275) Armenian Oral History

 

 

 

 The first anecdote below relies on what is called a "song." Interestingly, the main " evidence" of the Armenian "Genocide" boils down to what could be the line of a blues song: "My grandmama done tol' me..."
 
 Followed at bottom of page by a report on Ellis Island.
   
 Kill All the Orphans 
 
 Arshalous Norhadian Kebabjian was born in 1909 and arrived at Ellis Island in 1920. This 1993 interview is taken from the Ellis Island Oral History Program Archives.
 
 "One day they tried to kill all the orphans. We have a song on that. I used to sing and I used to cry about that. "They wanted to take everything they had in the house there and they want to, oh, kill all the orphans' ...Every day the orphans sang and they used to cry, especially persons like, you know, some persons have no feelings. But some of them, they feel it in their hearts. They start to cry like rivers."
 
 
 
 There were many unfortunate Armenian orphans. Just like there were many Turkish, Kurdish and other Muslim orphans that we never get to hear about. (Here's some more.) What a terrible thing to be an orphan, especially if your families had been brutally massacred, from both sides. Who wouldn't cry, if an orphan, especially under such horrifying circumstances.
 
 Now, I don't know what the rest of the story is, here... perhaps the answer can be found at Ellis Island, another institution that has been wholly persuaded by the Armenians to report their side, and theirs alone (see below); I hope whomever "They" were who tried to kill the orphans did not succeed. But who were "They"? Were "They" the revenge minded Ottoman Muslims whose loved ones had been viciously massacred by their own fellow citizens, the Armenians? Or were "They" the bad government representatives, as no doubt the Armenians would prefer us to believe? Certainly there were low-quality, unprofessional men among the gendarmes assigned to protect the Armenians.... since the high quality men were desperately needed at the Russian front, or for fighting treacherous Armenian forces from within. The key word here is, They "tried" to kill all the orphans. If the villains of this story were the gendarmes, they must have been really incompetent at their jobs; assuming these gendarmes decided to murder these orphans, how much effort would it have taken for an armed soldier to murder a little, defenseless orphan?
 
  I Cannot Walk
 
 
 Arousiag Dadian Boyajian was born in 1905 and came to Ellis Island in 1921. This 1993 Interview is taken from the Ellis Island Oral History Program Archives
 
 "I told my mother, 'I cannot walk.' Anyway, before we got there I told many times to my mother, 'Please, leave me here. I want to stay here. I can't walk anymore.' And she used to drag me. One day all the group went and just me and my mother were left, 'I'm not coming, you go.' So the gendarme came back from the group and he came and hit my mother with the rifle, you know with the sword. And I was hollering, she was hollering ...He said, `Come on, walk.' So we walked."
 
 This must be the only example of Armenian Oral History that showed a gendarme as a hero. Who knows what could have happened to the mother and child if they were left behind in no man’s land.
 Comments from a Guestbook 
 
 I come in peace
 From: an ARMENIAN
 Date: 11/4/99
 
 
 
 I do not expect for people to like what I am goin to write, but I have to this off my chest. There was an Armenian genocide. Ever since I was a youn boy my grandfather told me stories about his childhood in Armenia. He used to break down and cry when he told me about his immediate family. He said his sisters were raped and clothless, and thrown into a lake with a huge net above them so they would tangle and drownd themselves. His younger brother was beatin on his head with the back of a rifle (why waste bullets?), and parents stripped of their cloths and shot. That story will be with me forever, and every other Armenian with grandparents that went through the genocide have similar stories. Not to mention is was in newspapers and recorded. I don't want to argue with anyone, and armenians will chill out one day, but it is impossible to live on, knowing that people still deny that it was even a genocide.
 
