3716) Book Review: The Armenian Events Of Adana In 1909: Cemal Paşa And Beyond

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“The Armenian Events Of Adana In 1909: Cemal Paşa And Beyond”.

Book Review by Ergun Kırlıkovalı , May 27, 2019

Abstract:

This book represents a meticulous exploration of the ethno-religious, geo-strategic, political, social and economic dimensions of a tragic event in history, which is still little understood [1] 1and much misrepresented [2]. Güçlü studied the archives of five countries (the Ottoman Empire, the Republic of Turkey, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States), mostly primary and secondary sources, before masterfully piecing together this massive historical puzzle. Armenian sources are notably missing, because, as Güçlü explains here and elsewhere, access to Armenian state, lay, and religious archives is still restricted to those who adhere to the official Armenian narrative [3]. Güçlü enlightens the readers by delivering a comprehensive before-during-after look at the region and the event. Readers will be enriched by reading this book to realize that biased and furious descriptions of Adana events of 1909 [4], that are popularly accepted without much fact-checking or critical thinking, may be unfair, inaccurate, even unethical.

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3695) Book Review by Jeremy Salt Armenian Events of Adana in 1909 Cemal Pasa and Beyond by Yücel Güçlü

Book Review by Jeremy Salt,
Former Associate Professor Of Middle Eastern Studies
At Bilkent University

The Armenian Events of Adana in 1909: Cemal Pasa and Beyond by Yücel Güçlü, Hamilton Books, 2018. 499 pages. $32.99.

In the contested and controversial historical issue known as “the Armenian Question,” the 1909 communal upheaval in Adana stands between the breakdown of order in the eastern Anatolian provinces in the 1890s and the catastrophe that overwhelmed the civilian population of the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Those affected were Muslims as well as Christians, although it is almost entirely the suffering of the latter that has captured the attention of the “western” cultural mainstream.

The Adana “events” have been the subject of numerous works. The titles that quickly come to mind are Raymond Kevorkian’s studies in French and English; Kemal Çiçek’s collection of essays, Adana 1909 Olaylareli: Makaleler (Ankara Events of 1909: Articles); and Tetsuya Sahara’s short but meticulously researched monograph, What Happened in Adana in 1909? . . .

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3679) Book Review: Small Nations and Great Powers A Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict in the Caucasus

Book Review

Svante E. Cornell, Small Nations and Great Powers: A Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict in the Caucasus.
Richmond, England: Curzon Press, 2001, 480 pp. + maps

Small Nations and Great Powers is an ambitious work with a wide scope, covering all the ethnic conflicts that have devastated the Caucasus since the last days of the Soviet Union. The book is copiously annotated and its bibliography includes a large number of mostly English, but also German and Scandinavian studies that have been published since the late 1980s. The author, Svante Cornell, has established himself during the last half-decade as one of the most prolific authors on the politics of the Caucasus. Readers familiar with the literature on the region will recognize in several chapters of this volume updated and augmented versions of some of the articles published by the author in recent years.

Armenian-Azeri dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh, and conflicts in Georgia, Chechnya, and elsewhere in the North Caucasus.
Roles of Turkey, Iran, Russia, and the United States.

Pro-Azeri and pro-Turkish bias, which taints his analysis of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, of Turkey's role in the Caucasus, and of Armenian-Turkish relations in particular. Thus, an entire section entitled the "Shock of Khojaly" is devoted to the massacre of Azeri civilians by Karabakh Armenian forces . . .

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3676) Australia and the politics of the Armenian Genocide, Andrekos Varnava, 2017

HISTORY AUSTRALIA, 2017

BOOK REVIEW
Australia and the politics of the Armenian Genocide
Andrekos Varnava
Flinders University, Australia
Armenia, Australia & the Great War , edited by Vicken Babkenian and Peter
Stanley, Sydney, NewSouth Publishing, 2016, 336 pp., AUD$34.99 (paperback),

ISBN: 9781742233994, Publisher ’ s website: www.newsouthbooks.com.au/books/armenia-australia-great-war/

The Great War was momentous for so many people and there is no doubt that this was the case for both the Armenian and Australian peoples. On the eve of the Great War the Armenians were a historic community mostly living in Asia Minor and Transcaucasia who were trying to secure their existence in the face of the violent disintegration of the Ottoman Empire. Australia had officially been a nation for barely a generation and was still coming to terms with its role in the world. For the Armenians and the Australians, the Great War proved catastrophic in terms of casualties; the difference being the Genocide which took well over one million non-combatant Armenian lives. Yet for both the war proved instrumental for the character of their subsequent respective nation-states.

