The Harbord Mission Reports On Armenia, 1919 In The U.S. Department Of State Archives
By: Makhmourian G.G., Doctor of Sciences (History)
In June and August of 1919 the Paris Peace Conference discussed a lot of problems related to the Ottoman politics and the U.S. mandate for Western Armenia. European powers, namely
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US Congress > Legislation > 2009-2010 (111th Congress) > S. Res. 316
Text of S. Res. 316: Affirmation of the United States Record on the Armenian Genocide Resolution
US Congress > Legislation > 2009-2010 (111th Congress) > H. Res. 252
Text of H. Res. 252: Affirmation of the United States Record on the Armenian Genocide Resolution
Text of H. Res. 252: Affirmation of the United States Record on the Armenian Genocide Resolution
. . .
US Congress > Legislation > 2009-2010 (111th Congress) > S. Res. 316
Text of S. Res. 316: Affirmation of the United States Record on the Armenian Genocide Resolution
Oct 21, 2009 - Introduced in Senate. This is the original text of the bill as it was written by its sponsor and submitted to the Senate for consideration. This is the latest version of the bill currently available on GovTrack.
SRES 316 IS
111th CONGRESS
1st Session
S. RES. 316
Calling upon the President to ensure that the foreign policy of the United States reflects appropriate understanding and sensitivity concerning issues related to human rights, ethnic cleansing, and genocide documented in the United States record relating to the Armenian Genocide, and for other purposes.
IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES
October 21, 2009
Mr. MENENDEZ (for himself and Mr. ENSIGN) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations
RESOLUTION
Calling upon the President to ensure that the foreign policy of the United States reflects appropriate understanding and sensitivity concerning issues related to human rights, ethnic cleansing, and genocide documented in the United States record relating to the Armenian Genocide, and for other purposes.
Resolved,
SHORT TITLE
Sec. 1. This resolution may be cited as the ‘Affirmation of the United States Record on the Armenian Genocide Resolution’.
FINDINGS
Sec. 2. The Senate finds the following:
(1) The Armenian Genocide was conceived and carried out by the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1923, resulting in the deportation of nearly 2,000,000 Armenians, of whom 1,500,000 men, women, and children were killed, 500,000 survivors were expelled from their homes, and the elimination of the over 2,500-year presence of Armenians in their historic homeland.
(2) On May 24, 1915, the Allied Powers of England, France, and Russia, jointly issued a statement explicitly charging for the first time ever another government of committing ‘a crime against humanity’.
(3) This joint statement stated that ‘the Allied Governments announce publicly to the Sublime Porte that they will hold personally responsible for these crimes all members of the Ottoman Government, as well as those of their agents who are implicated in such massacres’.
(4) The post-World War I Turkish Government indicted the top leaders involved in the ‘organization and execution’ of the Armenian Genocide and in the ‘massacre and destruction of the Armenians’.
(5) In a series of courts-martial, officials of the Young Turk Regime were tried and convicted, as charged, for organizing and executing massacres against the Armenian people.
(6) The chief organizers of the Armenian Genocide, Minister of War Enver, Minister of the Interior Talaat, and Minister of the Navy Jemal were all condemned to death for their crimes, but, the verdicts of the courts were not enforced.
(7) The Armenian Genocide and these domestic judicial failures are documented with overwhelming evidence in the national archives of Austria, France, Germany, Great Britain, Russia, the United States, the Vatican and many other countries, and this vast body of evidence attests to the same facts, the same events, and the same consequences.
(8) The United States National Archives and Record Administration holds extensive and thorough documentation on the Armenian Genocide, especially in its holdings under Record Group 59 of the United States Department of State, files 867.00 and 867.40, which are open and widely available to the public and interested institutions.
(9) The Honorable Henry Morgenthau, United States Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1913 to 1916, organized and led protests by officials of many countries, among them the allies of the Ottoman Empire, against the Armenian Genocide.
(10) Ambassador Morgenthau explicitly described to the Department of State the policy of the Government of the Ottoman Empire as ‘a campaign of race extermination,’ and was instructed on July 16, 1915, by Secretary of State Robert Lansing that the ‘Department approves your procedure . . . to stop Armenian persecution’.