 
 
 No doubt awful things took place, "An Armenian"... on both sides. Turks have stories no less blood-curdling, at the hands of the Armenians. The questions are... who committed these crimes, and why were they committed? Were the criminals involved Turkish soldiers on orders of their government, or were they those who suffered at the hands of the Armenians and were out for revenge... or criminals and opportunists who took advantage of the Armenians poorly protected from sufficient guard-power because there was a full scale war going on, abetted by treacherous Armenians? At his trial, the assassin of Talat Pasha related horror stories like the ones your father unfortunately poisoned your mind with, and here is his answer when he was asked whether the criminals were Turkish soldiers. The issue is not whether Armenians suffered... the Turks admit there were Armenian massacres, unlike the Armenians, who won't admit the terrible crimes their fathers committed against Turks (genuinely documented by American, Russian and other "neutral" eyewitnesses; in contrast, you won't get any eyewitnesses for the Armenians... the likes of Morgenthau, the missionaries, and Leslie Davis only saw dead bodies/suffering people, if that; mostly, they listened to and believed in the tales told by Armenians).
 
 The issue is, were these crimes and tragedies state-sponsored? There is simply no reliable documented evidence to prove it. As a result, it is disgusting that the "Boo-hoo, feel sorry for me" attitude of the Armenians continues to slander the honor and reputation of the Turks. And will the Armenians ever "chill out" one day? I hope so, but not when the Armenian "Genocide" has become such a crucial raison d'etre for the Armenians... the Armenians need the enemy, and have made the falsified genocide a cause of their existence. I don't believe even a signed decree from God will persuade the Armenians to believe there was no genocide, so ingrained has this genocide idea become... and so essential to the Armenian sense of identity. (For such a gifted people... how sad.)
 
 Siamanto's "The Dance"
 
 
 
 The Dance
 
 by Siamanto (1878-1915)
 
 Translated from the Armenian by Shant Norashkharian.
 
 First published in Boston, 1910, by Hairenik Publishers and reprinted in 1979 by Caravan Books. This is public domain.
 
 And as her tears drowned in her blue eyes,
 On a field of ash where Armenian life was still dying,
 This is what the witness of our horror, the German woman narrated:
 
 "This story which I tell you and which cannot be told,
 I saw with my cruel human eyes,
 From the window of my safe house which looked on hell,
 Crushing my teeth from my terrible rage...
 
 With my cruelly human eyes I saw .
 It was in Garden city, which was turned to a pile of ashes.
 The corpses were piled high to the top of the trees,
 And from the waters, from the fountains, from the streams, from the
 roads,
 The rebellious murmur of your blood...
 Still speaks now its vengeance into my ears...
 
 O, don't be shocked when I tell you this story which cannot be told...
 Let men understand the crime of man against man,
 Under the sun of two days, on the road to the cemetery
 The evil of man against man,
 Let all the hearts of the world know...
 That morning in death's shadow was a Sunday,
 The first and helpless Sunday which rose over the corpses,
 When inside my room, from evening to dawn,
 Bending over the agony of a girl slashed with a sword,
 I was wetting her death with my tears...
 Suddenly from afar a black, beastly mob
 Brutally whipping the twenty brides who were with them,
 Stood in a vineyard singing songs of debauchery.
 
 Leaving the poor dying girl on her mattress,
 I approached the balcony of my window which looked on hell...
 In the vineyard the black mob became a forest.
 A savage roared to the brides: "You must dance,
 You must dance when our drum sounds."
 And the whips started wildly cracking on the bodies
 Of the Armenian women who were missing death...
 Twenty brides, hand in hand, started their round dance...
 The tears flowed from their eyes like wounds,
 Ah, how much I envied my wounded neighbor,
 Because I heard, that with a peaceful moan,
 Cursing the universe, the poor beautiful Armenian girl,
 To her young dove spirit gave wings toward the stars...
 In vain I moved my fists against the mob.
 "You must dance", roared the furious crowd,
 "You must dance until your death, lustfully and lasciviously,
 Our eyes are thirsty for your movements and your death..."
 
