At any rate, these letters are rarely put up at the TAT site, so they are written and forgotten — especially by the prejudiced ones the letters are directed too. (Once in a while, though, there are exceptions; letter-writing is not a waste of time.) As a result, I would often ask myself, instead of the "almost always" wasted effort, why didn't I prepare a page on the bum, instead? This way, at least the world can potentially discover the scholar or journalist's lack of fair play and lack of commitment to professional duty. Since a professional's reputation is invaluable (and a target for the genociders' ad hominem attacks, as with, for example, Israel Charny), perhaps the more honorable among these genocide nuts will be forced to look at what they are doing, and the great harm they are causing (not only to their reputations — one day, there is going to be an explosion on what a hoax the Armenian "genocide" is, and the reputation of some of these folks is going to be seriously damaged — but to the hatred they perpetuate by, in this case, equating Turkish people with Nazis). An awakening on the part of these genocide devotees hasn't happened too many times yet; the genocide juggernaut is too powerful. But there have been times when a few of those who haven't plunged too deeply into the depths have second-guessed themselves.
The Danish missionary Maria Jacobsen noted in her diary on February 7, 1915: “The officers are filling their pockets, while the soldiers die of starvation, lack of hygiene, and illness.”
Prof. Guenter Lewy, The First Genocide of the Twentieth Century
Even the Ottoman soldiers, the lifeline for the nation, were starving, and dying in large numbers from the same causes the Armenians were dying from, prompting the question: did the Ottoman government commit a "genocide" against their own soldiers? The witness: Danish missionary Maria Jacobsen.
Missionary Maria Jacobsen; from PBS' "Armenian Genocide."
I came across a page in The Danish Peace Academy, entitled
"Maria Jacobsen and the genocide in Armenia," written by Karekin Dickran; another vicious page of Armenian propaganda (Of course, there was no "Armenia" in 1915; the name of the nation was "the Ottoman Empire." An excerpt: "When the Turks and Kurds carried into effect the horrible massacres and the genocide against the Armenians in 1915, it was more than the little Danish woman could bear"), under the guise of relating the life of the missionary, who turned a blind eye to Christ's teaching that all should be loved equally. (A few Danish clergymen from a later era sort of made up for her bigotry, by getting Christ's message down perfectly.)
Naturally, when you see a title such as "Peace Academy" combined with the "Armenian genocide," ones who are aware that the "Armenian genocide" is a con job instantly get their "human rights" radars activated. While I don't like labels — I believe each issue should be evaluated on their own merit, instead of looking to what your camp is telling you — my sensibilities are mainly aligned with the "liberal" camp. Yet, it is incredible what "liberals" (liberals are mainly behind the "human rights" and "genocide" causes) do, by mindlessly accepting what the liberal leadership tells them. To me, being a liberal constitutes a sense of fair play and compassion. (As opposed to what we know of, say, the neo-conservatives in the Bush administration, ruled by dogma and no care about how much they hurt other parties, as long as their agendas are fulfilled. Of course, there is no difference between extremists on either end of the spectrum.) This is why conservatives berate liberals, with the term, "knee-jerk liberal," meaning a liberal's heart quickly bleeds when injustice is encountered. Where the "genocide" is concerned, the liberals who blindly accept Armenian propaganda are "knee-jerk liberals" in the opposite, let's say, "Bizarro" sense. One might call them the Bizarro liberals.
When Arthur Tremaine Chester wrote "Condemnation without hearing both sides is unjust and un-American," he was appealing to decent people whatever their political stripe. But because I am partial to liberalism, those words should resonate especially more for those of a liberal bent.
The generally conservative The Wall Street Journal [Europe], in a most enlightening article, explained why liberals hate Turkey. ("Because Turkey flouts the rules. Not international law, to be sure... Turkey flouts the kind of politically correct principles the left would like to establish as the norms of international behavior.") Naturally, deep-seated prejudices against the "Terrible Turk" also continues to be a factor, as horrified as most liberals would be in thinking of themselves as racists. (Yet Armenian genocide-proponent liberals are the worst racists, by siding with every "race" except the Turks — whom these Bizarro liberals feel no compunction about presenting as the embodiment of evil; their cruel genocide agenda necessitates that they break down complex issues to sides strictly wearing black hats and white hats.)