(11) Senate Concurrent Resolution 12, 64th Congress, agreed to February 9, 1916, resolved that ‘the President of the United States be respectfully asked to designate a day on which the citizens of this country may give expression to their sympathy by contributing funds now being raised for the relief of the Armenians,’ who at the time were enduring ‘starvation, disease, and untold suffering’.
(12) President Woodrow Wilson concurred and also encouraged the formation of the organization known as Near East Relief, chartered by the Act of August 6, 1919, 66th Congress (41 Stat. 273, chapter 32), which contributed some $116,000,000 from 1915 to 1930 to aid Armenian Genocide survivors, including 132,000 orphans who became foster children of the American people.
(13) Senate Resolution 359, 66th Congress, agreed to May 11, 1920, stated in part that ‘the testimony adduced at the hearings conducted by the sub-committee of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations have clearly established the truth of the reported massacres and other atrocities from which the Armenian people have suffered’.
(14) The resolution followed the April 13, 1920, report to the Senate of the American Military Mission to Armenia led by General James Harbord, that stated ‘[m]utilation, violation, torture, and death have left their haunting memories in a hundred beautiful Armenian valleys, and the traveler in that region is seldom free from the evidence of this most colossal crime of all the ages’.
(15) As displayed in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Adolf Hitler, on ordering his military commanders to attack Poland without provocation in 1939, dismissed objections by saying ‘[w]ho, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?’ and thus set the stage for the Holocaust.
(16) Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term ‘genocide’ in 1944, and who was the earliest proponent of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, invoked the Armenian case as a definitive example of genocide in the 20th century.
(17) The first resolution on genocide adopted by the United Nations at Mr. Lemkin’s urging, the December 11, 1946, United Nations General Assembly Resolution 96(1), and the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide recognized the Armenian Genocide as the type of crime the United Nations intended to prevent and punish by codifying existing standards.
(18) In 1948, the United Nations War Crimes Commission invoked the Armenian Genocide, ‘precisely . . . one of the types of acts which the modern term ‘crimes against humanity’ is intended to cover,’ as a precedent for the Nuremberg tribunals.
(19) The Commission stated that ‘[t]he provisions of Article 230 of the Peace Treaty of Sevres were obviously intended to cover, in conformity with the Allied note of 1915 . . ., offenses which had been committed on Turkish territory against persons of Turkish citizenship, though of Armenian or Greek race. This article constitutes therefore a precedent for Article 6c and 5c of the Nuremberg and Tokyo Charters, and offers an example of one of the categories of ‘crimes against humanity’ as understood by these enactments’.
(20) House Joint Resolution 148, 94th Congress, adopted on April 8, 1975, resolved, ‘That April 24, 1975, is hereby designated as ‘National Day of Remembrance of Man’s Inhumanity to Man’, and the President of the United States is authorized and requested to issue a proclamation calling upon the people of the United States to observe such day as a day of remembrance for all the victims of genocide, especially those of Armenian ancestry . . .’.
(21) President Ronald Reagan, in proclamation number 4838, dated April 22, 1981 (95 Stat. 1813), stated that, in part ‘[l]ike the genocide of the Armenians before it, and the genocide of the Cambodians, which followed it--and like too many other persecutions of too many other people--the lessons of the Holocaust must never be forgotten’.
(22) House Joint Resolution 247, 98th Congress, adopted on September 10, 1984, resolved, ‘That April 24, 1985, is hereby designated as ‘National Day of Remembrance of Man’s Inhumanity to Man’, and the President of the United States is authorized and requested to issue a proclamation calling upon the people of the United States to observe such day as a day of remembrance for all the victims of genocide, especially the one and one-half million people of Armenian ancestry . . .’.
(23) In August 1985, after extensive study and deliberation, the United Nations Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities voted 14 to 1 to accept a report entitled ‘Study of the Question of the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,’ which stated that ‘[t]he Nazi aberration has unfortunately not been the only case of genocide in the 20th century. Among other examples which can be cited as qualifying are . . . the Ottoman massacre of Armenians in 1915-1916’.
(24) This report also explained that ‘[a]t least 1,000,000, and possibly well over half of the Armenian population, are reliably estimated to have been killed or death marched by independent authorities and eye-witnesses. This is corroborated by reports in United States, German and British archives and of contemporary diplomats in the Ottoman Empire, including those of its ally Germany’.
