3370) Book Review : Crime of Numbers: Role of Statistics in the Armenian Question (1878-1918), Fuat Dündar

Reviewed by Yücel Güçlü, independent scholar

Transactions Publishers, 2010. xiv + 238 pages, with tables, figures, appendices, bibliography, index. $49.95, hardcover.

Crime of Numbers is a continuation of Fuat Dündar's postgraduate research. It is a controversial and provocative venture whose overarching thesis is that "during the First World War, in order to find land for homeless refugees from the Balkans, the Ottoman government evacuated certain areas where Armenians lived" (p. 2). His tone being polemical, Dündar is at pains to stress that this policy led to "the process that culminated in the decision to deport nearly the entire population" (p. 2). . . .

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3368) Interview With François Georgeon: Revelation A Shameless Manipulation From Hachette

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1. Interview With François Georgeon: Revelation A Shameless Manipulation From Hachette
2. The overlap of two realities: the martyrdom of muhacir and massacres of Armenians in Anatolia
3. "Armenian genocide" thesis about the contradictory presence
4. Interview with Fuat Dündar, History, No. 341, April 2009
5. Interview with Fuat Dundar: Comments By Sukru Server Aya, 14 September 2012

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These days, following private discussions about the two pages dealing with the Armenian "genocide" in the new textbooks (especially those of Hachette), this document has been sent. We discovered, read (with the greatest attention) and archived: it is indeed overwhelming for some "teachers" clearly unethical. Then, not knowing what to do in the immediate future, we said that we may publish it here. For fear of losing ourselves in developments unclear, we only bolded the passages that seem most important and serious contradiction with the contents of the screenshot below.

Collections of History, No. 45, October 2009, p. 52-61:

Chronicle of a collapse

The Treaty of Sèvres in 1920, after the First World War, leaving the Ottoman Empire in Anatolia State rump Northwest ... How did we get here? . . .

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3264) How Ara Sarafian Excavates Words & Figures Through His Own Imagination From Ambiguous Notes

Gomidas Institute
© 2011 Ara Sarafian

CONTENTS
Introduction by Ara Sarafian
Map
TALAAT PASHA’S 1917 REPORT
Opening Summary Page: Data and Calculations
WESTERN PROVINCES (MAP)
Constantinople
Edirne vilayet
Chatalja mutasarriflik
Izmit mutasarriflik
Hudavendigar (Bursa) vilayet
Karesi mutasarriflik 28
Kala-i Sultaniye (Chanakkale) mutasarriflik
Eskishehir vilayet
Aydin vilayet
Kutahya mutasarriflik
Afyon Karahisar mutasarriflik
Konia vilayet
Menteshe mutasarriflik
Teke (Antalya) mutasarriflik
CENTRAL PROVINCES (MAP)
Ankara (Angora) vilayet
Bolu mutasarriflik
Kastamonu vilayet 40
Janik (Samsun) mutasarriflik
Nigde mutasarriflik
Kayseri mutasarriflik
Adana vilayet
Ichil mutasarriflik
EASTERN PROVINCES (MAP)
Sivas vilayet
Erzerum vilayet
Bitlis vilayet
Van vilayet
Trebizond vilayet
Mamuretulaziz (Elazig) vilayet
SOUTH EASTERN PROVINCES AND RESETTLEMENT ZONE (MAP)
Marash mutasarriflik
Aleppo (Halep) vilayet
Urfa mutasarriflik
Diyarbekir vilayet
Syria vilayet
Zor mutasarriflik
Mosul vilayet
Beirut vilayet
Jerusalem (Kudus-i Sherif) vilayet
Appendix 1: A Report from the Turkish Military Archives
Appendix 2: Talaat’s “Black Booklet”
Map 1: Destruction of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915-17
Map 2: Surviving Armenian Deportees in the Ottoman Empire, 1917

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3091) Young Turk Mass Violence : A Regime-Focused Approach By Ugur Umit Ungor

For The Record / The Armenian Weekly, April 2010

This article will discuss the proposition that the Armenian Genocide may be contextualized within a wider vista of mass violence committed against civilians by the Young Turk regime over roughly four decades of rule. It will take as a point of departure the suggestion that a relatively cohesive regime profoundly transformed the multi-ethnic Ottoman society from the 1913 coup d’état to the elections of . . . 1950. This model will posit the Armenian Genocide within the changing power relations in this period and an exploration of important themes such as leadership, governance, ideology, socialization, and especially mass violence. In the current article, only the latter theme will be developed, using existing theoretical insights from the field of genocide studies and dictatorship studies. 1 The scholarship on the Young Turk regime is developing rapidly. So far, the regime has been studied in a fragmented way, with focus on specific aspects rather than its coherence. This article will attempt to challenge the convention by suggesting a new interpretative framework for understanding the regime. The value of this approach is that it can develop the thesis that from 1913–50, a clear political continuity can be observed in the administrative and ideological development of that dictatorship.

Models of dictatorships and totalitarianism need to identify areas in need of clarification, problematize major issues, and conjure up relevant research questions. For the Young Turk case, we have to ask several of these: How can the Young Turk dictator-ship best be understood? What are the most relevant and pertinent set of research questions to ask? And in which directions should the scholarship develop in order to generate the most meaningful and fruitful results? Theoretical views on the nature of dictatorships developed in totalitarianism studies have yielded important insights and tools that can be used for shedding light on the rise and fall of the Young Turk dictator-ship. In what follows, I will first outline several relevant facets of the regime itself, and then move on to discuss the issue of mass violence in more detail.

THE YOUNG TURK
DICTATORSHIP

What is the Young Turk dictatorship? Any discussion on the nature of the Young Turk regime needs to commence with its leader-ship, the political elite at the apex of the regime’s political and military power. There are at least three ways of viewing this theme: periodization, biography, and authority.

The first issue, periodization, remains a thorny issue in modern Turkish history. The conventional model of modern Ottoman/Turkish history holds that there are two distinct regimes at work in the first half of the 20th century. The Committee of Union and Progress (Ittihad ve Terakki Cemiyeti, or CUP) ruled the Ottoman Empire from 1913–18. Subsequently, the Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Firkasi/Partisi, or RPP) was in power of the Turkish Republic between 1923 and 1950. In this view, the War of Independence of 1919–22 segregates these two regimes as a new regime came into being. The abolition of the sultanate and promulgation of the Turkish Republic in 1923 then marks the distinction through a clear legal discontinuity. These distinctions focus mainly on cosmetic problems such as labels and denominations, rather than on core issues such as regime structure, staffing, political culture, ideology, and pol-icy. This chronological model is heavily influenced, if not produced entirely, by Young Turk historiography. 2

In order to survive in an international force field that was opposed to them, it was in the Young Turks’ interest to present the post-1918 regime as an entirely novel political movement. This dissociation was necessary since the CUP elite was indicted for war crimes and genocide. On the surface, the CUP dissolved itself in 1918, but in reality it only changed its name and appearance: The name of the political party, the party organ, and key security forces were changed after 1918. Upstart Young Turks then perpetuated and codified this myth. For example, in his famous 1927 speech “Nutuk,” Kemal Ataturk misrepresented the historical record by aggrandizing his role in the Young Turk movement and airbrushing the fact that the CUP resurrected itself after 1918 and launched him to lead the movement. 3 The Young Turk historical gaze became the official ideology of the Turkish Republic and has contaminated modern scholarship as well: The trap of “methodological Kemalism” is one of the most common pitfalls that surround scholarship on the Young Turk era. Historians, speciously, have tended to periodize either from 1923 on, or up to 1923. Rather, we should view the period 1913–50 as a more circumscribed, coherent period.

Second, biographies can concretize the abstract notion of the continuity of Young Turk rule. It can be suggested that a generation of men, born roughly between 1870 and 1890 and educated under Sultan Abdul Hamid II at the medical and military academies, and the school for civil service, would ultimately become the Young Turk generation. United in the Young Turk movement, baptized in the fire of Balkan paramilitarism, they struggled for power around the fin de si` ecle and rose to hegemony in the first half of the 20th century. The biographies of the Young Turks are relevant for understanding their ethnic and class backgrounds, and educational and political experiences. 4 A solid understanding of individual and collective biographies can also explain the emergence of their belief system.

To support the claim of continuity in biographical terms, it is sufficient to cross-reference CUP members with RPP members and accentuate the emerging strong overlap in the composi-tion and structure of the minis-terial elites. It is no coincidence that names such as Mahmud Celal Bayar, Tevfik Rustu Aras, Mustafa Abdulhalik Renda, Kazim Ozalp, Ibrahim Tali Ongoren, Hilmi Uran, Ali Cenani, Sukru Kaya, and others appear throughout the 1913–50 era in official reports and operative documents as architects of state formation and nation building. The same continuity applies to the Turkish military. 5 After the ostensible caesura of 1923, these were the men who were employed since they had proved their loyalty to the CUP’s ideological projects and were intimately related to each other— in generation, kinship, and experience of war and revolution. Even though some men were tried and hanged in 1926, innumerable Young Turks in mid-level positions remained in office.

The third issue, authority, is a stumbling block in the study of the Young Turk dictatorship. The political elite that made up the movement and the party largely consisted of the same group of officers and professionals. As we know, the top elite in charge of the regime changed. For the first phase of the regime, the government was led by Mehmed Talaat as interior minister (later “grand vizier”), Ismail Enver (minister of war), and Ahmed Cemal (minister of navy, viceroy of Syria). This regime has often been called the “triumvirate,” but this is misleading: Cemal Pasha was sidetracked at the beginning of the war (and later tried to negotiate a separate agreement with the Allies), and the relationship between Talaat and Enver still awaits thorough investigation. Anecdotal evidence suggests that rather than cooperation, the relationship was marked by intrigue, competition, and occasionally even threatening enmity at the nexus of the respective ministries they wielded power over: the Interior Ministry and the War Ministry, respectively. 6

The second Young Turk regime had a less multipolar structure, as authority revolved more around the personal dictatorship of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, aided by significant henchmen. 7 Not one of the triumvirate survived to see the Turkish Republic, but the political culture did not experience major changes. A major challenge in the scholarship is to come to grips with the (dis)continuities and change in this process, as well as with the nature of authoritarian rule and charismatic leader-ship. For example, fragmentation remains an issue to be investigated: The Young Turk dictatorship was no monolithic moloch in perfect inner harmony. There was considerable power struggle, rivalry, and intrigue within both phases and between regions, security forces, and administrative units. But there was also consensus on the nation-state ideology. More research is needed into these fields.

The nature of the Young Turk regime is a serious controversy in Turkish history, and opinions on it differ radically. Influential myths uphold the metahistorical idea that Ataturk established democracy in Turkey, and that the post-war Young Turk regime was a modern parliamentarian democracy. Western countries have traditionally assessed the Young Turk regime in a positive light, as a buffer against Communism and an engine for reform against “reactionary” political Islam. 8 Hans Kohn, for example, argued in 1939 that the Kemalist dictatorship “is based upon liberal principles, upon the ideas of progress of the nineteenth century. . . . Liberalism and democracy are not despised or scorned, they are the goal of education.”9 Some historians, too, apologetically reject the positing of the Young Turk regime as a totalitarian dictatorship imbued with a radically nationalist ideology, similar to a more general inter-war European phenomenon. For example, Zafer Toprak has claimed that the Young Turks had no plans to demographically homogenize the Ottoman Empire through force. 10 In the face of the sophisticated body of research on Young Turk population politics, this is a hardly tenable position. Feroz Ahmad writes about the Young Turk rejection of democracy that “given the prevailing internal and external circumstances during these years, it would be rash to expect such a regime.”11 This too, is a justificatory assertion that aims to exonerate and exculpate the regime, e.g. from its agency in the mass crimes committed between 1913 and 1950.