If these Bizarro liberals opened their minds and hearts, as liberals are supposed to do, and they took the trouble of examining the Turkish character through the ages (in addition to analyzing the historical evidence objectively, distinguishing facts from hurtful propaganda), they would see the Turks can teach these so-called liberals a lesson on liberalism. Honest, fair and tolerant, exhibiting a love for animals, "vastly more moral respecting women than Europeans," and regarding Armenians, note Sir Charles Eliot's usage of the "L" word (in 1900's "Turkey in Europe"):
"The Russians restricted the Armenian Church, schools and language; the Turks on the contrary were perfectly tolerant and liberal as to all such matters."
The man behind our study is "Danish librarian and peace activist Holger Terp," as described in a "Friends of Gandhi" interview. Mr. Holper is apparently the main force behind the Danish Peace Academy, the aim of which is "to communicate important information on peace, peace culture and war to its many users from all over the world and to create a Danish peace education."
Holger "Flower Power" Terp
What a contradiction. Creating peace through the perpetuation of hatred. In my way of thinking, one attains peace through love and understanding. Of course, sometimes war is necessary to attain peace, as well. Mr. Terp's Denmark would not have been freed from Nazi enslavement, for example, if the United States and other WWII allies had showered Hitler with understanding and conciliation... as Churchill's predecessor, Neville Chamberlain, had disastrously attempted. (To digress: some say the British elite was in on it with Hitler, encouraging the Germans to fight the Russians, changing their minds only when Hitler looked West. So Chamberlain might have been "in on it" with Hitler, instead of being a weakling.) Unfortunately, peaceniks like Mr. Terp unwittingly subscribe to the method of attaining what they think is peace, through the use of war — in his case, the war of words (with the distinction of utilizing hatred). But if he were made to observe how much he subscribes to the "peace through war" option, the conscientious objector in him would naturally be horrified.
Before rushing to judgment, I first wanted to see whether Mr. Terp's choice of putting up Karekin Dickran's hateful genocide article was just another example of a mindless liberal towing the party line, or whether he was emotionally committed to the Armenian cause. Based on a cursory search, it appears he has put his heart and soul into the Armenian perspective in other ways, which we will be getting to.
Now, of course, my "liberal" side is simpatico with Holger Terp. Like the rest of many of the non-Armenian Bizarro-liberals in the genocide industry, he truly believes he is doing good. (And, of course, he is doing good, in other ways.) I understand very much where he is coming from, and I do not believe he has any real maliciousness as does, say, a Vahakn Dadrian or a Peter Balakian. So it's going to be difficult to bitch-slap him around, and expose the hateful hypocrisy he needs to answer for. When I read that he was almost completely blind (particularly given that his profession is that of librarian, where reading is especially fundamental; somewhat akin to Beethoven's loss of hearing, not that Terp should ordinarily be mentioned in the same breath as Beethoven). At any rate, something told me a letter sent to him was not going to serve much purpose, and I decided to cook up this page, instead.
What determined Terp's commitment to the Armenian genocide madness, from a cursory Internet search (this page will not be the typically in-depth one), was this description on another site:
We posted a very long piece by a Turkish WAISer about the “so-called Armenian genocide?”, which stated ‘The Ottoman governments intent was merely to relocate, not destroy, the deportee population’. Holger Terp of the Danish Peace Academy says: This is contradicted by the Danish eyewitness missionary teacher Karen Jeppe. Holger quotes the long report pn “Karen Jeppe : Denmark’s First Peace Philosopher” by Eva Lous. Here is the section dealing with Armenians in Turkey and the Armenian gwnocide...