This book shows that there are many historic and contemporary connections for Australians and Armenians. Broadly, there are four historic and contemporary themes running through the book: (1) Armenian migration to Australia pre-and-post the Great War; (2) Australian eyewitness accounts of the Armenian Genocide (1915 and 1916) and ethnic cleansing from Asia Minor and parts of Transcaucasia (1920–23); (3) Australian relief efforts during and post the Great War; and (4) the role and position of the Australian federal and state governments in recognising the Armenian Genocide. The authors – Vicken Babkenian, an independent researcher writing his first book, and Professor Peter Stanley, an experienced military historian – have written a richly researched and beautifully written narrative that is easy to follow and understand.

Andrekos Varnava andrekos.varnava@flinders.edu.au





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3675) Book Review: The Great War in the Middle East

Review Article: The Great War in the Middle East

by Fikriye Karaman

The First World War in the Middle East By Kristian Coates Ulrichsen
Hurst & Co, 2014, 320 p. UK

The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East By Eugene Rogan
Basic Books, 2016, 512 p. USA

A Land of Aching Hearts: The Middle East in the Great War By Leila Tarazi Fawaz
Harvard University Press, 2014, 416 p. USA

The Great War and the Middle East By Rob Johnson
Oxford University Press, 2016, 354 p. UK . . .

..In 1915, the Caucasian front also witnessed a chain of events that culminated in the deportation of all Armenians of the Armenian Apostolic Church living close to the Ottoman-Russian war zone. In mid-April the Armenians revolted at Van. Already tense due to the provocations of Russia and the Armenian Revolutionary Committees, and to some extent due to poor governance, the Anatolian Armenians’ relations with the state and Muslim communities had deteriorated under wartime strains. The divided loyalties of the Armenians had shaken many Muslims’ confidence, as thousands of them “materially assisted the Russian forces and harassed the Ottoman Third Army as it retreated from Sarikamis” (Ulrich-sen, p. 59). At the onset of the Gallipoli campaign, many Armenians openly celebrated their forthcoming delivery from Turkish rule (Rogan, p. 166). Furthermore, as Sean McMeeken (2015) notes, in April 1915, the Hunchak revolutionaries and in July Boghos Nubar Pasha, the Egyptian-born head of the Armenian National Delegation, promised an armed collaboration with tens of thousands of ..

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3674) Review Essay: The Denial Of The Right To Disagree by Jeremy SALT

‘Denial’ is a weapon in the hands of the propagandist and the historian who uses it risks being put in the same category. What it means is that all relevant facts are known and beyond challenge. To question them is to ‘deny’ their truth. In a work of history, such an approach should be completely unacceptable. In their entirety, facts are never known. One history is only the layering over of other histories, to be replaced in its turn as new facts and more plausible explanations come to light. When it comes to the Armenian question, however, this process is short-circuited by ‘denial’.

Fatma Müge Göçek, Denial of Violence. Ottoman Past, Turkish Present and Collective Violence Against the Armenians, 1789-2009 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 629 pp.

Review Essay: The Denial Of The Right To Disagree
Jeremy SALT*


To cite this article: Salt, Jeremy. “Review Essay: The Denial of the Right to Disagree.”
Review of Armenian Studies, Issue 37 (2018).
Received: 10.02.2018
Accepted: 28.06.2018


The author states that the tehcir (‘relocation’) and massacres of Armenians in the First World War was ‘the first instance of a crime against humanity.’ In fact it was not; it was the first use of the phrase and only the first allegation that such a crime had been committed. Furthermore, the accusation by Britain, France, and Russia, specifically of ‘crimes against humanity’, was part of an intense propaganda war being waged against the Ottoman Empire by the allied powers. They had built their own empires through war, mass murder, and the destruction of cultures and were wide open to the same accusation many times over. Indeed, the recorded history of the human species is characterised by such crimes. The ethnic cleansing of Muslims from the Balkans twice in the . . . .

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3673) Book Review: Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Leadership, Strategy, Conflict by Edward J. Erickson

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
Leadership, Strategy, Conflict
by Edward J. Erickson

Winston Churchill labelled Mustafa Kemal Atatürk as a ‘Man of Destiny’ in The World Crisis (Volume 2) in 1925 and attributed much of the initial ANZAC and British failure at Gallipoli in 1915 to Kemal’s dynamic combat leadership. This was, of course, a retrospective appraisal and actually during World War I, Mustafa Kemal remained a largely unknown personality in both the Ottoman Empire and in Britain. In 1932, ...