Critical thinkers have dismissed these justifications as myths. Erik-Jan Zurcher, for example, writes that the Young Turk party had “totalitarian tendencies,” and continues to argue that what made it totalitarian was “the extreme nationalism, with its attendant development of a legitimizing historical mythology and racist rhetoric, the authoritarian character of the regime and its efforts to establish a complete totalitarian monopoly for its party of the political, social and cultural scene, the personality cult that developed around… Ataturk and Inonu…and the emphasis on national unity and solidarity with its attendant denial of class conflicts.”12 (To this might be added the violent treatment of ethnic minorities.) Hans-Lukas Kieser, too, summarily dismisses the myth that the Young Turk leadership was naive, benevolent, and relatively powerless in the face of overwhelming circumstances. 13 Considering the Young Turk regime’s monist urge to gain mastery over social processes and human destinies, its ambition to monopolize power at the center, destroy or silence opposition, commit mass violence against its own citizens, develop a radical ideology and a personality cult around a single leader, and extinguish non-Turkish cultural life in the public sphere of the eastern provinces, the regime perhaps may be classified as a nationalist, violent, totalitarian dictatorship.

MASS VIOLENCE

These insights need to be developed and related to discussions on the regime’s ideas and acts of violence. As Jacques Sémelin has argued, mass violence is never a spontaneous outburst of popular emotion, nor a chaotic swarm of individuals milling about. It is fundamentally a coordinated effort organized by the very top political elite, aided and carried out by the perpetrating agencies. 14

In other words, to understand mass violence we have to understand better the workings of the political elite, the cogs of the dictatorial regime that pursued the destruction policies.

First and foremost, it is important to note that the Young Turk regime was responsible for unprecedented levels of political violence in modern Ottoman-Turkish society. Never before and never after have so many people been involved in processes of mass violence, either as perpetrators or as victims. The Young Turks were politically and ideologically committed to violence. 15 Four decades ago, Feroz Ahmad already argued:

Another facet of the political revolution was the brutalization of political life. Once politics ceased to be the sport of the ruling classes the rules were changed accordingly. Under Abdulhamid death sentences were the exception not the rule. Dissent was made impotent through isolation and dissenters in exile could always recant....The Unionists were men of a different stamp. To them politics was much more than a game and having seized power they meant to hold on to it. To do so they were willing to use all possible means, so that repression and violence became the order of the day. Nothing was sacred in the pursuit of power and those guilty of dis-sent must be prepared to pay with their lives. 16

The polarization and depacification of Ottoman political culture and society was profound. During the Young Turk era (1913–50), we can distinguish at least two major processes of state violence: the persecution and murder of Armenians and Syriacs in 1915, and the persecution and deportation of Kurds in the 1920’s and 1930’s. There are fundamental similarities and differences in these two episodes of Young Turk mass violence, but suffice it to mention that for our purposes we will focus on continuities. This section will dis-cuss the Young Turks’ experience with mass violence as it developed in the four decades the regime dominated Ottoman-Turkish politics. It will argue that the Young Turk movement was forged in an imperial apocalypse of war and ethnic cleansing that profoundly affected their political outlook once they seized power. From then on, the regime orchestrated several large-scale processes of violent persecution and mass murder of Armenians, Greeks, Kurds and others. Understanding the roots and rationale of all this violence remains an important challenge, which is beyond the scope of this article.

The Young Turk Movement Was Forged In An Imperial Apocalypse Of War And Ethnic Cleansing That Profoundly Affected Their Political Outlook Once They Seized Power.

For our purposes, we can discern at least three schools of thought on the Armenian Genocide, although the term “school” should be used relatively loosely. A first (and early) avenue of investigation was pursued by scholars who contextualized the long-term Armenian experience, in particular the persecutions and massacres against Ottoman Armenians during the crisis from the 1890’s to the 1915 genocide. In this interpretation, the Armenian call for equality, a functioning rule of law, harmony, autonomy, or independence was met by successive Ottoman governments with violence and repression. The genocide was a culmination that ended the “Armenian Question” by ending the Armenian demographic presence in the empire. 17

A second school contextualized the Armenian experience in World War I with that of other groups. They argued that the Young Turk regime from 1914 on engaged in a full-fledged policy of demo-graphic “Turkification” involving deportations of entire groups, including Armenians, Kurds, Circassians, Greeks, and others. The objective in this massive project was demo-graphic “Turkification”: the numerical dilution of these groups in certain territories, to be repopulated with Turks. The destruction of Armenians was an ouverture, as well as major component, of this process. 18 A third line of thought has contextualized the violence in the Turkish nation formation process in the long 19th century, during which the definition and demarcation of the nation under severe inter-state and intra-state pressures frequently led to crises of identity. During these crises, external enemies such as the Russian Empire were equated with internal ones, such as the Armenian middle classes in the Ottoman cities.19


It might be worthwhile to launch a fourth approach that may shed light on Young Turk mass violence from a different perspective. I argue, as an alternative or complementary approach to these three perspectives, for a historical contextualization that is regime-focused: I believe it can be helpful to apply Zurcher’s periodization of 1913–50 as the “Young Turk era” to the study of mass violence in that wretched period. Whereas Zurcher demonstrated political and administrative continuities in terms of state formation, I will conceptualize the problem from the perspective of mass violence. The problem appears to us when we consider the following timeline of intra-society state violence under the Young Turks. First of all, the very ascendance to power of the Young Turk party in 1913 is marked by the bloody coup d’état, the installation of a dictatorship, and the silencing and destruction of the opposition. Nineteen fifteen saw the genocide of Armenians and Syriacs, and 1921 the massacres of Pontic Greeks and Kurdish Alevis of Kocgiri. Only a few years later, the 1925 conflict and ensuing massacres in the Diyarbakir region destroyed innumerable lives, villages, and property. That episode was only matched by the 1930 massacres in the Ararat region, which included the first systematic Young Turk efforts of aerial bombing. The most serious inter-war massacre was the 1938 one in the Dersim region following a brief guerrilla war with the local Kurdish Alevi resistance. 20 All of this violence was committed by the Young Turk political elite.

For the victim groups it seemed as if they were singularly victimized in these episodes, and many authors have studied these episodes in isolation. Although we need to know much more about each disparate event, the disadvantages of this approach are that they are not related to each other historically or conceptually. The Armenian Genocide is no exception to this: As in many cases of genocide, the first studies were conducted by surviving intellectuals. However, lifting out the genocide from the broader context offered here may run the risk of decontextualizing it from four decades of Young Turk mass violence. For this, we need comparative studies of each disparate event: How do the deportations of 1915–16 compare to those of 1925 and 1934? Also, what can we learn about the perpetrators who were involved in all these events from 1915–38? Finally, what was the influence of earlier episodes of state violence on later phases?

It might be instructive to draw a parallel with the Stalinist dictatorship. Research into Soviet mass violence has yielded important results in terms of the forms and nature of violence that Stalin(ism) produced. Across Stalin’s bloody rule, several important campaigns of mass violence were launched: the deportation and murder of the country’s rural middle class during “dekulakization” in the late 1920’s, the Great Terror campaign of political repression and persecution orchestrated in 1937–38, the mass murder of Polish military officers in 1940, and the destructive comprehensive deportation of many ethnic groups (Poles, Chechens,Germans, Koreans, Crimean Tatars). The same political elite targeted millions of people based on their sup-posed group identity over a period of two decades. 21

With this series of massacres in mind, singling out the Great Terror of 1937–38 as if it had no relation with the other violent episodes obfuscates the overall nature of the regime. In the field of Armenian Genocide studies, the murder of Armenians is studied in relative isolation from the wider context of Young Turk mass violence. This hiatus in the scholarship is puzzling, considering only a few years separates episodes of Young Turk mass murder, such as the 1915 genocide of Armenians and the 1925 massacres and deportations of Kurds. In some areas, like Diyarbakir, the same local elites who had destroyed the Armenian presence were also instrumental in the massacre and deportation of Kurds. As in the case of the Stalinist dictatorship, the genesis of a violent episode depended on a myriad of factors related to the international pressures of the threat of war, the political tensions existing within the system, and the bipolar dynamic between minority and state. For each of these cases,more con-textual research could clarify how it fits in with the regime’s utopian ideology or particular political objectives.

Here is one example that must stand for many. The embodiment of continuity in Young Turk mass violence might well be the bureaucrat Sukru Kaya (1883–1959). His involvement with the Young Turk movement and regime ranges from school teacher to civil servant to wartime director of the deportation apparatus, up to minister of culture and interior minister. 22

Sukru Kaya was born on the Aegean island of Kos into a middle-class family. He enrolled in the Galatasaray Lycée, graduated from law school in 1908, and moved to Paris to continue his graduate studies. Upon his return to the Ottoman Empire, he began working for the state, first as a clerk for the Foreign Ministry and later as a civil inspector. The Young Turk seizure of power offered him an opportunity to progress within the Ottoman state bureaucracy. In June 1915, Kaya was assigned the task of opening new state orphanages to house Armenian children younger than 10. 23

An efficient organizer, he won the favor of Talaat and was made director of the bureaucratic apparatus in charge of the deportation process, the Directorate for the Settlement of Tribes and Immigrants (Iskan-i Asair ve Muhacirin Muduriyeti,or IAMM).During his tenure, Kaya was the key executive responsible for the destruction of Ottoman Armenians. He traveled into the field, in particular Diyarbakir and Aleppo, and supervised the construction of concentration camps along the Euphrates. In 1918, the British arrested and imprisoned Kaya at Malta, along with other Young Turks who were accused of crimes. He escaped from Malta and stayed in Italy and Germany for a while, before he returned to Anatolia and joined the Young Turk movement in Ankara. In 1923 he worked as a consultant to the Turkish delegation at the Lausanne Conference. 24

Under the Turkish Republic, Kaya was made mayor of Izmir, member of parliament for Mugla, and minister of agriculture. Ultimately, he found his calling under Kemal Ataturk and functioned as interior minister between 1927 and 1938. During that period, Kaya was responsible for the implementation of the persecution and deportation of Kurds. Kaya was an ideologue: In his speeches, some of which have been published, he’d explain the need “to separate the country into west and east,” arguing that in the east, it was the government’s task to “render the Turk the master.”25 This effectively meant the launching of a nation-state project whereby non-Turks would be expelled and deported from the eastern provinces, and Turks settled on the confiscated land. To determine the criteria for the identification and selection of the deportees, Kaya pushed for the use of the term “race” (irk). 26 He saw violence against ethnic minority civilians as a legitimate solution of national security dilemmas. For example, after the 1925 campaign against Kurds, he concluded that government forces had “crushed and annihilated the rebels and bandits in the east . . . like all our other measures, this is a public expression of force. Whatever it costs for the strength of the Turkish state.”27

Again, Kaya traveled into the field for several important research trips and reported directly to his superior, Kemal Ataturk. During a 1931 journey, he was enraged by the fact that former Armenian deportees in Syria were continuing their crafts and trades, and moving across the Turkish-Syrian border to conduct business in eastern Turkey. They were working with Arabs, Kurds, and Turks, some of whom were friends, neighbors, or even old business partners. As this thwarted the development of the Turkish “national economy,” he proposed a boycott against anyone working with Armenians and tighter surveillance, including building a hermetic border. 28

Kaya also oversaw the 1938 campaign in the Dersim region, in which at least 40,000 Kurdish Alevis were murdered and a further 15,000 deported in cattle wagons to be dispersed in western Anatolian villages. Some scholars have suggested that these high levels of violence were generated by Young Turk resentment against the Dersim Kurds for sheltering and rescuing considerable numbers of Armenians during the genocide. 29

The vindication of this nationalist violence was virtually identical to the same discourse that had justified genocide two decades before. Sukru Kaya’s biography suggests an inescapable diachronic link between episodes of Young Turk mass violence that may seem unrelated and disparate at the surface, but demonstrate thorough-going biographical, institutional, and ideological links. His profile epitomizes the ebb and flow of a generation of young, ambitious, and ruthless bureaucrats committed to an inherently violent ideology.

