg Tribunal located the speechesâ€™ original minutes, as an attempt was made to insert the quote into the proceedings; these were admitted as evidence, and nowhere was there mention of Armenians.

15. How do the Armenians expect the American people to feel sorry for them when they support terrorism?

The assassinations, which only began in 1973, were stopped in 1983 by Armenian public opinion. Armenians do not need terrorists, because people of good will, having studied the Armenian case, now have greater understanding and sympathy.

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This ridiculous assertion speaks for itself. (By the way, Armenian terrorism went beyond 1983; three separate incidents in France of September 1986 alone resulted in eight dead and some170 wounded... the poor people victimized being among those who most enjoy kissing Armenian butt, besides Americans) Armenian public opinion never condemned the murderous nature of their assassins. Quite the contrary, even today the Armenian community treats these terrorists as heroes... as demonstrated in the recent trial of Mourad Topalian. The reason why the attacks stopped is because "Armenian" was becoming synonymous with the word "Terrorist," and that kind of negative influence can put a damper on "The Cause." (That is, "Con Job.")

16. Only 600,000 Armenians died in the Ottoman Empire during World War I, not 1.5 million, and they were killing Turks during that time.

The Turks play with numbers in a grotesque way. They argue that only 600,000 Armenians were killed not 1.5 million. Would this change the basic truth that a genocidal massacre occurred in 1915? Almost the entire Armenian population of Turkey was wiped out by its own government, the Turkish government. Does it really make the Turks better if they succeeded in killing only 600,000 Armenians and not 1.5 million? In any case, is was genocide.

The Turks insist that Armenians were also killing Turks. It is true that scores of Armenians fought back successfully. But how can you compare self-defense with murder? The Armenians were killed by their own government, the Turkish government; they sometimes fought back to protect themselves.

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Hold on a sec. Didn't Dr. Papazian proclaim in his answer to Question 9 that the unarmed minority of three million old men, women, and children were exterminated? Now it's down to 1.5 million. It's a good thing he frowns upon the grotesquery of playing with numbers.

If these three million Armenians were unarmed, how exactly did they fight back? How do these scores of old men, women, and children "fight back successfully"? Even if they possessed a few guns (which they couldn't have, because they were "unarmed"), that would be pretty tough for old men, women and children to fight back successfully against the savage and experienced Ottoman forces.

The fact of the matter is, large caches of (mainly Russian-supplied) guns, ammunition, supplies, and even uniforms had been hidden in depots in Anatolia, ready for use... against their own government and countrymen. (Even Ambassador Morgenthau said so, in his ghost-written "Ambassador Morgenthau's Story.")

Whether the figure of killed Armenians was 600,000 or 1.5 million, what counts is that genocide was the reason all these Armenians died. Okay, then... how is it possible that none of these people died from famine, disease and other wartime factors like the rest of their fellow Ottomans? Common sense dictates at least some of them should have died in this manner.

Armenians themselves contend one million survived, although this number is likely higher. All one need do is turn to "neutral" (Western, and therefore pro-Armenian, anyway) counts of the pre-war Ottoman-Armenian population, from the period... and AVOID Armenian counts. By subtracting the one million survivors from the number who existed prior to the war, the truth-seeker will then be able to determine the real figure of Armenian dead from all causes combined, and not just massacres. See the census page... and then see the egg on Dr. Papazian's face.

Since conditions were desperate, why did the Ottoman Turks bother with the relocating business? That is, they could have used the fortune they spent (Sam Weems' ARMENIA, Page 59: 261 million kurush) on more pressing matters, since money isn't that easy to come by when you're on your last legs... and The Sick Man of Europe was near death, by this time. Why didn't the Ottoman Turks simply slaughter the Armenians where they found them? After all, that's exactly the method the Armenians used, when they systematically exterminated Turks/Muslims.

Dr. Papazian, please stand in the corner! You've been bad.

17. The Turks had to deport the Armenians from the eastern war front where they were helping the Russians who promised them a homeland.

Armenians all over Anatolia, not just on the eastern war front, were wiped out. The cities of Yozgard, Sivas, Ceasrea, Hajin, Marash, and Adana -- just to name a few -- are hardly in the east. One needs but to look at a map of Turkey to see this. Turks depend on American ignorance of geography to make such foolish claims.

Russia under the Tsars never offered the Armenians or any other subject peoples their freedom. The last tsar, Nicholas II, would not even share power with his own Russian people, which helped prompt the Russian revolution during World War I. {Russia even forbade Armenian refugees, who had managed to flee the Genocide, from returning to their lands, which the Russian armies had overran during the war.} Prince Lobanov-Rostovsky, foreign minister of Russia in 1895, summed it all up by saying, "Yes, Russia wants Armenia, but without the Armenians."