 The twenty beautiful brides fell to the ground exhausted...
 "Stand up", they shrieked, waving their naked swords like snakes...
 Then someone brought to the mob a barrel of oil...
 O, human justice, let me spit at your forehead...!
 They anointed the twenty brides hastily with that liquid...
 
 "You must dance", they roared, "here is a perfume for you which even
 Arabia does not have..."
 Then they ignited the naked bodies of the brides with a torch,
 And the charcoaled corpses rolled from dance to death...
 
 In my terror I closed the shutters of my window like a storm,
 And approaching my lonely dead girl I asked:
 "How can I dig my eyes out, how can I dig them out, tell me...?"
 
 
 
 Siamanto (1878-1915), (born Atom Yarjanian [Western Armenian
 transliteration] in 1878: his 1910 work is copyrighted to "A.Y.
 Siamanto").One of the most important Armenian poets of the twentieth century. Siamanto was one of hundreds of intellectuals and political and spiritual leaders who were rounded up on April 24, 1915 and killed. In his case, he was held in detention until August, when he was murdered.
 
 Holdwater: Murdered... or executed for treason? Somebody had to lead the Armenians during their treacherous revolt, in the darkest hour of their dying nation. Could these leaders have come from the ranks of the bellhops from the local hotel, or from among the "hundreds of intellectuals and political and spiritual leaders"? Siamanto sure doesn't sound like an impartial Ottoman citizen.
 
 The above might have been part of an article from a Canadian newspaper, The Globe and Mail, June 16, 2001 (regarding the then-upcoming film, ARARAT), where what follows is definitely excerpted from. This article begins:
 
 There's a poem, says Oscar nominated director Atom Egoyan, that every Armenian kid knows.
 
 It's called The Bride, and was written by the poet Siamanto (his real name was Atom Yarjanian) who was bona in 1878 and died in 1915, one of the first of the 1.5- million people murdered by the Young Turks during the Armenian genocide.
 
 The poem is raw. It holds a mirror up to ugly men, who did an
 unspeakably ugly thing: tortured 20 young brides, who were made to dance naked, hand in hand, before a crazed mob. They twisted and twirled. And when they fell to the ground, exhausted, their captors shrieked for them to stand. They doused them in kerosene and torched the bodies. "And the charcoal corpses
 rolled from dance to death," Siamanto wrote.
 
 Well, that "charcoal corpses" line is the one from the poem above, entitled "The Dance." Yet, the poem "every Armenian kid knows" (confirming that just about all Armenian kids are taught this delightful genocide topic, along with Turk-hating, since birth) is called... "The Bride"? Hey, get your facts straight, Armenians. (Good grief. What am I saying?)
 
 At any rate, the article states, "Egoyan filmed his re-enactment of Siamanto's incensed account of that insane event." In other words, here we've got a poem, and it's treated as historical fact. A story "witnessed" by an unnamed German woman. A German woman who happened to be in the Ottoman Empire, whom we can safely conclude could only have been a missionary, assuming she existed at all. She was watching this event, this event that Atom Egoyan decided to showcase in his movie as fact, from the window of her "safe house." As the tears were drowning her blue eyes, not only was she able to ascertain that the twenty brides were "beautiful" (I suppose the story would not have the same impact, if these women were anything short of "beautiful"), but the German woman testified that the "corpses were piled to the top of the"... trees?
 
 That must have been one heck of a balancing act.
 
 I suppose the poet was entitled to take... ehhh... "poetic license"; unfortunately, everyone from Atom Egoyan to the writer of this newspaper article, and especially "every Armenian kid," looks at this tale and automatically concludes it must have actually taken place. Just like every other missionary-concocted horror story that newspapers of the period printed as pure fact. (And this blind belief in whatever the Armenians claim still goes on in the Western press. It's really amazing.)
 
 Is this story supposed to be representative of what took place during the Armenian "Genocide"? But... it was published five years before the main year of the "genocide," in 1910. Were these twenty Armenian brides stripped and burned as practice, a few years before the "genocide"? Or are we asked to believe these horrendous stories took place routinely and all the time, before the "genocide" even got a running start?
 