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DISCUSSION

Drawing together the threads of this argument, three types of continuities need to be suggested. First, regime continuity. There can be little doubt that the Committee of Union and Progress morphed into the Republican People’s Party. But we need to understand better the precise administrative, political, and military continuities in this process. Secondly, in most administrative sectors there is a strong elite continuity, which can be demonstrated easily, for example, for men such as Sukru Kaya. Young Turk henchmen kept their power bases intact and were mobilized during periods of crisis and ideological politics to draw upon prior experience. Ideological continuity, then, is the third form of continuity. This in particular is exemplified in the nation-state ideology and in approaches to territoriality: From 1913–50, eastern Turkey was seen as a con-tested territory to be purified of large minorities such as Armenians and Kurds.We need to understand these continuities better—administrative, biographical, military, ideological, at the national and local levels. A sociological understanding of this violence must demonstrate the intersection between individual biographical experience, social structural changes, historical forces, developments, and events in the political process.

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ENDNOTES

1. A much more expanded version of this argument will follow in a forthcoming interpretative volume: Ugur Umit Ungor, The Young Turk Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).

2. Busra Ersanli, Iktidar ve Tarih: Turkiye’de ‘Resmi Tarih’ Tezinin Olusumu (1929–1937) (Istanbul: Iletisim, 2003); Etienne Copeaux, Espaces et temps de la nation turque: analyse d’une historiographie nationaliste 1931–1993 (Paris: CNRS Editions, 1997), pp. 190–96.

3. Hulya Adak, “National Myths and Self-Na(rra)tions: Mustafa Kemal’s ‘Nutuk’ and Halide Edib’s ‘Memoirs’ and ‘The Turkish Ordeal,’” in South Atlantic Quarterly, vol. 102, no. 2/3 (2003), pp. 509–27.

4. For a generational analysis, see Erik-Jan Zurcher, “How Europeans adopted Anatolia and created Turkey,” in European Review, vol. 13, no. 3 (2005), pp. 379–94.

5. Dankwart A. Rustow, “The Army and the Founding of the Turkish Republic,” in World Politics, vol. 11 (1959), pp. 513–52.

6. Sevket Sureyya Aydemir, Makedonya’dan Orta Asya’ya Enver Pasa (Istanbul: Remzi, 1972), vol. 2 (1908–14), p. 418.

7. Theories on charismatic leadership could shed further light on the construction and functions of the Ataturk myth. For a brief discussion on Mustafa Kemal Ataturk as a dictator, see Frank J. Coppa (ed.), Encyclopedia of Modern Dictators: From Napoleon to the Present (New York: Peter Lang, 2006), pp. 129–30.

8. Donald Bloxham, “Changing Perceptions of State Violence: Turkey’s ‘Westward’ Development through Anglo-Saxon Eyes,” in Richard Littlejohns and Sara Soncini (eds.), Myths of Europe (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007), pp. 223–34.

9. Hans Kohn, Revolutions and Dictatorships: Essays in Contemporary History (Cam-bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1939), pp. 255.

10. Zafer Toprak, “Bir Hayal Urunu: ‘Ittihatcilarin Turklestirme Politikasi,’” in Toplumsal Tarih, vol. 146 (2006), pp. 14–22; Interview with Zafer Toprak, Taraf, Nov. 10, 2008.

11. Feroz Ahmad, From Empire to Republic: Essays on the Late Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey (Istanbul: Istanbul Bilgi University Press, 2008), vol. 1, p. 174.

12. Erik-Jan Zurcher, Turkey: A Modern History (London: I.B. Tauris, 2004), p. 186.

13. Hans-Lukas Kieser, “Modernisierung und Gewalt in der Grundungsepoche des turkischen Nationalstaats (1913–1938),” in Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, vol. 57, no. 3 (2006), pp. 156–67.

14. Jacques Semelin, Purify and Destroy: The Political Uses of Massacre and Genocide (London: Hurst & Co., 2007), p. 141.

15. George W. Gawrych, “The Culture and Politics of Violence in Turkish society, 1903–14,” in Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 22, no. 3 (1986), pp. 307–30.

16. Feroz Ahmad, The Young Turks: The Committee of Union and Progress in Turkish Politics, 1908–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 163.

17. Among the many different studies, see Vahakn N. Dadrian, The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia into the Caucasus (Providence, R.I.: Berghahn Books, 1995).

18. For a recent state-of-the-art collection of articles, see Journal of Genocide Research, vol. 10, no. 4 (2008), special issue on “Late Ottoman Genocides”; Fuat Dundar,Modern Turkiye’nin Sifresi: Ittihat ve Terakki’nin Etnisite Muhendisligi (1913–1918) (Istanbul: Iletisim, 2008).

19. Taner Akcam, Turk Ulusal Kimligi ve Ermeni Sorunu (Istanbul: Su, 2001).

20. Hans-Lukas Kieser, Der verpasste Friede: Mission, Ethnie und Staat in den Ostprovinzen der Turkei 1839–1938 (Zurich: Chronos, 2000).

21. For a recent state-of-the-art collection of articles, see Journal of Genocide Research, vol. 11, no. 2–3 (2009), special issue on “New Perspectives on Soviet Mass Violence.”

22. Interior Ministry Archive (Ankara), personnel file of Sukru Kaya, document no. 1041, p. 21.

23. BOA, DH.SFR 54/150, Ministry of Education to provinces, June 26, 1915.

24. Hakki Uyar’s “Sukru Kaya” in Modern Turkiye’de Siyasi Dusunce (Istanbul: Iletisim, 2001), pp. 80–91, focuses exclu-sively on the political and ideological back-ground of Kaya and ignores his violent career.

25. Turkiye Buyuk Millet Meclisi Zabit Ceridesi, vol. 23, period 4, session 3 (June 14, 1934), p. 139.

26. ibid., p. 145.

27. Ekrem Erguven (ed.), Sukru Kaya: Sozleri-Yazilari 1927–1937 (Istanbul: Cumhuriyet Matbaasi, 1937), pp. 7–8.

28. Basbakanlik Cumhuriyet Arsivi (Turkish Republican Archives, Ankara), 030.10/180.244.6, Interior Minister Sukru Kaya to Prime Minister Ismet Inonu, Dec. 5, 1931.

29. Martin van Bruinessen, “Genocide in Kurdistan? The Suppression of the Dersim Rebellion in Turkey (1937–38) and the Chemical War Against the Iraqi Kurds (1988),” in George J. Andreopoulos (ed.), Genocide: Conceptual and Historical Dimensions (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), pp. 141–70.

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3059) Answers To Questions On The Occasion Of The 95th Anniversary Of The Armenian Genocide

By Prof. Jirair Libaridian, University of Michigan

Should we continue expanding our resources to pursue worldwide recognition of the Armenian Genocide or should our priorities change?

The drive behind the campaign for the recognition of the Genocide is an understandable reflex, especially given the still dominant official position of the Turkish state, the denial of the Genocide. But we should realize that we are now engaged in a tug of war with that state: we push, and as a re-action they push; they push, and then we push harder.

While engaged in this battle, we should think, indeed, if this is the best and only way to proceed in the . . .


future. We have a tendency to confuse our collective and existential needs to press in this campaign with strategic thinking. We also have a tendency to forget that just as the Armenian Question before the WWI, when we enter the international arena with our campaign, it is not us who determine the character and use of that campaign, or even the outcome; rather, it is those from whom we beg that they recognize our genocide.

On a personal level, I must confess that I am repulsed by the situation in which we find our-selves: we were the victims, and now we are the beggars, constantly placing ourselves in the role of the victim, constantly at the mercy of forces and games beyond our control, constantly raising our hopes and being frustrated, dependent on the use of one word by a president or a prime minister or a committee or a commission. We act as if we don’t have any other value outside the role of the victim, which must be consecrated by someone else, while that someone else has his/her own agenda. We don’t seem to have an autonomous thought process.

I would not want to translate my personal feelings into policy but I would also not want to see community policy on reflexive reactions. With all my respect and support for President Obama, should I care about what he says and should my whole community life and agenda be based on whether he uses the word Genocide or not? Should I design my plans on where to place my energies and resources around the annual battle, which seems to repeat itself, like a musical tune with many variations?

Is it wise and productive to build identity around the theme of victimization and a self-image that depends on what others think of us? Is that a good agenda for healthy Diaspora communities? Is that enough to give to our new generations?

Was what we did 40, 30 or 20 years ago right? And if it was, is it still wise to continue doing the same thing now? The same way? Under what circumstances should we change tactics or stratefy?

I would not offer any conclusions here, but I would make one recommendation: there has to be a serious public and rational discussion on this question, and the opportunity costs related to it, especially among those who take this approach of Genocide recognition campaign as the basic strategic path for granted and, after some 40 years, have never questioned or assessed it properly. Finally, I do not know and I have not seen reliable studies as to how much these efforts cost us, in terms of financial, human and other resources nor, for that matter, have I seen any serious discussion of any of the negative side effects of such campaigns, and I can think of a few.

The last 15 years, at least, have indicated for those who wish to see it, that there are other strategies available that could be used instead of, or in tandem with, the current one. But for that to happen, we must have leaders of organizations who are willing to be self-critical and see beyond the confines of their organizational interests.

Should our primary concern be Armenia or the welfare of the Diaspora and the future generations?

It does not seem to me that we need to counterpoise one to the other. It is clear that with an in-dependent Armenia we have a different kind of Diaspora than without it. I have stated before, and still believe, that what Armenia has given us is much more than we can repay in any form. The new generation of Armenians now has a direct and a more wholesome sense of its identity, a more dynamic one, than they did without it.

The two entities are different—and the Diaspora itself represents a whole spectrum of units and should not be seen as a single one—but are mutually dependent in a number of ways. We must recognize and respect the differences as well as the dependencies.

There are, of course, those in the Diaspora who want to care about Armenia from a distance and prefer to focus on Diaspora institutions. And they should be left alone to do so. But it is clear that even they and their institutions, regardless of their preferences and approaches, are and will be affected by whatever happens in and to Armenia, by the degree of support it gets from the other elements in the Diaspora, and the place the homeland has in the minds and hearts of these other elements.

What are the limits of the Diaspora’s involvement in shaping Armenia’s policy?

The short answer to your question is a question: Which Diaspora do you have in mind?

Otherwise, there are severe limits, obviously.

The first is a structural one: While Armenia has a leader who can, at least formally, speak in the name of Armenia and can certainly implement policy in the name of the country, the Diaspora has a thousand leaders and there is no single person or institution that can speak on behalf of a Diaspora.

I remember a day when I was working in Armenia, when representatives of a number of Diasporan groups met with president Ter-Petrossian, separately, and each urged a certain policy on a particular issue. Each spoke in the name of the whole Diaspora, each thought they best embodied the goals and values and concerns of that Diaspora. And, of course, what one had to say was in conflict with what the next group recommended. At the end, Ter-Petrossian conveyed the following logic to these groups: when the Diaspora has a leader who can sit across the president of Armenia and say with confidence that he or she represents the Diaspora without being contradicted by an-other because that person has been selected through a process or can impose its will on the others, then it is possible to think of a Diaspora opinion which the president of Armenia would have to consider, at the least.