(25) The United States Holocaust Memorial Council, an independent Federal agency, unanimously resolved on April 30, 1981, that the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum would include the Armenian Genocide in the Museum and has since done so.
(26) Reviewing an aberrant 1982 expression (later retracted) by the Department of State asserting that the facts of the Armenian Genocide may be ambiguous, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 1993, after a review of documents pertaining to the policy record of the United States, noted that the assertion on ambiguity in the United States record about the Armenian Genocide ‘contradicted longstanding United States policy and was eventually retracted’.
(27) On June 5, 1996, the House of Representatives adopted an amendment to House Bill 3540, 104th Congress (the Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 1997), to reduce aid to Turkey by $3,000,000 (an estimate of its payment of lobbying fees in the United States) until the Government of Turkey acknowledged the Armenian Genocide and took steps to honor the memory of its victims.
(28) President William Jefferson Clinton, on April 24, 1998, stated: ‘This year, as in the past, we join with Armenian-Americans throughout the nation in commemorating one of the saddest chapters in the history of this century, the deportations and massacres of a million and a half Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in the years 1915-1923.’.
(29) President George W. Bush, on April 24, 2004, stated: ‘On this day, we pause in remembrance of one of the most horrible tragedies of the 20th century, the annihilation of as many as 1,500,000 Armenians through forced exile and murder at the end of the Ottoman Empire.’.
(30) Despite the international recognition and affirmation of the Armenian Genocide, the failure of the domestic and international authorities to punish those responsible for the Armenian Genocide is a reason why similar genocides have recurred and may recur in the future, and that just resolution of this issue will help prevent future genocides.
DECLARATION OF POLICY
Sec. 3. The Senate--
(1) calls upon the President to ensure that the foreign policy of the United States reflects appropriate understanding and sensitivity concerning issues related to human rights, ethnic cleansing, and genocide documented in the United States record relating to the Armenian Genocide and the consequences of the failure to realize a just resolution; and
(2) calls upon the President in the President’s annual message commemorating the Armenian Genocide issued on or about April 24, to accurately characterize the systematic and deliberate annihilation of 1,500,000 Armenians as genocide and to recall the proud history of United States intervention in opposition to the Armenian Genocide.
Congress > Legislation > 2009-2010 (111th Congress) > H. Res. 252
Text of H. Res. 252: Affirmation of the United States Record on the Armenian Genocide Resolution
Mar 17, 2009 - Introduced in House. This is the original text of the bill as it was written by its sponsor and submitted to the House for consideration. This is the latest version of the bill currently available on GovTrack.
HRES 252 IH
111th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. RES. 252
Calling upon the President to ensure that the foreign policy of the United States reflects appropriate understanding and sensitivity concerning issues related to human rights, ethnic cleansing, and genocide documented in the United States record relating to the Armenian Genocide, and for other purposes.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
March 17, 2009
Mr. SCHIFF (for himself, Mr. RADANOVICH, Mr. PALLONE, Mr. KIRK, Mr. BERMAN, Mr. CANTOR, Mr. MCCOTTER, Mr. ACKERMAN, Mr. ROYCE, Mr. WAXMAN, Mr. SMITH of New Jersey, Ms. WATSON, Mr. BILIRAKIS, Mr. CROWLEY, Mr. SENSENBRENNER, Mr. PAYNE, Mr. SHERMAN, Mr. WU, Mr. SIRES, Mr. DANIEL E. LUNGREN of California, Mr. BARRETT of South Carolina, Ms. ESHOO, Mr. CAPUANO, Mr. WEINER, Mr. HONDA, Mrs. MALONEY, Mr. LANGEVIN, Mr. WALZ, Mr. PETERS, Ms. SUTTON, Mr. COSTA, Mr. LOBIONDO, Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts, Mr. SOUDER, Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey, Mr. WOLF, Mr. MARKEY of Massachusetts, Mr. NEAL of Massachusetts, Mr. CARDOZA, Mr. LIPINSKI, Mr. ABERCROMBIE, Mrs. CAPPS, Ms. SCHAKOWSKY, Mr. LEVIN, Mr. HIMES, Mr. BACA, Ms. HIRONO, Mr. ROTHMAN of New Jersey, Mr. MCGOVERN, Ms. MCCOLLUM, Mr. FATTAH, Mrs. NAPOLITANO, Mr. SPACE, Ms. DELAURO, Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin, Mr. CALVERT, Mr. POLIS of Colorado, Mr. LANCE, Ms. LORETTA SANCHEZ of California, Mr. OLVER, Mr. GRIJALVA, Mr. DAVIS of Illinois, Mr. GONZALEZ, Mr. CONYERS, Mr. SARBANES, Mr. VAN HOLLEN, Ms. TITUS, Mr. STARK, Mr. JACKSON of Illinois, Mr. KENNEDY, Ms. TSONGAS, Mrs. TAUSCHER, Ms. WOOLSEY, Mr. DREIER, Mr. NUNES, Mr. TONKO, and Mr. TIERNEY) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs
RESOLUTION
Calling upon the President to ensure that the foreign policy of the United States reflects appropriate understanding and sensitivity concerning issues related to human rights, ethnic cleansing, and genocide documented in the United States record relating to the Armenian Genocide, and for other purposes.