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3662) Edward Ericson: "The Events Of 1915 In Turkey Were Provoked By Armenian Revolutionaries"

1 Jun 2018

Famous military historian Edward J. Erickson arrived from the United States to Moscow to present his scientific and historical monograph ”Ottomans and Armenians: A Study in Counterinsurgency”, which was published this year in Russian. Vestnik Kavkaza spoke with the American researcher about the main results of his work and the importance of such independent works on the 1915 events in Turkey for historical science.

- What are the main questions that your book answers about the 1915 events in Turkey?

- In 1915, at the beginning of the First World War, the Ottoman Armenian citizens were relocated from their homes to camps for the purposes of counterinsurgency program - this event, over the last 100 years, has often been described as a genocide, a prototype for the Holocaust. My work puts the relocation in a context: these people were moved as a part of the war and because of national security concerns by the Ottoman Empire government. So the book and the events are all about an explanation of why approximately 350 thousand Armenian citizens were moved from their homes to the camps in the Euphrates valley, and this is an alternative interpretation of the events of 1915.

- What myths about the 1915 events in Turkey did you manage to disprove in your book? . . .

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3652) Book Review: Armenian genocide (and if they had lied to us): Reflections on the Turkish-Armenian tragedy by Yves Bénard

Book Review: Armenian Genocide (And if They Had Lied To Us): Reflections on the Turkish-Armenian Tragedy
by Yves Bénard

The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, June 28th 1914, caused a great stir. In less than a month, Europe and Japan entered the war. Turkey is assailed by the Russians, the Armenian deserters, the British, the French, the Greeks, the Italians and the Australians.

All the Turks were drafted. Only the elderly, the women and children, remained in towns and villages. The Armenian militias had been waiting for this moment to implement their "extermination" plan aiming to obtain the "Great Armenia". Driven by a murderous frenzy, they indulged in barbarous acts of indescribable cruelty, over 500,000 victims were raped, disembowelled, crucified, slaughtered, mutilated, burned or buried, and the villages burned.

The author brings to light this dark page of the Turkish-Armenian tragedy with documents that bring a completely new and unexpected look on the Turkish-Armenian affair.

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3650) Review Of Chapter 7, Book Titled “The Fall of Ottomans” by Eugene Rogan, Related To Annihilation Of Armenians by Y Atun, S Aya, A Atun

Abstract Subject chapter, Chapter 7 of The Fall of Ottomans, bears no “judicially valid evidences at all”, and is a narration of other people’s narratives or works. It has no chronological consistency or any reasons properly told. These are too many and would require another chapter of verbatim answers which can be documentarily given with ease. The dependable source Taner Akcam (an extreme leftist prison fugitive in 1978, sheltered in Germany for a decade and later transferred to the care of Mr. Dadrian and created as scholar) in all these years has not produced one authentic document, other that “stories or fake evidences”. His salaries at Universities have been paid by rich Armenians. He is doing a “job for the money and support he gets”. The following posting with several references, unless the opposite is proven, weighs his scholarship and ethics: (Note: The blog post and share all polite comments).
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3645) Free E-Book: The Big Lie: A Research On Some Of The Great Lies And Liars In The Late Century

Book Review:  The Big Lie
A Research On Some Of The Great Lies And Liars In The Late Century
© Şükrü Server Aya, 2017
Ka Kitap,  Istanbul
ISBN 978-605-82354-0-3

(Theory and human behavior)

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

Joseph Goebbels (Hitler’s Propaganda Minister)

The “distorted and definitely undocumented Armenian genocide” propaganda has been brought to such levels of political abuse and travesties of all fundamentals of known principles of law and justice, that writers, speakers and even large bodies such as parliaments and lately CHURCHES are involved with increasing participation. This appears to be movement of exercising and unknowingly defending “die Grosse Luege” or “the Big Lie” as it was coined in the above phrase.

The daily effect of propaganda and ease of politicians to exploit centuries old prejudices, blindfold the presently ongoing world dramas in much larger calamities. If you surf on internet, you can see that the total WW-1 casualties of various countries add up to about 40 millions. Outstanding losses are as follows: Russia, 9 millions; Germany and Austria each 7 millions, France 6 millions, Britain 3 millions, Italy 2 millions, USA about 300.000. All these large losses are rest in the ashes of history, except “Armenian losses of 1,5 million” which you cannot see anywhere in such statistics because they were little compared to warring parties and official war records.