What, for example, is the position of the Diaspora, taken as a single unit, regarding the Protocols Armenia signed with Turkey last year? A number of organizations, some with mass member-ship, supported it. Others opposed it. So which one represents the position of the Diaspora? It is obviously not all that clear that all members of all the organizations that supported the protocols agreed with their leadership; it is equally questionable that all members of those who opposed the protocols agreed with their leadership.

The second limitation is of an organic nature: the three traditional Armenian political parties have established themselves in Armenia, not without much success or popular support, I would say, and have become parties in Armenia, taking their basic agendas with them while keeping their diasporan structures intact. In addition, major organizations such as the Armenian General Benevolent Union, the Armenian Assembly of America, and the Armenian Missionary Association have been functioning in Armenia for a long time and, in some respects, have acquired strong sensibilities for the realities in Armenia. What should we consider these parties and organizations at this point, after 20 years: strictly diasporan?

On the other hand, we have a large number of citizens of Armenia who have become diasporans but have not integrated in the traditional diasporan organizations, and who have and act on very different sensibilities and perspectives. Should we consider these large groups part of the Diaspora? And, which Diaspora?

I can go on with other limitations—political, cultural—but the above should give you some idea.

What do these characteristics say about the Diaspora and what are the implications of this analysis? The answers to these questions are complex and disconcerting, but this is not the place to develop them.

What would the effects of a weak and depopulated Armenia be on Armenians and the Diaspora?

Since this is the 95th anniversary of the Genocide, I find it only proper to raise a question that all of us, but especially those who want to speak in the name of the Armenian people in Armenia or in the Diaspora, should consider, a question that is almost an answer to your question.

How was the Genocide in 1915 possible, technically speaking?

We discuss the horrors of the Genocide, we discuss the immorality and illegality of the Genocide, we have even started looking at the historical reasons for the Genocide beyond the useless and dangerous—though for some simple and comforting notion that Turks were placed on earth to kill Armenians and Armenians were there to be killed by Turks.

You simply cannot kill a people just because you want to and you find yourself a good reason to do so. You must also have the capability to do it. Being a government gives you an advantage but it is not sufficient. If you represent a certain number on your land, you can resist and make it harder or impossible for a government to eliminate you. And eliminate you as radically as the CUP did in 1915-1917.

There were spots where we resisted, sometimes with good results. Imagine if we had five million Armenians in Western Armenia instead of the two or so million by the best estimates, including Armenians in some other parts of the Ottoman Empire.

Don’t you think that the chances of successfully resisting such a policy by the government would have been far greater?

More importantly, don’t you think that the CUP government might have thought twice before determining that the solution to the Armenian Question is the effective elimination of the Armenian element from Anatolia or the Eastern provinces or Western Armenia, whatever you want to call the region?

The population of Armenia during the Bagratuni period was estimated to be around one million people, mostly Armenian and mostly in what would become Western Armenia. And why is it that England or other parts of the world that had roughly the same population in the same century, ended up with many, many millions more but not Western Armenia.

There were massacres, sure, during the Seljuk and Mongol periods; there were also conversions. But for the most part things had settled down by the 17th century. Western Armenia probably lost more Armenians after that date and before the Genocide.

The reason for the diminished population was emigration due to economic conditions, the occasionally insecure environment, and the appeal of other places, which were imagined as providing better answers to these problems. In many respects this last phenomenon was somewhat universal. But while other countries and peoples may have been able to afford the loss of population without losing much strategically, we were not in that position: we could not afford it.

We need to look at two factors when considering this history: The focus of the Armenian political parties—first the Hnchakians and then the Dashnaktsutyune during their founding days until WWI on the thinning of the Armenian population and the dangers they saw in that process. Second, anyone interested in this subject should read Fuat Dundar’s book that will be released this month on the importance of the absolute and relative numbers of Armenians in the region in the thinking of Ottoman and Young Turk leaders.

A weak Armenia is most vulnerable, of course, in more ways than one; particularly if that Armenia has not settled its problems with all its neighbors. A depopulated Armenia would have difficulty being a viable country. You can have a viable country with a vibrant society that preserves the best of its past and is capable of participating in progress and development and knows how to handle change; or, an Armenia that can serve as a theme park for visitors from the Diaspora. There is a relationship between numbers and security, numbers and development, numbers and quality, numbers and the tax base. In this respect, the failure to resolve Armenia’s problems with its neighbors remains, in my mind, the main reason for the large scale emigration, and large scale emigration is the greatest threat to Armenia’s future.

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Loussapatz "The Dawn" 24 April 2010, Ontario, Canada

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1705) Decision For "Genocide": March 1915 or May 1915?

"Genocide scholar" Robert Manne decided to make his mark with the Armenians' story by contending the Gallipoli invasion (April 25) triggered the Armenian "genocide" (April 24). Naturally, since it would be impossible to trigger an event that had already taken place one day earlier (of course, April 24 only has symbolic meaning for Armenians, marking the arrests of over two hundred Armenian ringleaders for revolt in Istanbul; the real beginning of the "genocide" is May 27-June1, when the resettlement policy was implemented), Manne desperately hoped to solidify his theory by going back to the previous month. Here, it was the Allies' bombardment that really served as the trigger, Manne told us, even though the Ottomans' concern during this period rested with the very real danger of the Russians invading from the east; particularly after the Third Army had been decimated at Sarikamish, thanks in no small part to treacherous Ottoman-Armenians.

The reader can tune in to the rest of Manne's unscholarly hijinks on the appropriate page, if interested. The reason for this preface is to explain why this page came about. Manne's main source was Taner Akcam's "A Shameful Act" (which Manne embarrassingly accepted at face value, without digging beneath the surface; in great keeping with the way "genocide scholars" operate, utilizing any corrupt souce as long as their precious genocides are confirmed), and Manne made a big point about Taner Akcam's contention that the "genocide" decision had already been made in March 1915.

It's nothing new for genocide theoreticians to make the case for a decision for this nonexistent genocide, occurring well before May 2nd, when the first serious consideration for the Armenians' forced migration took place. We've heard about:

1) A 1910 agreement which supposedly served as a Wannsee Conference,

2) The "Ten Commandments" forgery,

3) The secret February 1915 meeting described by Mevlanzade Rifat, a Kurd who was an "avowed Ittihadist opponent" (as Dadrian described him) who somehow had access to "one of the super secret meetings of Ittihad, during which the decision for the Armenian genocide was being debated," as Dadrian would further go on to stupidly state. Christopher Walker himself concluded this one as an apparent "fraud." (See Guenter Lewy's "The Ottoman Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide," 2005, pp. 51-3. The Ittihad is Turkish for the CUP, the Young Turk party in charge.)

4) The evil Naim-Andonian forgeries. (By the way, Richard Hovannisian actually gave both Andonian and Rifat credence, in his 1967 "Road to Independence" book.)

So now Akcam, rehashing Dadrian's weasel history, has stressed March 1915 as the time when the "genocide" was decided upon, as he first wrote in the 1999 Turkish version of his 2006 book which Dadrian's Zoryan Institute has released in English. Manne has eagerly grabbed on to this singular source (actually, dual source; Akcam is front man for Dadrian), just as so many (such as Robert Jay Lifton) have amateurishly grabbed on to Dadrian's claims in the past, and calling Akcam "wonderful," to boot.

I have yet to read Akcam's "Shameful" book, since I'd rather risk the corrosive effects of my stomach's acids on a "genocide master" as Dadrian, rather than a "village idiot" as Akcam. But one of our scholarly readers who had already contributed to our Manne page, Erman, has; Erman is fired up enough to check the original Turkish/Ottoman sources that Dadrian/Akcam have unscrupulously distorted, in the knowledge that almost no one has been looking over their greasy shoulders.

Erman has made available the relevant pages of Akcam's book, attempting to prove March 1915 was when (as Manne put it, quoting Akcam): "the fundamental decision to unleash the deportations and the massacres of the Armenians was taken." (Sounds to me like those are two different goals. Putting aside, for the moment, the timing of the decision, what was the ultimate idea... relocation/"deportation," as no one disputes? Or intentional massacres? The latter, by the way, if the plan was to commit massacres here and there instead of an all-out effort (as it sounds, with the word "massacres"), is still worlds apart from an intentional extermination policy, or "genocide." We know it could not have been the latter, because not a single Armenian under Ottoman control would have survived. Even the conclusion of this particular thesis is confused.)

Before we examine Akcam's "proof" for a March decision, let us bear three "big picture" points in mind.

First:

There were arrests, and even what might be called mini-relocations in the first few months of 1915, as war conditions demanded. What is never considered is that Muslims were being relocated as well; in fact, April 24 ironically marks when the governor of Van was looking to "deport" the Muslims of Van, as protection against the rampaging Armenians. 702,900, which Kamuran Gurun mistakenly pointed to as the total for Armenians forced to migrate (in his book, "The Armenian File"), was actually (as Ara Sarafian discovered) the number for either relocated "Turkish" Ottomans or refugees from war. In other words, there was roughly as many "Turks" relocated, or Turkish refugees, as Armenians. (Boghos Nubar's number for "deported" Armenians was 600,000-700,000.)

(Funny, isn't it, that the "Turks" who were relocated, and exposed to the same hardships as the "deported" Armenians, are never discussed.)

Second:

In his book, Kamuran Gurun correctly wrote that the May 2 telegram by Enver Pasha is the first serious indication for the decision to move out the Armenians. Now here is the question you must ask yourselves, ladies and gentlemen. When scholarly frauds such as Dadrian and Akcam are telling us that this decision was undertaken in previous months, can you explain how Enver could have possibly written the message he has? (Here is the May 2 telegram.) Remember, this was an internal message, not prepared for public relations purposes. Remember as well that Enver was one of the three Young Turk leaders who gets the "credit" for implementing genocide. Therefore, if the decision for "genocide" had already been made, how could he possibly have written a message as this without referring to the supposed earlier time when the decision had already been made?

Lastly:

The way in which pseudo-scholars such as Robert Manne (if you think "pseudo-scholar" is a cheap shot, review what scholarship entails: the dispassionate examination of all relevant information, not simply the kind that fulfills one's agenda) operate is as though these events took place in a vacuum. All of a sudden, a decision was made to boot out the Armenians, who were just sitting around, minding their own business.

Absolutely no consideration whatsoever as to the driving forces in motion. For thirty-forty years beforehand, Armenians of the Ottoman Empire were corrupted by their terrorist leaders and by the missionaries, the idea of which was to drive them apart from the Turks, with whom they had co-existed for centuries in relative harmony. The extremists among the Armenians had committed the most vile criminal acts, in order to incite Turks to strike back, and to open the doors for European intervention. The revolutionary plan changed in 1908, when the idea became to cooperate with the increasingly mighty Russians, in the conquest of Eastern Anatolia.

At this point, the Armenian population at large, and not just the revolutionaries, had become a threat to the existence of the Ottoman state. (False reasons for "genocide," such as pan-Turkism and Christian hatred, had nothing to do with the ultimate relocation decision; at this time, the Young Turks were still idealistic believers in Ottomanism, and "Turk" was still a dirty word among most Turks.) As a result of their alliance with the Young Turks to bring down Sultan Abdul Hamit, the Dashnaks became a powerful political force (under the millet system, Armenian leadership centered in the clergy; the Dashnaks' answer was to take over the Armenian Church), and nationalism spread like wildfire within the Armenian community. Especially beginning in 1913, traitorous planning and arming was stepped up. Loyal Armenians were made fatal examples of, as in the 1912 case of Van's mayor.

