523) Guenter Lewy Responds to Vahakn Dadrian

Vahakn Dadrian did not like an article by Guenter Lewy, entitled "Revisiting the Armenian Genocide," and appearing in The Middle East Quarterly. Dadrian then put his one-sided scholarship to the test by soliciting an Islamophobic web site, Jihad Watch, to exclusively showcase his response in.


But Dadrian did not stop there. He penned an abbreviated version of his objections, for inclusion in the letters page of the publication. That, along with two other letters, may be seen below. See how Prof. Guenter Lewy reacts to the prosecuting professor, who will deceptively say anything and everything to affirm his precious genocide.


Revisiting the Armenian Genocide

To the Editor:

I must express my delight at reading Guenter Lewy's balanced treatment of the Turkish-Armenian conflict ("Revisiting the Armenian Genocide," Fall 2005) in the pages of the Middle East Quarterly. I have the utmost admiration and respect for the honesty and truthfulness displayed in the article.


Ergun Kirlikovali

I am one of the eight children of a much ignored and dismissed Balkan-Turkish genocide victim. My father, as a one year-old baby, somehow escaped the horrors of the Balkan wars (1911-13) but without any parents, relations, or even neighbors or acquaintances. All vanished from the face of this earth without a trace. To this day, we don't know where my father's family is buried although we suspect somewhere near the village of Kirlikova, which today sits in northern Greece. In 1912, he was thrown along with thousands of other orphaned Turkish babies into one of the last trains departing from Selanik (Thessaloniki today) to the Ottoman capital of Istanbul. The Ottoman state cared for him until 1923 when the newly-established Turkish republic took over. He graduated from the University of Istanbul in 1939 and served as a forestry engineer for thirty-four years before passing away in 1973.

There are millions of Turks today who have similar stories. Those Turkish refugees who survived massacres in the Balkans, the Aegean Islands, the Crimea, the Caucasus, and elsewhere met another cycle of Christian violence in Anatolia at the hands of Greeks in the West and Armenians in the East. Our stories have not been told because of endless Armenian propaganda, which, since 1915, has saturated the West. My pain was never shared. My tears went unnoticed. Lewy's essay stirred such deep emotions in me, and a sense of fairness emanating from it soothed my even deeper wound.

Ergun Kirlikovali
Santa Ana, California



To the Editor:

The scholarship behind Guenter Lewy's article, "Revisiting the Armenian Genocide" (Fall 2005), was unimpressive. He is wrong to state that "many historians … in the West" deny the Armenian genocide. Quite the contrary, very few do.


Nicolas Tavitian

Professor Lewy's methodology is weak. He reduces evidence concerning the genocide to documents regarding the 1919-20 trials, the "Special Organization," and to the Memoirs of Naim Bey. The evidence of genocide, however, is far more extensive. The genocide was carried out in its most intensive phase for over a year in full view of Turks, Armenians, Kurds, as well as foreign missionaries, diplomats, and military officials. Archives, memoirs, eyewitness accounts, and newspaper reports all show a systematic and deliberate elimination of the Armenian population.

Lewy limits his argument to what he says did not happen. He does not address what did occur. If the killings were simply the actions of "Kurdish tribesmen and corrupt policemen," then these rogue elements eradicated a population from the Ottoman Empire that had weathered 2,500 years of conquests and invasions. Genocides usually fail. There are Jews in Germany today, and Tutsis in Rwanda. But, Istanbul aside, there are no Armenians in Turkey. What happened, if not genocide?

The question of the Armenian genocide remains a serious issue for Turkey's relations with both Europeans and Americans. Western nations hold a cooler and more open approach to history, in which recognition of past crimes is a necessary step toward friendly and cooperative relations. Turkey has not reached a stage where it is willing to recognize its past atrocities. This is why Turkey's denial of the Armenian genocide threatens to become a major impediment to Turkey's accession into the European Union.

Nicolas Tavitian
Director of European Programs
Armenian General Benevolent Union

Vahakn Dadrian's Piece of Mind


To the Editor:

Guenter Lewy's article contains errors that undercut his thesis: the Turkish courts-martial were in Istanbul, not Yozgat; Mehmet Kemal was Kaymakam only of Bogazliyan and not of Yozgat; Cemal Pasha was commander of the Fourth Army, not the governor of Aleppo; Liparit was an Armenian activist, not a German missionary; Malta was not a venue for criminal trials but a temporary detention center.