“This Big Lie” is just born and had no time to distort the old historical records. In order to make this cornucopia of irrefutable documents and solid facts as concise as possible, this study will make use of primarily neutral official, international, pro-Armenian publications balancing the information contained in the millions of original Ottoman documents available in open archives. The document or reference given to support the statement MUST BE TREATED AS LEGAL EVIDENCE and given PRIORITY versus personal opinions or apocryphal tales; like the previous ones, it has not been requested or supported by any entity. . .

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2019) Book Review: Twisted Law And Documented History - Geoffrey Roberson's Opinion On Genocide Against Proven Facts

HAZEL ÇAĞAN ELBİR
30.11.2013

Author: Şükrü Server Aya, Athol Books, Belfast, 2013
Book Review (Review of Armenian Studies)
Hazel Çağan Elbir
Analyst, AVİM

Geoffrey Robertson, who prepared a report named “Was There an Armenian Genocide?” and this report was submitted to the British Parliament by British Armenian All-Party Parliamentary group on 14th December 2009. The report includes documents from Foreign and Commonwealth of Nations. The purpose of the report is to declare British Parliament as a denier of the so-called Armenian genocide.

This informative book was written in order to respond Prof. Geoffrey Robertson QC (Queens Counsel) article by article considering Armenian allegations which are contrary to the existing documents. Each article is interpreted and uncovered by the author, Şükrü Server Aya in a simple and frank way. Mr. Aya presents a documented historical response to Mr. Robertson. In order to adhere to the original report by Mr. Robertson, Mr. Aya quoted the related articles from the report. Therefore, the readers have a chance to read both sides at the same time. . . .

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3575) Review Essay by Jeremy Salt: A Lawyer's Blundering Foray Into History

Author: Geoffrey Robertson, QC, An Inconvenient Genocide: Who
Now Remembers the Armenians? (London: Biteback Publishing,
2014), 293 pp.

The author of this book is well known, as an international human rights lawyer, as the author of other books and as a television panelist and former moderator of the BBC quiz program ‘Hypotheticals.’ His reputation alone will ensure sales and favorable reviews but this book cannot be regarded as a serious study of the Armenian question, let alone as the historical basis for a legal judgment of any kind.

Mr Robertson’s problems begin with the front cover. ‘Who now remembers the Armenians?’ refers to a statement allegedly made by Hitler on the eve of the invasion of Poland, yet in three versions of the speech admitted as evidence at the Nuremberg tribunal there is no mention of the Armenians. 1 They appear in a version passed around by an American journalist, Louis P. Lochner, who claims to have been given it a week before the invasion of Poland by a confidant of one of Hitler’s enemies . .

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3572) Book Review: Atatürk in the Nazi Imagination by Stefan Ihrig, Harvard Uni

Book Review by Sukru Server Aya: Atatürk in the Nazi Imagination by Stefan Ihrig, Harvard Uni Press

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3571) Book Review - Armenian Insurrection and the Great War” by Dr. Pat Walsh and Dr. Garegin Pastermadjian “Armen Garo"

“The Armenian Insurrection and the Great War” by Dr. Pat Walsh and Dr. Garegin Pastermadjian “Armen Garo” (A Cautionary Tale of Betrayal)
ISBN 978-1-8722078-23-6 “Belfast Historical & Educational Society” 215 pages.

INTRODUCTION: For those who undertake wide ranging, below the surface and cross referenced research on the “genocide fanfare”, which has been popular only in the last fifty years, there are some logical questions. These are generally never asked or answered when debating a hundred or hundred and fifty years’ old historical events which are likely to have been forgotten long ago. The very important reality is that the genocide allegations relating to over a century old events do not stand on any reliable documentary evidence, i.e. official reports, past memorandums or correspondence and alike… They are usually based on grand-mother stories and personal hearsay, even than not on dependable true eyewitness reports. . . .

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3565) Book Review “They Can Live In The Desert But Nowhere Else”: A History Of The Armenian Genocide

by Ronald Grigor Suny. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015

Reviewed by Edward J. Erickson

Professor Ronald Grigor Suny is a distinguished scholar and a well-published historian. He is known for his body of work specializing in Armenian history and affairs. The title of the book comes from a conversation that American ambassador Henry Morgenthau reported he had with Ottoman interior minister Talat Pasha in early August 1915 (p. 269–270), which Suny purports to show that Talat had solved the Armenian “problem” in a particularly brutal manner. The introduction presents Professor Suny’s thesis is a roundabout manner, which is to explain that the Young Turks (the alleged perpetrators of a genocide) had an “affective disposition” that “allowed them, indeed in their minds required them, to eliminate whole peoples”

(p. xx). Essentially, Suny argues that the Young Turks’ cognitive and emotional state demonstrated by their observed behavior and actions in 1915 proves a genocide.