As Louise Nalbandian pointed out, what the Armenian revolutionaires were looking for to carry out their rebellion was war. Their preparations included the 1910 "Instructions" with sections instructing on how "To Attack Villages." (The Armenian Rebellion at Van, p. 183.) Days after war broke out, Armenians stirred trouble in Van and soon eruptions would break out throughout many areas of the empire (consult pp. 196-200 of Gurun’s “The Armenian File,” 1985, for a sampling of internal Ottoman telegram communications, reporting upon many different village outbreaks; here’s a few for the Van area, and one for Sivas).

In line with Turkish tolerance, it took a long time for the Ottoman Turks to protect the nation from Armenian belligerence, taking small gingerly steps at first. (For example, a March 7, 1915 report from Adana's German consul Buege to Ambassador Wangenheim in Istanbul: "[T]he house searches were conducted in a polite manner.") When the Van Province rebellion that began in February and intensified in April-May (in the city of Van) drove home how serious a threat the Armenians posed, the time came to take off the gloves. To illustrate:

"In the early days of the war, army intelligence reports started to indicate that an Armenian revolt had begun and that the situation could have become serious. Officials stressed the need for precautions, but it was too late. It is obvious that the Ottoman government did not yet realize the enormity of its problem in the East. The measures undertaken to stop the rebels were classic operations to fight small bands, protect government installations and facilitate conscription. Martial law had been declared. Armenians who remained in the army were shifted to noncombatant duties, chiefly in labor battalions. Units of soldiers and gendarmes were dispatched to chase rebels and open roads. Where entire villages in sensitive areas such as mountain passes and crossroads had rebelled, they were destroyed. Tax collectors and conscription officers were accompanied by soldiers for their protection. Plans were laid to punish villages that harbored guerillas, although events soon made it nearly impossible to carry these out. [44] Measures like these were suited to the type of Armenian rebellion seen in past years, but they were to prove insufficient when Armenian actions became a general revolt." (Emphasis Holdwater's; McCarthy, The Armenian Rebellion at Van, 2006, p. 191. This book is a must-read, utilizing honest sources that spell out the historical realities, not the deceptive smoke and mirrors act of Dadrian/Akcam.)

In short: a relocation decision could not have been possible in March because the Ottoman leadership was only learning about the extent of the Armenian threat as the events unfolded. It was only when Van was lost to the Russians did the Ottoman leadership wake up and realize they needed to do something drastic, as the life of their nation hung in the balance. Exactly as Zia Mufty-Zade Bey had spelled out in an Oct. 18, 1915 letter to The New York Times:

"I see the justification of this act of the Ottoman Government in the aide the Armenians gave to the Russians. It is well to notice that only in Van and its neighborhood, where the internal revolt of the Armenians took effect, did the Russians succeed in invading Turkish territory. It stands, therefore, to reason that a legally constituted Government, having been deceived by the treason of a certain element of the population, will take necessarily severe measures..."




Taner Akcam Backs Up the "Decision-in-March" Theory


The following is from Taner Akcam's "A Shameful Act," pp. 152-154; many thanks to Erman for providing the text of these pages, as well as the invaluable research and analysis he performed in relation to critical footnote 20. The "clickable" footnotes are Holdwater's.


It is very likely that the key decisions concerning the massacre were made within the CUP in Istanbul during March 1915. “In these discussions a decision was made that Bahaettin Sakir Bey would resign from his duties pertaining to the country’s foreign enemies and concentrate solely on internal enemies.” Sakir was put in charge of dealing with “the Armenians inside…These discussions concluded with the formulation of the Deportation Law. When Bahaettin Sakir Bey returned to the Caucasian front a short time later the new arrangements had been completely determined.” 20 [1]

The information is confirmed by Ottoman documents. In a telegram sent by Talat to the local authorities in Erzurum on April 5, 1915, he notes that “Bahaettin Sakir will come soon” and that he was bringing money with him. 21 [2]

Taner Akcam

We have other evidence that the decision was made at the end of March, during the critical days of the Gallipoli campaign, and that it was discussed with the Germans. While the battle for Gallipoli was raging, Enver remarked to Huseyin Cahit that the solution to the Armenian threat was to “remove them… and send them somewhere else.” [3] In his memoirs, Halil Mentese wrote that the government sent him to Berlin on 18 March to ensure German assistance in holding on to the Balkan road, a German supply corridor. As soon as he reached Berlin, Mentese began holding meetings. At around this time, he received a telegram from Talat telling him, “Wait! We have some important tasks for you.” Mentese proposed that the task he entrusted to Cavit Bey, who was also in Berlin at the time. “No,” came the answer. “This is not something Cavit Bey can do. Wait there.” When Mentese returned to Istanbul in May, Talat met him at the railway station. “Tell me, dear Halil,” he reportedly said. “What did you discuss in Berlin regarding the deportation of Armenians?” 22 [4]

From Cavit Bey’s journal we know that he learned that Mentese was coming to Berlin on 28 February 1915. Mentese duly arrived on 6 March, not March 18. [5] After several trips elsewhere, Cavit returned to Berlin on 22 March, and met with Mentese on the following day. This meeting is entered in Cavit’s diary on 30 March. At the meeting, Mentese told him about the cable from Istanbul with the orders to remain. 23 Thus, the telegram from Istanbul must have been sent before March 23. Halil himself claimed that the instructions he received, or was about to receive, were to discuss the deportation of Armenians with the Germans.[6] What we may extract from all this is that the decision was made toward the end of March, and that it was probably discussed with the Germans. Cavit Bey’s diary indicates that he had no knowledge of these discussions. The timing of the decision is especially significant because it was taken ahead of the Armenian uprising in Van in late April 1915, even though the uprising is usually presented as the reason for the decision. [7]

In a report, Paul Rohrbach, a friend of Talat Pasha, quoted a speech given by a Russian deputy in the Duma. The deputy, Miljukow, mentioned a meeting between Enver and Wangenheim, the German ambassador to the Porte, quoting from Wangenheim’s own report. The passage he quotes is identical to Enver’s comments to Huseyin Cahit..Enver reportedly told the ambassador that the interests of state necessitated the deportation of the Armenians, and he asked the Germans not to stand in the Ottomans’ way, and even to help. According to the Russian deputy’s allegations, Wangenheim reported the conversation to Berlin as a “ready plan.” 24 [8]

We have many indications that the decision for genocide was made by the CUP Central Committee deliberately and after long consideration. [9] The postwar indictment of Unionist leaders provides some valuable information. [10] “The massacre and eradication of Armenians,” it states, “was the result of a decision made by the Central Commitee of the Committee of Union and Progress.” These decisions were made after “wide- ranging and in-depth discussions.” The indictment records Dr. Nazim’s statement that the Armenian question “had been decided by the Central Committee after long and in-depth discussions,” and that “this initiative would settle the eastern Question.” 25 [11]

The governor-general of Aleppo, Celal, said in his rnemoirs that he heard this from a deputy in Konya. [12] The deputy told Celal that if “he were to oppose their point of view on this matter they would get rid of him.” 26 [13] Further, Ihsan Bey, head of the special bureau of the Interior Ministry, gave testimony in Istanbul that when he was prefect of Kilis, Deputy Director of the Office for the Resettlement of Tribes and Refugees Abdul’ahad Nuri Bey, coming to Aleppo from Istanbul, told him that the intention behind deportation was extermination.”I was in contact with Talat Bey,” said Nuri, “and personally received the annihilation order.” He tried to convince Ihsan Bey by arguing that “it was for the safety of the country.” 27 [14]

Vehip Pas[h]a, who was appointed commander of the Third Army in February 1916, said in his written testimony of December 1918:

These atrocities, committed according to a clear program and with absolute intent, were carried out at the orders and supervision of first, members of the Union and Progress Central Committee, and second, by leading members of government who, by casting aside law and conscience, served as tools for the designs of the Committee. 28 [15]

Vehip added that government officials, despite being fully aware of these crimes, did nothing to stop them and even encouraged them. 29 The verdict in one of the postwar trials in Istanbul mentions the decision to massacre as having been made by the Central Committee and conveyed to the provinces by special couriers. 30

Foreign observers confirmed this account. Stange, a German officer who worked with the Special Organization’s armed gangs on the Caucasian front [16] , wrote that the government had a “fear of Armenians that was out of all proportion to the powerless condition in which they lived.” He added that had the decision to deport the Armenians been made by the army, one would have expected steps to be taken to protect the deportees’ lives and possessions. [17] “Hundreds and thousands were murdered,” Stange wrote, “the authorities helped themselves to anything left behind, houses, shops, goods…. The Armenian church had assets worth about 150,000 lira… the evictions were carried out in inhumane conditions and families and women were driven away with no protection…One feels justified surmising that the main aim was to take advantage of this excellent opportunity to implement a long-held plan to weaken, if not destroy, the Armenian people, while there would be no protest from the outside world. The military imperatives and the various rebellions only provided welcome pretexts.” [18]


[FOOTNOTES]

20. Ibid [Mil, “Umumi Harpte”], Installment no. 98 (10 Subat/February 1934); Installment no. 100 (12 Subat/February 1934).

21. BA/DH/SFR., 51-215, 1333CA 20. I thank Fuat Dundar for bringing the document to my attention.

22. Halil Mentese’nin Anilari, pp. 213-1. After reading news of Talat, Mentese claims that “there was no answer for a long time,” but he does not mention when the answer did come. The period of time spent in Berlin was “close to two months,” he says. If we assume that he went to Berlin on 18 March, then he must have returned around the beginning of May.

23. “Maliye Naziri Cavit Bey’in Notlari, Turkiye’nin 1. Dunya Savasina Girmesi,” Tanin, 22, 24, 27, 28 Birincikanun (December) 1944.

24. PA-AA/R 1409, Report by Paul Rohrbach, dated 13 May 1916.

25. First session, Main indictment, Takvim-I Vekayi, no. 35-40 (27 Nisan 1335/27 April 1919).

26. “Halep Valisi Cela’in Anilari,” Vakit,

27. First session, main indictment, Takvim-I Vekayi, no. 35-40 (27 Nisan 1335/27 April 1919).

28. Testimony of Vehip Pasa; Vehip Pasa's testimony, supplied to the Inquiry Commission on 5 December 1918, played an important part in the Harput and Trabzon trials, as well as in the main trial. In the 29 March 1919 session of the Trabzon trial, it was read out in full, and was actually included in the verdict of the Harput trial.

29. Ibid.

30. Tercuman Hakikat, 5...(August) 1920.

31. PA-AA/Bo. Kons./B. 170, Report by Stange, dated 23 August 1915.

Holdwater's Analysis



1. This "evidence" may be the most powerful indication that there was a March decision, given what appears to be a credible source, and this is the one we have to focus much attention on. (Even though the timing — that is, whether the "Deportation Law" was formulated in March — is missing. Note as well how Akcam's paragraph begins by referring solely to "massacre," as though relocation is a synonym for massacres, or genocide.) What is this 1934 source, exactly? It was a series of articles appearing in a newspaper about the memoirs of a Special Organization officer nicknamed "A. Mil." In the 1990s, these memoirs were collected and made into a book, and the man's real name turned out to be Cemil Arif. Erman found the book, and hunted for the "March 1915" section that Dadrian/Akcam used from the newspaper.

