3791) 7 Awkward Questions to Ask Believers of the Armenian 'Genocide'

April 24, 2022 Since the 1990s, most scholars and historians changed their minds once they started opening more archival material with growing interest in what happened to Armenians. 

 

Many questions began to arise, casting total doubt on the hitherto undisputed allegation of an Armenian “genocide” committed by the Ottomans. The tough questions have become awkward for Armenians who were once very convinced that they experienced genocide. . . .

We are going to review just 10 of them that any rational person would find calling the events of 1915 a genocide would be a bit of a stretch.

1. Why were so many Armenians given aid, food, money, resettlement land, tools if the intention was genocide rather than moving hostile rebel villages away from the Russian front line?
A bit of context:

The American consul stationed in Aleppo in Syria, JB Jackson sent a dispatch to the American ambassador Henry Morganthau on February 8, 1916 informing him that 500,000 Armenian migrants had arrived in Syria and that 500 pounds of gold were spent each week on them and joining a list of 486,000 people who were receiving Ottoman aid in their resettlement. [ 1 ] [ 2 ]
This was also asked for in historian Yusuf Halacoglu's book: The Story of 1915 What Happened to Ottoman Armenians . It breaks down settlements with 300,000 Armenians settled in Deir-el-Zor (the city that Armenians claim is a desert even though it is a lush city right next to a river). 100,000 in Damascus and Maan. Although they gathered them all in one place, they were not exterminated as the Armenians imply. Nor were they exterminated before being transported to Syria, as Consul Jackson tells us that more than 500,000 arrived in 1916. He also mentioned that 625,000 Armenians lived in 1921 in Syria.

2. If the goal of the Ottomans was extermination/mass murder, then why weren't the thousands of Armenians in western Turkey forced to migrate to Syria?

The Ottomans did not transfer Western Armenians because there were no rebellions in Western Turkey. All the rebellions were in the East and that was the front line with Russia. So, as part of the standard military strategy at the time, the Armenians were moved from the east.

Common Armenian counter-argument: Western Armenians were not killed because there were European observers in Western Turkey.

Well, that wouldn't make much sense given that European and American diplomats had free access to Ottoman-Syrian territory and reported on it frequently. But notice they don't claim they were killed. They know very well that the Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople stayed there and was not moved or killed. They know that around 300,000 Armenians living in western and central Turkey did not migrate and that the relocation order specifically mentioned eastern areas near the front lines with Russia.

3. If the Ottomans exterminated the Armenians, where are all the authenticated encrypted telegraphs ordering the killing of civilians? There would be two copies, one for the perpetrators of the attacks and one in the archives. It would have taken thousands of orders from Constantinople for all the massacres the Armenians claim to have taken place.

All communication at the time was by telegraph. All commands MUST be authenticated with numbers, otherwise any spy could plug in his own machine halfway between Constantinople and the frontline and manipulate the Ottoman army into an ambush. Thus, there would be two copies of such orders and yet, for 100 years, no one has come forward having found such orders anywhere. Given that genocide was not a crime at the time and the violent Ottoman Empire has a history of being ruthless after suffering 8-10 million Turkish deaths in the Balkan Wars of the 1800s, there is no was no reason for them to hide such orders against disobedient Christians if there were any.

4. Where are all the anti-Armenian laws, hate speech or vitriol expressed against Armenians by the Ottoman rulers?

Unlike Nazi Germany with Kristallnacht and various examples of Jewish hate speech and laws. An entire book written by the German leader expressing his hatred for the sins of the Jews and how they posed a threat to German Christianity. Nothing like it exists for the rulers of the Ottomans such as Enver Pasha or Talât Pasha. Instead, we have many orders written by Talat Pasha expressing that Armenian migrants must be protected because they are taxpayers after all. Even the orders to conscript them into the Ottoman army because they need their help against the Russians and the Armenian rebels (of course many Armenians would be conscripted and then desert the Ottoman army taking arms and ammunition for Armenian rebel organizations).

There is not even anything like the Wannsee conference in the Ottoman leadership, something that proved the Holocaust to be genocide by Nazi Germans. They had meetings to talk about how to deal with corpses and how to steal them before killing them.

5. How did the Ottomans identify the Armenians from the Turks?

Armenians were not given identification to isolate them and harm them further. Simply rebellious Armenian villages were moved from the front lines and then allowed to return once Russia withdrew in 1917 to face the Bolshevik Revolution.
It is impossible to tell the difference between Armenians and Turks unless you have sought circumcision or heard them speak their native language (although many Armenians also spoke Turkish). Or unless you've seen them enter a church or heard their name. Otherwise they look completely alike. The main difference being that they were Christians with a different language.

Instead, we have counter evidence: Ottoman-Armenian governors. Yes, Armenians became governors during the reign of Talat Pasha and Enver Pasha. In fact, the very reason the CUP (ruling party) came to power was because it sided with the Armenian rebels and overthrew the Sultan. It was a progressive party against a conservative sultan who treated Armenians worse.

This is not surprising as it is common for many Armenians to accuse even Ataturk (the founding father of the Turkish Republic) of having also participated in the genocide, which was also much more politically progressive and not very religious at all. It doesn't matter what Turkish or Ottoman rulers think, but because they are Turkish, Armenians think they must have hurt Armenians. This in itself is a hateful ideology that has been propagated by the ARF (Armenian Revolutionary Federation) since 1915. Yet after 100 years, the ARF is still an active organization. You have to ask yourself why? Isn't World War I over for Armenians yet?

6. Despite the British conquest of Constantinople in 1918 and its detention for 5 years and the looting of the Ottoman archives. They found no evidence of genocide or intentional planning to exterminate any minority. Wouldn't there have been such evidence found by the British during their occupation?

Even the worst enemy of the Ottoman Empires, the British Empire, found no evidence of genocide. They certainly spread propaganda of an Armenian Genocide, but they never provided any documentation or archival material stolen from Constantinople , or found orders indicating that a heinous calamity was brewing, as accused by the Armenians.

7. How can you retroactively apply the term genocide when it became international law in 1948?

If we start applying things retroactively, then there were a lot of genocides that we could start listing and start blaming European nations. But we don't do that. Is it because we love Europe or hate Turks?

Common Armenian counter-argument: "Yes, we can't apply it retroactively, but Raphael Lemkin came up with the term to describe the suffering of Armenians."

Yes, but Raphael Lemkin is not a historian. How can he know that a genocide took place against the Armenians? He may have simply been fooled by the Entente Power propaganda at the time which accused the Ottomans of massacring Christians (they did not use the term genocide at the time).

Finally, even if we were to use Raphael Lemkins' definition, almost every war would suddenly turn into a genocide debate, because civilians die in every war. His view of the term genocide is simply not correct because genocide is a term specifically reserved for the intentional killing of a group.

Besides, the reputation of Raphael Lemkins is problematic. As the definition now includes the protection of religious, ethnic, national and gender groups. He didn't want "class" to be part of the UN definition of genocide because he was persuaded (or paid) by the Soviets to exterminate people of certain classes.

[ 1 ] American Archives NARA RG 59, 867.48/271, quoted in Sarafian, Vol I, p.112ff

[ 2 ] The History of 1915 What happened to the Ottoman Armenians?

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