1492) NYT: There were 200.000 Armenian Insurgents in the Ottoman Anatolia

The Armenian lobbies in the US and Western Europe insist on that the 1915 Events was ‘genocide’, though Turkey argues that Arsmenians and Muslims killed each other in a severe civil war. Turkey also says that many Armenians died due to the bad war conditions. The Ottoman archives are full of the documents proving the bloddy Armenian riots and how many Turks and Kurds had been massacred by the Armenian revolutionary terrorists. However the Armenian side does not accept the Ottoman documents as true source in Armenian issue. Armenian historians defends that the Ottoman Armenians were fully innocent and had no arm to defend themselves from the attacks. According to the official Armenian history understanding, Ottoman Armenians did not riot and did not apply violence against the State or neigbouring Kurdish and Turkish people. The Armenian historians imply that the Ottomans had no legitimate reason when they took harsh measures against the Armenians. However the respected American newspaper The New York
Times does not confirm the Armenian allegations:

The New York Times reports on November 15, 1895 that the number of the armed Armenian insurgents was about 200.000 (‘Turkey’s Ruling Terror, Mussulmans Implore the Porte for Protection from Armenians’, 15 November 1895). The report continues:

“A secret committee relies upon two hundred thousand insurgents in Asia Minor in the Spring... The Armenians set fire to a mosque, the school, and the bazaar, using bombs containing some inflammable material to make their work more certain. The flames spread with startling rapidity, and several stores and houses occupied by Mussulmans and Christians were destroyed. The insurgents also attacked the Mussulman quarter of Oulcupinar and killed many of the residents. The Mussulman population of Arabkir has telegraphed to the Porte imploring protection. The authorities there succeeded, however, in restoring order. Forty bombs were discovered, with which the Armenians designed to destroy the barracks and Government offeces.”

The New York Times also reported that more than “5.000 Armenian revolters assembled in Adana” province to “prepare for aggressive action”.

The insurgency expanded to the small towns and villages of Anatolia in time. Imagine there was how many Armenian insurgents in 1915 in Anatolia territories. While almost all Muslim men were in war against the enemies, the Armenian revolutionary nationalist groups attacked the Muslim villages and towns and more than 520.000 Muslim Ottoman citizens were slaughtered by the armed Armenian insurgents.

Both sides experienced one of the most tragic events in the last years of the Ottoman State. Maybe, one of the sides committed more sins than the other side. However no one is fully innocent in this story.

12 March 2007
Nilgun Gulcan (U.S.A.K.)
turkishweekly.net