While Lewy relies on two Turkish authors who dismissed the Naim-Andonian documents as forgeries, a subsequent German researcher visited the Ottoman state archives and established that the state documents "confirm to some degree the contents of two other" Naim-Andonian documents.[1] Moreover, Lewy ignored my extensive analysis of these disputed documents.[2]


Vahakn Dadrian

Lewy misinterprets evidence with which he attempted to construct his revisionist account. He took issue with the military tribunal's key indictment to which the court appended forty-two authenticated documents. But he misunderstands the facts of the Ottoman criminal justice system. It was an inquisitorial system, modeled after its French counterpart. For proof of guilt, judges balance evidence with defense counter-arguments. Such evidence consists of confessions, witness and expert testimony, official records, discovery, judicial notice, searches and seizure.[3] Several dozen Turkish witnesses, including two army commanders, several other high-ranking military officers, physicians, and governors testified. The ensuing verdicts confirmed the premeditation of the Armenians' mass murder.

Lewy is incorrect about General Vehip. His written testimony is recorded and extant in several sources, including period newspapers.[4] Lewy's reliance on the three high commissioners—one American and two British—is misplaced because each denounced the military tribunal for its "failure" to exact justice commensurate with the gravity of the crime committed against the Armenians. As U.S. high commissioner Lewis Heck stated, "The great majority of the Turkish officials in the interior either actively participated in, or at least condoned the massacres of the Armenians."[5] On another occasion, he declared "the great majority of the Turkish race heartily approved of these massacres."[6] The loss of the military tribunal's documents, which Lewy uses to undercut reliance on the documents, coincides with the Kemalist seizure of Istanbul in 1922.

Lastly, Lewy's discussion of the Special Organization, the main instrument of Armenian massacres, is marked by error. The German Colonel Stange was, according to both authentic Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman sources, commander of a Special Organization regiment otherwise identified as The Detachment. Its several units, consisting of released convicts, participated in the massacres against Armenians. After acknowledging them as chettes (bandits), Stange, denounced them as "scums."[7] Lewy mistranslates the autobiographical account of Esref Kusçubasi, that organization's principal leader. Lewy denies that the convicts enrolled in that organization "took the lead role in the massacres." But, Kusçubasi bragged that he "performed secretly charted duties" in conducting the Armenian deportations.[8] In contrast to Lewy's arguments, the historical evidence is clear. Ottoman authorities conducted premeditated genocide against the Armenian population.

Vahakn N. Dadrian
Director, Genocide Research, Zoryan Institute
Cambridge, Mass./Toronto, Can.
Academy of Sciences, Republic of Armenia
Guenter Lewy responds:



Mr. Kirlikovali is correct that the tribulations of Turkish refugees from the Balkan wars and other armed conflicts of the pre-World War I era have not received the attention and condemnation they deserve. The West has been preoccupied with the horrors of the Armenian story, and the suffering of Turks has often been ignored. The same holds true for the wartime famines that took a heavy toll of life among both Turks and Armenians. This double standard in recognizing human misery must be repudiated for the sake of historical truth and to help descendants of these victims live with their pain.

In response to Mr. Tavitian: yes, a large number of Western students of Ottoman history reject the appropriateness of the genocide label for the tragic fate of the Armenian community in Ottoman Turkey. This list includes distinguished scholars such as Roderic Davison, J.C. Hurewitz, Bernard Lewis, and Andrew Mango. Ignoring this formidable array of learned opinion, most Armenians and their supporters among so-called genocide scholars assert with superb arrogance that the Armenian genocide is an incontrovertible historical fact, similar to the Jewish Holocaust, which would be denied only by lackeys of the Turkish government. One pro-Armenian author, Henry C. Theriault, has even suggested that denial of the Armenian genocide represents hate speech and, therefore, should be illegal in the United States.