 Or... could the Armenian poet simply have made this tall tale up? What a concept.
 
 
 The Worth of Armenian Oral History 
 
 
  
 
 The worth of Armenian Oral History
 
  
 
 We can call upon the vision of beloved American artist Norman Rockwell, and his 1948 work, "The Gossips," to get an accurate picture of the historic worth of Armenian oral stories. (For a detailed view, click on the image.)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 THE ARMENIAN EXHIBIT ON ELLIS ISLAND
 
 
 
 When I visited Ellis Island years ago, I was taken aback by the one-sided representation, regarding the Armenian “Genocide.â€� I thought, what does genocide have to do with a New York City museum regarding the one-time, historic first stop for immigrants to America? (Ellis Island is just a hop and a skip away from the Statue of Liberty.)
 
 The first two examples of “Oral Historyâ€� you have read on this page are courtesy of an Armenian web site celebrating Ellis Island’s Armenian exhibit. For me, however, the story of how the exhibit came to be was most revealing.
 
 Ellis Island, the site tells us, receives 70,000 visitors weekly. What an advertisement for the Armenian “Genocide.â€�
 
 The name of the museum’s director and curator? Margaret C. TellalianKyrkostas. A double dosage of Armenian-Greek. Are you beginning to get the picture?
 
 Among the supporters of "Armenia: Memories From My Home" in 1997 were probable husband and Museum Vice President, Theodore Kyrkosta, and “Armenian Collector,â€� Michael Kehyaian. The “Ellis Island Armenian Exhibit Committeeâ€� was comprised of Edward D.Jamie, Michael Kehyaian, George Kevorkian, Margaret Kyrkostas, Ted Kyrkostas, Aris Sevag, and Mary Toumayan.
 
 The Armenian site reports:
 
 â€œOn August 29,1997, one week before the exhibit was to open, Deputy Superintendent Larry Steeler and Chief Exhibit Curator Diana Pardue informed TellalianKyrkostas that the massacre photographs… and especially the display panel headings, "Genocide" and "Massacres"…would not be allowed to be displayed. The reasons they gave were: "They would be offensive to young children"; " We already have a massacre photograph on the second floor and we don't want any more"; and "We have had visitors objecting to nonimmigration topics."
 
 Well, that last reason in particular makes a lot of sense to me. The museum has some wonderful sections regarding how the arriving immigrants would be screened and other relevant issues that directly had to do with the museum’s purpose. The problems the immigrants faced in the old country has nothing to do with a museum that celebrates a historic immigration admittance center to The New Land.
 
 â€œNew York City Council Speaker Peter Vallone, a guest speaker at the opening ceremonies, vehemently objected to the censorship and started a campaign to reinstate the censored material.â€�
 
 â€œOther government officialsâ€�… that is, Armenian butt-kissers â€�protested.â€� On September 11, The New York Times … that is, America’s historic Armenian butt-kissing newspaper… “broke the story,â€� and other news outlets covered “the controversy.â€�
 
 â€œA Fresno, California press conference by Armenian National Committee of America Chairman Mourad Topalian was covered by local affiliates of ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox television.â€� Uhhh… that wouldn’t be convicted terrorist Mourad Topalian, would it? The one-time ANCA rep caught red handed with a storage depot full of explosives and ammunition… and whose manufactured bomb allegedly exploded in front of New York City’s Turkish office, wounding three passersby?
 