Arif seems to be following a chronological order in the telling of events without referring to any particular dates. In earlier pages devoted to other events not having anything to do with the Armenian relocation, February is mentioned, and in later pages (again unrelated to Armenians) there is a March reference. It appears, therefore, that this Sakir story took place in March. Sakir is said to have left Artvin (a Russian town taken by the Ottomans at the outset of war in 1914; Sakir was commander of the Special Organization), moved to Erzurum and thereafter arrived in Istanbul (where these meetings are said to have taken place); a rough translation from the book version is as follows:

"Dr. Bahaettin Sakir has witnessed many facts during the period of the four-five months he has spent in Erzurum and at different points of the Caucasian front. The attitude the Armenians have taken up against Turkey and the assistance they provided to the Russian army has led him [Sakir] to the conviction that it was necessary to fear the internal enemies as much as the external ones. The Armenians inside through the banditry organization were threatening the rear of our army and were trying to cut our lines of retreat. Because of its significance, below I provide one of these instruction documents [of Armenian bands] related to the future movements of Armenian bands containing everything including the little details.” (After quoting from a five-page instruction report of the Armenian bands, Arif continues.) "These discussions finally resulted in the formulation of the relocation decision. When Dr. Bahaettin Sakir Bey returned to the Caucasian front after a while, the new situation [became newly apparent. But we won't touch these matters] because the issue of the relocation of Armenians was completely out of the Special Organization’s scope."

How do you like that! Dadrian's witness, Arif, as part of the Special Organization (S. O.), murderously verifies the S. O. had nothing to do with Armenians. (The S. O., of course, is Dadrian's invented "Gestapo Fall Guy.")

We can see Dadrian/Akcam's presentation is totally warped. First, Sakir was not "put in charge" of internal enemies, because it is Sakir himself who is said to have made this decision in the original source. Secondly, and more importantly, note how Dadrian/Akcam refer to the Armenians as “the Armenians inside," making it sound as though all Armenians were in line to get hit by Sakir, when the phrase referred strictly to Armenian rebels or activists via their "banditry organization."

Likewise the sentence, "When Bahaettin Sakir Bey returned to the Caucasian front... the new arrangements had been completely determined,” is completely taken out of context. Akcam gives the impression that based on the supposed extermination plan new regulations were put into practice by the S.O. and Sakir, yet Dadrian/Akcam's very own source maintains that this relocation matter was totally out of the S.O.’s jurisdiction. Furthermore, it is not that "new arrangements had been completely determined”; the correct translation tells us that a new situation or a new state of affairs had emerged.

Erman notes that the book version is the accurate one, and its words and sentences are in line with Akcam’s 1999 Turkish version of his "Shameful" book. However, in the Turkish book too, Akcam makes manipulations.

In addition, Erman raises the point that we can only wonder what the "March" reference relates to. For example, was it related to the general relocation that began in June, or to local ones? (There were some earlier local and limited relocations in some areas such as Erzurum and Zeitun prior to the Van rebellion, for example.)

Once again, we get another confirmation as to how much Dadrian (and his Turkish instrument) think nothing of displaying such a lack of scholarly ethics, as long as their propagandistic agenda keeps getting affirmed. And those such as Robert Manne think nothing of obliterating their own scholarly credibility by referring to Taner Akcam as "wonderful." (Not that such a description is wholly inaccurate; Taner Akcam does make one wonder, all right.)

2. This does not confirm anything in regards to the relocation decision. It only tells us that Sakir was expected in Istanbul for what could have been any number of reasons. Furthermore, if this message was related at all to the Shakir story we have read earlier, the date for which was undetermined, we can see from this one's April date expecting Shakir's visit that we moved even farther away from March. The best information to be gleaned here is that Akcam's copy-pasting from Dadrian's work is interrupted once in a while by the help he receives from some probably "Radikal"-minded Turks in Turkey, in this case, "Fuat Dundar."

3. "The battle for Gallipoli was raging" after the Allies had landed on April 25, and we already know from Enver's May 2 telegram (i.e., one week later) that he was of the mind to “remove (the Armenians)… and send them somewhere else.” Is this supposed to serve as "evidence that the decision was made at the end of March"?

What we have here is a great example of Dadrian's "scattershot approach." Dadrian bombards us with so many of the different details he has compulsively gathered through the years, that their collective impact makes it appear as though we have back-to-back "genocide evidence." Yet when one takes the time to really look, one can see it amounts to a big, fat nothing.

4. The word to focus on here, regarding what Talat told Mentese, is "reportedly." Since the source is Halil Mentese's memoirs, we are to assume all of this information was derived from these memoirs. Every other bit of information is presented as a "fact" coming from the pages of these memoirs, but only when we get to the critical "Armenian" part are we hit with the word "reportedly." Why was this distinction made? Only a reading of this book will tell the tale as to what Dadrian/Akcam distorted this time. However, it could be that these "important tasks" were not spelled out in these memoirs, and Dadrian/Akcam are indulging in their favorite game of speculation. (The only indication we have that the tasks were Armenian-related will be tackled in the footnote following next.) Furthermore, if Talat really asked how the Armenian topic was handled in Berlin, the question was posed in mid-to-late May, after Mentese's two-month stint in Berlin was up. It could be the Armenian matter was raised toward the end of the stint, as the CUP began to seriously consider the resettlement possibility after May 2nd. A question to be asked is, if these "important tasks" really included the relocation decision, what was the idea? If the Ottomans made up their minds about the necessity to move out the Armenians, what was there to discuss? Is Akcam implying the CUP was trying to get the Germans' permission? All the Ottomans could have done was to inform their German allies of their plans, and it really would have boiled down to delivering a simple message. This is something anyone could have handled, even Cavit Bey, so the logical conclusion is that the "important tasks" were referring to something altogether different.

5. Who are Dadrian/Akcam to tell us when the accurate arrival date was? It could easily turn out that Cavit Bey was the mistaken one. Naturally, it would suit Dadrian/Akcam's purposes to make the visit sooner rather than later (to better squeeze the decision into March), and this is why we are being asked to believe Cavit rather than Mentese.

6. "Halil himself claimed that the instructions he received, or was about to receive, were to discuss the deportation of Armenians with the Germans." Since that is the "make or break" argument, a footnote would have been absolutely critical. There is none. It looks like we are being expected to take Dadrian/Akcam's "word." In addition, please examine Akcam's next sentence: "What we may extract from all this is that the decision was made toward the end of March, and that it was probably discussed with the Germans." Why "probably"? If Mentese has conclusively written in his memoirs that these "important tasks" boiled down to the "deportation of Armenians," then unless he decided to ignore such orders, he would have "definitely" discussed the matter with the Germans, and not "probably." What do these clues tell those of us who have not had the opportunity to consult Mentese's memoirs? They tell us Dadrian/Akcam's Dashnak "word" is meaningless.

7. Absolutely nothing presented so far allows us to "extract from all this... that the decision was made toward the end of March." no matter how many distortions and mistranslations have been provided by these two con men. Furthermore, the uprising in Van that began in late April (specifically, a couple of days before April 20) only applies to the city of Van. The uprisings in Van Province had been going on as soon as war was declared by Russia, gaining momentum in the months ahead. To give an idea, the Erzurum governor, Tahsin Bey, reported on December 21, 1914 that the Armenians of the Karc[h]ekan and Gevas[h] districts of Van Proviince were in revolt, cutting telegraph wires and attacking the kaymakam (district head official), and that the gendarmerie forces were insufficient to put down the revolt. (The Armenian Rebellion at Van, p. 195.) More than a thousand Armenians from Timar (north of Van) and surrounding areas began a revolt in February that soon spread, attacking neighboring Muslim villages and killing Muslim villagers.(P. 193.) The Armenian rebellion had fully begun by February, and not only in the Van Province; Bitlis, Sivas, Adana and Erzurum were also being attacked. "By March 1915 the Eastern Anatolian countryside was completely at war," increasing in a "planned and methodical manner." (P. 195.) The Dashnak chairman of the Armenian Defense Council in the Old City of Van, Haig Gossoian (Gassoyan), in a brief description of the council and its prewar preparations, wrote the rebellious work had begun in October 1914. (P. 198; provided source: The Epic Story, p. 13.) The rebellion was no joking matter, and all of it must be taken into account as leading to the relocation decision, not simply the decisive revolt in the city of Van.

8. As this report is dated May 1916, it is absolutely irrelevant as "proof" that the relocation decision was made over one year ago, in March. (So why is it being included? Again, it's the old scattershot approach. The reader is hit on all sides, all in an attempt to detract and confuse.) Yet, let's examine what is being said here. Enver told Ambassador Wangenheim that the plan was to move out the Armenians, the Germans should butt out and even help. Yeah, so? That is probably exactly what Enver said, and what does it prove? (Of course, genociders are hoping for the suckers who listen to think relocation equals genocide. It does not.)


Baron Von Wangenheim


What is especially revealing with this anecdote is that while we don't know when the exchange occurred (Wangenheim wrote in an April 30, 1915 letter to Berlin [A-15363, No. 267] that "The events in Van and the recent attacks by the Russians on the Bosporus and by the united French and English troops on the Dardanelles would not be without influence on the decision of the government," implying he did not know about the decision for "deportation." The reason he did not know is because the decision was not made. Enver's May 2 telegram is the first indication of this decision, so our best guess must be that Enver spoke with Wangenheim after May 2), we can see the decision having been made in March is total bunk. If the Germans knew in March, Wangenheim, the German ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, would have had to be in the loop. There is no way Wangenheim could have written his April 30 letter if he had already known. Furthermore, there is no reason why Enver would have needed to tell Wangenheim, since Taner Akcam has asked us to believe Mentese had already covered this ground with the Germans in March. (Taner Akcam really is a "Shameful Liar.")

9. No decision for "genocide" was made, because there was no genocide. A decision for resettlement was definitely made, reluctantly, and after "long consideration," even as treacherous Armenian attacks were piling up over the half-year since war's beginning.

10. The 1919-20 postwar Ottoman kangaroo courts mean nothing. Even the British rejected their findings, in preparation for their own Malta Tribunal. Naturally, these fake courts from the beaten and occupied Ottoman Empire form Dadrian's bread and butter, and since Akcam is a low-grade "xerox copy" of Dadrian, Akcam must point to the value of these courts as well... the legality of which is on a par with the courts of Vichy France, under Nazi occupation.

11. This court was the product of the corrupt postwar Ottoman administration, known to do anything to remain in power, especially kowtow to the victorious allies. One purpose of the courts was retribution (another purpose we can learn from Dadrian himself), and a reasonable byproduct of such an illegal undertaking is that any claim could be made without evidence, very much in line with how Dadrian/Akcam present their own "genocide evidence."

12. Key phrase: "he heard." In other words: "hearsay." In other words: how the bulk of the case for genocide is made.

13. Some Ottoman officials protested the relocation, as obviously people who were entirely innocent were swept along for the ride. What exactly was Celal opposing? Relocation? Most probably. But since relocation equals genocide in genocide-speak, our "wonderful Turkish historian," as Robert Manne has described Akcam, hopes that you will believe that Celal was opposing an order for extermination.

14. Remember, gang; Nuri was one of the Ottoman officials Aram Andonian victimized through his forgeries. Andonian put words into Nuri's mouth in eight telegrams, where Nuri emerged as another Heinrich Himmler. Here, Dadrian/Akcam are pointing to Nuri as a credible witness against Talat Pasha, while elsewhere they will have you believe Nuri played a major hand in extermination. (Dadrian/Akcam do so by expecting you to swallow Andonian's evil work as authentic.) So if Nuri was such a mad dog killer, why are Dadrian/Akcam expecting us to take Nuri's word for anything? (Ironic, isn't it? Another irony is that Nuri wasn't even arrested by the British.)