In a short article, it is impossible to put forth all of the evidence that contradicts the notion of a premeditated plan of annihilation. I do so in my book on the Armenian massacres,[9] on which my essay is based. The reports of American, German, and Austrian consular officials as well as the accounts of Western missionaries, who were on the spot in Anatolia, confirm the occurrence of large-scale killings but do not implicate the "Special Organization" or any other agency of the central government. Mr. Tavitian's allegation of "a systematic and deliberate elimination of the Armenian population" is further undercut by the exemption of the large Armenian communities of Istanbul, Izmir, and Aleppo from deportation. These exemptions are analogous to Hitler exempting the Jews of Berlin, Frankfurt, and Cologne from the final solution.

I welcome Mr. Dadrian's close reading of my article, which indeed caught a few minor factual errors. However, regarding the points of substance, Dadrian again displays his skill in the use of selective evidence. For example, the alleged thirty-one telegrams of Talât Pasha contained in the Naim-Andonian volume, some of which order the killing of all Armenians, are rejected as crude forgeries not only by Turkish historians but also by almost all Western students of Ottoman history. Hilmar Kaiser, cited by Dadrian and the one exception to this rule, did say documents from the Ottoman Ministry of the Interior "confirm to some degree" two telegrams, but he concluded that "further research on the ‘Naim-Andonian' documents is necessary."

If Dadrian wants to consider the verdict of the Turkish courts-martial as proof of the guilt of the Young Turk regime in the premeditated murder of Ottoman Armenians, he is, of course, free to do so. However, his readers should know that the evidence relied upon by the military tribunals—"confessions, witness and expert testimony, official records, discovery, judicial notice, searches and seizure"—is of doubtful reliability. Among other shortfalls in due process, it was never subject to cross-examination. More importantly, this evidence does not actually exist. Wherever the blame for this situation is to be placed, the fact is that all of the original documentation of the trials is lost, and we have nothing but copies of some documents in the gazette of the Ottoman government and the press. It is doubtful that the Nuremberg trials would ever have attained their significance in documenting Nazi crimes had only unauthenticated copies of documents existed.

I know of no authentic sources that prove Stange's service as a commander of a Special Organization unit engaged in the massacre of Armenians. It is in Dadrian's gloss and not in the original documents that Stange confirms the transfer of brigands employed in guerilla war to mass murder duties, and it is Dadrian, not Stange, who equates the "scum" involved in massacre with released convicts and enrolls them into the ranks of the Special Organization. Similarly, the leading Special Organization official, Esref Kusçubasi, after his capture indeed bragged about his exploits in secret operations, but it is only through the shrewd juxtaposition of words taken from different parts of the book in question and Dadrian's insertions that this account becomes an acknowledgment of involvement with the Armenian deportations.

Hilmar Kaiser, on whom Dadrian relies for his defense, has drawn attention to "misleading quotations" and the "selective use of sources" in Dadrian's work, and he has concluded that "serious scholars should be cautioned against accepting all of Dadrian's statements at face value."[10] I concur in this judgment.

Footnotes



[1] Hilmar Kaiser, "The Baghdad Railway and the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1916," in Richard G. Hovannisian, ed. Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide (Wayne State University Press, 1999), p. 109.
[2] Vahakn N. Dadrian, "The Naim-Andonian Documents on the World War I Destruction of Ottoman Armenians: The Anatomy of a Genocide," International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Aug. 1986, pp. 311-60.
[3] Articles 130, 214, 222, 232, 233, "Ottoman Criminal Code of Procedures," in George Young, Corps de Droit Ottoman, v. VII (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905).
[4] Vakit, Mar. 31, 1919; Hayat Tarih Mecmuasi, vol. 11, no. 3, Nov. 1981; Le Courrier de Turquie (Turkish Association for the Defense of the Fatherland), Apr. 1, 2, 1919.
[5] U.S. National Archives, R.G. 256, 867.4016/2, pp. 2, 3.
[6] Ibid.; idem, 867.00/59, p. 3.
[7] Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv (HHSTA), Vienna, PAI 942, Krieg 21a Türkei; Altay Yigit, Karadeniz Muharebeleri (Trabzon: Istikbal, 1950), p. 351.
[8] Cemal Kutay, Birinci Dünya Harbinde Teskilâte Mahsusa (Istanbul: Ercan, 1962), p. 78.
[9] The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2005).
[10] Hilmar Kaiser, "Germany and the Armenian Genocide, Part II: Reply to Vahakn N. Dadrian's Response," Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies, 9 (1996): 139-40.
HEAR PROF. LEWY embellish Dadrian's ethical shortcomings, from a February 2006 discussion at the University of Utah.

