Turkish Source Alert! However, the following is written brilliantly, and the footnotes indicate excellent documentation. Judge for yourself. In addition, Professor Ataöv's interpretation on the Armenians' rabid Turcophobia is the most sensible and best explanation I have come across.
While preparing this web site, I included writings by Ataöv that I now realize were excerpted from this article; this is the full account.
After this mother of all Ataöv articles, another ... Ataöv article follows, entitled, " A "Statement" Wrongly Attributed to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk."
The 'Armenian Question' Conflict, Trauma & Objectivity
By Türkkaya ATAÖV*
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Preface
THE 'ARMENIAN QUESTIONS'
Conflict, Trauma and Objectivity
Center For Strategic Research Sam Papers No. 1 / 99
Footnotes
PREFACE
SAM PAPERS is an English-language publication series of the Center for Strategic Research (Stratejik Araştırmalar Merkezi, SAM), affiliated with the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It is being published irregularly based on events composed of monographs, critiques, seminar minutes and the like that follow.
Türkkaya Ataöv, professor of international relations recognized for his numerous thought-provoking published works, not only on the Armenian question, but also on various aspects of past and contemporary conflicts, reacts this time to a group of articles which have appeared in the Summer 1994 issue of the Journal of Political and Military Sociology. Judging by the criticisms that he offers or the new points that he brings to attention, one may quote, James Russell Lowell, that "a wise scepticism is the first attribute of a good critic."
Professor Ataöv's treatise, entitled The 'Armenian Question': Conflict, Trauma and Objectivity, as the previous printed monograph, should be considered a contribution to the evaluation of the subject.
THE 'ARMENIAN QUESTIONS'
Conflict, Trauma and Objectivity
The Journal of Political and Military Sociology (Illinois, U.S.A.) printed in one of its recent (22/1, Summer 1994) issues five articles on the "Armenian question" by Professor Vahakn N. Dadrian, an Armenian-American researcher. It stated that four of the essays were "adapted" from former prints elsewhere.1 Dr. Richard Falk, Professor of International Law and Practice at Princeton University, and Dr. Roger Smith, Professor of Government at the College of William and Mary and the "special guest editor" of this issue, present the topic seemingly in full agreement with author Dadrian.
None of the three writers employs a wide historical perspective. They seem to have closed the door to almost a thousand years of Armenian-Turkish relations, most of which, whether acknowledged or not by Professors Dadrian, Smith and Falk, had been amicable, even brotherly. The literature on the "lean years", that is, of the early 20th century, is already stupendous in volume, although adding up to few reliable data. Comparatively, there is so little in print on the centuries of coexistence and cooperation. The Turks, who faced Byzantium, and not the Armenians, at the Battle of Malazgirt (Manzikerd, 1071), recognized (1461) the Armenian (Gregorian) Church, when it was rejected by established Christian centers.
None of the three writers presents a combination of interrelated factors. Scholars are, not only expected to keep in mind opposing views, but also to utilize interdisciplinary approaches. Final judgment in history, especially in a very controversial case like the Armenian-Turkish conflict, cannot be surrendered to an ethnic participant in a dispute. In most cases, one side will be painted as an "idealized white", and the other as a "gruesome black."
In all his presentations. Professor Dadrian portrays the Turks as wild, cruel, ferocious, uncivilized and barbarous savages, and the Armenians as simple victims, prey in the hands of their fierce enemies. In the publications of many Western authors, like Dadrian, the Turks are never the sufferers. This approximation is an oversimplification inconsistent with historical phenomena. After centuries of peaceful coexistence, on which Dadrian does not dwell in any of his writings, the Armenians, supported by foreign circles, considered their Muslim neighbours as rivals in Eastern Anatolia and the Caucasus, where the majority was made up of the latter. The Armenians, who had no majority in Eastern Anatolia, cooperated during the First World War, with the aggressive and expanding Russians, without whose active cooperation, they thought, they had no chance of a homeland. The territory, whether in Eastern Anatolia or most of the Caucasus, which the Armenians claimed as their own, was largely inhabited by non-Armenians. The demographic reality that disproved Armenian aspirations could be changed by foreign support and ethnic cleansing.
Much of the history of Anatolia, the Caucasus, the Balkans and southern Russia cannot be understood without a proper assessment of the Muslim dead and Muslim refugees.2 Only about two centuries ago, the Muslims, mostly Turks, constituted the overwhelming majorities, pluralities or sizable minorities in these territories. Ottoman weakness in the 19th century, especially after the 1877-1878 Russo-Turkish War, however, encouraged Armenian terrorism and separatism as well as the expansionism of some neighbours, principally Russia and the Christian Balkan peoples. The Turks were either massacred or forced to migrate. Millions were killed, and millions fled.3 The population of the contemporary Turkish Republic consists mostly of the descendants of the surviving immigrants. A host of Western writers, including Dadrian, Smith and Falk, ignore the massacre and the forced exile of Muslims, predominantly Turks, from the Balkans, the Crimea and the Caucasus.
Whenever there is an attempt to challenge this one-sided and biased approach, there is an almost unanimous accusation of "revisionism", as if to revise an entrenched interpretation is scholarly impermissible. Falsifiability is a criterion in scholarship. All theories should be checked for correctness. All existing literature relevant to a problem have to be located and analyzed, and when sufficient new clues are obtained, the validity of former generalizations have to be re-tested. There is no need to cling to the original lopsided hypotheses. Scholarship is like a building in perpetual repair. Perpetuating the existing set of beliefs is not necessarily a scientific approach. Not only a totality of facts, but also how a problem is formulated at the very beginning is very crucial. New dimensions, such as the ones some Turkish scholars have introduced, may change the focus and parameters. Contrary to what Professor Falk writes, some Turkish accounts are not just "shoddy propaganda" and "inept or disingenuous scholarship". I proved, for instance, beyond any doubt, that a picture presumably a photograph of heaps of skulls of "massacred Armenians" in 1915 was actually an oil painting by a Russian artist (The Apotheosis of War by Vassili Vereshchagin) who died in 1904.4
Dadrian gives no credit to views that do not serve his particular purpose. For instance, the Ottomans, through the millet system, allowed considerable autonomy to all religious communities. The Turks did not pursue a policy of religious conversion, except in the special case of the Janissaries, Dadrian neither gives credit to this long Ottoman tradition of toleration, nor does he assess the heavy price the Turks paid for it. He does not also mention the intervention of the foreign powers in Ottoman domestic affairs, under the pretext of protecting the minorities, principally the Armenians. Foreign missionaries created in the Christian minorities of the Ottoman Empire a sense of community with the Christian imperialist powers. They even gave the Christian minorities a posture of superiority.
* * *
Professor Vahakn Dadrian
Professor Vahakn Dadrian
Dadrian's assumptions go back to the 1894-96 and the 1909 periods, during which he states "over one million Armenians were put to death". He calls the trials of the Sultan Abdülhamid era as "farcical" (p. 133), and maintains that the Turks had "received mild punishments" (p. 134). He makes no reference, for instance, to a report of a British captain, Charles Boswell Norman, who says the Osmanlı (Ottoman) has yet to be heard. Norman cites "facts" which shifts the blame "on the shoulders of the real originators of the rebellion in Anatolia"5. Sent to Turkey, as an officer in the Royal Artillery, Captain Norman says that hitherto the British have had "only the Armenian version of the disturbances embellished with the hysterical utterances of their English confreres". He maintains that England has yet to leam that "the disturbances in Asia Minor are the direct outcome of a widespread anarchist movement of which she has been the unconscious supporter". Noting that so much has been written "for the avowed purpose of proving the Armenian to be a model of all meekness and the Turk a monster of cruelty", Captain Norman deemed it necessary "in the interests of peace, of truth and of justice to point out the aims and objects of the Armenian Revolutionists". He records that the Hunchak Committee was "directly responsible for all the bloodshed in Anatolia for the last five years". He underlines: "To pretend that these regrettable occurrences that deluged Anatolia with blood were unprovoked assaults by Mohammedans on Christians is untrue... The disturbances were commenced by the Armenians". He refers to a Manifesto, dated 19 November 1895, and addressed to the Armenians of the Adana region: "Arm yourselves now for the battle... Let us draw our swords and fall on the foe". Referring to another Manifesto on behalf of the Zeitoun Armenians, he says that "it fully proves that the disturbances there were originated by the Armenians". He adds that the British correspondents, reporting on the "so-called Sassoun atrocities, were hopelessly duped by Armenian romancers". Noting that the touching story of the "Armenian matrons throwing their children over the cliff on the Antokh Dagh and their jumping over themselves to avoid dishonour, is an absolute myth", he writes that, not only the Armenian population figures were very much exaggerated, but also the number of victims. For instance, at Berecik, where 2,000 Armenians were supposed to have been murdered, Captain Norman says that "five lives were lost."
The Armenian Troubles and Where the Responsibility Lies is the title of a booklet by a correspondent of a New York newspaper, who apparently reproduced in 1895 in pamphlet form the five letters he had written in and sent from Istanbul.6 Believing that the whole atmosphere on the Sassoun events of 1894 has been "polluted with falsehoods and exaggerations", he states that the disturbances were "brought about by the Armenian revolutionary committees". He quotes the Rev. Cyrus Hamlin's article in the Congregationalist of 23 December 1893: "An Armenian revolutionary party...a secret organization...managed with a skill in deceit...[has] the strongest hopes of preparing the way for Russia's entrance into Asia Minor to take possession...These Huntchaguist bands...will watch their opportunity to kill..., set fire to their [Muslim] villages and then make their escape into the mountains. The enraged Muslims will then rise and fall upon the defenceless Armenians...[and] Russia will enter in the name of humanity...This Huntchaguist revolutionary party...is of Russian origin; Russian gold and craft govern it." The author quotes the AP correspondent who says that the Armenian conspirators murdered the Rev. Edward Riggs and two other American missionaries and fastened the blame on the Turks. As to the story that Armenian women, who, rather than "suffer dishonor at the hands of (their) Turkish persecutors", threw themselves into an abyss until the ravine was filled with corpses, the American correspondent says that "the horrible narrative is a reproduction, with additions and embellishments to suit the occasion, of an old tale in poetry by Mrs. Hemans years ago, under the title of 'The Suliote Mother'." He writes: "Provocation and intimidation seem to be the plan of the Armenian revolutionists."
The Armenian terrorist groups continued to attack, assassinate and murder. But each event of such a nature was presented to world public opinion as one-sided "extermination", the propagated figures running into thousands. For instance, the Armenian author H. Pastermadjian writes that 3,500 Armenians were killed in the Sassoun rebellion of 1894.7 The Rev. A. W. William, in association with an Armenian writer, quotes a larger figure-6000.8 The Protestant missionary Edwin Bliss states that the Armenian losses were "at least 6,000."
However, the first combined report of the foreign consuls establishes a much lower figure, i.e., 265 — with no mention of the Turkish losses.10
The Ottoman authorities tried both Armenians and Turks for defying the law. Frequently, the Sultan pardoned the convicted Armenians. This was the case even when a group of Armenians planned to assassinate him on 21 July 1905.
***
No balanced account of Armenian-Turkish relations can be formulated without a general presentation of the fate of the Turks as well. The Greek revolt set an example (1821) for other uprisings against Ottoman rule. The Greeks murdered virtually every Turk they encountered. The whole Turkish population of many cities, towns and villages were marched out and slaughtered. The Turks "stood in the way" of minorities who wanted to create their own states on territories where the Muslims constituted the majorities. The policy of eliminating the Turks, either through murder or ethnic cleansing, was repeated during and after several other armed conflicts carried out under the slogan of national independence." The Muslim peoples, mostly Turks, of the Balkans, the Caucasus and southern Russia were either killed or forced to migrate to Anatolia. The Turks of Anatolia also suffered overwhelming mortality. This does not mean, however, that it was only the Muslims who suffered. But that one-sided interpretation of Ottoman history has to be corrected.
It is unscientific as well as unfair to describe as "revisionists" all those who challenge the one-sided traditional view that considers the non-Muslims as victims and the Turks as brutal victimizers. There is also a history of Turks as victims, a role in which they are not usually seen. Had the Turks done the same to the Christian minorities when they had first encountered them, they could have survived on lands where they had lived for centuries as majorities. The Ottoman millet system allowed each religious community great self-government under their own leaders. Each millet, which enjoyed religious freedom, established and maintained its own institutions, including courts, schools and welfare systems.
Professor Richard Falk
During and after each war the Ottoman armies fought in the 19th century and the early 20th century, minority groups, supported by the great powers of the day, revolted. The Ottomans, who got little credit for their tradition of religious toleration, paid a heavy price for it. Various foreign governments intervened in Ottoman domestic affairs, ostensibly to protect the Christian minorities. Missionaries gave the latter a sense of partnership with the imperial powers.
A vast area from the environs of Bosnia all the way to Central Asia via southern Russia and the Caucasus was, not only territories where Muslims ruled but also a wide world where the Muslims constituted the majority, plurality or sizable minority. The Ottoman Empire, struggling to survive, was trying to defend its Muslim citizens against massacre and to find shelter for those who managed to escape from the recurring butchery. This is the reason why so many citizens of the contemporary Turkish Republic are sons and daughters of immigrants from Yugoslavia to Armenia. Western publications record, in exaggerated form, only the sufferings of the Armenians, Bulgarians, Greeks and other Christian peoples.