We can see what is happening. Everyone is into the veracity of the Armenian Genocide, because the genocide forces have succeeded in silencing the voices of real scholars, there is now one prevailing voice since it is only Turkey that "denies" the genocide, everyone knows genocide is "bad," there is prejudice against the Terrible Turk, and into this fray has entered the lone Turkish reader attempting to inject some sanity. Whatever facts that were presented in this "long piece" called the "so-called Armenian genocide?" were completely ignored, as usual. In this case, the WAIS moderator (mind you, in this case not exactly the WISE moderator) turned to an "authority," none other than "Holger Terp of the Danish Peace Academy"; why if the man is for peace, he can't be wrong, could he?
So whatever arguments the Turkish contributor presented (it was hard to dig up, but here they are, followed again by Terp's response) were just completely dismissed because Holger Terp tells us the missionary has contradicted everything. Of course, the missionary testimony did not even begin to rebut the historical sequence of events presented by the "Turkish WAISer" (WAIS standing for the World Association of International Studies in Stanford University, California), such as "Nothing happened to the Armenians for 800 years till late 1800’s." Isn't it incredible that these supposed intellectuals choose to mindlessly chant, "rah rah, genocide," without stopping to examine the facts? (Here's the thread for this discussion; they are all of one mind.) The sad thing is, this sort of compliance and uncritical acceptance lies across the board. Why is it that these otherwise fair people don't listen to what the Armenophile Richard Davey cautioned against, all the way back in 1895: "But surely it is not for us to endorse falsehoods and exaggerations without taking the trouble to verify them." (The answer mainly rests upon one word, three syllables, beginning with "P," and badly rhyming with "precipice.")
I mean, look at the source... it's a missionary, for — (should I say it?) — for God's sake. It was the duty of the missionaries, evidenced in their prayers, to vilify the heathen Turks. They felt they had a license from God, in the performance of their Christian duty, to break the Ninth Commandment (the one regarding the bearing false witness), and break it they constantly did. No one questioned their repetition of disgusting horror tales, all derived from hearsay, because everyone knew — as genocide scholars and peace advocates who followed them in later years — that clergymen would not lie.
Why is it that none of these WAIS "intellectuals" stopped to say, hey. Wait a minute. This is the word of a ... missionary. You know, the missionaries? That is, religious fanatics? Why should we accept at face value what an agenda-ridden, bigoted missionary would tell us?
The Historical Proof of Terp's Missionary, Karen Jeppe
Danish Missionary Karen Jeppe
Let's focus on a few lowlights of this piece. Frankly, there is nothing here that even comes close to proving a government-conducted systematic extermination was in place. Karen Jeppe, "Denmark’s First Peace Philosopher," tells us that Armenians were suffering. Well, we know the Armenians were suffering. Everyone in the bankrupt Ottoman Empire was suffering, and dying in large numbers of famine and disease. But suffering is not genocide. "Genocide" is geno + cide, or race killing. There must exist the factual evidence of the intent to kill off a "race" or group, and we don't define evidence as hearsay, particularly a missionary's hearsay. If the majority of Armenians were left in what was left of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the war, with half a million other Armenians managing to move away to other lands not under Ottoman control (The United Armenian Delegation claimed 700,000 in 1922; see last link), and if Talat Pasha ordered the resettlement to come to a stop in August 1915, it is as plain as the beard on Holger Terp's face that what occurred could not possibly be called a "genocide."
Here we go, with some excerpts from Terp's "evidence":
Karen Jepep [sic], who had come back in 1908, untiringly continued her work to provide the daily bread for the Armenians.
Why just the Armenians? Aren't we all God's children?
During many years, the Armenians had put their trust in the promises given by the Young Turks, that Christians and Moslems were to live peacefully side by side, when they came into power.
It is an undeniable fact that "Christians and Moslems" already lived peacefully side by side, before the Armenians began forming their terrorist groups in the mid-to late 19th century. If Armenians were regarded as dog meat, how could 1.5 million Armenians have survived until the opening of WWI? The Turks/Muslims were regarded as dog meat in Armenia, and as soon as Armenia was formed in 1918, the Muslims were systematically polished off during 1919-1920, in what the Jewish Times referred to as "An appropriate analogy with the Jewish Holocaust."
