273) Killings From 90 Years Ago - Haunt Turkey in its EU Bid

THE NUMBERS GUY  By CARL BIALIK   
   
 
  May 16, 2005
 
 
 The Ottoman empire's deportation and mass killing of Armenians 90 years ago has become a tense issue for modern-day Turkey, which is being pressured by the European Union and some of its member nations to acknowledge the actions as genocide and open up its archives. And questionable numbers are a central part of the controversy.
 
 Armenia argues that as many as 1.5 million Armenians were massacred. But Turkey says the number of dead was no more than 600,000 and possibly far fewer, and says the killings were justified as the product of armed conflicts that swept the region at the time. Scholars disagree on the number, and politics have obstructed honest statistical debate.
 
 Some background: In the final years of the Ottoman empire -- which stretched from modern-day Turkey to much of Europe, northern Africa and the Middle East for more than 600 years -- a Turkish nationalist government led mass deportations and killings of Armenians. The violence lasted from 1915 until the early 1920s. Modern-day Turkey says the targeted Armenians, an ethnic minority present throughout the empire, had conspired with Russians in military operations against the empire, and that Armenians' revolutionary actions against the state spurred the mass deportations. Neither Turkey nor Armenia existed as nations during the violence, yet many Turks and Armenians line up today to defend their ethnic groups' historical records.
 
 Immigration, trade issues and Turkey's Muslim majority -- which would be unique in the EU -- all are playing a large role in the run up to negotiations over membership, scheduled to begin in October. Against this backdrop, Turkey's historical dispute with Armenia has emerged as a potential stumbling block to membership. Heiki Talvitie, the EU's special representative to the South Caucasus, said recently at a press conference that Turkey's membership chances hinged in part on its relations with Armenia, according to Agence France Presse. Currently the countries have no diplomatic relations, and a major reason is the dispute over whether the Ottomans committed genocide. In the past decade, national legislatures of several EU members, including France, Italy and the Netherlands, have called the killings genocide. The U.S. and Turkey have not.
 
 Disputed death tolls often follow genocide, according to Richard Garfield, a professor of nursing at Columbia University who has extensively studied mass killings. "The politicization of mortality data means that controversy and wide variations in estimates is the norm," Dr. Garfield says. He has worked in Liberia, Yugoslavia and Haiti, helping to improve death counts from modern-day conflicts.
 
 Of course, I can't conclusively determine how many Armenians died. But I'll explain how scholars arrived at their estimates and why counting the dead is such a complex business.
 
 Even in a political vacuum, counting the dead from nearly a century ago would be difficult. The killers had no reason to tally their victims, nor were international organizations in place to monitor the killing. So researchers have employed a brute tool: subtraction. They compare the number of Armenians before World War I with the number of survivors, who were spread across many surrounding countries. The difference in population becomes the number of victims. Of course, that doesn't account for newborns. It also includes deaths from disease and starvation, and while those deaths may be related to the killings, it's debatable whether they should be included in the overall count. "There really isn't the information to make an evidence-based consensus about how many people died," Dr. Garfield says.
 
 As I noted in a previous column, even today in some parts of the world population counts are unreliable. All the more so, then, in rural areas of the Ottoman empire. Before the killings there were two parallel efforts to count the living -- one by the Ottomans, and one by the Armenian church -- but there are suggestions both groups' motivations may have affected their accuracy (more on that in a moment). So researchers trying to arrive at a death count adjust the population numbers, and those adjustments can have a big impact on end results. For example, count more prewar Armenians, and you'll get a higher death toll.

 

 

 

My column last week on the number of Armenians who died in mass killings and deportations in the Ottoman empire 90 years ago sparked a lot of mail, including several letters criticizing the column for minimizing the deaths and for seeming to set a numerical threshold for determining if genocide was committed. Neither was intended by the column, which looked behind a historical death toll that is often repeated without explanation, to examine how it was calculated. Armenian groups and advocates who are pushing Turkey to call the killings a genocide often cite death tolls in their accounts.
 