For about a whole century (1821-1922), it was the Turks who were the main victims. The Turkish losses began with the Greek revolt, which set a pattern for the rest of the Christians in the Ottoman Empire. The Greek revolution started with the murder of the Ottoman officials and continued with the wholesale killing of the Muslim inhabitants of various cities, towns and villages, such as Kalavryta, Kalamata, Missolonghi and Vrachori. Even those Turks who were given promises of safety were slaughtered in quiet comers. The Turks of Greece were "in the way" of an independent Greece. When the Greek Kingdom in the Morea was established (1830), "a Greek state now existed, but a Greek nation still had to be made".12
Armenians and others followed the Greek example of "creating a nation-state" by murdering and expelling Turks and other Muslims. The Crimean Tatars, a Turkic people, were the first to suffer on account of Russian expansion. The notable exception to the general wholesale murder or forced migration of Muslims was the Turkish War of National Liberation (1919-22). But even in its initial period the Greeks had attempted ethnic cleansing of Turks in Western Anatolia. Very few Western sources acknowledge Armenian attacks on Muslims. It was Russian expansion and assistance principally to the Armenians that brought to the Caucasus Christian demographic and political domination. Just as it was the case in the Balkans and the Crimea, the Muslims were pushed out, and Christians brought into new areas. Similar to the case of Sofia in the Balkans, Erevan was (until 1827) a province with a Muslim majority. The brochure, entitled Eliminate Turkey and signed by Vahan Cardashian, an Armenian living in New York, in the year 1918, is another example of the same "traditional" attitude.13
***
Dadrian overlooks the crucial fact that a substantial number of Armenians, sympathizing with the objectives of the Russian Government, have fought against the Ottomans (and the Persians) since the last century. The Armenian political parties14 worked like terrorist organizations resorting to assassinations and mass violence. They acted as spies, received arms from abroad'5 and eventually welcomed invading armies. The Armenians programmed, with the Russians nearby, the massacre of Turks and the forced migration of the remainder, until vast lands would be emptied for the sovereignty of the Armenian people. Waves of Muslims such as the Abkhaz, the Chechen, the Circassians, the Daghestanis, the Ingush and others had no alternative but to escape to Anatolia.
The Armenian-Turkish conflict escalated on the eve of the First World War and reached a climax during the white heat of war conditions. It may be appropriate to refer, at this point, to two important Armenian sources. Hovhannes Kachaznouni, one of the prominent leaders of the Dashnak Party and the first Prime Minister of the independent Armenian Republic, wrote: "...When Turkey had not yet entered the war...Armenian volunteer groups began to be organized with great zeal and pomp in Trans Caucasia. In spite of the decision taken a few weeks before at the General Committee in Erzurum, the Dashnagtzoutune actively helped the organization of the aforementioned groups, and especially arming them, against Turkey. In the Fall of 1914, Armenian volunteer groups were formed and fought against the Turks...16 Another Armenian wrote: "...The leader of the Turkish-Armenian section of the Dashnagtzoutune did not carry out their promise of loyalty to the Turkish cause when the Turks entered the war...They were swayed in their actions by the interests of the Russian government...A call was sent for Armenian volunteers to fight the Turks on the Caucasian front."17
When the Armenian Catholicos of Etchmiadzin wrote to Count Illarion Ivanovich Vorontsov-Dashkov, the Russian Governor-General of the Caucasus, on 5 August 1914, and offered him, in addition to his congregation in Russia, "the sincere devotion of the Armenians in Turkey",18 the Russian official wished that the actions of the Armenians on both sides of the border would be in accordance with his "instructions". He added: "I should like to request you, through the exertion of your influence on your congregation, in case of a Russo-Turkish war, to ensure that our own Armenians, together with the Armenians inhabiting the border regions, perform the duties that will be given to them, both under the present circumstances prevalent in Turkey and also in the future."19
Dadrian quotes U.S. Ambassador Henry Morgenthau who wrote that "the Armenians all over Turkey sympathized with the Entente" (p. 186). This is not the whole truth. Armenian "sympathy" entailed, according to Armenian sources in addition to a wealth of Ottoman documents, systematic, and not just sporadic, resort to sabotage and armed revolt. The Armenians deserted the Ottoman armies en masse. They revolted in a number of places, destroying telegraph lines, killing officials, soldiers and civilians, and looting arsenals. They formed troops under the command of their own men and also under that of Russian officers. They facilitated the advance of Russian armies, and obstructed the retreat of Turkish troops. They attacked Muslim quarters and villages, burning houses, and tearing down everything Muslim.
Dadrian's totally misleading assertion that when the Turks began to "rape Armenian girls and women" these clashes were reported to Ottoman authorities "as instances of Armenian 'rebellion'" (p. 185) is negated by a wealth of even Armenian documents. There are ample Armenian publications to prove their extensive involvement in the war on the side of Turkey's enemies. For instance, Garo Pasdermadjian, former Armenian deputy in the Ottoman Parliament, who defected to become the commanding general of the sizable Armenian troops, argued later that Armenian participation in armed hostilities was the leading factor in the winning of the war.20 In another book, he defended the view that there ought to be an independent Armenia because of Armenia's role in the war.21 Pasdermadjian's books tell, from first-hand experience, Armenian belligerency in contradiction to Dadrian's terribly minimizing assertions. Armenian General Gabriel Gorgarian also published a series of articles on the subject.22 Several regiments and battalions were formed under the command of Garo, Antranik, Kari, Vartan, Hamazasp, Dro, Khatcho, Mourat and others.
Many civilian Armenians expose the same undeniable fact. For instance, Bogos Nubar, the head of the Armenian delegation to the Paris Peace Conference, in an official letter dated 30 November 1918, and addressed to the French Foreign Minister S. Pichon, states that the "Armenians, since the beginning of the war, had been de facto belligerents" (... les Armeniens, des Ie debut de la guerre, ont ete des belligerents de facto). Bogos Nubar's separate letter on the same subject was printed in The Times of London.23 A.P. Hacobian, another Armenian writer, admits that the Armenians cut through the Turkish lines and helped the "Russian cause". He adds that the "Armenian support contributed very materially to the success of Russian arms in the Caucasian theatre of the war."24 There are also sufficient Western publications, for instance, British and French books and articles,25 proving Armenian belligerency, and not just ostensibly misunderstood isolated events of minor importance.
Dadrian writes that Turkey entered the First World War "by a preemptive attack on Russian seaports" (p. 7), hinting that its government was eager to participate in the armed hostilities to start the relocation of its Armenian citizens. In fact, it was Admiral Souchon, the German commanding officer of the Battleship Goeben (renamed Yavuz), who opened fire on Russian positions in the Black Sea, destroying several ships and dragging Turkey into the war. Several Ottoman cabinet members "were furious and got Enver Pasha to send a ceasefire order to Souchon as well as apologies to the Entente governments. But it was too late."26
While quoting Cemal Pasa, who stated in his Memoirs27 that their objective was to free Turkey from measures which constituted a blow to internal independence, Dadrian construes it to mean to be free to deal with the Armenian minority. It was, in fact, the elimination of the Public Debt (Duyun-u Umumiye), which had a monopoly over the revenues of the country, that the Turkish leaders had in mind. The revenues were turned over to that commission to help pay off the foreign bondholders. The representatives of Europe's financial and political leaders were given control over Ottoman revenues, which they would administer and collect. The first agreement to this effect was reached with Sultan Abdulhamid II in 1879 and supported by a series of decrees between then and 1882. When the famous Decree of Muharrem (1881) was announced, the Public Debt Commission was established outside the Ministry of Finance with one delegate each from six foreign states and one from the Ottoman Empire, as well as a special representative of the Galata bankers. Thus, a foreign commission was created as a separate Ottoman treasury to collect taxes. The measure in the minds of the Young Turk leaders, and later the Kemalist government, concerned the fiscal privileges of foreign circles which reduced governmental income and contradicted the principle of sovereignty.
Whatever the subject matter may be, it is the prerogative of any government to prevent foreign powers from interfering in domestic affairs, now a principle of international law, explicitly expressed in Article 2/7 of the United Nations Charter. Almost endless examples may be cited from recent history of Asian, African and Latin American countries proving such interferences. Especially the 19th century is full of them, Russia pursuing its own objectives in the Balkans and the Caucasus, France in the Levant, Germany in the Drang Nach Osten policy, and Britain in overseas areas.
Dadrian also conveniently eliminates from his narrative the very crucial Armenian revolt in Van, the massacre of the Turks in that far eastern city, and the Armenian cooperation with the approaching Russian army. Such actions, apart from being against law, national and international, triggered the reaction of relocating the Armenians.
The Armenians of Zeitun rebelled immediately after the Ottoman Government decreed mobilization (3 August 1914). While the Russians started distributing arms to the Armenian deserters, the first Ottoman report (29 November 1914) focused on the planned Van rebellion. The Turkish governor there suggested sending Muslim {not Armenian) families to safer areas in Western Anatolia to protect them from Armenian assaults. Turkish men were at the fronts facing the enemy. The Van rebellion finally occurred on 17 April 1915. The rebels opened fire on Ottoman police stations and on the Muslim quarters. The Turkish governor ordered the evacuation of Van. After the Russians entered Van, the rebellion spread to neighbouring Mus. The Russians, who nevertheless exploited Armenian violence and separatism for their own ends, frequently moved towards areas within Ottoman sovereignty but with some Armenian population.
It is important to remember at this point that the British began the naval action against the Dardanelles on 19 February 1915, and occupied the island of Lemnos as a base, four days later. It was on the 18th of March that Admiral de Robeck and eighteen warships tried to force the Turkish Straits. About a month later, 75,000 men under the command of Sir lan Hamilton succeeded in landing at several places at the tip of the Gelibolu (Gallipoli) peninsula, while Australian troops made a feint farther north, and a French force landed on the Asiatic side. There was a landing at Suvia after many additional divisions had been sent out from Britain.
The Anglo-Indian forces took Quma from the Turks in the Mesopotamian theater (9 December 1914). Sir John Nixon repulsed Turkish attacks on British positions near Basra (11-13 April 1915). General Charles V.F. Townshend took the town of Amara (3 June 1915) on the Tigris, and then Nasiriya on the Euphrates (25 July 1915). A general British advance toward Baghdad started, and the Turkish retreat as far as Aziziya took place after the Battle of Kut-al Amara (28 September 1914). The Turkish forces near the Suez Canal, the Sinai Peninsula and Palestine retreated during the campaigns of 1915 and 1916.
It was during the climax of Armenian-Russian cooperation against the Turks that the British and the French warships were trying to pass through the Dardanalles, the Suez Canal operation was progressing in the Palestine front, and the British had started moving upward from Basra and Baghdad, both Ottoman provinces. What Dadrian never mentions is the fact that every part of Eastern Anatolia was subject to attacks by Armenian brigands while Turkish men capable of bearing arms were fighting at Gelibolu, the Caucasian front, Palestine and Mesopotamia.
* * *
There are numerous Western sources that prove Armenian desertions to the Russian army, series of local revolts, and Armenian cooperation with Turkey's wartime enemy in various ways. Clair Price28 writes that the Armenian bands "captured Van...and having massacred the Turkish population, they surrendered what remained of the city to the Russian armies." He adds: "The news from Van affected the Turks precisely as the news from Smyrna affected them when the Greeks landed there in May 1919." In his words, "streams of Turkish refugees were pouring westward into central Asia Minor. The British had launched their Dardanelles campaign at the very gates of Constantinople." The British appealed, in the meantime, "for funds to equip these [Armenian] volunteers."
Rafael de Nogales29 states that Garo Pasdermadjian, the Armenian deputy in the Ottoman parliament, "passed over with almost all the Armenian troops and officers of the Third Army to the Russians...burning hamlets and mercilessly putting to the knife all of the peaceful Musulman villagers that fell into their hands." He adds: "The altogether unjustifiable desertion of the Armenian troops, united to the outrages they committed outwards, on their return,...did not fail to alarm the Turks and rouse their fear lest the rest of the Armenian population in the frontier provinces of Van and Erzurum revolt likewise, and attack them with the sword. This indeed is precisely what happened."
Stating that "thousands of Russian bombs and muskets were found" in the hands of the Dashnag members, Felix Valyi also concurred30 that the Armenians "seized the town of Van, established an Armenian 'General Staff there under the command of Aram and Vardan, which delivered up the town to the Russians troops." M. Philips Price also says: "When war broke out, the Armenians of these regions made secret contact with the Russian authorities in the Caucasus."31 Philip de Zara, then, asks: "How can anyone deny that, in the opinion of the Turks, according to the law of all states, the conduct of the Armenians, facilitating during the war the task of the adversary, can be recognized as anything but a crime of high treason?"32 French General M. Larcher observed that
19 (?) "the Armenian population in the zone of operations overtly exhibited a common cause with the Russians...some migrating to Transcaucasia... [and] frequently attacking Turkish convoys." He noted that "the loyalty of the Armenians recruited in the Turkish troops seemed doubtful."33
***
The articles in the Journal of Political and Military Sociology frequently refer to a number of oft-used sources, such as Morgenthau, Bryce, Lepsius and Werfel. They treat such sources, and others inspired by them, as authoritative and trustworthy.
It is quite possible to disagree with them. Ambassador Morgenthau's Story, for instance, is a book by a former New York real estate developer who was rewarded by President Woodrow Wilson, a year after his election, with a political appointment to Istanbul. His book, written in 1918, and focusing on the Armenian episode, had great impact. Reprinted several times, it is still in print, and is cited on the floor of the U.S. Congress. There are frequent references to it, including quotations of passages that appear even in American high school texts.
Dr. Heath W. Lowry is an American scholar and a leading Turcologist, who published a brilliant academic monograph entitled The Story Behind Ambassador Morgenthau's Story.34 Utilizing the public collection of papers relating to Morgenthau, he ably questioned the credibility of the Morgenthau book as a source to explain the events of 1915. They are in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress and consist of 30,000 items in 41 reels of microfilm. He consulted the Morgenthau Papers in the F.D. Roosevelt Presidential Library in New York, and analyzed the personal papers of the late Burton J. Hendrick who "ghosted" the Morgenthau book. He traced sons, cousins and other relatives to check information. But he relied on first-hand material, such as Morgenthau's "Diary", his family "Letters", his cabled dispatches and written reports. These materials present another story, much more reliable than that wartime printed propaganda piece.
Ambassador Henry Morgenthau's book was also a key source for three influential wartime anti-Turkish books — the publications by Lord Bryce, the German Pastor Dr. Johannes Lepsius and young Arnold J. Toynbee. The so-called "Blue Book" was an important British war propaganda publication. Toynbee, later a celebrated historian but then a young man, worked in the preparation of this biased work. In his later book, The Western Question in Greece and Turkey, he confessed that the "Blue Book" was a piece of war propaganda." Many of the stories published by Toynbee in the wartime period were apparently supplied through Ambassador Morgenthau. At times, Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey's signature was added to such publicity material to give it an official look. Grey was a total ignoramus with respect to Armenian-Turkish relations.