Naturally, all we have is the hearsay of Ihsan Bey, quoted out of context, as the documentation for these proceedings are unavailable. If true, we don't know what motivated Ihsan Bey; he could have been saying anything to escape the hangman's noose himself. Prof. Guenter Lewy's take on Ihsan Bey:"In the absence of corroboration from other reliable sources, it seems difficult to consider this testimony evidence in any meaningful sense of the term." (The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide, p. 81.)

15. Prof. Lewy on Vehip Pasha (p. 81): "Parts of this deposition were included in the indictment of the main trial and in the verdict of the Harput trial, but an indictment is not proof of guilt. The context of the quoted remarks has been lost. While the entire text of the deposition was allegedly read into the record of the Trabizond trial on March 29, 1919, the proceedings of this trial are not preserved in any source; only the verdict is reprinted in the official gazette." Here is insight as to what made Vehip tick.

16. While Akcam does not go so far as to call Stange a Special Organization commander as does his mentor, Vahakn Dadrian, the truth is there is no evidence linking Stange with direct Special Organization involvement. See Lewy, pp. 84-5, or this abbreviated version. Note the 2-3,000 irregulars Stange worked with in his detachment were not "armed gangs," but Georgian Muslims (Laz and Acar) who had volunteered to fight the Russians. The Stange Detachment also included... Armenians! Dr. Ed Erickson researched primary Ottoman documents on Stange's background, and concluded that Stange was given command of all units at one point, including the S.O.; but in reality, the S.O. took its orders from Sakir. ("Stange controlled neither the Special Organization nor the volunteers, he sent coordination copies of his own detachment orders to Halit, who passed these on to the adjacent volunteers.[27] This was a clumsy arrangement, and there is no indication that the Special Organization and volunteers reciprocated.")

17. Steps were taken to "protect the deportees’ lives and possessions," except they weren't always very good steps. This is why U.S. war correspondent and genuine eyewitness George Schreiner wrote that the Armenians' miserable experience had less to do with "intentional brutality," than with "Turkish ineptness." On the other hand, let's look at the situation in perspective: we are dealing with the bankrupt "Sick Man of Europe" here, with insufficient manpower and resources. The nation was in the fight for its life (history tells us that fight was lost), and everyone was dying in droves from hunger and sickness. Under the circumstances, the Ottomans thought they were doing the best they could. Sometimes they suffered from a false "things will work out" optimism, as with the Sarikamish disaster. When things went wrong, as when Armenians got massacred, the Ottomans made changes, such as with choosing alternate routes to minimize the chance of lawless bands or Kurds to descend upon the Armenians. In the aftermath of the chaos of war, it is always easy to look at the choices made and to determine things could, in retrospect, have been done differently.

18. This passage brings to mind the old expression, "Fiction is Stanger than truth." Yes, there is no end of bigoted westerners weaned on "Terrible Turk" stories to think the worst of Turks, and to accept any hearsay account to feel "justified surmising." How did Stange get his information? He relied primarily upon Consul Scheubner-Richter in Erzurum (Lewy, p. 227), whose sympathies for fellow Christian Armenians are by now well known. (Scheubner-Richter went as far as to once dumbly write, “The Armenians of Turkey for all practical purposes have been exterminated," a contention at odds with the Armenian Patriarch himself.) And how did the bigoted consul get his primary information? From Armenians, who almost certainly served as his interpreters, and missionaries; Scheubner-Richter also served as ambassador to Britain for ten years, where constant exposure to the hysterical anti-Turkish British press surely must have deepened his own existing bigotry.

Ironically Stange, a favorite Dadrian witness, has been accused by Dadrian as being one of the "arch-accomplices in the implementation of the massacres." Yet when it suits Dadrian's purposes, such an alleged mass-murderer becomes a credible witness. In addition, Stange also opined "the decision to eradicate the Armenians during the war was made a long time before the outbreak of the war,” a contention Akcam is certainly aware of as Dadrian has repeated it often. So Stange is contradicting Akcam's own "decision in March" thesis, yet Akcam has no problem in finding Stange credible, when it suits Akcam. (Naturally, Stange was in no position to factually back up his own ludicrous claim.)

The August 23, 1915 Stange report is one that Prof. Lewy read in its original German, and this is the one where Dadrian was exposed in practicing his trademark dishonesty. For example, Stange reports the north-of-Erzurum Armenians "were murdered, with the acquiescence and even the assistance of the military escort, by so-called [volunteers], [tribesmen] and similar scum." Dadrian omits the phrase "wiith the acquiescence." More importantly, the term "Special Organization" appears nowhere in Stange's document. (Lewy, p. 84.)


Note that practically everything Akcam has written (or more precisely, copy-pasted from the deceitful Dadrian) is steeped in exaggeration and falsehood. Can you imagine if his entire book were dismantled in the same fashion as these three representative pages? What a telling sign of the thickness of anti-Turkish prejudice, that this "Shameful" book has been accepted as accurate in so many Western quarters. Unfortunately, in such a hateful environment, we can't even expect supposed scholars such as Robert Manne to do their scholarly duty, which is to question.

And then Taner Akcam, who employs the same sleazy standards as his immoral master, would have the audacity to write:

"Suspicion within the academic community as to whether or not sources have been honestly and accurately presented is something that can poison the entire scientific milieu"

How does this ex-PKK terrorist and "wonderful Turkish historian" look at himself in the mirror? Truly, it boggles the mind.

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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/decision.htm
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1623) Fuat Dündar: 1915 Was Part Of A "Systematic Ethnic Engineering" Project & Comments by Sukru Server Aya

• Article by Talin Suciyan - Armenian Reporter - 4/14/2007


• Comments by Sukru Server Aya 18 Apr 2007

ISTANBUL - Speaking in Istanbul in March, historian Fuat Dündar argued that the Armenian "deportations" of 1915 were part of a "systematic ethnic engineering" project undertaken by the Ottoman government, which was controlled by the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) at the time.

Mr. Dündar, who received his Ph.D. from the prestigious École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris, has studied the cipher telegrams written by members of the CUP government and tracked the ethnic and demographic changes in Anatolia between 1913 and 1918. . . . . For his master's degree, he had focused mainly on the displacement of Muslim populations, publishing a book titled Ittihat ve Terakki'nin Müslümanlari Iskan Politikasi (The CUP's settlement policy for Muslims). He is also the author of Türkiye Nüfus Sayimlarinda Azinliklar (Minorities in Turkey's censuses).

At the "Armenian conference" held in 2005 at Istanbul's Bilgi University, Mr. Dündar presented some of his findings. "Deportation is not a holistic and premeditated project," he concluded at the time. But now, speaking before a group of about 60 activists, academics, and journalist at Tarih ve Toplum Bilimleri Enstitusu (History and Social Sciences Institute), Mr. Dündar declares, "deportation is a conscious decision, the consequences of which could have been known in advance."

What follows is a conversation between this correspondent and Fuat Dündar, which also appeared in Turkish in Agos.

COMMENT: Information given about this person is misleading in as far that he invents an obscure term such as “systematic ethnic engineering” which has no relationship to the subject, other than expressing that he is some sort of “engineer” (Petroluem) which is enough to acredit him as a “historian”! I should have sent this publication to Prof.Dr. Nursen Mazici, at Marmara University Political Sciences department, where this person seems to be preparing a thesis.

The credentials submitted as regards “Bilgi University” and “AGOS” gives a lead as regards the “fast stairway to escalate like Akcam, Pamuk, Shafak a.s.o.”by creating scenarios to catch attention” instead of simple truths.

Personally, I do not think that this interview by Tulin Suciyan (whom I admire) deserves my counter comments, but this will be for one-time only.

Q: You wrote your Ph.D. thesis on settlement policies during the CUP period between 1913 and 1918. Are you talking about a systematic settling policy covering all those who were not ethnic Turks?

F. Dündar: Actually Turks were also resettled in order to obtain a predominance or majority of Turkish identity. We can say that ethnic engineering was conducted. The Turks' duty was to turkify. In the framework of this engineering, Kurds, Arabs, Armenians, Albanians, Georgians, Circassians, Laz people, Greeks, Jews, Assyrians, Nasturies, and Bulgarians were displaced.


C: This is pure nonesense. It appears this person has not read Justin McCarthy’s ISBN 0-87850-094-4 DEATH AND EXILE, The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922 giving exact figures of demographic changes owing to large numbers of Muslims emigrating into Anatolia from lost Balkan states and Caucassia. There was no time or reason to “Turkify” when Muslims were sleeping on streets, in their ox-carts in search of a shelter to sleep. This is pure invention and distortion. Even Istanbul streets and squares were full of refugees’ ox-carts!

Q: Was this systematic?

F. Dündar: Yes, both systematic and chronologically continuous. In 1913, the policy targeted Bulgarians. At that time, the territories that now belong to Greece belonged to Bulgarians. The Bulgarian army was powerful and that posed a threat to Istanbul. So 50,000 Bulgarians were displaced and sent to Bulgaria, and 50,000 Turks from Bulgaria came and settled in their place. Then came the turn of Greeks. [The CUP leader] Halil Mentese confessed this chronologic continuity. He said, "After Bulgarians now it's the Greeks' turn."

On October 22, 1914, the policy of expelling Greeks was halted because two days earlier a deal was made with Germany in which there was also financial aid. Therefore, for the sake of the state's stability, the attacks against Greeks were stopped. Greeks were displaced inland from the shores and the borders to be used as a tool to threaten [Greece] in the future.

Toward the end of 1914, we can see the displaced [Muslim] people in Zeitun. While Armenians were sent away, displaced Muslims were settled in their places. The purpose of this population exchange was to create a safe homeland. In 1915 Armenians were expelled from the region. Then, in 1916, the policy start targeting Kurds. New "replacement" commissions were gathered. During the same period Kurds fleed from Russia.

C: Distortion of simple realities this far and blaming Turks (in defense and refuge) to plan a “systematic cleansing and resettlement” and call it “a planned exchange of population” has no logical explanation. The Armenians at Zeytun, had revolted, had put “brave revolution fights” (I can give too many U.S. paper clips) and were evacuated with French battleships during war ! Why Dundar makes no mention that Ottomans entered war in autumn 1914, the Russian had advanced pushing all the people in the area, up to Erzurum front line? Dundar makes fantasies, when 80.000 soldiers froze in late Dec.1914 and first week of January 1915 in the Russian front. Regarding Greeks, mostly they were not involved in Armenian terror activities, and were needed in the services they held. Of course they were untouched!

Q: Why?

F. Dündar: Because they were pro-Ottoman Kurds. Russians too wanted to expel and get rid of Kurds. But not by killing them. In 1917, in Palestine, Jews become the target [of the CUP]. All these steps were parts of the CUP's project. Thus, the systematic character is obvious.


C: Nonsense again about Palestine Jews who were untouched, but suffered overall famine and epidemics. Cemal Pasha had trusted Aaron Aronshon (a Jewish agro-scientiest who was to fight locust disaster) who later turned out to be a spy for Britain. Zionist immigrations to the area, was not encouraged for obvious reasons.

Q: How many people were displaced?

F. Dündar: As you know, [the columnist] Murat Bardakçi has publicized parts of the "notebook of Talat Pasha" after keeping it to himself for 20 years. He does not even say the dates when the notebook was written. Had Bardakçi acknowledged this notebook 20 years ago, we would have progressed much further in our research. In my opinion the notebook was written by the end of 1915. Only according to Talat Pasha's notebook, 80 percent of 1.5 million Armenians were deported. Muslims who escaped from Russian army come to around 1.2 million people, of whom around a million are Kurds and 200,000, Turks. Turks were made to resettle in the regions in which Armenians had been living. Kurds were scattered in Turkish-populated areas. Tens of thousands of Assyrians, Nasturis, Circassians, and Arabs too. At that time the population of Anatolia was around 12 million. One-third of this population was displaced and resettled.