 A couple of weeks later, the Ellis Island folks buckled under to the pressure and “agreed to reinstate some of the photographs and text documenting the Armenian Genocide.â€� The pressure group that orchestrated the big hullabaloo included Margaret TellalianKyrkostas, Sharistan Melconian, Shahan Avedian, Rev. Anoushavan Tanielian, Aram Arkun, Rev. Nishan Bakalian, Vartkes Vartanian, Nicole Vartanian, and a lawyer for City Council Speaker Peter Vallone. “The controversy surrounding the exhibit raised the disquieting possibility that the United States Government had engaged in censoring the exhibit's message.â€�
 
 â€œThe facts, figures, photographs and graphics for the exhibit were researched by Margaret TellalianKyrkostas and Aris Sevag. Aram Arkun verified some of the data on the massacres.â€� Oh, good. Thankfully, such impartial foxes were put in charge of this chicken coop, and undoubtedly the principles of truth and fairness could not have even come close to being compromised.
 
 
 Related: Another Oral History

 

 ----------------------------

 

The Situation of the Armenians: By One Who was Among Them   

 

  
 
 A report from a REAL "1915" Western eyewitness!
 
 Followed by background on the article, and a report on whether Sweden has recognized the Armenians' genocide.
 
 
   
   
 
 The situation of the Armenians: By one who was among them
 
 By H.J. Pravitz , Nya Dagligt Allehanda , 23 April, 1917
 
 H.J. Pravitz takes a deeper look at the statements previously had been made by Mrs. Marika Stjernstedt, Nya Dagligt Allehanda, a Swedish Newspaper published in the period 1859-1944.
 
 *******************
 
 
 
 "…Recently returned home from abroad I have right now – i.e. somewhat late – had the opportunity to look at two Swedish booklets on the Armenian issue. "Sven Hedin — adelsman" [Sven Hedin — a nobility], by Ossiannilsson and "Armeniernas fruktansvärda läge" [the terrible situation of the Armenians], by Marika Stjernstedt. The former book went immediately in the waste basket. In all its poorly hidden appreciation of the title character, it annoyed me more than a main article in Dagens Nyheter. The latter, which seemed spirited by the compassion for the suffering Armenians, I have read repeatedly, and it is really this and its inaccuracies that my article is about.
 
 I dare to claim, that hardly any other Swede has had the opportunity like me, to thoroughly and closely study the misery among the Armenians, since I now for about a month have traveled right among all the emigrating poor people. And this, during the right time, fall 1915, during which the alleged brutalities, according to both writers, were particularly bad.
 
 I want to hope, that what I am describing below, which are my own experiences, will have the purpose to remove the impression of inhumanity and barbarity from the Turkish and German side, which is easily induced by the reading of the two booklets mentioned above.
 
 If I understand the contents of the books correctly, both writers want to burden the Turks as well as the Germans with deliberate assaults or even cruelties.
 
 My position as an imbedded eyewitness gives me the right and duty to protest against such claims, and the following, based on my experiences, will support and strengthen this protest.
 
 Despite the fact that I was and am such a pronounced friend of Germany and its allies, which is consistent with the position of a servant of a neutral country, I started my journey from Konstantinopel (Istanbul) through the Asian Turkey, with a certain prejudiced point of view, partly received from American travelers, about the persecution of the Armenians by their Turkish masters. My Lord, which misery I would see, and to which cruelties I would be a witness! And although my long service in the Orient has not convinced me that the Armenians, despite their Christianity, are any of God’s best children, I decided to keep my eyes open to see for myself to which extent the rumors about Turkish assaults are true and the nameless victims were telling the truth.
 
 I sure got to view misery, but planned cruelties? Absolutely nothing.
 
 This is precisely why it has appeared to me to be necessary to speak up.
 
 To start with, it is unavoidable to state, that a transfer of the unreliable Armenian elements from the northern parts of the Ottoman Empire to the south was done by the Turkish government due to compulsory reasons.
 
 It should have been particularly important to remove, from the Erzeroum district, all these settlers, who only waited for a Russian invasion to join the invading army against the hated local legal authority. When Erzeroum fell in February 1916, an Armenian, with whom I just shared Russian imprisonment, uttered something I interpreted as 'It would have fallen way earlier if we had been allowed to stay.' That a country like Turkey, threatened and attacked by powerful external enemies, is trying to secure itself against cunning internal enemies, no one should be able to blame her.
 