With regard to the Armenians, Lord Bryce was also a propagandist. Morgenthau became acquainted with him during the course of a trip to Palestine (1914). In a letter (7 August 1915) to Morgenthau, Bryce asked the U.S. ambassador to provide him with material that he could use in Wellington House's propaganda schemes. This "house" was actually a secret office for a committee, headed by C.F.G. Masterman, to serve war propaganda. It issued 17 million copies of such publications only in the United Kingdom.
Morgenthau was also the main source for the German Lepsius. Who was Dr. Johannes Lepsius? Having decided on a strategy to further German influence among the Armenians of the Caucasus, the Germans searched for ways and means, during the war, of being popular in some Armenian circles. They were planning a "White Book" to impress, not only the Armenians, but also the Germans and Allied public opinion. No one could be a better instrument than Lepsius, who, in the words of Frank G. Weber, was not objective,36 his sources of information being the Armenians in Istanbul and Ambassador Morgenthau. Having dined with Lepsius (3 August 1915), having had several other talks and having received the authorization of Washington, D.C. to pass material to him, Morgenthau was certainly a key source for the Lepsius work.
Morgenthau was also influential in creating pro-Armenian and anti-Turkish public opinion in the United States. He achieved these purposes initially through his role as a provider of one-sided information to Toynbee, Bryce and Lepsius, and then publishing a book that bears his name. He had returned to the United States in early 1916. In a letter to President Wilson (26 November 1917), he expressed the desire to write an anti-German and anti-Turkish book to increase support for Wilson's war effort. It was intended as wartime propaganda. When he was about to give up the idea, he received the president's blessing, and started serious negotiations with the printers. The book was finished within a year of Morgenthau's letter to Wilson. It was first serialized in-The World's Work (circulation: 120,000), then appeared in the largest newspapers (combined circulation: 2,630,256), and was finally published in book form by Doubleday, Page and Company (22,234 copies). Morgenthau also received a Hollywood offer for film rights. But Wilson disapproved, saying that they had gone far enough.
It is the duty of scholars to establish how credible that book is as a source of history. It is still a primary source, as the "observation of a bystander" who asserts a "premeditated massacre or genocide." This book has served to shape public opinion in the world. Decades later after its first appearance, it is still being reprinted, and quoted in speech and in writing. Not only has it been used as reference by politicians and writers, it has probably influenced many young Armenians who assassinated Turkish diplomats and bystanders.
Dr. Lowry's monograph is a fine example of scholarly investigation and the desire to find out the truth. In the world of academics, after Lowry's book, the Morgenthau propaganda should be laid to rest. Lowry exposes concrete clues right from primary sources as to who wrote the Morgenthau book, and how it was written.
Among the collections of Morgenthau papers, there is a transcript called "Diary", which apparently was typed by Hagop S. Andonian, a Turkish-Armenian. Morgenthau also wrote lengthy weekly letters to members of his family. They were likewise prepared by the same Andonian. The American ambassador writes that this relieved him "of all responsibility for any errors." These writings formed the basis of the future book that created a sensation and which is still regarded in some quarters as if it is a reliable source of history.
Andonian, formerly a student at the (American) Robert College, had become Morgenthau's personal secretary. He bears the same family name with Aram Andonian, who published the so-called "official documents"37 that the Turkish scholars proved to be forged.38 Hagop Andonian left Turkey with the ambassador to assist him with the book. Morgenthau writes that his services were "indispensable."
Another key Armenian was Arshag K. Schmavonian, interpreter and advisor. Morgenthau knew none of the languages spoken in Istanbul. He accompanied the ambassador on almost every official visit and also to meetings with American businessmen and missionaries. He assisted the ambassador in the writing of his cables. He was also transferred to Washington, where he remained "Special Advisor" in the employ of the U.S. State Department.
Still another participant was U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing, who read and commented upon every page of the manuscript before it was published in installments or in book form. He made notes suggesting alterations or omissions. Lansing asked Morgenthau, in a letter dated 2 October 1918, not to mention his name in connection with the book. The book itself came from the skilled hand of the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Burton J. Hendrick, in whose mind the actual concept of the book, according-to Hendrick's letter of 7 April 1916 to Morgenthau, seems to have originated. As another letter, dated 5 July 1918, proves, Hendrick was guaranteed, throughout the lifetime of the book, forty percent of the profits. Some months before he died (1949), Hendrick stated that he had the job of 'ghosting' Morgenthau's book.
Then, what may more or less be called a "committee", composed of two Armenians, the eyes and ears of Morgenthau, Secretary Lansing and journalist Hendrick collectively brought out a publication, which includes "statements" also by the Ottoman Ministers Talat and Enver, given in quotation marks. The latter look as if they want to condemn themselves which certainly suits the tastes of Andonian, Schmavonian, Lansing and Hendrick, but which has no basis in reliable records. Hendrick portrayed the Turkish leaders as thoroughly inhuman characters. Author Dadrian has a similar disposition. Alleged conversations have no foundation even in Morgenthau's "Diary" and the "Letters". Dr. Lowry, who carefully examined everything written by Morgenthau, could not locate a single reference to some very important alleged conversations. Apart from outright inventions, the "authors" take rumors and put them in the mouths of Turkish leaders - moreover, in quotation marks. The authors, united in anti-Turkish propaganda and "victory for war policies", try to portray the Ottoman ministers as criminals publicly boasting of their crimes. They take rumors, through interpreter Armenians, and credit them to the Turkish leaders. They feel utterly free to change, add, subtract and quote. An example of a Lansing contribution in pencil: "...with the usual insincere oriental politeness." Consequently, there are also out-and-out contradictions between two statements signed by Morgenthau. In one (Ambassador Morgenthau's Story, p. 20) Talat Pasa is made to say that he "scoffed at all religions and hated all priests, rabbis and hodjas", but in another ("Diary" for 10 July 1914) that he is "the most religious" in the Ottoman Cabinet.
There is at least one other book by George A. Schreiner, who was also in Turkey as Morgenthau's contemporary and who finds the American ambassador's books "remarkably unreliable".39 He adds that Talat Pasa was "on the best terms" with Morgenthau.40
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Franz Werfel
Franz Werfel
There are likewise frequent references to the events at Musa Dagh and to a certain Franz Werfel who wrote a novel about it. Werfel's now-famous novel, Die vierzig Tage des Musa Dagh, is supposed to be a modem saga of a persecuted minority, determined to fight back. Roger W. Smith writes: "The evidence Dadrian presents attests to the fact that the Armenians were defending themselves from exterminatory assaults" (p. vi). Werfel's American edition41 brought the novel worldwide fame. His book is not a documentary, not meant to be a scholarly work. It is a tale, in which he makes Enver and Talat Paşas converse, according to Werfel's own perception and fancy, planning the "genocide." Werfel writes that Talat's "fat fingers... composed... [the] order, sent out to all valis (governors) and mutasarnfs: The goal of these deportations is annihilation.'" There is not a single genuine document bearing the signature of Talat Paşa or of any other Ottoman dignitary to that effect. The assertion of anyone that this was in the mind of Talat Paşa is not an acceptable argument.
People "learn", nevertheless, not from dispassionate and non-partisan studies, but from sensational fancy work. For instance, although the Hollywood movie (Amadeus) on composer Mozart, granted a successful piece of drama, depicts Salieri as a minor but ambitious and wicked man in the world of music, the latter, far from being a black character, was a first rate man of this branch of art, who had given lessons to Schubert. Very few interested people will endeavour to read enough of history of music to place Mozart and Salieri in a fair perspective.
Werfel records the Armenian uprising in Van occurring after the relocation order. The truth is just the opposite. The uprising was not a desperate attempt of self-defence. It took place about two months before the relocation, which developed as a consequence of the revolt. This crucial historical fact is presented head over heels by Werfel, who relied on Armenian sources and Johannes Lepsius's book Deutschland und Armenien.42 Although shockingly biased, Lepsius, nevertheless, presents Cemal Paşa, one of the ruling Ottoman Triumvirate, in a comparatively better shade. So does Werfel in the German original. But the American "censor" apparently crossed out, in the English translation, even that minute point. After all, there should be no favourable reference, even if a small one, to someone (Cemal Paşa) assassinated by the Armenians.
An Austrian writer quotes Abraham Sou Sever, a Sephardic Jew born in Izmir (Turkey) and later emigrated to the United States (Holdwater note: He is talking about Albert Amateau): "My dear departed friend, Franz Werfel, who wrote that book, The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, never was in that region to investigate what he wrote. He wrote it as his Armenian friends in Vienna had told him. Before his death, Werfel told me that he felt ashamed for the many falsehoods and fabrications the Armenians had foisted on him. But he dared not confess publicly for fear of death by the Dashnag terrorists."43 Sever also said that thousands of Armenians, all armed, ascended the summit of that mountain after provisioning it to withstand siege. Daily sallies from that summit of armed bands attacked the rear of the Ottoman armies, and disappeared into the mountain. It stood siege for forty days, an indication of the preparations the Armenians had made. They had been fostered, organized, financed and supplied with arms by the Russians. The thousands who occupied the summit escaped by descending the mountain and reaching the Mediterranean coast, where they communicated with the French and the British naval ships. They were taken aboard, only a small contingent of Armenians remaining behind, who finally surrendered to the Turks.
***
Dadrian does not make it clear that it was under these circumstances that the ringleaders of the Armenians were arrested on 24 April 1915, in Istanbul, and the decision to relocate them taken afterwards. They were not deported or expelled to a foreign country. Wherever they were sent, be it Aleppo, Damascus or Musul, all of these cities were then within the Ottoman frontiers. They were not headed for a camp or prison. In some areas, individuals who had not taken part in any terrorist or treasonable activity were also transferred from one place to another, and even arrested. But, on the other hand, on some occasions, this was cause for instructions from the Ottoman Government to avoid their repetition.44 However, as Enver Pasa's communication, dated 2 May 1915, to Talat Pasa indicates, the Armenians were relocated in such a way that they would not form large communities, minimizing the chance of a rebellion.45
The 24th of April was the day when 235 people were arrested in the Ottoman capital. The Council of Ministers adopted, on 30 May 1915, the temporary law to "transfer and settle Armenians in other quarters". The law was temporary because the Ottoman Parliament was not in session. It opened on 15 September, and approved the temporary law, which included provisions that should the relocated be attacked, the assailants would be court-martialed. The elaborate procedures to govern the forced migration could not be properly applied. When news that some convoys were attacked reached the Ottoman authorities, written messages were sent, stating that every possible measure ought to be taken to protect the Armenians, and those guilty of violence be punished. No less than 1,397 individuals who failed to comply with these instructions were indeed punished, including executions. Their conviction proves that the Ottoman authorities were willing to call to justice those responsible, at least many of them, for the deaths. Those convicted may not be as many as some people may desire, or punishments may not be as severe as some would prefer. It is unfortunate that there are always some who escape justice. But there were trials, accusations and punishment - all taking place in Ottoman courts.
A national court was set up to try and punish its own nationals. An Inquiry Commission was also formed in the Ottoman Chamber of Deputies. This occurred while parts of the country, including the capital, were under foreign occupation. While it was true that some individuals, officials as well as some private citizens were guilty of neglect, mismanagement or outright murder, there was, in addition, a tendency especially in the governmental circles of the capital to appease the victorious powers. Alt Kemal, Behramzade Nusret and Abdullah Avni, the first two lieutenant-governors, and the third gendarmerie commander, were condemned to death and executed. All of the condemned men who had fled, except Dr. Nazım, were assassinated by Armenians - Talat Pasa and Bahaeddin §akir in Berlin, Cemal Pasa in Tbilisi, and Enver Pasa in Central Asia.
No matter what kind of terminology may be used by some writers, the event that they are supposed to describe is the transfer or relocation of the bulk of the Armenian population, most of whom, as Bogos Nubar admitted in his aforementioned written statement to the French Foreign Minister, have reached their destinations, but some unfortunately perished from general war conditions as well as attacks of criminals. The Armenians participated, in addition, in about a dozen armed conflicts between the years 1914 and 1922, costing Armenian and non-Armenian lives.
Relocation took place for reasons of security. It also involved some Armenians residing in Bursa, Eskisehir or Konya and even in Istanbul, none of which are in Eastern Anatolia, not because they were Armenians but because they had, or believed to have had, connections with terrorist or treasonable acts in the east. Security forces, generally well-informed, may have erred in some cases. Some reactions might be uncalled for, some acts may be overzealous, and circumstances may provoke criminally inclined or revenge seeking people to indulge in murder and robbery. The descendants of the Armenians in Istanbul today prove that not everyone was involved in the relocation.
One cannot generalize on the basis of fanaticism or intrigues of certain individuals, Bahaeddin Şakir for instance, that the whole relocation was actually a cloak for ultimate destruction. There were also other Turks who made accusations and helped sentence the culprits, except those who eluded justice by flight or other tricks. No matter how some writers (including the celebrated Turkish professor Tank Zafer Tunaya) might have translated certain Ottoman words ("taktil", for instance, meaning "killing," Dadrian's articles in the Journal of Political and Military Sociology, pp. 35 and 130), the only possible conclusion still stands true that there is no evidence in the Ottoman archives supporting the view that the central Ottoman Government planned or executed the massacre of the Armenians.
There are also frequent references to Pan-Turkism as an argument for the removal of the Armenians from places of origin. To properly gauge the weight of this argument, it is important to remember that the ideas related to Turkism did not even originate in the Ottoman Empire or later in the Republic of Turkey, but in the diaspora. In this way, it differs from Pan-Hellenism, Pan-Germanism or Pan-Italianism. Moreover, Turkism, which originated among the Turkic peoples living outside the Ottoman Empire, emphasized similarity in language, literature, folklore and history. Further, its propagators felt themselves justified because they had more than their share of competitors or opponents in the forms of Pan-Slavism of Tsarist Russia, the Megali Idea of the Greeks and the racism or the irredentism of some other neighbours. Many other nations usually had only one "opponent image". Finally, Pan-Turkism never went beyond acknowledging the fact that there is an obvious cultural affinity among all Turkic-speaking peoples.