As far as the Young Turks were concerned, they had made a "devil's pact" with the Dashnaks, in order to bring down Sultan Abdul Hamit. They had every intention to grant further rights to every Ottoman, as demonstrated by reviving the old Constitution in 1909. But the conniving and treacherous Armenians were still seduced by the promises of the enemies of their nation; in 1910 the revolutionary committees began to distribute the “Instructions for Personal Defense” throughout eastern Anatolia, the blueprint for their impending rebellion. With sections such as “To Attack Villages,” it was far from a manual on self-defense. (The Armenian Rebellion at Van, p. 183.)
Then the ailing empire was not given a chance for respite, what with the Tripolitanian and Balkan Wars (1911-12, 1912-14, respectively), where concentrating on creating a utopia for Armenians necessarily had to take a back seat. Too bad many Armenians listened to their fanatical leaders and chose this critical time to further their preparation to stab their nation in the back. In short, the situation was not at all that the poor, innocent Armenians had put their trust in the Young Turks' promises, only to see the promises broken; the Young Turks had already demonstrated they had every intention of keeping their promises, and to make the Ottoman Empire a land where every Ottoman had equal rights. It was the Dashnak Armenians who failed to live up to their promises of loyalty, as an Armenian historian tells us.
AFTER THE WAR...
In view of the resolute determination of the British to smear the Turkish Nation with a horrendous crime, the acting Ottoman Government decided to carry the matter beyond the sphere of authority of the Allies, especially the British. On February 18, 1919, Reshid Bey, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, appealed to five neutral European countries (Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, The Netherlands and Spain) and invited them to appoint two legal assessors or magistrates to the "Turkish Commission" already constituted for investigating the "alleged" abuses in connection with the relocation of the Ottoman subjects of different race and religion.
Mr. Wandel, the Danish envoy in Istanbul, forwarded this official request of the Ottoman government by telegram to Copenhagen on February 28, 1919.
The above is from TAT's page on the Malta Tribunal. None of the neutral governments complied, partly intimidated by the British (who discouraged at least the Spanish from participating), and probably because they did not care. Danes who believe in "genocide" and in "peace" ought to question why Denmark did not respond to this cry for help, from a nation left totally at the mercy of great nations intent on murdering the nation; this was a real opportunity to see if there was a genocide or not. (Fortunately, the British answered that question. There was no evidence for the finding.)
[T]he Turks had tried to relieve the inner tensions by exterminating the strangers, those who were different, of another faith than the Moslem one. To begin with, about 30.000 Greeks had to pay, then about 10.000 Syrians; in 1876 the turn came for about 20.000 Bulgarians, and in 1894 it fell to the Armenians.
Absolutely vicious. Yes, this is the kind of "history" our peacenik is offering, and the WAIS moderator is accepting without question. In conflicts involving Greeks, it was the Muslims who wound up getting slaughtered wholesale (in 1821's revolution, in 1877 and in Crete), and it was always Greece "firing the first shot." When a segment of the population rebels, it is the duty of the government being attacked to quell that rebellion. (Where are those figures from, "30,000 Greeks," and "10,000 Syrians" — presumably the Assyrian community, another rebellious lot; has anyone bothered to ask?) When combatants get killed, that cannot be defined as "massacres" or "atrocities." Similarly, 1876's Bulgarians were also compelled to rebel, and suffered a loss of some 10,000. (Note the presented figure is doubled.) The Turks/Muslims would go on to lose (1877-78) some 260,000 killed, and over a half-million expelled, in the hands of the Bulgarians and their Russian benefactors. And it should be obvious by now that the Armenians caught the rebellion fever ("...In each and every case the disturbances were commenced by the Armenians"; British Captain Norman), and the 20,000-odd deaths from 1894-96 (not 200,000-300,000 as Armenian propaganda frequently tells us) was a natural consequence. As usual, no one cares about the 5,000 or so innocent Muslims who died under the hands of the Armenians.
Just dwell on the utter stupidity of the statement above. The claim is that the Turks engaged in "exterminating" the "strangers" (strangers? These were fellow Ottomans), as if the numbers would have stopped in the low thousands, had the aim truly been extermination. The dishonesty is simply overwhelming.