 I think it points to a misconception when one claims that the Armenians are living under the uninterrupted distress of some sort of Turkish slavery. There are peoples that have it worse. Or what about Indian Kulis and Bengalis under British rule, and the Persian nationalists in Azerbaijan under the Russians' — "penétration pacificue", and the Negroes in Belgian Congo, and the Indians in the Kautschuk district in French Guyana. All these, not to mention many others, seem to me, are victimized to a higher degree and more permanently than the Armenians. I guess technically, one can say that a longer lasting but milder persecution is less bearable to endure than a bloody but quick act of despotism, as in (Ottoman) assaults of the kind that from time to time put Europe's attention on the Armenian issue. Apart from these periodical so-called massacres, the reason of which could to a large degree be ascribed to the Armenians themselves, I do think that the (Armenians) are treated reasonably well.
 
 The (Armenians) have their own religion, their own language, both in speaking and writing, their own schools etc.
 
 As far as the much discussed major Armenian migration is concerned, I am the first to agree that the attempts of the Turkish side to reduce the difficulties of the refugees left a lot to be desired. But I emphasize again, in the name of fairness, that considering the difficult situation in which Turkey, as the target of attack from three powerful enemies, was in and it was, in my opinion, almost impossible for the Turks, under these circumstances, to have been able to keep up an orderly assistance activity.
 
 I have seen these poor refugees, or "emigrants", to use Tanin’s words, seen them closely. I have seen them in the trains in Anatolia, in oxen wagons in Konia and elsewhere, by foot in uncountable numbers up in the Taurus mountains, in camps in Tarsus and Adana, in Aleppo, in Deir-el-Zor and Ana.
 
 I have seen dying and dead along the roads — but among hundreds of thousands there must, of course, occur casualties. I have seen childrens' corpses, shredded to pieces by jackals, and pitiful individuals stretch their bony arms with piercing screams of "ekmek" (bread).
 
 But I have never seen direct Turkish assaults against the ones hit by destiny. A single time I saw a Turkish gendarme in passing hit a couple of slow moving people with his whip; but similar things have happened to me in Russia, without me complaining, not then, nor later.
 
 In Konia, there lived a French woman, Madame Soulié, with family and an Italian maid. They lived there, despite the war, and the Turks did them no harm. And as far as the Germans stationed in the town are concerned, she called them 'our angels.' 'They give all they have to the Armenians!.' Such evidence of German readiness to sacrifice I established everywhere the Germans were.
 
 In Aleppo, I lived by the Armenian Báron, the owner of a large hotel. He did not tell me about any Turkish cruelties, although we talked a lot about the situation of his fellow citizens. We also talked about Djemal Pasha, who would come the day after and with whom I would meet. Báron expressed himself very positively about this man, who by the way, least of all seemed like an executioner.
 
 In Aleppo, I hired an Armenian servant, who then during a couple of months was my daily company. Not a word has he told me about Turkish cruelties, neither in Aleppo nor in his home town of Marash or elsewhere. I must unconditionally believe in exaggerations from Mrs. Stjernstedt’s side and I do not put one bit of confidence in the Armenian authorities she claims to refer to.
 
 On page 44, Mrs. Stjernstedt writes about (the town of) Meskene and an Armenian doctor Turoyan. I was in Meskene right when he was supposed to have been there. I looked carefully around everywhere for historical landmarks, since Alexander the great crossed the Euphrates (river) here, and the old testament also talks about this place. There was not a sign of Armenian graves and not of any Armenians either, except for my just mentioned servant. I consider Mr. Turayan’s evidence very questionable, and I even dare to doubt that this man, if he exists, was ever there during the mentioned time. If the conditions in Meskene really were as he claims, will anyone then believe that the suspicious Turks would have sent an Armenian up there with a "mission from the government"?
 