It should be well-known that it originated in the diaspora, mainly in response to the pan-ideologies of other nations. The official Tsarist policy of Russification, often accompanied with Christianization, provoked the Turkic groups in the Tsarist empire, principally the Tatars, to be increasingly aware of common ties with each other. The spokesman for the Tatars was Ismail Gaspirah (1851-1914), the mayor of the Crimean town of Bab.9esaray (?), who founded a Turkish newspaper (Tercüman) and devised a new standard school curriculum introducing the Turkish language as a means of instruction. His ideas were repeated by other Turkic intellectual circles in Azerbaijan and Central Asia. These ideas were carried to Istanbul by leading Tatars and Azerbaijanis, who had left Russia. But the Turks, influenced by these ideas to a certain extent, never totally abandoned Ottomanism or Pan-Islamism.
On the other hand, much of the history of the Balkans, Anatolia, the Crimea and the Caucasus cannot be understood without discussing systematic Muslim (mostly Turkish) massacres and forced migrations. The unity of the other ethnic and religious groups was accomplished through the expulsion of the Muslims. For about a century, the new states were founded on the suffering of the Muslims, mainly Turks.
* * *
Contrary to what Dadrian asserts, "intercommunal clashes" and "wartime privations" (p. 100) are not irrelevant. The view that many Armenians perished on account of epidemics and general war conditions is not a propaganda to belittle the events of 1915. In the past centuries, considerably more soldiers died from sickness and contagious diseases than from enemy weapons during wars. This was also true for the Ottoman scene during the First World War, and affected both Turks and Armenians.46 The Turkish army losses in the war were tremendous, the number of dead from disease reaching figures unheard of in the 20th century wars. The Armenians lived and fought on Ottoman territory almost under the same conditions, suffering huge losses, just like the Turks. For instance, a Frenchman's article in the Paris-based journal Turcica47 informs us hat when the French, evacuating the Turkish town of Maras[h] in February 1920, took with them about 5,000 Armenians, half of the latter died on account of exceptional difficulties connected with the journey.
One should also add that Talat Pas[h]a allowed the American missionaries to do relief work among the Armenians, in spite of the fact that Turkey and the United States were on the opposing camps during the war. How many examples are there in history of a combatant country permitting the citizens of another country fighting in the other camp to stay, feed, cloth and educate the people it is accused of exterminating?
Several civil and conventional wars took many more Armenian lives than generally acknowledged by contemporary Armenian writers. Plentiful evidence support the view that there had been an armed Armenian uprising behind the Turkish Eastern Front, and that Armenian guerillas, assisted by the Russians, fought on the side of the Tsarist armies. Hostilities continued between the Turks and the Armenians after the Bolshevik Revolution. Sections of Armenians participated in the civil war in the Caucasus during and after the triumph of Communism in Russia and the adjacent territories. There had been a conventional war between the Ankara government and the independent Armenian Republic immediately after the creation of the latter. There have also been conventional wars between the same independent Armenian Republic, on the one hand, and Georgia and Azerbaijan, on the other. Professor Falk writes (p. ii) in the Journal that the Armenians have "reexperienced the reality of atrocity in relation to the unresolved fight over the future of Nagomo-Karabagh region." That region is legally a part of Azerbaijan, and the Armenians are holding it as occupied territory, contrary to international law. Back in the 1920s, while the Armenians conducted a war against the Azeris, some Armenians revolted against the authority of the newly-created Armenian Soviet Republic. The Armenians joined forces with the French against the Turks in Southern Anatolia. Armenian irregular units have also participated in the Turco-Greek War of 1919-1922.
In all these armed conflicts, whether civil wars, guerilla warfare, underground fighting or outright conventional wars, the Armenians inflicted sufferings on other peoples, but they themselves also died in the process. A consequence of these conflicts was that many Turks lost their lives as well. Some Turks were also victims during the whole duration of the First World War and after. While whole Turkish cities, towns and villages became ruins, and Muslim corpses filled ditches and wells, before the Bolshevik Revolution, the dramatic events following 1917 left the armed Armenians, whether regular soldiers or irregular bands, as the only authority in parts of Eastern Anatolia. The whole region was a graveyard after the Armenian retreat. The Armenians destroyed everything on their road. A number of foreigners witnessed these pillages and murders.48
While Professors Dadrian, Falk and Smith do not see the evidence of Armenian crimes, especially some recent Turkish publications include interviews with elderly people as well as a host of new documents prove Armenian mass murder of Turks in various comers of Eastern Anatolia, principally in Van, Kars, Bitlis and Erzurum.49 The Turkish documents complement grandiloquence in the memoirs of Armenian commanders or spokesmen that they have wiped out enemy forces or groups.
* * *
Professor Falk further states that the Turkish state has "outrageously muddied the waters of truth by obscuring and distorting the story of Armenian genocide in the 1915-18 period" and that the "shameful" ongoing campaign of the same disseminated "various fabrications of the historical record, and through cajolery and intimidation." He adds that Turkish accounts were "shoddy propaganda" or "inept or disingenuous scholarship" (p. i).
An appropriate reminder in respect to "intimidation": Fred C. Ikle, United States Under Secretary of Defence for Policy defined the Armenian terrorist attacks against Turkish diplomats and property as "one of the most dangerous and most neglected of all terrorist movements."50 In the past, Armenian terrorists murdered official diplomatic representatives of the Turkish state and members of their families as well as non-Turks. Turkish embassies and consulates in Athens, Beirut, Beme, Brussels, Lisbon, Los Angeles, Lyons, Madrid, Ottowa, Paris, The Hague, and Vienna, as well as Turkish delegations in various places, including the Turkish center at the United Nations, have been attacked. Some Turkish consulates have been seized, occupied and officials inside have been killed and wounded. Turkish Airlines offices in Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, Geneva, London, Milan, Paris and Rome as well as non-Turkish airline offices such as Air France, Alitalia, British Airways, El Al, KLM, Lufthansa, Pan Am, Sabena, Swissair, and TWA were bombed, the latter for their commercial relations with Turkey. Several foreign governments such as Canada, France, Italy, Portugal, Sweden, and Switzerland were threatened for having brought legal proceedings against Armenian terrorists. The Turkish folk dances had to be cancelled in California on account of various intimidations, and Armenian groups broke up a Turkish history class in Los Angeles and bombed the residence of an university professor (Stanford J. Shaw), who went into hiding. Dr. Falk, as professor of international law and practice, knows that all of these activities are against accepted legality. The legal evidence of all these events and others are available. But Dr. Falk mentions so-called "intimidation" of the Turkish Government without bothering to explain what he means.
Quite a few Turkish publications on this issue are compilations of reliable documents, (exposing several Armenian falsifications), and individual scholarly works. I am aware from personal experience as well that Armenian propagandists frequently demanded the "release of Ottoman documents" but resisted using them when they contradicted their choice of conclusions. I participated, on the basis of invitation by two French courts, as a "witness of authority" (temoin d'autorite) in the trials of Armenian terrorist groups, one concerning the occupation of the Turkish Consulate-General, the murder of a Turkish official and the wounding of another, and the other involving the explosion of a bomb at the Orly Airport shedding the blood of some sixty people. I was asked by the lawyers of the defendants as to when the Ottoman documents would be available. A vast amount of Ottoman documents are indeed available in the form of series of printed material, often with transliterations and translations, or in microfilm, distributed world-wide, including various governments and leading libraries.51 Thousands of reliable Ottoman documents, printed by Turks and setting the issue in a balanced perspective, are not utilized by those who wish to persist in presenting the Turks only in an adverse light.
The Turks have also published various studies exposing a number of falsifications. For instance, one of my publications carries this very title: The Andonian "Documents", Attributed to Talat Pasha, Are Forgeries!52 An Armenian writer, Aram Andonian, who had separately published (1920) a book in three languages (English, French and Armenian), either referred to or printed 48-50 so-called "documents" that he attributed to the Ottoman leaders, principally to Talat Pasa, war-time (1914-18) Ottoman leader. Turkish scholars analyzed them and concluded that the book was based on forgeries. Andonian has never been able to show the originals of the so-called "documents", because there are no such documents. What he calls "telegrams" have been fabricated by him and his circle. He later said that he "lost" them. Some circles entertain the wrong conviction that the German court, which tried Soghomon Tehlirian, Talat Pasa's assassin, had accepted these "documents" as authentic and as evidence (1921). Even Tehlirian's counsel (Von Gordon) had to withdraw them, and the German prosecutor said that he knew of "documents", carrying the signatures of high dignitaries, later proved to be falsifications. While the victors of the First World War were searching all comers for such documents to accuse the Ottoman leaders, then detained in the Island of Malta, they chose not to assess the "telegrams" fabricated by Andonian.
The British could not also use the so-called "Ten Commandments" which Professor Smith rashly considers as "further proof of the existence of a central plan for genocide" (p. vi). What Dadrian presents as a Turkish "document" is a correspondence between the British High Commission in Istanbul (which Dadrian still calls Constantinople) and the Foreign Office in London in early 1919 (p. 173f). Where is the original of that "document"?
Forgeries are too common in history to be considered impossible. Referring to writer Gwynne Dyer, Dadrian says that "the British eventually ignored the document" (p. 193). They chose to ignore it while they were searching the whole Ottoman archives for a single reliable document to be used against Turkish leadership and moreover reaching to other archives in search for similar material. The British, in fact, did everything they could, but the 118 individuals, including the former Ottoman premier and other high dignitaries, had to be released from Malta.53
The British knew that these so-called "documents" could not be relied upon. For instance, Aram Andonian himself admits, in a letter (26 July 1937) to an Armenian lady (Mary Terzian) residing in Geneva (Switzerland) that his book was not an historical piece, but a propaganda work, and that others used it freely in the way that they preferred. In terms of appearance and contents, the Andonian "documents" abound in various factual errors, omissions and contradictions that give him away. These supposed papers, in the way they were printed in Andonian's books, are not the kind used by the old Ottoman bureaucracy. In fact, no papers were used but various cryptogram systems at different times, during the war. But Andonian's ciphering does not agree with the coding complex that we have in the Ottoman archives. Apparently, the Armenian writer has made up a cipher system of his own. The dimensions of the forgery gain more gravity especially when the confusion involving dates and numbers of the "documents" that Andonian seems to have fixed are analyzed. He has committed blunders on account of his ignorance concerning the difference between the Julian and the Gregorian calendars. Not knowing the intricacies of this system, Andonian made miscalculations in putting "appropriate" dates. Sometimes, he errs with a margin of nine months. He habitually forgets to add the 13 days to find the Gregorian date. There is an utter confusion in terms of the numbers of the "documents". The numerals on the forged "documents" do not coincide with the numbers (and the dates) of authentic documents. The corresponding documents in the Ottoman archives concern the digging up of new artesian wells in the Sinai Peninsula or the condition of railroad workers. The signatures are forged. At times, a governor is supposed to have signed an official document before taking up that post. There are notable differences between the English and the French texts, words altering, sentences and paragraphs changing places, and certain phrases disappearing or replaced by others. The Turkish used is poor at times.
Falsifications in respect to the "Armenian question" are not confined to the Andonian "telegrams". Another falsification concerns a "statement" wrongly attributed to Adolf Hitler. While talking to his generals in Obersalzburg a week before (22 August 1939) the attack on Poland, the German dictator is supposed to have said: "I have given orders to my Death Units to exterminate without mercy or pity men, women and children belonging to the Polish-speaking race-After all, who remembers today the extermination of the Armenians?" This quotation has appeared in hundreds of publications. Dadrian also asserts that Armenian-Turkish relations during the First World War "served to stimulate Hitler to embark upon his own initiatives of genocide" (p. 31). Although even this forged statement makes reference to Poles, and not the Jews, Dadrian frequently uses terminology of the Jewish genocide. In Dadrian's choice of words, even the "responsible secretary" of the ruling Ottoman party is comparable to the Nazi Gauleiter (p. 99).
This is an attempt to link the planned extermination of European Jewry in the course of the Second World War to the events connected with Armenians. First of all, there is no historical basis for attributing such a statement to Hitler.34
I have traced in a booklet that the Nuremberg Tribunal accepted two versions of this Hitler talk, initially numbered as USA-29 and USA-30, refusing to approve a third one. None of these texts contains such a statement. Likewise, Dr. Lowry traces, in a scholarly article, the manner in which this purported quote has entered the lexicon of U.S. Congressmen, and the manner in which it continues to be used by Armenian-Americans in their efforts to establish a linkage between their own history and the tragic fate of European Jewry."
Further, there has been an anti-Jewish sentiment with roots in the past. Much has been written about anti-Semitism. There are even full bibliographies on the subject, especially in the European context. Its roots should be traced to the early forms of sentiments of the pre-Christian world. In Hellenic times, the Jews, who believed in monotheism and shared certain ethical considerations, were quite apart from other groups. Hellenism, with its family of gods and goddesses, and other sets of values, was a rival to, if not an opponent of, Judaism. In Roman times as well, Judaism was still a vigorous religion, "horrifying" many Romans threatened by potential changes in their imperial civilization. Even when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, some of the old prejudices were carried on into the "Christian" attitudes towards the Jews, and new misconceptions were added. Apart from the old pagan notion that the "gods" hated the Jews because the latter did not recognize them gave way to "collective responsibility" for the crucifixion of Jesus. The entire Jewish community was considered to be the "culprit."