Guenter Lewy Responds


Journal of Genocide Research (2007), 9(4),

December, 675–709



Letter to the Editors


Guenter Lewy responds to Taner Akcam’s review of The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide (JGR 9:1)


During the course of writing books on various controversial subjects, I have had my share of critical reviews, yet I have never spent time replying to them. My assumption has been that readers can be relied upon to sense hostile intent and special pleading, and will draw their own conclusions after reading the book in question. Taner Akcam’s review of my book The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide, 1 on the other hand, represents the kind of attack upon my scholarly competence and personal integrity that should not go unanswered.


According to Akcam, my book is replete with factual errors that “are so substantive as to reinforce a suspicion that he entirely lacks mastery of the material.” And yet the instances he cites hardly substantiate this appraisal. For example, as concerns the findings of the Istanbul courts-martial held after the end of World War I, which allegedly prove the existence of a centrally planned extermination of the Armenian community—i.e. genocide—the all-important fact is that none of the documentation of these trials has survived. Without the original documents, testimony and depositions, we depend upon reports of the proceedings preserved in selected supplements of the official gazette of the Ottoman government or on press coverage, and no historian worth his salt will consider such materials reliable evidence. It is doubtful that the Nuremberg trials would ever have attained their tremendous significance in documenting the crimes of the Nazi regime if we had had to rely on a few copies of documents in the trial record or in the press covering the trials instead on the verdicts being supported by thousands of original German documents preserved in our archives.


The involvement of the Special Organization in the alleged genocide fares no better. As the military historian Edward J. Erickson has shown rather conclusively in a recent article, 2 this special forces outfit was involved in guerrilla warfare as well as in conventional military operations, but there is no credible evidence that it had any role in the massacres of Armenians that we know to have taken place.


Akcam states that Turkish diplomats are distributing my book as representing the “official Turkish position,” and he characterizes it as a “propaganda boon” for the Turkish government. After encountering this appraisal, readers of Akcam’s review will be surprised to learn that the book, supposed to be an apologia for the Turks, includes passages such as the following (I paraphrase as well as quote verbatim):


• Even if Turkish allegations of wholesale disloyalty, treason and revolt were true, they are “totally insufficient as a justification for what was done [to the Armenians]” (p 95).


• After citing the assessment of the dissident Turkish historian Selim Deringil that “colossal crimes were committed against the Armenian people” and “no histor-ian with a conscience can possibly accept the ‘civil war’ line, which is a travesty of history,” I add: “I agree with this view” (p 122).


• “The Turkish side, which seeks to dismiss the mass killings as ‘excesses’ or ‘intercommunal warfare’ and often speaks of ‘so-called massacres’ therefore is distorting the historical record” (p 252).


If these views had indeed become the “official Turkish position,” one would have to conclude that the Turks had made amazing progress in overcoming their defensive attitude toward the tragic events of World War I. Unfortunately, this is not the case.


In the eyes of Akcam and most Armenians, one either accepts the idea that what happened to the Armenians constitutes genocide or one is on the side of “Turkish denialists.” My book represents an endeavour to transcend the sterile was-it-genocide-or-not polemics and concentrates on the far more important task of clarifying what happened, how it happened, and why it happened. I rely upon documentary evidence collected during extensive research in the archive of the German Foreign Ministry in Berlin, the Public Record Office in London, and the National Archives in Washington. Pace Akcam, I also use the reports of European missionaries who witnessed the horrors of the deportation process. Reviewers in other professional journals have found this effort to be successful and valuable.


Since Taner Akcam will have the last word in this exchange, he undoubtedly will use the opportunity to repeat and renew his impetuous charges against my work. I invite readers of the Journal of Genocide Research to read my book and form their own opinion of who is right.




Notes and References


1 Guenter Lewy, The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2005).


2 Edward J. Erickson, “Armenian massacres: new records undercut old blame,” Middle East Quarterly, Vol 13, No 3, Summer 2006, http://www.meforum.org article 991.



Guenter Lewy c 2007

University of Massachusetts Amherst

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