 For fourteen days, I followed the Euphrates; it is completely out of the question that I during this time would not have seen at least some of the Armenian corpses that, according to Mrs. Stjernstedt’s statements, should have drifted along the river en masse at that time. A travel companion of mine, Dr. Schacht, was also travelling along the river. He also had nothing to tell when we later met in Baghdad.
 
 In summary, I think that Mrs. Stjernstedt, somewhat uncritically, has accepted the hair-raising stories from more or less biased sources, which formed the basis for her lecture.
 
 By this, I do not want to deny the bad situation for the Armenians, which probably can motivate the collection initialized by Mrs. Stjernstedt.
 
 But I do want to, as far as it can be considered to be within the powers of an eyewitness, deny that the regular Turkish gendarme forces, who supervised the transports, are guilty of any cruelties.
 
 Later on, in a different format, I want to impartially and neutrally like now treat the Armenian issue, but at the moment, may the adduced be enough.
 
 Rättvik, April 1917
 
 HJ Pravitz.
 
 *******************
 
 
 
   Notes on the above article, by Ergun Kirlikovali
 
 
 
 The entire credit for this incredible piece of research goes to my good friend Dr. Erdal Atrek, a Turkish-American scholar. My hat is off to this gentleman. I am proud to know Dr. Atrek from my high school years in the late 1960s at the Robert Academy of Istanbul, Turkey, and lucky to have caught up with him again many years later in America.
 
 While I am proud to be Erdal Atrek’s school mate, I am embarrassed and ashamed to be Orhan Pamuk’s classmate (1966-1970), who chose to sell his soul — and heritage — to get the Nobel Prize. While Pamuk insulted the entire Turkish nation without knowing the first thing about the facts surrounding the Turkish-Armenian civil war during WWI, Dr. Atrek went out of his way to unearth this magnificent piece of evidence single handedly, which will literally bury the ethocidal campaigns of the AFATH ("Armenian Falsifiers and Turk Haters") community.
 
 What follows, breaks the back of the AFATH lobby and the AAG ("Alleged Armenian genocide")  irreparably, as a Swedish officer, WHO ACTUALLY TRAVELED UP AND DOWN THE EUPHRATES RIVER WITH THE ARMENIAN REFUGEES DURING THE FALL OF 1915, the highlight of the so-called genocide, saw absolutely no Armenian bodies floating in the river or the river reddened due to Armenian blood, as usually told by the sensation — seeking AFATH ("Armenian Falsifiers and Turk Haters") crowds to the unsuspecting media. I will not spoil the wonderful surprise by telling you all about this article here; you must read it in its entirety below...
 
 Please note that the Swedish officer does say that he had witnessed hunger, starvation, and suffering among the Armenians, which no one in the Turkish camp, including this writer, disputes. What we, in the Turkish camp, are saying is that the Christian suffering described here or elsewhere in the AFATH literature, can not be viewed as separate from what was experienced by the Muslim inhabitants of the area and era, which was, tragedy-for-tragedy, casualty-for-casualty, loss-for-loss, four times worse than the Armenian suffering. If one takes into account, as any decent, self-respecting, and fair-minded individual must, this “simple-but-rock-solid fact,â€� then one can not talk about a genocide. Case closed!
 
 What’s more, the suffering that befell on all the inhabitants of Anatolia, without discrimination as to the race, ethnicity, color, or creed of the inhabitants, was the direct result of the greed, terror, armed uprisings, brutal betrayals, and supreme treason by the Armenian revolutionaries, which were passionately supported and viciously manipulated by Russia, France, and Britain, for their own selfish imperialist interests. Those European powers had themselves been locked in a three way contest, to see who will pick up the largest slice of the pie that was the vast lands of the tri-continent Ottoman Empire.
 