Professor Turkkaya Ataov
Professor Türkkaya Ataöv
Discrimination intensified with the First Crusade, leading to Jewish massacres and ridiculous accusations of ritual murders, supposedly carried out by Jews. Renewed and intensified anti-Jewish prejudice was part of an overall campaign of discrimination, plunder and exploitation. Government services being closed to them, the Jews indulged more and more in trade, becoming distinguished as "usurers" and hence target of further resentment. Such "theological hatred" of the Jews frequently led to demands that they wear a mark on their clothes. What became tragically required much later in Nazi Germany had its roots in the Middle Ages. Centuries before they were hunted in Germany, the Jews were expelled from a number of European cities, and finally from the Iberian peninsula (1492). Already held responsible for the "poisoning of wells" and the plague epidemic, the expelled Jews were welcomed by the Turks of the Ottoman Empire. Jak V. Kamhi, the President of the Quincentennial Foundation (1492-1992) in Turkey, said the following at the "Seminar on Racism and Anti-Semitism" in Istanbul (1995): "The Muslim and the Jewish faiths managed to live together in peace and without any kind of clashes for eight centuries in Spain and six-hundred years in the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Turkey."56
The Reformation, and especially Calvinism, was more understanding towards the Jews in Protestant areas. Some other "Christians" did not stop believing in the "inherent evil of the Jews". This general picture continued until the 19th century, when the able and hard-working Jews became part and parcel of the economic, cultural and scientific life of Europe. It was inevitable that the Jews would create their own capitalist class in the process. The new allegation that there was an essential link between Judaism and capitalism, and that the Jews as such were essentially the exploiting capitalists only missed the point once more. Capitalism is a socioeconomic formation, replacing feudalism, with no direct connection with any race or religion. But this basic truth did not prevent some romantic German nationalists from considering even assimilated Jews as "aliens" in their homeland, as well as supporters of left causes from describing them as the enemies of the working classes, and rightists from seeing a Jewish influence in every leftist move. All these extremists provided part of the background for the murder of German and European Jewry in the coming 1930s and the 1940s.
Germany was not the only country where anti-Semitism was rampant. In France, the allegation that the Jews benefited most from the fruits of the French Revolution gave way to accusations that they were plotting to destroy Christian culture. Such discriminatory sentiments were fanned by influential publications after the notorious Dreyfus affair, which helped to institutionalize anti-Semitism in France. Tsarist Russia gave the world anti-Semitic pogroms, which made life unbearable for the Jews. These events were parallelled all over Europe by the emergence of pseudo-racial theories, justifying inequality, and even wars. Racists divided human beings into "higher" and "lower" races, which in theory gave the former the "right" for mass annihilation.
It was this historical accumulation that provided the National Socialists in Germany with the opportunity to use every accusation and tool of oppression, culminating first in the Nuremberg laws, and then in genocide. The Nuremberg trials were inevitable. Hundreds of thousands of captured Nazi documents were assembled as evidence in the trial of the major Nazi war criminals. One cannot find the oft-repeated Hitler "statement" among these documents.
Even then, some Armenians and their like-minded colleagues cling to this so-called "statement" because they wanted to set it into motion as a "connecting link" with the Jewish genocide. Reliable methodology in historiography contradicts such a pursuit. It is tremendous injustice to the Jews and the Turks alike. The Jews have gone through a genocide another example of which is very difficult to find. Moreover, apart from the extraordinarily good relations between the Jews and the Turks since the Middle Ages, Turkey's role in helping European Jews during the Holocaust has been largely ignored. As Professor Shaw notes, the world does not realize the extent to which Turkey, and the Ottoman Empire which preceded it, over the centuries served as major places of refuge for people suffering from persecution, Muslims and non-Muslims alike.57 Turkey was a haven, not only for those who escaped the Inquisition, but also hundreds of well-known intellectuals during the 1930s58 and thousands of other less well known persons were rescued.
Extreme right-wing political movements in Western Europe, previously fringe phenomena, have once again become much more significant.59 The Jews and the Turks are among the victims of present-day racism, xenophobia, and intolerance. Some Westerners, apparently, externalize and project their own unwanted "bad" parts onto the Jews, Turks and others to make themselves appear" good."
Still another falsification is a so-called "statement" attributed to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. This founder of the Turkish Republic is supposed to have confessed Ottoman state responsibility for the "Armenian genocide". This statement is false, probably initially stemming from confusing the celebrated Turk with someone from the Istanbul military court bearing the same first name. This error, which might have started as an oversight, a mere misunderstanding or a simple lapsus linguae, is repeated in print and in word, with the hope of strengthening a case by "quoting" against the Turks no less an authority than the founder of their state. While fancy escalates, falsity itself develops from misapprehension to fraud and trickery. Some Armenian authors have already printed articles calling the story a "fiction", and requesting that "this fable die". I offered in a booklet60 a summary of the origins of this apocryphal episode, tracing its growth through some Armenian and foreign sources, quoting Atatürk as well as the Armenian writers who have established this fallacy. I reproduced there genuine Mustafa Kemal letters, among other evidence, to clarify several points surrounding the untruth in question.
A separate booklet 61 of mine aims to expose yet another Armenian falsification, which attempts to use the name of the same statesman. The Los Angeles Examiner published (1 August 1926) an article, announcing simultaneously that it was written "by Mustafa Kemal Paşa," and that it was also "an interview with Emile Hilderbrand, a Swiss artist and journalist." Some Armenian circles have been using this article, expecting others to believe that the words have fallen from the mouth of the Turkish leader. In view of the evidence I presented in the booklet, I conclude that no such interview has ever taken place with Turkey's Mustafa Kemal. (Holdwater Note: I have examined the details of this booklet here.)
There are also a number of works by Turks, available in foreign languages, which compare authentic documents with forged ones.62 Several forged "documents" were presented to world public at a time when schemes to dismember Turkey had reached its climax. There are enough authentic documents in print now, whose numbers will increase, shedding light to the issue in conflict. These are all contributions to the study of Armenian-Turkish relations and not "muddling the waters of truth". Exposure of forgeries and falsifications, such as the one connected with a well-known Vereshchagin painting presented as a massacre photograph, cannot be briskly described in a few phrases as "shoddy propaganda" or "inept or disingenuous scholarship."
* * *
Professor Roger K. Smith
Professor Roger K. Smith
The approach of the Journal of Political and Military Sociology brings to mind the need for interdisciplinary analysis. The latter is especially appropriate since the review is presented on the cover pages as an "interdisciplinary" publication. There are many factors that influence who we are, and how we act, both individually or as members of groups. Hence, one's ethnic or national identity is determined by a complex interaction of causes and effects, ranging from individual psychodynamic mechanisms to broad historical events. The interdisciplinary analysis offers insights into the underlying psychopolitical factors that affect interactions between groups, especially those in conflict. Conversely, emphasis on a selected logic of events, which are, in fact, the results as well as the moulders of far more complexities than offered, reveals an identity formation, more and more sustained by repetitive one-sidedness to the exclusion of other crucial facts.
It may be proper to recall the following statement by Erik H. Erikson, who was a psychoanalyst distinguished by his prevailing studies" outlining the relationship between culture and the individual: "We cannot leave history entirely to non-clinical observers and to professional historians who often too nobly immerse themselves into the very disguises, rationalizations, and idealizations of the historical process from which it should be their business to separate themselves. Only when the relation of historical forces to the basic functions and stages of the mind has been jointly charted and understood can we begin a psychoanalytic critique of a society..."64
Groups need others to define themselves, in the process of which they learn how to hate out-groups. Vamik D. Volkan introduced the subject of the human need for enemies and allies.65 He underlined that people sometimes have a psychological investment in the continuation of a given conflict, and that they actually use them as external stabilizers of their sense of identity and inner control. Not only they have an investment in the continuation of this enmity, but their militancy partly marks their internal conflicts. Since they need the enemy, they are afraid to lose it. Although a number of other scientists had previously served the development of pertinent knowledge and literature in the general field of political psychology, Volkan's contributions bring forth the relevance of anxieties in a people or nation. His approach, shared by some other scholars, encourages one to go beyond the surface phenomena in history and politics.
Volkan uses the term "chosen trauma" to refer to the mental representation of an event that causes a group to feel victimized.66 The group mythologizes an event, and draws it into its identity, passing the mental representation, along with associated feelings and defenses, from generation to generation. For each generation, the event is modified. What remains is the central role it plays in the group's identity, even though the modified version of the event is different from the historical truth. This tendency goes hand in hand with the temptation to seek out a scapegoat. For groups of Armenians, that scapegoat are the Turks.
Groups also have "chosen glories", which are also part of the identity. For some Armenians, these glories may be how a handful of them stood against the attacks of so many, how they drove their enemies back inflicting heavy losses on them, how they contributed to the victory of freedom and democracy or how modest and humanitarian they were while there were no limits to the cruelty of their enemies!
Both chosen traumas and chosen glories support the group's sadism and masochism. The enemy is imagined as a stereotype of negative qualities. The stereotyped enemy is frequently referred to in non-human terms.67 For instance, in Dadrian's articles the "evil" is projected onto the Turks, to such an extent that there is no sympathy for the enemy's losses. There is no consideration of the possibility that an ethnic group's unwanted aspects may well be projected to another group. Instead, the chosen trauma is passed to the new generation, which mythologizes the original trauma, and replaces historical truth by one-sided, sensational narrative.68 Various ritualistic outlets, such as demonstration on the 24th of April, supposedly the beginning of "Armenian genocide", also provide further opportunities to accentuate the same chosen trauma and pass it on, once more, to the next generation, which will be more and more removed from what really occurred, whether a trauma or a glory. Dadrian joins a number of other writers who seem to project onto the Turks almost all of the unwanted aspects of the Armenians.
Why and how does this transformation come about? It is necessary to know the histories of the parties in conflict, and the characteristics of their respective cultures. While the details of these ingredients may be the topic of a full-sized book, it is at least necessary to underline the significance of constantly-motivated forces which define much of group interactions. Volkan compares ethnic identity to a "tent", which ordinarily provides a stable and functional habitat, but which may "shake", rendering the self vulnerable.69 The Ottoman tent provided stability for the Armenians as well for some centuries. The tent is a covering into whose fabric chosen traumas and chosen glories are woven. The individuals will go about their business if the tent is strong, but they will be preoccupied with repair and restoration when the tent is shaken. The more the instability, the more the desire to prove the identity. A group may need to rediscover and reformulate its identity each time its "tent" is shaken.70
Several Armenian writers resorted to the "enemy Turk" image to sustain the self. But this change occurred, not when the Ottoman Government recognized the rights of the Armenian community in the 15th century or the few centuries that followed, but at the time of the shaking of the same tent, forcing many Muslim intellectuals to redefine their selves as well. The Armenians apparently felt this need, initially after the 1877-78 Ottoman-Russian War, not only disastrous for the Turks, but also destabilizing the identity of many nationalities with in the Ottoman Empire, which asked in anguish, "what will happen to us?" The "Armenian tent" was shaken several times afterwards with the end of the First World War (1918), the installation of the Bolshevik rule in Armenia (1920), the Lebanese Civil War (1975), and the disintegration of the Soviet Union (1991).
The psychodynamics of ethnic terrorism, which some Armenians resorted to in the recent past as well as decades before that, is also related to the "shaking of the tent". It is an undeniable fact that the Armenian terrorists were rampant during the last decades of the Ottoman Government, and that they have also murdered Turkish diplomats or members of their immediate families and a number of non-Turks who happened to be in their line of attack.71 Heath W. Lowry convincingly argues that each succeeding Armenian generation produced and nurtured a new group of terrorists.72 The appallingly minimizing tendency of some writers, David Marshall Lang for instance, that the Armenians "were not all angels"73 represents a shocking under-statement. Dadrian severely undermines the obvious phenomena of Armenian treason and terrorism by casually referring to "sporadic acts of sabotage" and "alleging treasonable acts" (pp. 6-7). Even the 15-year old Mardiros Jamkotchian, apprehended by Swiss authorities after he assassinated (1981) the Turkish diplomat, Mehmet Yerguz, in Bern, told the court that he shot him in the back because this was a war, and that they were both "soldiers."
Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire were the allies of the Ottomans during the First World War. This does not automatically convey the thought that they peel off, at once, their age-old bias and produce impartial opinions to be relevant eternally. The whole Western world knew that the Ottomans had expanded their holdings to the outskirts of Vienna, and some European parents intimidated their children with the threat that "the Turks are coming!" These stereotyping of Turks by Westerners, including the Germans and the Austrians, stems from a number of recurring events - for instance, "the loss of Constantinople". This is another chosen trauma, shared by several European peoples. Moreover, the Germans and the Austrians, with whom the Ottoman Turks frequently came into conflict even during the First World War, eventually needed potential friends from the rival camp, just in case they would be defeated. It was especially Berlin's policy to cultivate good relations with quarters close to the decision-makers among the opposing group of states.
***
While presenting Professor Vakakn N. Dadrian's articles in the collective volume of the Journal of Political and Military Sociology, Professor Roger Smith describes them as a model historical and sociological narrative and analysis, and states that certain lessons may be drawn from the topic in question. I consider Professor Dadrian's approach a one-sided presentation of a complex phenomenon. In his appraisal, questioning the authenticity of documents supposedly proving the existence of genocide, testimony of authentic Ottoman documents challenging the genocide assertion, legal scrutiny in the light of the 1948 Genocide Convention, mention of general war-time conditions or any reference to Armenian participation in armed conflicts and terrorism are attempts of "revisionism."
Some Armenians cannot abandon a series of myths, such as past "wide frontiers", ethnic "homogeneity" on those lands, "continuous" Armenian-Turkish conflict or Armenian "innocence" against untold "cruelty" of their enemies. The truth, documented by abundant sources, is that it was the ten-or of organized Armenian bands, their seizure of power in parts of Eastern Anatolia, their co-action with invading foreign troops, and the expulsion of the Muslim population that led to the Ottoman decision to relocate the Armenians in the southern portions of the state.
The defeat of the Ottoman state at the end of the First World War, and the very likely prospect of harsh conditions to be imposed on the Turks fed the resurgence of a strong anti-Ittihadist sentiment, in spite of the adherents of the former ruling group, and played a role, not only in the decision to hold trials, but also in the proceedings and verdicts. Dadrian, on the other hand, considers the designation of some Ittihadist leaders as the culprits as "a convenient device to exonerate the Turkish people as a whole" (p. 133). No matter to what degree a writer may entertain ethnocentric views, to search for ways to involve a -whole nation in a one-sided evaluation of a dramatic event brings to mind a racist approach, especially incompatible in the United Nations' Year of Tolerance (1995), and the Third Decade To Combat Racism and Racial Discrimination (1993-2003).