While this kind of argument may be suitable for forensic psychologists, historians rarely attempt it because of the dictum that correlation does not prove causation. . . . . .

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3545) Review Essay: “Proving” A “Crime Against Humanity”?

by Maxime Gauin

“Proving” A “Crime Against Humanity”?

The Young Turks’ Crime Against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide And Ethnic Cleansing In The Ottoman Empire

TANER AKÇAM, 2012
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press
528 pp., US$ 37.80 (hb), ISBN-10: 0691159564, ISBN-13: 978-0691159560

Introduction

After a presentation of what he considers as the relevant context (the Ottoman archives, Balkan wars and their aftermath, “ethnic cleansing” against the Greeks), Taner Akçam bases his “demonstration” primarily on Ottoman and German sources to “prove” that a “genocidal” decision was taken by the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) leadership in March 1915, after discussion with the German government, and carried out during the war, mostly during the years 1915 and 1916, not only by massacres and deportations but also by “forced assimilation” of women and children . . .

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3534) Book Review: Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: a Disputed Genocide

Guenter Lewy, 2005. Publisher The University of Utah Press

Part 1
The literature is voluminous on what Armenians call the first genocide of the twentieth century and what most Turks refer to as an instance of intercommunal warfare and a wartime relocation. Yet despite the great outpouring of writing, an acrimonious debate over what actually happened almost one hundred years ago continues unabated. The highly charged historical dispute burdens relations between Turkey and Armenia and increases tensions in a volatile region. It also crops up periodically in other parts of the world when members of the Armenian diaspora push for recognition of the Armenian genocide by their respective parliaments and the Turkish government threatens retaliation. 'Vestnik Kavkaza' publishes chapters from the book of Guenter Lewy "The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: a Disputed Genocide", revealing the essence of the issue. . . .

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3511) Protesting Biased & Unbalanced Geoffrey Robertson QC Interview on ABC Australia

Protesting the biased and unbalanced ABC Australia in at least four programs - "Drum" , “Lateline” , “Q&A” and ABC News Radio on  Geoffrey Robertson QC interview.

In all of the programs, Mr Geoffrey Robertson QC, in Australia, funded by the Armenian Lobby, to promote his new book "An Inconvenient Genocide", was given free reign to advertise his publication apparently free of charge on the national broadcaster. . .

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3507) An Inconvenient Genocide' by Geoffrey Robertson Q.C / International Law: No Genocide by Kirlikovali/ Open Letter and call to ABC TV programmers by Sukru Server Aya

Updated th Dec 2014
Geoffrey Robertson Launches Book on Armenian Genocide

'An Inconvenient Genocide' by Geoffrey Robertson Q.C.

CANBERRA, Australia—The Armenian National Committee of Australia (ANC Australia) reports that leading human rights lawyer, Geoffrey Robertson QC, will be launching his latest publication at the National Press Club in Canberra.

“An Inconvenient Genocide: Who Now Remembers the Armenians,” published by Random House, is a groundbreaking publication where Geoffrey Robertson presents a compelling argument based on fact, evidence and his knowledge and expertise of international law, proving beyond reasonable doubt that the horrific events that occurred in 1915 do indeed constitute genocide.

Robertson is a leading human rights lawyer and a UN war-crimes judge. He has been Counsel in many notable Old Bailey trials, has defended hundreds of people facing death sentences in the Caribbean, and has won landmark rulings on civil liberty from the highest courts in Britain, Europe and the Commonwealth. Robertson is the Head of Doughty Street Chambers, a Master of the Middle Temple, a Recorder and visiting professor at Queen Mary College, University of London.

This event, which is being held at one of the most prestigious events in Australia, coincides with the start of ANC Australia’s Advocacy Week in Canberra.

Robertson’s research and publications on the Armenian Genocide have been instrumental in shifting the denialist policy, which had been adopted for many years by the United Kingdom.

Executive Director of the Armenian National Committee of Australia, Vache Kahramanian remarked: “The launch of Mr. Robertson’s latest publication will go a long way in altering the position adopted by the Australian Government on the Armenian Genocide.”

The Armenian National Committee of Australia has been working with Geoffrey Robertson’s international team on the promotion of his latest publication.

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