New massacres took place in Cilicia, where 20.000-30.000 Armenians were murdered. The Young Turks blamed the government and deposed it.
The losses numbered some 20,000, according to Armenians of the time, including a low number of Turkish victims, and was the result, once again, of Armenian aggression. Note the accuracy of the history Mr. Terp has relied upon: The Adana ("Cilicia") events took place in 1909, under the administration of the Young Turks. The Abdul Hamit administration had already been deposed.
Armenian historians have apparently been going round archives in two dozen countries to find out what they contain – the Danish archives for instance. What they contain is what we knew already – that an awful lot of Armenians were killed or died in the course of a wartime deportation from many parts of Anatolia. Did the Ottoman government intend to exterminate the race, or was it just a deportation that went horribly wrong?
Prof. Norman Stone, Armenian Question
The Turks were efficient. Before the war there were about 1.8 million Armenians in Turkey, after the war there were about 450.000. A few hundred thousands managed to flee either to the Caucasus or to Syria.
The pre-war population was some 1.5 million; at least this disgusting propaganda did not wildly overboard, here. The Armenian Patriarch vouched for 644,900 Armenians remaining in what was left of the empire after the war, as we already covered. Regardless, some of the worst propagandists today tell us one million survived. 1.5 million minus 1 million produces the result of some 500,000 Armenian dead, mainly from non-murderous reasons. In other words, some two-thirds survived. The above calculation is telling us less than half survived.
At the end of the war the Turks had lost, but they refused to honor the peace agreement laid upon them.
In other words, Ataturk had the audacity to not honor the Sèvres Treaty, the "peace agreement" that declared a death sentence upon the Turkish nation. Is that Mr. Terp's definition of a "peace agreement," to ensure the nation would no longer survive? In point of fact, the real peace agreement took place at the end of Oct. 1918, aboard the HMS Agamemnon (between Minister of Marine Hussein Rauf and British Admiral Calthorp), which guaranteed the frontiers of the defeated Ottoman state; assurances were given in writing that the integrity of Turkish borders would not change. It was the British and the French who refused to honor this armistice, when they imposed Sèvres in August 1921.
The Armenian state which the Western Powers had promised to set up, was very short-lived.
The Western Powers did not promise anything, but dangled a carrot on a stick for their Armenian pawns. The Republic of Armenia came into being in mid-1918 as a result of the Russian revolution. The credit for its formation: "...[T]he Armenian nation would never forget that it was the Ottoman Government which first conceived the idea of founding an independent Armenia, and recognized it." Telegram, Sept. 9, 1918, Avetis Aharonian to Prime Minister Kachaznouni; Feigl, "The Myth of Terror," 1986, p. 97.
The Russians conquered the original Armenia and incorporated it into the Soviet Union.
Not according to Armenia's first prime minister: "The Bolsheviks entered Armenia without meeting any resistance. This was the decision of our Party. There were two reasons for acting this way; first, we could not resist it even if we wanted to — we were defeated; second, we hoped that the Soviet authorities, backed by Russia, would he able to introduce some order in the state — a thing which we, all alone, had failed to do, and it was very plain already that we would not be able to do. It was our desire to let the Bolsheviks rule the country ..."
By 1922 the situation worsened seriously. Refugees came pouring in, especially from Cilicia, where the French troops were in withdrawal. Many Armenians had gone back to their homes, believing that they would be protected by the French.
In point of fact, many of the resettled Armenians had already been returning to their homes, before officially allowed to do so at the end of 1918. "Cilicia" served as a reverse-migration, where Armenians were encouraged to concentrate in the Adana region, with the security of French protection, and in hopes of setting up another "Armenia." As usual, the Armenians engaged in their massacring of local Muslims, planning to form an Armenian majority, repeating the same tactic as when they occupied chunks of eastern Anatolia — where some half-million Turks, Muslims, Jews and others were killed at the hands of the Armenians' systematic campaign of "ethnic cleansing." The outraged French were forced to disarm some of their Armenian units, and when Turkish nationalist proved too strong, were forced to retreat. Many Armenians felt compelled to join the departing French, fearful of repercussions from the crimes they had committed. Thousands of Armenians died during the retreat from Marash, of starvation and disease, deaths that have unconscionably been added to the "genocide" toll. An Armenian who died from any reason, including old age, is claimed to be a victim of "genocide."