C: Dundar skips the direct reply, taking shelter under Murat Bardakci, instead of Justin McCarthy’s “head counts”, and tries to prove victimization of the Kurds, who were the main adversaries of reciprocal plunders with Armenians. Regarding “deported-relocated people” if he disagrees with Halacoglu records of under 500.000, he should accept Boghos Nubar’s official letter of 600-700.000, confirmed also by Dr. Nansen, and Caleb Gates in charge of reliefs. See(*)

Q: What are your sources?

F. Dündar: Cipher telegrams. They are the operational documents -executive orders - of the CUP government. They are not decisions taken in various congresses. Cipher telegrams are operational documents.

C: Mr. Dundar is hereby invited to show his findings with authentic translations and evidence, in front of scholars of Turkish Historical Association, plus international scholars and press. The existence of “cipher telegrams” can not be generalized as genocide ordering documents, unless he has “something EXACT to say” instead of imploring other meanings he wants to label. If he does not comply with this challenge and prefers to write on AGOS etc., then, I am afraid that he will reveal his face of “charlatan history impostor” instead of a young engineer or scholar.

Q: What is a cipher telegram?

F. Dündar: These are telegrams written in code by special telegraph officers and can be decoded only by those who have the key. Codes were changed about every three months.

We can read them because Talat Pasha wrote them in a regular way and they were coded by the telegraph officer. These documents are in the Ottoman archives. Anyone able to read Ottoman can go and read them. However, this does not mean that the cipher telegrams are archived fully. The archives are open, but this does not mean that one can find all of the telegrams there.

C: This is a terrible slander and LIE unless he proves to be true. Archives, follow a certain system, and “nothing can be added or taken out”. This is “cheap talk of proof by slander”.

The fact that ethnic engineering was done through telegrams makes the whole story even more meaningful. Over the course of five years, the whole population structure changed in a certain geographic area. There is no other instance of this.

C: The population structure changed because of “force mejeure - de facto” reasons. There was no other Empire as big as the Ottomans, being plundered and chopped from all sides, which housed so many ethnicities and religions.

Q: How were the geographic borders defined?

F. Dündar: The CUP's target was Anatolia [defined in modern Turkish as all of Asia Minor]. According to me, the regions to which Armenians were sent were not within the borders of the future state project. Thus, Armenians were to be excluded from this project [the future state]. Kurds were within the project. For instance, Talat Pasha opposed the idea of resettling Kurds in Aleppo area. He wanted them to be resettled in regions that are within the borders to today's Turkey because the number of Muslims was limited. Thus, it is the optimum use of existing resources.

C: CUP’s target was to win War and protect all they had or expand, if they could... Relocations were made out of the war zones, towards Syria, because this was the safest and most distant from war fronts. The borders of today’s
Turkey was drawn by Mustafa Kemal, not by CUP! He should know “that much of history”...

Q: You are using engineering language.

F. Dündar: The language of the documents is quite cold and distanced. The author of these telegrams, Talat Pasha, was a lawyer, a very smart person, who spoke foreign languages. He differentiated between the language of the cipher telegrams and the language used in diplomacy. He was a real "statesman-diplomat."

C: Is Dundar praising Talat or degrading him because he spoke “good French”.

Q: You wrote in your book that the aim of the state was to "mix" and then to "unify and melt." If these do not work then to "cleanse." Who were the ones who were mixed and who were the ones who were "cleansed"?

F. Dündar: Kurds were mixed. Even if we disregard the politics of violence, including converts, seized and adopted children, 40 percent of Armenians survived. Only one-third of Armenians remained. "Cleansing" does not mean annihilating all. There were Armenians who remained but were disconnected from their land.

C: Justin McCarthy writes that about 40% of Muslims and Armenians in the war zones, died because of several reasons, back and forth emigrations during 1915-1922. The Armenian population in the war zones, was a maximum 700.000 (Nubar & Nansen) and 40% would be roughly 300.000. Both Katchaznuni and Lalaian confirm that during the 2 year rule of the Armenian Republic 1918-1920, almost 200.000 died in Yerevan area because of starvation. Some Armenians came back in 1918 with French and Russian troops, but later had to flee back. After the Lausanne Conference, a 2 year grace period was given to “all who had left Turkey” to come back and reposses their properties they had left. What more can be done?

There was a rule of 5 percent for instance. In comparison with the Muslim population, Armenians were not to exceed 5 percent. Even this had some preconditions. For instance, if a family had a son over 15, he would be counted as a second family. Then you had some loyal Armenians, police, soldier, etc.

C: Armenians were employed “preferentially” in all State services. However, after the “resettlement”, in order to avoid revolutionary regroupings, they were to form not more than 10 houses in small villages, or 5% of population..

Q: Were Armenians taken to the army from deportation?

F. Dündar: Yes. In 1916 or 1917 in Der Zor, Armenians were taken to the army.

C: All men in soldiery age were enlisted, Armenians were no exception. Many died “fighting alongside Turks”..

Q: What is the source of this information?

F. Dündar: Cipher telegrams.

C: No need to cipher telegrams, it is already a known fact...

Q: Did they obey the order?

F. Dündar: I do not know. But the order exists. Of course they were to be taken without any weapon handed to them, in what was called a "hard-labor battalion" (amele taburu).

C: Bias surfaces: “amele taburu” means simply “labor battalion”, (not hard labor) every man was needed!

Q: You are saying that the CUP conducted deportations and the resettlement project with great care. With which organizations on the ground did they conduct this?

F. Dündar: This is the state. The state has population records. It has a statistical agency as well. Each institution has its own statistical department. In 1915 there were maps based on the "millet system." Still, there were officers who were not working according to the CUP's mentality. They were dismissed.

Was there any attempt to persuade the officers in order to create an intellectual or ideological organization in these telegrams?

Telegrams convey orders. But for instance in one of Talat Pasha's telegrams, you can see a sentence written for persuading the recipient. He says, "By now all the Ottoman territories are a battleground." Of course, 100-percent fulfillment of orders is impossible. Local authorities may differ in the initiatives they take.

C: Officers dismissed ? What an imagination when they were direly needed! Ottoman Army laws were unchanged, only a few top commanders were CUP members! Party by-laws in military ? Pure nonsense. Dundar “jumps into bright discoveries” by the word “battleground”. The primary cause of the relocation-deportations, was the NEED TO HAVE A NO-MAN battleground so that army can move and fire freely. “Battle ground” implies that the areas were now free for war, without fear of backstabbing sabotages.

Q: You have said that population changes were tracked every three months. Are there records referring to this? Are we talking about such a well-organized structure?

F. Dündar: Yes. The number of births and the number of deaths were added. Population movements were followed and reported to the center every three months.

C: If yes, why doesn’t Dundar trust the official figures announced by Prof. Halacoglu and deviates whenever he wants?

Q: You have said that the CUP succeeded in resolving many of the problems that could have created trouble for the future nation-state. Looking back, can you say the CUP resolved these problems?

F. Dündar: The CUP left a very "adequate" population composition to Mustafa Kemal.

C: Pure imagination. Mustafa Kemal was not a member of CUP and always was against officers being involved in politics. Enver had posted him as attache in Sofia, to get rid of him ! This relationship is purely imaginary!

Q: What do you mean by "adequate"? There is no homogenous society, right?

F. Dündar: Well, at least we can say that compared to the time before the CUP, a more harmonious population composition was created. Probable Kurdish and Greek demands were halted. Of course, Armenians got the worst of it.

Q: You assume that Mustafa Kemal would have chosen to build a totally homogenous nation state. Do you not think there might have been other options?

F. Dündar: There is continuity in mentality. It is possible to trace back the mentality of assimilating Kurds in order to build a new state to the CUP period. [The Pan-Turkist ideologue] Ziya Gökalp not only proposed the assimilation of Kurds but also proposed projects to realize this. He prepared a survey questionnaire in 1914, with more than 60 questions. Criminal data were collected in this questionnaire. Whether there are ethnic divisions within the clans, or different divisions of language, weakness of the leaders, etc.

C: Dundar speaks of the real cause of the survey, the “Kurd” involvement. Ziya Gokalp’s projects remained as inspiration only, there was no time, no money, no means to execute them. They remained as a “dream”.

Q: Where was it published?

F. Dündar: It is a questionnaire sent to regional authorities by the CUP government, I mean regions in which Kurds were living. It is in the Ottoman archives. It is going to be published.

C: Big conclusions from a tiny detail !

Q: In the "Armenian Conference" in Istanbul, at Bilgi University in 2005, you said, "deportation is not a holistic and premeditated project." Now you are saying "deportation is a conscious decision, the consequences of which could have been known in advance." These are two different sentences. Could you please explain?

F. Dündar: If I am not mistaken, I said, there was no policy to annihilate all Armenians. And I still defend this argument. But of course the partial decrease in the Armenian population was due to the CUP's population policies. Moreover, at that time I said I had not yet studied the Armenian case. After having studied Armenians, one can see that Der Zor was very well known to the state. There are statements of authorities in Der Zor. Further, in 1912, a report had been prepared for the government by experts. The report says, "No immigrant could be settled in that area." Sixty percent of the population in Der Zor consisted of nomadic groups. The state knew Der Zor very well. This proves that even a decision only to deport is a conscious decision. The ,results are not invisible. Thus, it can be said that the Armenian deportation was a crime against humanity.

C: Dundar finally speaks up the words, he is engaged and expected to speak, “Armenian (only) deportation was a crime against humanity!" In other words, other deportations may not be a crime ! And revolting against the home country and doing every act of treason, “should be totally normal, and no precautions needed to be taken”! Dundar says that he has studied Armenians (meaning he knows it all, while I have been reading nearly since the day of his childhood, I do not claim that I studied all; I am ready to learn something new he has to say). The fact that “nomadic people lived in the Zor area proves that it was a scarcely populated area, suitable for living. How come that in his studies, he never read the following words from Morgenthau’s diary:

“Zenop Bezjian, Vekil of Armenian Proestants called. Schimavonian introduced him as his schoolmate. He told me a great deal about the conditions in the interior. I was surprised to hear him report that Armenians at Zor are fairly satisfied, that they have already settled down to business and are earning their livings; those were the first ones that were sent away and seem to have gotten there without being massacred. He gave me a list where the various camps are and he thinks that over (*) one half million have been displaced. He was most solicitous that they should be helped before winter set in.”

Q: What are the living conditions in Der Zor?

F. Dündar: Der Zor is a desert. Even, once upon a time, it was called "Province of the desert" on the maps. Further, on July 6, 1914, there was a discussion in the parliament. A Greek member of parliament asked why the immigrants expelled from the Balkans were resettled in Greek villages. He said, "Almost all the country is empty. What is the reason for this resettlement?" Talat Pasha responded, "Yes, there are lots of empty places. Yet, had those Muslims resettled in desert areas, they would have all died."

So, the conditions were known. But only 10 months later, Armenians were sent there.

C: Above excerpt from Morgenthau’s diary and spoken by Bezjian, prove that this interview and all that is said is just another scenario to escalate to “ZOR-ian reputation”, and is not worth to be seriously replied.

Owing to my age, I beg to be excused from replying similar premature future statements, published in newspapers.

Last word: Don’t be afraid from learning, and never think that you know it all. Even Einstein did not know it all !

S.S. Aya

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