 Europe rained death and destruction on Anatolia during WWI and conducted at least part of this unspeakable campaign of death and destruction using proxies, like the Ottoman-Armenians, (and Ottoman-Greeks, among other Ottoman-Christians), causing neighbor-killing-neighbor, and destroying a millennium of peaceful co-habitation by the Turks and Armenians, or Muslims and Christians, in Anatolia. The U.S. Protestant missionaries also contributed to this human tragedy first with their anti-Turkish and anti-Muslim teachings during 1865-1915 and then with their biased reports of Armenian suffering from Anatolia during 1914-1918, which the New York Times gladly printed word-for-word, without once checking their validity or seeking inputs or rebuttals from the Turkish side for balance and fairness. While the missionaries filed and the New York Times printed 145 anti-Turkish stories in the year 1915 alone, for example, there was not a single report mentioning the four times worse Muslim suffering ... or a single refutation or rebuttal by the Turks… Some journalistic ethics! Some war coverage! (This anti-Turkish bias, unfortunately, seems to continue, at some level, even today.)
 
 And if those wartime measures were not taken when they were, then the undersigned would probably not be writing these lines today or there would not be half million Turkish-Americans... or Five million Turkish-Europeans... or Seventy million Turkish citizens of Turkey... As most would have met the same tragic end as my paternal and maternal grandfathers did at the hands of the Ottoman-Armenians and Ottoman-Greek: Extermination and burial in unmarked mass graves of unknown location!
 
 Don’t think for a moment that my suffering is unique; not at all. There is no family in Turkey today whose grandparents had not been devastated by the WWI. Our last names tell our tragic stories and we need no lessons from anyone about man’s inhumanity to man. I am a product, like many Turks, of an ignored and untold genocide; that of the Turks. Yet, in all these years, I have not read a single word about my suffering in any of the AFATH ("Armenian Falsifiers and Turk Haters") accounts... All I see is an unfortunate and relentless barrage of typical Crusader bias, constantly parroting the Armenian side of the tragedy, and drilling into the hearts and minds of unsuspecting readers the notion of “poor, starving Armeniansâ€� and “barbarous Turkâ€� clichés, with zero respect for fairness, balance, or truth. And then they wonder: “Why is this issue not resolved in 90 years?â€� You tell me!
 
 "The situation of the Armenians: By one who was among them. A Swedish officer, H.J. Pravitz, takes a deeper look at the statements by Mrs. Marika Stjernstedt," Nya Dagligt Allehanda, a Swedish Newspaper published in the period 1859-1944, 23 April, 1917.
 
 Original was traced in the Swedish Royal Library, copied, and translated by Dr. Per A. Nordlund, a Swedish national, upon a personal request by his friend, Dr. Erdal Atrek, a Turkish-American, who had seen this newspaper article mentioned in a pamphlet published by the Turkish Prime Ministry: Armenians in Ottoman Documents (1915-1920), Ankara, 1995, page 179.
 
 Dr. Atrek says this clipping, perhaps an old clipping from the original Sweden paper, which probably yellowed and all too brittle by now, was used as an appendix to the document number 205 in that pamphlet.. There is an Ottoman translation attached to this clipping which is further translated into today’s Turkish by Mr. Mehmed Munir, the legal counselor to the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
 
 Dr. Atrek obtained and carefully guards the photocopies of the entire newspaper issue of 23 April, 1917, in case the AFATH ("Armenian Falsifiers and Turk Haters") sends a team of “seek and destroyâ€� agents to Sweden to steal and destroy this document which very damaging to the AFATH claims of Ottoman Army excesses during the relocation.
 
 Dr. Nordlund, the translator, was a believer in AFATH ("Armenian Falsifiers and Turk Haters") claims of genocide, until he read this article. He was so moved by the fairness and truth in it, that he told Dr. Atrek that he changed his position now.
 
 The writer sends his heartfelt thanks to both Dr. Atrek and Dr. Nordlund for their selfless work which will revolutionize our task of exposing the ethocidal behavior of some of those AFATH-owned-and-operated genocide scholars. Our task of refuting and exposing the AFATH is a lot easier now, thanks to their efforts.
 
 Peace,
 
 Ergun KIRLIKOVALI