Resolved,
SHORT TITLE
Sec. 1.
This resolution may be cited as the ‘Affirmation of the United States Record on the Armenian Genocide Resolution’.
FINDINGS
Sec. 2.
The House of Representatives finds the following:
(1) The Armenian Genocide was conceived and carried out by the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1923, resulting in the deportation of nearly 2,000,000 Armenians, of whom 1,500,000 men, women, and children were killed, 500,000 survivors were expelled from their homes, and which succeeded in the elimination of the over 2,500-year presence of Armenians in their historic homeland.
(2) On May 24, 1915, the Allied Powers, England, France, and Russia, jointly issued a statement explicitly charging for the first time ever another government of committing ‘a crime against humanity’.
(3) This joint statement stated ‘the Allied Governments announce publicly to the Sublime Porte that they will hold personally responsible for these crimes all members of the Ottoman Government, as well as those of their agents who are implicated in such massacres’.
(4) The post-World War I Turkish Government indicted the top leaders involved in the ‘organization and execution’ of the Armenian Genocide and in the ‘massacre and destruction of the Armenians’.
(5) In a series of courts-martial, officials of the Young Turk Regime were tried and convicted, as charged, for organizing and executing massacres against the Armenian people.
(6) The chief organizers of the Armenian Genocide, Minister of War Enver, Minister of the Interior Talaat, and Minister of the Navy Jemal were all condemned to death for their crimes, however, the verdicts of the courts were not enforced.
(7) The Armenian Genocide and these domestic judicial failures are documented with overwhelming evidence in the national archives of Austria, France, Germany, Great Britain, Russia, the United States, the Vatican and many other countries, and this vast body of evidence attests to the same facts, the same events, and the same consequences.
(8) The United States National Archives and Record Administration holds extensive and thorough documentation on the Armenian Genocide, especially in its holdings under Record Group 59 of the United States Department of State, files 867.00 and 867.40, which are open and widely available to the public and interested institutions.
(9) The Honorable Henry Morgenthau, United States Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1913 to 1916, organized and led protests by officials of many countries, among them the allies of the Ottoman Empire, against the Armenian Genocide.
(10) Ambassador Morgenthau explicitly described to the United States Department of State the policy of the Government of the Ottoman Empire as ‘a campaign of race extermination,’ and was instructed on July 16, 1915, by United States Secretary of State Robert Lansing that the ‘Department approves your procedure . . . to stop Armenian persecution’.
(11) Senate Concurrent Resolution 12 of February 9, 1916, resolved that ‘the President of the United States be respectfully asked to designate a day on which the citizens of this country may give expression to their sympathy by contributing funds now being raised for the relief of the Armenians’, who at the time were enduring ‘starvation, disease, and untold suffering’.
(12) President Woodrow Wilson concurred and also encouraged the formation of the organization known as Near East Relief, chartered by an Act of Congress, which contributed some $116,000,000 from 1915 to 1930 to aid Armenian Genocide survivors, including 132,000 orphans who became foster children of the American people.
(13) Senate Resolution 359, dated May 11, 1920, stated in part, ‘the testimony adduced at the hearings conducted by the sub-committee of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations have clearly established the truth of the reported massacres and other atrocities from which the Armenian people have suffered’.