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I'd say it takes a lot more than looking at a map to prove the Armenians in the listed cities were "wiped out." At any rate, I included a map you can click on to see for yourself... it's from an Armenian web site, detailing the areas of "harm," and because it offers false statements like "concentration camps" (there were no Auschwitzes or Dachaus; let's make that clear; I'm aware of "tent villages" (as those set up by the Near East Relief) that might have been the closest thing to a concentration camp, but these didn't have barbed wires on them, and the Armenians could come and go as they pleased), I'm sure it's as .... ehhh.... "exaggerated" as possible. Nevertheless, even if we accept this map at face value, and especially if we look at comparative maps (above, on the same page) outlining where the Armenians resided... it looks pretty much like the eastern-to-central part of the country to me.

Don't forget, the Armenians' treachery was not limited to solely the East; the invasion of Gallipoli relied on reports from Armenian spies, and Armenians did their best to sabotage the Turks from behind, in more limited ways than their rebellious brothers in the East... such as poisoning food supplies of the Turkish troops. Why weren't the Armenians of the West deported? What kind of a "genocide" IS this, anyway?

"The move towards a rapprochement with Turkey after the Balkan Wars turned out to be highly unpopular in Russian bourgeois-landlord circles, which were now coming out in favor of a final division of the Ottoman Empire. With this object in view, an entire system of measures was Turkey. It contemplated the formation of an autonomous Armenia under Russian protection as the most powerful means of exerting pressure"

I. V. Bestuzhev's article entitled "Russian Foreign Policy, February-June 1914", which appeared in "1914: The coming of the First World War," edited by Walter Laqueur and George Mosse

More than 15,000 Anatolian Armenians went to the Russian South Caucasus for training when the Armenian rebellion began in late 1914. Telegraph lines were cut; roads through strategic mountain passes were seized; hundreds of Ottoman officials were attacked,
particularly recruiting officers, throughout the east; outlying villages were assaulted. In the service of the Tsarist armies, they seized the city of Van in March 1915 from a weak Ottoman garrison and proceeded to kill 60,000 Turks.

When these thousands of armed Armenians spearheaded a massive Russian invasion of eastern Anatolia, they faithfully fulfilled the promise given to Tsar Nicholas II by the President of the Armenian national Bureau on November 5, 1914 in Tbilisi: " From all countries Armenians are hurrying to enter the ranks of the glorious Russian army, with their blood to serve the victory of the Russian arms."

Thanks: H.E. Altay Cengizer

Czar Nicholas called upon the Armenians living in Turkey to unite with the ones living in Russia. Upon this invitation an article published in the Churchâ€™s mouthpiece, â€˜Araratâ€™, bearing the signature of the Armenian Patriarch Kevork V, suggested to the Armenians to unite with their kinsmen in Russia. The article was distributed to the entire world, and plenty of Ottoman Armenians took the invitation to their hearts.

From Eric Feigl's THE MYTH OF TERROR:

"...The rebellion of the Armenians had been fostered, organized, financed, and supplied with arms and munitions by the Russians. Leaders of the Armenian revolutionary organization DASHNAGTZOUTIUN have since admitted to have been seduced by Russia with promises of independence and a New Armenia."

Here is what another Papazian has to say about Armenian treachery.

The irony of the Armenians' choosing to go to bed with Tsarist Russia, the mortal enemy of the Ottoman Empire, is that once Russia got what it wanted from the Armenians, Russia then turned her back on the Armenians. It's troubling that Dr. Papazian attempts to "prove" the Armenians would have never helped the Russians by giving examples of how the Russians would double-cross the Armenians AFTER receiving the Armenians' full cooperation.

Dr. Papazian's nose must have grown to the length of a tree by the time this last question in the Armenian FAQ rolled around, since the Armenians' treacherously allying themselves with the most dangerous enemy of their country is such a clear-cut matter of historical record; how mind-boggling that anyone would have the audacity to deny it.

What Dr. Papazian should be asking is: if it was so obvious not to get mixed up with an ally who couldn't be trusted... all the way back to the days of Peter the Great... (indeed, the Russians have been a fair-weather friend to the Armenians, to say the least; they mass-murdered the Armenians living in the Caucasus area, shut down Armenian schools in 1885, confiscated church property worth 100 million francs [despite the fact that right to property ownership was granted to the Gregorian Church in 1836], arrested wealthy Armenian businessmen and intellectuals in the Caucasus area and then seized their property... to cite only a few instances of Russian oppression against the Armenians) WHY did the Armenians allow themselves to get so mixed up with an untrustworthy ally? If they made such an unintelligent decision, why can't they be honorable enough to take the responsibility of the consequences? Face it... had the Armenians remained the loyal citizens of the Empire (that the Ottomans long credited them as being), this discussion would not even be taking place.

Unless the murderer is a psychopath, every murder must have a motive. In the case of the Armenian "Genocide," there simply was no motive. Since the Ottomans regarded the Armenians as being among their most loyal citizens, they would have had to be out of their minds to suddenly decide to systematically eliminate them.

(An excerpt giving an idea of Armenian treatment at the hands of the Russians has been added to this page's bottom.)

This is a very long page, and I didn't want to add even more by providing further sources to my counter-claims; however, spend more time on this site, and you'll find lots of back-up by impartial Western and even Armenian sources.

Armenian Genocide Resource Center

11.7.05

175) Armenian Arguments to Prove the "Genocide"

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