 Here are some letters, edited for space and clarity:
 
 Dr. Papazian made the most salient point in your article -- getting lost in the numbers shouldn't divert attention from what is most important, which is that the Armenians were subjected to a methodical and diabolical genocide perpetrated by the Turkish government and its constituents. ... Using numbers to play politics with the lives of those who died for their cultural identity and their religion is a shameful game that only the guilty and the conscienceless would play.
 -- Peter Abaci
 
 A point you seemed to have completely ignored in your article were the number of Muslims killed. This is a scary issue and the psychology behind the bloodshed in the Middle East. A dead Christian gets counted but no one cares about a dead Muslim. The McCarthy study touches on that issue very well. ... Also why is McCarthy the only academic you mention from a Turkish-friendly point of view?
 -- Omer Koker
 
 I am an Armenian descendent living in Brazil. ... You can ask any Armenian you find in Diaspora, in any country of the world, and you'll find that they had lost relatives during the genocide. In my case, I lost three of my grandparents, burnt inside a church, among other relatives. ... It's not a game of numbers, it's a question of conscience and justice.
 -- Andrew R. Apovian
 
 Your first mistake is grossly undercounting the number of experts and countries that affirm the Armenian genocide as a fact. At least 100 of the most renowned genocide and Holocaust experts in the world have affirmed the genocide of 1915. Moreover, scores of countries, U.S. states, municipalities, and international organizations have done so. See here and here for lists of experts, countries, international organizations, and others that have formally affirmed the Armenian genocide. ... The Armenian genocide has been studied to death, as have the fatality figures. The genocide is a fact that has been proven time and time again. You should not have presented it as debatable, just so that you would appear to be "fair-minded."
 
 Another example of Number Guy's undercounting is the absolutely amazing statement that Armenians who died of "disease and starvation" should probably not be counted as part of the killing. Numbers Guy, the "deportations" are regarded as death marches by all experts on those events.
 -- David B. Boyajian
 
 Several readers cited the recognition of the genocide by scholars and governments. But these recognitions don't always cite specific numbers of Armenians killed. And the politicians and scholars generally didn't directly study the death toll. What interested me was the actual source of the numbers -- the scholarship upon which the numbers were based.
 
 As for David's second point: I didn't say such deaths probably should not be counted; I said it was debatable. The estimates of Armenian deaths are derived indirectly from reduced population counts, from all causes. There are no reliable counts of how many died directly from Ottoman actions, hence the uncertainty.
 
 Increased study into what you called the harbingers of genocide (such as undercounting the targeted population) might even help improve early detection and help save lives. Continuing to focus on counting the dead in order to define genocide will only perpetuate debate after-the-fact, which will always be too late.
 -- Basil Valentine
 
 I appreciated your thoughtful article about how many Armenians died in 1915. However, I am more optimistic about the chances of resolving these disputes. Specifically, I have been campaigning for the setting up of an independent international historical commission under the umbrella of UNESCO [the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization]. This is quite distinct from the recent proposal of the Turkish government for a bilateral Turkish-Armenian historical commission. The Turkish proposal is a significant step forward and has been welcomed by many governments but contains serious flaws -- not least that the Armenians will not be willing participants. The Armenians argue that no more research needs to be done but this cannot be accepted when so many facts and documents are disputed, and archives still closed. ... A bilateral commission composed of Turks and Armenians will inevitably be dominated by political not scientific issues, filled with partisan historians bickering over the validity of documents and definitions.
 -- Patrick Byrne, editor, Turkey In Europe online magazine
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 Tuluy Tanc, minister counselor of the Turkish embassy in Washington, cited death counts to me as low as 8,000 to 9,000, based on records Ottomans kept. But those doing the killing are hardly credible sources for a death toll. Mr. Tanc said he wouldn't insist on any particular set of numbers, saying his government has also recognized estimates up to 600,000. "There are many, many different sources," he says. The embassy's Web site cites figures between 500,000 and 600,000.
 