Not only one-sided victimization in Armenian-Turkish relations fail to reflect historical facts, but chosen traumas, persistently presented from a lopsided viewpoint, prevent reconciliation. Insistence on the victimization of the Armenians only delays mutual benefits which should outweigh the advantages to the Armenians of continued enmity. While old habits contradict future relations of trust, a cure favors fair diagnosis. The disintegration (1991) of the Soviet Union motivated Turkey to embark on a new policy in the Caucasus, the Black Sea and the Balkans. Turkey suggested the membership of Armenia (and Greece) in the cooperation scheme around the Black Sea, although none of the two is a riparian state. All parties interested in cure and peace may utilize new circumstances to replace decades of old assumptions and interpretations. Since 1991 the Turks have taken steps to overcome barriers that imprisoned relations with Armenia behind unsurmountable bars. One needs fresh definitions.
FOOTNOTES
*.The author is professor of international relations at Ankara University, Turkey.
1.Armenian Review, 44/1-173 (Spring 1991), 1-36; Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 7/2 (Fall 1993); The International Journal of Middle East Studies, 23/4 (November 1991); The Yale Journal of International Law, 14/2 (Summer 1989), 221-234.
2.Justin McCarthy exposes this little known fact in his latest scholarly work: Death and Exile, Princeton, The Darwin Press, 1995.
3. Bilal Şimşir, Rumeli'den Türk Göçleri, Ankara, Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1968.
4.Türkkaya Ataöv, An Armenian Falsification, Ankara, Sevinç Matbaası, 1985.
5.Captain C.B. Norman, "The Armenians Unmasked," copy of a hand-written manuscript (1895) at the Institute of the Turkish Revolution, Faculty of Languages and History-Geography of Ankara University. Also see: Türkkaya Ataöv, A British Report (1895): "The Armenians Unmasked", Ankara, Sevinç Matbaası, 1985.
6 Turkkaya Ataöv, An American Source (1895) on the Armenian Question, Ankara, Sistem Ofset, 1986.
7 H. Pastermadjian, Histoire de I'Armenie, Paris, 1949, p. 384.
8 A.W. William and M.S. Gabrielian, Bleeding Armenia, New York, 1896, p. 331.
9 Edwin Bliss, Turkey and the Armenian Atrocities, Philadelphia, 1896, pp. 370-371.
10.Kamuran Gih-un, The Armenian File: the Myth of Innocence Exposed, London, K. Rustem and Bro. and Weidenfeld and Nicholson Ltd., 1985, p. 142.
11.McCarthy, op. cit.
12.Hugh Seton-Watson, Nations and States, London, Methuen, 1977, pp. 110-117.
13.New York, The American Defense Society, 1918.
14.Louise Nalbantian, The Armenian Revolutionary Movement: The Development of Armenian Political Parties, through the Nineteenth Century, Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1963.
15.Türkkaya Ataöv, "The Procurement of Arms for Armenian Terrorism: Realities Based on Ottoman Documents," International Terrorism and the Drug Connection, Ankara, the University of Ankara Press, 1984, pp. 169-177.
16.Hovhannes Kachaznouni, The Armenian Revolutionary Federation Has Nothing to Do Any More, New York, Armenian Information Service, 1955, p. 5. Also: Türkkaya Ataöv, An Armenian Source: Hovhannes Katchaznouni, Ankara, Sistem Ofset, 1984, p. 4.
17.K.S. Papazian, Patriotism Perverted, Boston, Baikar Press, 1934, pp. 37-38. Also: Türkkaya Ataöv, An Armenian Author on "Patriotism Perverted", Ankara, Sistem Ofset, 1984.
18.Esat Uras, The Armenians in History and the Armenian Question, Istanbul, Documentary Publications, 1988, pp. 843-845.
19.Ibid., p. 845.
20.Garo Pasdermadjian, Armenia: A Leading Factor in the Winning of the War, New York, American Community for Armenia, 1919.
21.Garo Pasdermadjian, Why Armenia Should Be Free? Armenia's Role in the Present War, Boston, Hairanik, 1918.
22. "Armenian Participation in World War I on the Caucasian Front," The Armenian Review, 82 (Summer 1968) and the following issues.
23.30 January 1919, p. 6.
24.A.P. Hacobian, Armenia and the War, London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1917, pp. 66 f.
25.For instance: G. Kotganoff, La Participation des Armeniens a la guerre mondial sur Ie front du Caucase: 1914-1918, Paris, Imp. Massis, 1927; A. Poidebard, Le Role militaire des Armeniens sur le front du Caucase apres la defection de I'armee russe, Paris, Imp. Nationale, 1920; R. Pinon, "L'Armenie belligerante, " La Voix de I'Armenie, Paris, Annee 1 (1918); E.J. Robinson, "The Case of Our Ally Armenia," Asiatic Review. London, Vol. XV (1919); F.R. Scatchard, "Armenia's True Interests and Sympathies in the Great War," Asiatic Review, Vol. VI (1914).
26.Stanford J. Shaw and Ezel Kural Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, Vol. II, Cambridge. Cambridge University Press, 1977, p. 362.
27.Cemal Paşa, Hatıralar, Istanbul, 1977, p. 438.
28.Clair Price, The Rebirth of Turkey, New York, 1923, pp. 86-87.
29.Rafael de Nogales, Four Years Beneath the Crescent, tr. Muna Lee, New York, 1926, p. 45.
30.Felix Valyi, Revolutions in Islam, London, 1925, pp. 233-234.
31.M. Philips Price, A History of Turkey, London, 1956, p. 91.
32.Philippe de Zara, Mustafa Kemal, Dictateur, Paris, 1936, pp. 159-160.
33.Commandant M. Larcher, La Guerre turque dans la guerre mondiale, Paris, E. Chiron-Berger Levrault, 1926, pp. 395-396.
34.Heath W. Lowry, The Story Behind Ambassador Morgenthau's Story, Istanbul, Isis Press, 1990.
35.New York, 1970, p. 50.
36.Eagles on the Crescent, Ithaca, Comell University Press, pp. 150-152,187.
37.Aram Andonian, Documents officiels concernant les massacres armeniennes, Paris, Imp. Turabian, 1920.;
38.Şinasi Orel and Sureyya Yuca, Ermeriilerce Talat Pasa'ya Atfedilen Telgraflann Gercek Yüzü, Ankara, Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1983. Also: Türkkaya Ataöv, The Andonian "Documents", Attributed to Talat Pasha, are Forgeries! Ankara, Siyasal Bilgiler Fakültesi, 1984.
40.George A. Schreiner, The Craft Sinister: A Diplomatico-Political History of the Great War and Its Causes, New York, G. Albert Geyer, 1920, p. xxxi.
41.Ibid., p.126.
41.The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, New York. Carroll and Graft Publishers.
42.Potsdam, Tempelverlag, 1919.
43.Erich Feig], A Myth of Terror o Armenian Extremism: Its Causes and Its Historical Context, Freilassing-Salzburg, Edition Zeitgeschiechte, 1986, pp. 87-88.
44.Gürün.op.cit.,p. 211.
45.Ibid., pp. 199,204-205.
46.Türkkaya Ataöv, Deaths Caused by Disease, in Relation to the Armenian Question, Ankara, Sevinç Matbaası, 1985.
47.Georges Boudiere, "Notes sur la Campagne de Syrie-Cilicie: L'Affaire de Maraş," Turcica, Vol. IX/2-X(1978),p.l60.
48.For instance: Justin McCarthy, "American Commissions to Anatolia and the Report of Niles and Sutherland," report to the Turkish Historical Society, General Conference, Ankara, 1990; Türkkaya Ataöv, The Reports (1918) of Russian Officers on Atrocities by Armenians, Ankara, Tmaz Matbaası, 1985.
49.For instance: Azmi Süslü, Gülay Öğün, Mehmet Törehan Serdar, Genocides commis par les Armeniens Van, Bitlis, Mus et Kars: interviews des temoins vivants. Van, Universite Yüzüncü Yıl, 1995; Enver Korukçu, Ermenilerin Yesilyayla'daki Türk Soykırımı: 11-12 Mart 1918, Ankara, Atatürk Universitesi, 1990; Cezmi Yurtsever, Kalekilise, Ankara, Kamu Hizmetleri Araştırma Vakfı, 1995; Hüseyin Çelik, Görenlerin Gözüyle Van'da Ermeni Mezalimi, Ankara, 1994; M. Fahrettin Kirzioğlu, Kars İli ve Çevresinde Ermeni Mezalimi: 1918-1920, Ankara, 1970.
50.Testimony by the Honorable Fred C. Ikle, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Before the Subcommittee on Security and Terrorism of the Senate Judiciary Committee," Washington, D.C., mimeographed, March 11,1982, p.6. Also: Michael M. Gunter, "Pursuing the Just Cause of Their People": A Study of Contemporary Armenian Terrorism. New York, Greenwood Press, 1986.
51.For instance: The Foundation for Establishing and Promoting Centers for Historical Research and Documentation, Ottoman Archives: Yıldız Collection, the Armenian Question, Vols, I-XV, Istanbul, 1989-; Askeri Tarih ve Stratejik Etüd Başkanlığı.Askeri Tarih Belgeleri Dergisi, No. 81 (1982) and the following, Ankara. For a general review of the value, diversity and features of the Ottoman archives, see: Türkkaya Ataöv, The Ottoman Archives and the Armenian Question, Ankara, Sistem Ofset, 1986.
52.See supra., fn. 38.
53.Bilal Şimşir, Malta Surgiinleri, Ankara, Bilgi Yayınevi, 1985.
54.Türkkaya Ataöv, Hitler and the "Armenian Question", Ankara, Sistem Ofset, 1984.
55.Heath W. Lowry, "The U.S. Congress and Adolf Hitler on the Armenians," Political Communication and Persuasion, Vol. 3/2 (1985), pp. 111-139.
56.Jak V. Kamhi, "Racism...Anti-Semitism," Seminar on Racism and Anti-Semitism, Istanbul, 19-20 January 1995 (under the auspices of the Council of Europe), p. 3. Also: Stanford J. Shaw, The Jews of the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic, London, Macmillan; New York, New York University Press, 1991; Mehmet Suphi, "The Expulsion of Safarad Jews: Regression in the Development of Modem Society," Mind and Human Interaction, Vol. 4, No. 1 (December 1992), pp. 40-51.
57.Stanford J. Shaw, Turkey and Holocaust: Turkey's Role in Rescuing Turkish and European Jewry from Nazi Persecution, 1933-1945, New York, New York University Press, 1993.
58.For instance: Horst Widmann. Exile und Bildungshiife: Die deutschsprachige akademische Emigration in die Turkei nach 1933, Bern, Frankfurt, 1973; Fritz Neumark, Zuflucht am Bosphor, Frankfurt, 1980.
59.Ruth Gruber, Right-Wing Extremism in Western Europe, New York, the American Jewish Committee, 1994.
60.Türkkaya Ataöv, A 'Statement' Wrongly Attributed to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, 3rd pr., Ankara, Meteksan, 1992.
61.Türkkaya Ataöv, Another Falsification: "Statement" (1926) Wrongly Attributed to M. Kemal Atatürk, Ankara, Sistem Ofset, 1988.
62.For instance: Turkkaya Ataöv, Documents on the Armenian Question: Forged and Authentic, Ankara, Barok Ofset, 1985.
63.Erik H. Erikson, Young Man Luther, New York, W. W. Norton, 1958; ______, Gandhi's Truth, New York, W. W. Norton, 1969.
64.Erikson, Young Man Luther, op. cit., p. 21.
65.Namık D. Volkan, The Need to Have Enemies and Allies: from Clinical Practice to International Relationship, Northvale, New Jersey; London, Jason Aronson Inc., 1994. As J. V. Montville states in the presentation of the book, with the publication of Volkan's work psychological elements in political analysis can no longer be overlooked (p. x). Volkan was the first president of the International Society of Political Psychology to come from a medical background. He is now the Director of the Center for the University of Virginia's School of Medicine. The center, which publishes the quarterly Mind and Human Interaction, focusses on the psy-chodynamics of large group processes or studies history with a psychoanalytic point of view. It sheds light on the hidden underpinnings of relations between neighbours in conflict. See: Vamik D. Volkan, Cyprus-War and Adaptation, Charlottesville, University Press of Virginia, 1980; ------ and Norman Itzkowitz, Turks and Greeks: Neighbours in Conflict, Cambridge, U.K., the Eothen Press, 1994. These studies suggest new methods to improve our understanding of the complex human dimensions of some ethnic/religious problems.
66.Vamık D. Volkan, "On Chosen Trauma," Mind and Human Interaction, Vol. 3, No. 1 (1991), p. 13.
67.W. W. Bernard, P. Ottenberg and F. Redl, "Dehumanization: a composite psychological defence in relation to modern war," Sanctions for Evil: Sources of Social Destructiveness, ed., N. Sanford and C. Comstock, San Francisco, Jossey-Bass, 1973, pp. 102-124.
68.R. R. Rogers, "Intergenerational Exchange: Transference of Attitudes Down the Generations," Modern Perspectives in the Psychiatry of Infancy, ed., J. Howells, New York, Brunner-Mazel, 1979, pp. 339-349.
69.Vamık D. Volkan, "The Dynamics of Global Ethnic Conflict: General Reflections and Specific Cases," paper for conferences at Havenford and Bryn Mawr Colleges, 1-2 October 1993.
70.Vamık D. Volkan and Max Harris, Shaking the Tent: the Psychodynamics of Ethnic Terrorism, Virginia, Center for the Study of Mind and Human Interaction, 1993.
71.See supra., fn. 50.
72.Heath W. Lowry, "Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Armenian Terrorism: 'Threads of Continuity,'" International Terrorism and the Drug Connection, Ankara, the University of Ankara Press, 1984, pp. 71-83.