Karen Jeppe's "Genocide Evidence"
The worst of what Karen Jeppe had to say... that is, the big evidence serving to "contradict" what the Turkish WAIS member had put up... boiled down to this:
The Turks were not so sophisticated in mass destruction, so their methods were to herd the men together and shoot them. The young women were often sold as house slaves, older women and children were also driven together, but these were sent out wandering, until they died of thirst, hunger and exertion.
We don't need to get into refuting the vicious nonsense above, do we? Let's just leave it with common sense: if the above served as the idea, not a single man, older woman and child would have remained alive.
Fridtjof Nansen
More importantly, the above are not Karen Jeppe's words. They are the words of the one who wrote Jeppe's biography, Eva Lous, described as a "research librarian and head of the Womens' Historical Collection in the State Library." In other words, Eva Lous is not a historian, but a librarian — like Holger Terp. (Danish-Armenian Karekin Dickran, the writer of the previous article on Maria Jacobsen, is not a historian either; her occupation is "designer.") The bibliography at the end of Eva Lous' article (entitled "Literature"; Terp copy-pasted this article from a page on his own site, which may be examined in its entirety on fredsakademiet.dk/library/ukjeppe.htm) includes works from hopeless pro-Armenians such as Fridtjof Nansen (whose League of Nations connection might have had a role to play in Karen Jeppe's job in the forerunner of the United Nations, as "commissary in Armenian affairs," from May 15, 1921), and Peter Balakian's "The Burning Tigris." One does not attempt valid history by exclusively consulting propagandistic sources.
Ladies and gentlemen, "Karen Jeppe's Genocide Evidence," as Holger Terp would have us believe, boiled down to the vicious and unsubstantiated paragraph above that you have read. Take a look for yourselves on Terp's Jeppe page, under the very short section entitled "The Turkish Genocide on the Armenians." Really. That was it. That was the "history" Holger Terp pointed to, in order to prove there was a genocide, refuting the presentation of the Turkish WAIS member. Let's repeat the words again, by the partisan WAIS moderator:
Holger Terp of the Danish Peace Academy says: This is contradicted by the Danish eyewitness missionary teacher Karen Jeppe.
If Karen Jeppe was an "eyewitness," she eyewitnessed nothing but suffering. Suffering is not genocide. She did not eyewitness any murderous method by the Turks, such as the way they would "herd the men together and shoot them." Jeppe might have seen some of the Armenians who were sent off on their forced migration eventually dying of thirst, hunger or exhaustion. Unfortunately, there was no mass transit (save for a one-track railroad which some Armenians coming from the west were allowed to use), and everyone — including the soldiers — had to hoof it when they traveled from Point A to Point B. (One example; even Maria Jacobsen paid note to the soldiers' lack of transportation, in Diaries of a Danish Missionary, pp. 48, 52, 59, 161.) And, yes, the bankrupt Ottomans did not do a good job of caring for these people. But that is a far cry from claiming that the "intent" was to murder them. If such were the intent, the majority of Armenians could not have possibly survived.
It is so totally irresponsible for a "man of peace" to serve as an accomplice to the perpetuation of hatred and racism.
In the Gandhi paper, Terp was similarly gaga for the missionaries Gandhi associated with. It's possible that Terp, like Fridtjof Nansen's father, is a very devout Christian. The way he regards the lawful word of missionaries as Jacobsen and Jeppe is most revealing. Unfortunately, the word of missionaries can never substitute for actual history.
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© Holdwater
The source site of this article gets revised often, as better information comes along. For the most up-to-date version, and the related photos, the reader may consider reviewing the direct link as follows:www.tallarmeniantale.com/GS-Terp.htm
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