 Justin McCarthy, a professor at the University of Louisville, arrived at a count of 600,000 dead by using official Ottoman population registrations. He adjusted for an assumed undercounting of women and children, a common problem in unsophisticated population counts, and arrived at a prewar population of 1.5 million for Armenians living in the eastern part of the Ottoman empire, known as Anatolia. Then he counted 900,000 survivors, based on official data from Russia and other countries where they settled. Dr. McCarthy published his findings in 1983; they were double many earlier estimates.
 
 In 1991, Levon Marashlian, a professor of history at Glendale Community College in Glendale, Calif., published a critique accusing Dr. McCarthy of undercounting. Among his arguments: Armenians were likely undercounted because they hid from officials during the conflict. "If you hide, you're not taxed, you're not conscripted," Dr. Marashlian told me. And he says the Ottomans had their own reasons to undercount: "The Ottoman government had the motivation to show as few Armenians as possible, because the Europeans were pressuring Ottomans to institute reforms." He cites contemporary accounts that indicate the Ottomans were suppressing the numbers. Dr. Marashlian thus adjusts Dr. McCarthy's prewar estimates higher, and notes that the new results are closer to the Armenian church's own numbers. He concludes there were two million Armenians before the war, and he counts only 800,000 survivors, yielding an estimated total of 1.2 million dead.
 
 Dr. McCarthy, in turn, says the Ottomans' adult male records were accurate, and disputes the Armenian church's numbers.
 
 "The Ottomans in general were good counters," says Columbia's Dr. Garfield, but he adds that the Ottomans' population figures -- 1.5 million for the eastern part of the empire, after Dr. McCarthy's adjustments -- are suspect because a harbinger of genocide is the undercounting of the targeted group. "It's a step toward their nonpersonhood," he says.
 
 George Aghjayan, an actuary who sits on the eastern region board of the Armenian National Committee of America, has also studied Dr. McCarthy's numbers in detail. He sent me a lengthy critique by e-mail. Among his arguments: Many Armenian men traveled outside the empire for work, which would contribute to undercounting of prewar adult males; and that Dr. McCarthy's technique for estimating Armenian survivors who ended up in Russia could lead to overcounting. The bottom line, according to Mr. Aghjayan: By undercounting prewar Armenians and overcounting survivors, Dr. McCarthy would undercount the dead.
 
 An estimate of 1.5 million deaths has become the standard number in op-ed articles and news accounts of Armenian versions. That's the number on the Armenian National Institute's Web site. Rouben Adalian, director of the institute, concedes the number is an estimate that includes additional Armenian deaths related to the fallout of the original killings. He says he is confident that an estimate of more than one million "is very secure."
 
 In the academic ideal, researchers could come together at conferences and meetings and work toward a consensus figure. But there is too much venom in the air. Armenian advocacy groups and some scientists I spoke to labeled Dr. McCarthy a Turkish apologist. He, in turn, speaks dismissively of some of his critics. "It's hard to say this is scholarly debate," he told me. "It's two sides presenting their position and not talking to each other." Meanwhile, Armenian scholars charge the Turkish government with limiting access to the Ottoman archives to some favored researchers, preventing new information from emerging and possibly helping to clarify the debate.
 
 "I think 100 years from now, our debate about Armenian events will not be that different than it is today, because we have limited, conflicting information," Dr. Garfield says.
 
 Some advocates and scholars I contacted for this article said pinning down exact numbers isn't necessary. Dennis R. Papazian writes on the Web site of the Armenian Research Center at University of Michigan-Dearborn, where he serves as director: "Does it really make the actions of Turkey better if they succeeded in killing only 600,000 Armenians and not 1.5 million? …In any case, it was genocide."
 
 Are death tolls from today's conflicts bound to be disputed a century hence? It's a question worth asking in light of the continued Armenian controversy. Les Roberts, a research associate at Johns Hopkins University who has worked on counting the dead in Congo, Rwanda and Sierra Leone, painted a dismaying picture of current efforts. In an e-mail from Afghanistan, he mentioned two key challenges. First, "No one can agree on how to define the death toll from a conflict, just the deaths from intentional violence or all those that died because the violence occurred." (The Armenian numbers include both.) And, secondly, "No one is charged or expected to count the deaths from conflict. The [International Committee of the Red Cross] avoids the topic so that they can work with all sides. The press is bad at it. The public health crowd is very adverse to being killed so they rarely estimate deaths until conflicts are over."
 