73.David Marshall Lang, The Armenians: a People in Exile, London, Alien and Unwin, 1981, p. 7
From mfa.gov.tr/grupe/eg/eg38/default.htm
A "Statement" Wrongly Attributed to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
This is an important article (by Professor Ataöv) that shows not only what Mustafa Kemal did not say about the Armenians, but what he did say.
This is the Mustafa Kemal, universally known as "the Father of the Turks", who created a compact Turkey from the wide-strewn fragments of the Ottoman State, who gave the nation a new political system and who created a new generation with self-respect. There were, of course, others named as "Mustafa" or "Kemal" or both, not only during Atatürk's life-time but since the Turks adoption of Islam as their religion. It will be recalled that Muhammed Mustafa was the Prophet of Islam, and his name appeared in all Moslem countries as frequent as "François" in France.
The "Mustafa Kemal" that several Armenian and some foreign writers or spokesmen mix up, on account of lack of proper knowledge or sufficient good will, with the founder of the Turkish Republic is a namesake. The "error" may initially be traced to a French author, a certain Paul du Véou, who in his Le Désastre d'Alexandrette (34) wrote, in a footnote, that "Mustafa Kemal" had appeared before a tribunal in Istanbul on January 27, 1920, and had made a statement that placed responsibility on the shoulders of the Ottoman State for the "Armenian massacres", (For a photostatic reproduction of this source, see Annex 1 on page 6.)
It was common knowledge then, as it is now, that Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was already in Samsun on May 19, 1919, and was ordered to return to Istanbul as early as June 23 of the same year, an order which he disobeyed, resigning from the army on July 8, 1919. The Nationalist Congresses of Erzurum and Sivas were held under his presidency, in August and September of 1919 respectively. Mustafa Kemal established his headquarters at Ankara on December 27, 1919, about three weeks short of the "statement" he is supposed to have made at the Istanbul tribunal. Soon the Turkish Grand National Assembly met in Ankara. He was later condemned to death by the Sultan's Government in Istanbul, curiously enough by the same tribunal he is supposed to have appeared as a witness. Mustafa Kemal was in Ankara on January 27, 1920. How could he be in the Ottoman capital, especially under the conditions now known to the whole world? The chronology of events may easily be traced in several foreign sequential studies as well, such as Professor Gotthard Jaeschke's Die Türkei seit dem Weltkrige: Geschichtskalender, 1918-1920 (35) or the Documents on British Foreign Policy: 1919-1939, First Series, issued by the Foreign Office.
The "error" was repeated in a book entitled Les Memoires de Mgr. Jean Naslian by an Armenian Catholic Bishop. There is a reference on page 43 in the first volume of that publication, printed in Vienne in 1951, to a statement by "Mustafa Kemal". (See Annex 2) Bishop Naslian might have been misled by Paul du Véou's book or better by reference to a "Mustafa Pasha statement" in Le Bosphore, La Renaissance or other Armenian newspapers printed in Istanbul in 1919 and 1920. Le Bosphore was published by the occupying authorities in the Ottoman capital to further Armenian interests. Likewise, La Renaissance was a French-language paper, under the editorship of Hagopian Chaian, an Armenian, to serve the same interests. These papers and perhaps several others referred to a statement by "Nemrud" Mustafa Pasha. Bishop Naslian, however, confused him with the Mustafa Kemal. Armenian author Guerguerian advised Bishop Naslian to correct his memoirs before publishing; he never did. Moreover, it was translated into Armenian by Haik Stephanian as Arhi Hovhaness Arkyebiskopos Nasliani Housheruh. (36) The same error was reproduced in the Armenian version. It kept being repeated, for instance, by Jean Mécérian in his Le Génocide du peuple Arménien. (37) (See Annex 3.)
Author G. Guerguerian (referred to above), an American cleric with residence at Forest Hills (New York), might have been the first to correct this "error" with his article in Massis Weekly (1967), published in Beirut. The warning, however, went unnoticed. Armenian author Leon Surmelian, in his Preface to Andonian Shiragian's The Legacy: Memoirs of an Armenian Patriot, wrote: "The present Turkish Government and press seem to forget Mustafa Kemal Pasha's testimony before the Turkish war tribunal in Constantinople on January 28, 1919." He categorically adds: "The founder of the Turkish Republic spoke as an eyewitness of the Armenian horrors he personally witnessed. (38) On the heels of Surmelian, let me quote another Armenian, publisher Tashjian: "... There is no evidence at all in any source other than the suspect Naslian-based passage that he (Mustafa Kemal Pasha, the founder of modern Turkey) attended, testified or even addressed a memorandum on the Armenian case." (39)
Picking from sources like Naslian, the same error was repeated in Soviet Armenia. G. Arutyunov and G. Episkoposov, for instance, (the former a full Professor of History and the latter a PhD.) in a letter to the Novoye Vremya of December 4, 1981, published in several languages, once more quoted the same statement, falsely attributed to Atatürk. Further, the article of Mari Kochar, from the Yrevan State University (Armenian S.S. Republic), which appeared in the January 15, 1982 issue of the Karakan Tert (Literary Paper), has been extensively used in the Armenian press abroad. Yet again, Jon Kirakosian, from Soviet Armenia, repeated the same error in the April 1982 issue of the monthly Sovetaken Haiastan. (40) (See Annex 4). The same article is reprinted in many Armenian-language reviews all over the world-for instance, in the Baykar of Boston, June (Hunis) 1982. (41) A book, entitled The First Holocaust and edited by Hagop Terjimanian, an Armenian, carries the same false statement. (42) (See Annex 5.) The error, at times, stretches to sections of the Greek press as well.
Samples above in terms of "historicisme à l'Arménienne" may be sufficient. It was another Armenian writer, James H. Tashjian, the Editor of the Armenian Review, published in Boston, Mass., U.S.A. in a letter printed in March 20, 1982 issue of the Armenian Weekly, again brought out in Boston, who wrote that Mustafa Kemal "never appeared before such a tribunal, nor did he render such a statement". (See Annex 6). He called this an "astonishingly hard dying disorder" caused by "similarities in the names" and "questionable scholarship". Informing his readers that this matter would be subject of a corrective paper in his own journal, he urged that interested parties abstain from attributing to Mustafa Kemal Pasha the statement on the Armenians. Neither this announcement, nor his 18-page article (pp. 227-244) in Vol. XXXV, No. 3-139 (Autumn 1982) issue of the Armenian Review prevented the lawyers of the four accused Armenian terrorists at the Paris trial (January 1984), nor their associates in the French press, from presenting it to the Court or to public opinion as a "document". (For the first page of publisher Tashjian's article, see Annex 7).
Author Tashjian determines that on January 20, 1920 (and not on January 28, 1919), "Nemrud" Mustafa (Kemal) Pasha, an entirely different person read or submitted a memorandum to the very tribunal, where he was previously the chief but now replaced by a certain Esad Pasha. If Nemrud Mustafa has ever submitted such a memorandum to the summary court, he is supposed to have accused, according to Tashjian, some people of atrocities. Tashjian states that Nemrud Mustafa, now a defendant, was later absolved of charges and re-appointed as chief of the same court. What should interest us here is that Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was condemned to death in May 1920 by the same court, presided over by Nemrud Mustaa Pasha, with whom the founder of the Turkish Republic is so liberally "confused". Tashjian, who describes the disorder an "unhappily durable fiction", states that the aim of his paper is "to clear up this confusion once and for all". (As to the other points that publisher Tashjian is trying to make in the same article, he may read, by way of introduction, the books on Atatürk mentioned above. (43)
Corrections even by Armenians have failed to move other Armenians, who opportunistically placed their hope on slander, forgery and false propaganda. A most recent example is the reference to it on January 24, 1984, by a certain M. Aslanian, a member of the Paris Bar Association, during the trial of the four accused Armenians, guilty of carrying arms and explosives, attacking the Turkish Consulate-General in Paris, invading its premises, taking hostages, wounding and killing people, Aslanian's statement was apparently shared and approved by the other four lawyer-associates, who expected a cheap reward from a fallacy. Endeavouring to defend the four accused. M. Aslanian addressed a question to me in the court room, where I happened to be as a "Witness of Authority", as to what I had to say to that "statement by Mustafa Kemal, the founder of the Turkish Republic". When I replied that this statement was being wrongly attributed to the first President of our country, that even an Armenian source such as the Armenian Review, published in the United States of America, recently carried an article ascribing it to another person by the same name, and that I was in a position to submit the particulars of that article to the court, an uproar was heard from the defence bench, attempting to impress the judges and the members of the jury that the Turks were "denying" even such an authority as Mustafa Kemal. But I happened to be right and soon submitted a written statement to the court, quoting the author, title, date, number and pages of the Armenian article in question. It will be remembered that this article, as well, described the allegation as "fiction" and "confusion" and pleaded at the very end: "Let this fable die." I am reproducing my letter (see Annex 8.), addressed to M. Guy Floch, the President of the Court, who read it aloud to the defence lawyers. The five counsels of the accused Armenians subsequently read in private a letter meant for them all, in which I expressed readiness to tender my resignation from the university if the statement in question belonged to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, but that one would expect M. Aslanian to do the same and resign from the Bar Association, if the statement was not made by Atatürk, for submitting forgeries and trying to mislead justice. (See Annex 9.).
But this was not the end of the "acrobatics". Witness Yves Ternon also used the same fake statement for his own ends. And more importantly, not only the columns of several French papers preferred silence in terms of such corrections, but some referred to an Atatürk "statement", pretending as if it had not been proved false. A certain Charles Blacnhard of Le Matin apparently chose to re-write history, in his article on January 28, 1984, for the satisfaction of his associates when he continued to attribute the same false statement to "the father of modern Turkey". Some "erudition", some "reporting"! Antoine de Rivarol's dictum inevitably comes to mind here: "Ce qui n'est pas clair n'est pas Français". "Oublié tout cela", he categorically stated. (See Annex 10.) But he demonstrated undeniable "forgetfulness" when he was reminded by letter (See Annex 11) of the particular facts of his material error. I have also enclosed a copy of the communication pertaining to this point and addressed to the President of the Court, which was publicly disclosed by the latter. Reference to Reporter Blanchard's professional conscience having ailed to move him, I have ventured to send to the gentlemen another letter (See Annex 12), assessing his "methodology" of writing. To make an understatement, in no textbooks of journalism are such distortions and evasions described as truthful reporting.
The "error", nevertheless, still continues. Ankara article by Nishan Nercessian, entitled "Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and the Armenian Genocide", published in the Armenian Observer as recent as February 29, 1984 (See Annex 13) refers to the same statement, allegedly made by "the hero of the Gallipoli campaign". (44) Such repetitions, bound to come to an end, nevertheless, expose the prejudice, lack of erudition and sometimes even deceitfulness of its author.
Having established what Mustafa Kemal Atatürk has not said, one may proceed to see what he has said on the issue. To quote some important statements would be adequate. One is an interview on February 24, 1921, with columnist Clarence K. Streit of the Public Ledger, published in Philadelphia, in its March 27, 1921 issue. (See Annex 14.) The text of the interview may also be found in the archives of the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It was lately printed in the first volume of a Ministry of Culture publication, entitled The National Foreign Policy of Atatürk. (45) When asked his government's comment on the transfer of the Armenians, Mustafa Kemal replied:
"After making allowance for the enormous exaggerations always made by those who accuse their enemies, the transfer of Armenians reduces itself to his - The Armenian Dashnak Committee, then in the service of the Tsar, had caused the Armenian population behind our troops to revolt when the Russian Army began its great 1915 offensive against us.
"Obliged to retreat before the superior numbers and material of the enemy, we found ourselves constantly between two fires. Our convoys of supplies and wounded were pitilessly massacred, roads and bridges destroyed behind us and terror reigned the Turkish country-side. The bands, which committed these crimes and which included in their ranks Armenians able to bear arms, were supplied with arms, munitions and provisions in Armenian villages where, thanks to the immunities accorded in the capitulation's, certain foreign powers had succeeded during peacetime in establishing enormous stocks for this purpose. The world, which regards with indifference the fashion in which England, in peacetime and far from the battle field, treats the Irish nation, can not in all justice complain of the resolution we were obliged to take relative to the transfer of Armenian population.... The massacres and devastation's caused by Armenian bands while the Russians were evacuating our eastern provinces are sufficiently known. The American General Harbord, with whom I talked at Sivas and who after having visited these regions and having made edifying observations on the conduct of the Armenian bands, wrote to tell me that all I had related to him was true, is a witness from whom American opinion can usefully inform itself. The Dashnaks, moreover, continued their crimes in the zone of Kars and Oltu until the conclusion of the Alexandropol Treaty..."
The full quotation has been reproduced above on account of its authenticity and straight-forwardness. Mustafa Kemal underlines the conspiratorial nature of Armenian armed attacks, the bloodshed and massacre caused by them, endorsed by General Harbord as well. When asked about his opinion on the "Wilsonian boundaries" of Armenia, Mustafa Kemal retorded: "I find Mr. Wilson's project, tending to place several million Turks under the domination of several thousand Armenians, simply ridiculous."
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's reference to the Armenian massacres of the Moslem population is a reflection of a fact, an echo of the "other side of the coin". The curious phenomenon of suppressing all publication and talk about the massacre of Turks by various Armenian bands is a monstrous one-sidedness that approaches the limits of racism. Publications devoted solely to this discriminatory "scholarship" and "reporting" will certainly reach the world public in due time.
In the meantime, one may quote, within the general framework of this booklet, five original letters of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, some of which are being published here for the first time. A Mustafa Kemal telegram (See Annex 15.), (46) marked "very urgent", dated March 16, 1920 and addressed to the representatives of the Entente Powers in Istanbul and to Admiral Bristol, the U.S. High Commissioner, well expose the nature and the real causes of anti-Turkish propaganda based on alleged, new "massacre of 20,000 Armenians". He states that the Turkish nation is "grieved to see the occupation, under various pretexts, of most important portions of its lands left over from the Mondros (Mudros) Armistice", that it "expected modifications in accordance with our legitimate wishes and requirements of justice" but that "certain circles in Europe, which consider the furthering of a negative drive as imperative for their own interest" now have "fabricated the hated and most unjustified lie that there has been a new massacre of 20,000 Armenians in Anatolia". He further states that the Turks had found it "entirely unnecessary even to issue an official denial of this wholly untruthful falsification, on account of the presence of several persons and agents in the whole of Anatolia, representing the Entente Powers and the American Government". He points out that "there had been loss of life among the Turks, the French and the Armenians participating with the French troops, during clashes in and around Maras and Urfa". He underlines, however, that "this was not a massacre of Armenians". The Armenians brought to Cilicia from outside and those armed local Armenians had "carried out unbearable acts of aggression, continually sought the enlargement, with no reason whatsoever, of the area of occupation" and that the commanders of the occupation forces had "tolerated the Armenian attacks on the Moslem population". He adds:
"It is essential to add that, had the persons commanding the forces of occupation in and around Cilicia refrained from arming, conferring duties on and championing the Armenians, had they administered the various sections of the local population with justice and equity and had they desisted from expanding, with no grounds and remittingly, the territory, which was under the British at the end of the Armistice, now changed and occupied, these unfortunate clashes, having led to the loss of life of so many people, would never have taken place".
Mustafa Kemal further adds that this was "the real nature of the lies on the so-called massacre of Armenians in Anatolia" and that "the declaration already made by the Armenian representatives and notables of the people of Maras, supposedly massacred, absolutely supports this fact". He asks the Entente Powers and the U.S. Government to assist in the formation of an "international supreme council to investigate on spot and at once this fabricated story of the Armenian massacres and illuminate the world.... on the nature.... of this propaganda.... aiming to mislead public opinion."
In another letter to the Ministry of War on February 29, 1919 (See Annex 16) (47) Mustafa Kemal relates that a "British officer, accompanied by an Armenian interpreter, has come to Beyazit from Igdir and spoke to the Lieutenant Governor there, telling him that Beyazit and its environs have been assigned to Armenia under British custody and that 15,000 Armenian refugees, under the protection of regular Armenian troops, would be transferred to the liva (subdivision of a vilayet or province) of Beyazit". He adds that the Turkish Lieutenant Governor informed the British officer that he had "not received any official communication from his own government in respect to measures pertinent in this case", that "the number of the refugees ought to be 7-8,000" instead of 15,000 and that there was "no need for them to come under the protection of Armenian troops". He also quotes the Turkish Lieutenant Governor's figure as to "the Moslem population of Beyazit being 80,000" and stresses himself that "a concession of even an inch of land to Armenia in the Eastern Vilayets is unthinkable".
Mustafa Kemal's letter of June 5, 1919 (see Annex 17), (48) written from Havza (No.343451) and addressed to the Office of the Prime Minister, states, inter alia, that within the borders of the liva of Amasya, there had been "no Moslem attacks on the Christians", but Christian bands have carried five consecutive raids on the Moslem population, that "certain Greek and Armenian provocateurs continue their policy and attitude to create events directed against the Islamic peoples in order to show the administration as defective, to invite occupation and intervention and especially applying directly to foreign officers and entirely bypassing the government, at places where such foreign army personnel may be found". He emphasizes that the Moslem citizens, though regretful about it all, nevertheless, "keep quiet". Underscoring that "the leaders of the Armenian and the Greek bands are spoiled by the British officers and some American personnel whom they invariably contact", he adds that these foreigners are "misled and deceived". He further states, in the last paragraph of his communication, that the Armenians are "active and in preparation" in Caucasia and in the east of Erzurum, Erzincan and Van.
In a letter to the General Staff on May 25, 1919, (see Annex 18), (49) Mustafa Kemal informs that "three-hundred Armenians with three heavy machine guns and considerable explosives" have been penetrating from the north-east corner of Erzurum, that they were expected to become active in the interest of their "political objectives" as soon as the climate allows and hence that "the 15th Army Corps should not only be left intact, but even enlarged in accordance with circumstances".
Still another Mustafa Kemal documents (see Annex 19) is a draft of a telegram sent to the Italian representative at Alanya (south-western Turkish port in the Mediterranean), to be dispatched to the Paris Peace Conference, the Entente Powers, the American Government and the diplomatic representatives of the neutrals. The statement refers to the "Armenian destruction of forty Moslem villages", where a portion of the "civilian population was subjected to slaughter" and "belongings openly sold in the markets of Kars". His report also informs the foreign representatives that armed Armenian bands of similar make-up were preparing attacks on other regions to be followed by similar bloodshed. Mustafa Kemal forcefully protests against such aggression.
The above appraisal of affairs, chosen to be ignored by militant Armenians and consequently not properly acknowledged by the rank and file, is, nevertheless, shared by no less than Hovhannes Katchaznouni, the first Prime Minister of the independent Armenian Republic, a pillar of Dashnagtzoutiun and certainly someone who should know. His talk at the Convention of foreign branches of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, convened in 1923 in Bucharest, was also partly printed in New York in 1955 by the Armenian Information Service. Translated from the original by Matthew A. Callender, it is interestingly entitled as The Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnagtzoutiun) Has Nothing To Do Any More. Difficult to find copies of the book nowadays in the libraries of the world (from where they have probably been systematically eliminated and destroyed), I shall take the liberty to summarize in the near future, in the form of a separate booklet, some of the ideas and evaluations in it, along with another important work, entitled Patriotism Perverted by another Armenian author, K.S. Papazian. I do believe, however, that it is appropriate here to make brief references to a few statements of H. Katchaznouni. He admits, for instance, that in 1914 when Turkey had not yet entered the war, the Dashnags were forming bands for future military action against Turkey, contrary to the decision and the will of the General Meeting of the Party. (50) He confesses that, having embraced Tsarist Russia wholeheartedly, they had created a dense atmosphere of illusion and had lost all sense of reality. (51) He adds that they should have used peaceful language with the Turks. (52)
The Armenian statesman and author further says: "When the skirmishes had started, the Turk proposed that we meet and conter. We did not do so and defied them". (53) The result was the Gümrü (Alexandrropol, Leninakan) Treaty of December 1 (or November 30) 1920 with the Turks, establishing the border.
Another Armenian, K.S. Papazian published his Patriotism Perverted in Boston in1934, with the purpose of presenting to the English-speaking Armenians and to the American public in general, a clear picture of the organization called the Armenian Revolutionary Federation. Leaving aside for the time being many interesting evaluations of the Dashnags background, past activities, purposes and methods, one may quotea few statements, pertinent to the topic of this booklet. Papazian admits that the Dashnags gave assurances that in the event of a war between Russia and Turkey, "they would support Turkey as loyal citizens". (54) He adds, however, that they "did not carry their promise". He says that "they were swayed in their actions by the interests of the Russian Government". He accepts the fact that "the methods used.... were so open and flagrant, that it would not escape the attention of the Turkish authorities". (55) He states that the war with Turkey was the outcome of the Act of May 28, 1919, by which the government of the Armenian Republic claimed possession of certain provinces in Eastern Republic the readers that the existing Republic was recognized by the Turks under the Treaty of Batoum, he says that one can readily comprehend why the Turks regarded the Act of May 28, 1919, as a provocation for war. He also reminds that the men who signed the Treaty of Sevres on August 10, 1920, were the same who repudiated it and the claims of the Armenians in Turkey by signing the Treaty of Gümrü. (56)
The Dashnags were driven out of authority when the Soviet Armenian Republic was formed. Hatchaznouni and Papazian both state that Simon Vratzian, the last Prime Minister of the Armenian Government, sent on March 18, 1921, a formal appeal to Mustafa Kemal's government in Ankara seeking military assistance from it. (57). In the words of author Papazian, this appeal of Vratzian was the "ratification of the Treaty of Alexandropol, by which the Dashnag leaders declared to the whole world that Armenia has renounced all her demands on Turkey and has no more cause of dispute". (58)
FOOTNOTES
Açiklamali Atatürk Kaynakçisi, Ankara, Türkiye Is Bankasi, 1981
Sami N. Özerdim, 10 Kasim-31 Aralik 1938 Günlerinde Türk Basininda Türkiye için Yazilmis Yazilarin Bibliyografyasi, Ankara, Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1958.
Atatürk: Biography, Ankara, Turkish National Commission for UNESCO. 1981 (French: Atatürk: Vie et Oeuvre; German: Atatürk: Sein Leben und sein Werk).
Nimed Arsan, ed., Atatürk'ün Söylev ve Demeçleri, Vol. I, 2nd Pr., Ankara, Türk Inkilap Tarihi Enstitüsü, 1981, p. 380.
Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1965.
Atatürk the Birth of a Nation, Nicosia, K. Rustem and Brother, 1981, p.140.
Ibid., p. xviii.
Original Spanish: Jorge Blanco Villalta, Kemal Atatürk: El Constructor do la Nueva Turquia. Buenos Aires, Claridad, 1939; 2nd Pr., 1945; English ed.: Atatürk, tr. By Willam Campbell, Ankara, Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1979, pp. xi-xiii.
Türkkaya Ataöv, "Atatürk-More Than a National Leader", Darshana International, Moradabad, India, Vol. XXII, No. 1 (January 1982), pp. 16-20.
Atatürk'ün Söylev ve Demeçleri, op.cit., Vol.II, p.21.
Delhi, Macmillan, 1983.
Ibid., p. 73.
R.K. Sinha, Kurtulus Savasi, Devrimler: Mustafa Kemal ve Mahatma Gandi, 1919-1928, Istanbul, Milliyet, 1972.
Kemal: Maker of Modern Turkey, London H. Joseph, 1934.
For reference to this talk, see: Türkkaya Ataöv, "Atatürk: Pioneer Against Oppression",. The Standart, Nairobi, Kenya, November 2, 1981, p.4.
Reveil d'une race: dans la Turquie de Mustafa Kemal, Paris,Nouvelle Société d'Edition, 1927.
Turquie d'Atatürk, Paris, E.Ray, 1935.
l'Europe et la Turquie nouvelle, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1922.
Moustapha Kemal Atatürk: Créateur de la Turquie moderne, Paris. Nouvelles Editions Latines, 1958.
Moustapha Kemal ou la rénovation de la Turquie, Paris, Bibliothèque Charpentier, 1921.
Nationalisme turc, Paris, Plon, 1921.
For instance: Bernard Lewis. The Emergence of Modern Turkey, London, Oxford University Press, 1968.
Karel Pravec, Kemal Atatürk, Praha, Nakladatelstvi Svoboda, 1967.
For instance: Zoran Tomic, Kemal Atatürk: Tvorats Nove Turske, Beograd, Planeta, 1939.
Petro Ghiata, Atatürk, Bucurexti, Editura Enciclopedica Romana, 1975.
For instance: Thomas A. Vaidis, Kemal Atatürk: O Demiourgos tes Neas Tourkias, Atenai,Akropolis, 1936.
For instance Stefan Velikov, Kemalistkata Revolutsiya: Bilgarskata Obstestvennost, 1918-1922, Sofya Institut po Balkanistika, 1966.
For instance: Aziz Hanki, Etrak ve Ataturk, El-Kahire, 1939.
A Year's Embassy to Mustafa Kemal, New York and London, C. Scribner's, 1934.
Das Land Kemal Ataturk's: der Werdengang der Modernen Türkei, Wien-Leipzig, W. Braumüller, 1935.
Kemal Atatürk un die moderne Türkei, Berlin, VEB Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, 1971.
Kemal Atatürk: Untergang und Aufstieg der Türkei, Frankfurt/Main Societats Verlag, 1937.
Leipzig, P.List, 1935.
Paris, Editions Baudinière, 1938,p. 121.
Berlin, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Islamkunde, 1929.
Beirut, Armenian Catholic Press, 1960.
Beirut, 1965, pp. 50-51.
Boston, (Hairenik, 1 1976, pp. xii-xiii, Emphasis mine.
James H. Tashjian, "On a Statement Condemning the Armenian Genocide of 1915-18 Attributed in Error to Mustafa Kemal, Later "The Atatürk", The Armenian Review, Boston, Mass., Vol. XXXV, No.3-139 (Autumn 1982), p.230.
Yerevan, No. 4 (April 1982), pp. 14-15.
The article, "amusingly" entitled "Badbutyan Pasteri a la Turc" (or History-Writing in the Turkish Fashion), itself reproduces a false statement.
Pasadean, California, Siran Editions, 1982, p.4.
Apart from his serious misconceptions and misjudgments, Tashjian has also committed various factual errors as well. For instance, Halide Edip, Turkey's leading woman intellectual of the time, was not the wife of Ziya Gökalp. (See Tashjian op.cit., p. 242, footnote 24).
See the center-spread of the Armenian Observer, Los Angeles, California, Vol. XIV. No. 14 (Wednesday, February 29, 1984).
Atatürk'ün Milli Dis Politikasi, Vol. I, Ankara, Kültür Bakanligi, 1981, pp. 257-276: Hakimiyeti Milliye, Ankara, 8 Temmuz 1921; Sami N. Özerdim., "Kurtulus Savasimiz Içinde Bir Amerikali Gazetecinin Izlenimleri", Türk Dili, Ankara, No:22 (Subat 1970), pp. 367-369
T.C. Genelkurmay Baskanligi, Askeri Tarih ve Stratejik Etüd Baskanligi, Atatürk Arsivi, K. 23, D. 1336/13-1, F.32-1.
Ibid., D. 167,F. 43-1.
Also printed in: T.C.; Basbakanlik Osmanli Arxivi Daire Baskanligi, Atatürk ile Ilgili Arsiv Belgeleri: 1911-1921 Tarihleri Arasina Ait 108 Belge, Ankara, 1982, pp. 34-36, 138-140.
Askeri Tarih ve Stratejik Etüd Baskanligi, op. Cit., A. 1/1, D. 164, F. 47-1.
P. 5 and f.
Ibid., p. 6.
Ibid., p. 9.
Ibid., p. 10.
p. 37.
Ibid., p. 38.
Ibid., p. 44-45.
Ibid., p.50.
Ibid., p. 51.
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