 But Columbia's Dr. Garfield was more hopeful, saying that methods have improved markedly; researchers, for instance, survey refugees in camps during ongoing conflicts about mortality among friends and neighbors. "I am optimistic about our ability to provide people with a better base," Dr. Garfield says. "It makes it harder to lie."
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 My column last week provoked some interesting responses. First, here a couple of letters about the oft-cited statistic that 70% to 80% of rap buyers are white.
 
 You conclude that the 70-80% statistic does hold up, due to the answers from the [Mediamark Research Inc.] booklet results. However, the respondents are not randomly selected. First, MRI has to select the families and then the families have to return the booklets. If the return rate differs according to some factor that is also correlated to rap-music purchases, then the MRI results could be off. For example, if 50% of rap music is purchased by rich white kids and 50% by poor black kids and most of the MRI booklets are returned by wealthy families, then it would not be surprising to see that white rap consumers are over reported.
 -- Tom Tatlow
 
 Tom, good point. I didn't fully explain the MRI methods. They tell me they aim for a representative sample -- deliberately contacting more wealthy households, who might be less incentivized by the cash rewards -- and then adjust the responses to correct for oversampling of any demographics. That said, like with any survey, it is possible that some characteristic that can't be corrected for makes some people more likely to respond than others. Also, in the end I concluded that 70% to 80% isn't right, because in the latest MRI numbers, the percentage came in closer to 60%.
 
 The above percentages [60% of rap buyers are white, though 78% of Americans are white] result in an index of 76 ... from a base of 100 (60% divided by 78% x 100). An Index of 76 signifies that the market group (whites) is under-represented by 24%, which is "significant" to many marketers. As a direct marketing consultant I frequently observe clients that will not even consider marketing to groups with an Index of 76.
 -- Kenneth D. Newton, Dirmark Inc.
 
 We also printed many letters about the prior week's column on gay foster parenting, and these letters provoked more interesting responses.
 
 I would like to respond to Dan from Corvallis, whose main complaint seems to be that you attribute same-sex abuse to heterosexuals. ... He misses the point entirely. The point is that these abusers would not have been weeded out in a system which did not give foster children to openly gay couples. They consider themselves hetero, regardless of what Dan considers them. Therefore, when they are asked under this new proposed rule whether or not they are gay, they will still say no and, perhaps, be given foster children.
 -- Josh Wroniewicz
 
 Several readers offered conflicting comments on the practice of journals charging authors for publication.
 
 You are being too nice to these guys. Any publication that charges contributors is in the advertising business. The people that appear in these kinds of publications are those whose submissions would not make it through a more rigorous review process (otherwise why would they pay to publish something that other publications would print for free?).
 -- Don Shobrys
 
 There are several journals in economics, especially agricultural economics where researchers are funded by grants, that have page charges. These journals will waive the charges and publish the paper if the authors' employer or a grant can not fund the pages. It seems that this is an important distinction between reputable and not-so-reputable journals.
 -- John Whitehead, department of economics, Appalachian State University
 
 Maybe in psychology journals don't ask for money when publishing an article, but it is a common practice in top-tier journals in other areas. The Association for Computing Machinery publishes many of the important journals in computer science, and asks for a fee for published work. For example, the Journal of the ACM charges $60 per printed page. What's important to note is that they bill after a paper has been scheduled for publication, and that the expectation is that most authors are a part of a well-funded enough organization to pay the fee for them.
 -- Adam Pennington
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 Write to me at numbersguy@wsj.com. I'll post and respond to selected letters here soon. WSJ.com subscribers can also sign up to receive an e-mail notice when new Numbers Guy columns are published (nonsubscribers can sign up by clicking here). Read other columns at WSJ.com/NumbersGuy.