(14) The resolution followed the April 13, 1920, report to the Senate of the American Military Mission to Armenia led by General James Harbord, that stated ‘[m]utilation, violation, torture, and death have left their haunting memories in a hundred beautiful Armenian valleys, and the traveler in that region is seldom free from the evidence of this most colossal crime of all the ages’.
(15) As displayed in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Adolf Hitler, on ordering his military commanders to attack Poland without provocation in 1939, dismissed objections by saying ‘[w]ho, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?’ and thus set the stage for the Holocaust.
(16) Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term ‘genocide’ in 1944, and who was the earliest proponent of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, invoked the Armenian case as a definitive example of genocide in the 20th century.
(17) The first resolution on genocide adopted by the United Nations at Lemkin’s urging, the December 11, 1946, United Nations General Assembly Resolution 96(1) and the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide itself recognized the Armenian Genocide as the type of crime the United Nations intended to prevent and punish by codifying existing standards.
(18) In 1948, the United Nations War Crimes Commission invoked the Armenian Genocide ‘precisely . . . one of the types of acts which the modern term ‘crimes against humanity’ is intended to cover’ as a precedent for the Nuremberg tribunals.
(19) The Commission stated that ‘[t]he provisions of Article 230 of the Peace Treaty of Sevres were obviously intended to cover, in conformity with the Allied note of 1915 . . ., offenses which had been committed on Turkish territory against persons of Turkish citizenship, though of Armenian or Greek race. This article constitutes therefore a precedent for Article 6c and 5c of the Nuremberg and Tokyo Charters, and offers an example of one of the categories of ‘crimes against humanity’ as understood by these enactments’.
(20) House Joint Resolution 148, adopted on April 8, 1975, resolved: ‘[t]hat April 24, 1975, is hereby designated as ‘National Day of Remembrance of Man’s Inhumanity to Man’, and the President of the United States is authorized and requested to issue a proclamation calling upon the people of the United States to observe such day as a day of remembrance for all the victims of genocide, especially those of Armenian ancestry . . .’.
(21) President Ronald Reagan in proclamation number 4838, dated April 22, 1981, stated in part ‘like the genocide of the Armenians before it, and the genocide of the Cambodians, which followed it--and like too many other persecutions of too many other people--the lessons of the Holocaust must never be forgotten’.
(22) House Joint Resolution 247, adopted on September 10, 1984, resolved: ‘[t]hat April 24, 1985, is hereby designated as ‘National Day of Remembrance of Man’s Inhumanity to Man’, and the President of the United States is authorized and requested to issue a proclamation calling upon the people of the United States to observe such day as a day of remembrance for all the victims of genocide, especially the one and one-half million people of Armenian ancestry . . .’.
(23) In August 1985, after extensive study and deliberation, the United Nations SubCommission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities voted 14 to 1 to accept a report entitled ‘Study of the Question of the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,’ which stated ‘[t]he Nazi aberration has unfortunately not been the only case of genocide in the 20th century. Among other examples which can be cited as qualifying are . . . the Ottoman massacre of Armenians in 1915-1916’.
(24) This report also explained that ‘[a]t least 1,000,000, and possibly well over half of the Armenian population, are reliably estimated to have been killed or death marched by independent authorities and eye-witnesses. This is corroborated by reports in United States, German and British archives and of contemporary diplomats in the Ottoman Empire, including those of its ally Germany.’.
(25) The United States Holocaust Memorial Council, an independent Federal agency, unanimously resolved on April 30, 1981, that the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum would include the Armenian Genocide in the Museum and has since done so.
(26) Reviewing an aberrant 1982 expression (later retracted) by the United States Department of State asserting that the facts of the Armenian Genocide may be ambiguous, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 1993, after a review of documents pertaining to the policy record of the United States, noted that the assertion on ambiguity in the United States record about the Armenian Genocide ‘contradicted longstanding United States policy and was eventually retracted’.
(27) On June 5, 1996, the House of Representatives adopted an amendment to House Bill 3540 (the Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 1997) to reduce aid to Turkey by $3,000,000 (an estimate of its payment of lobbying fees in the United States) until the Turkish Government acknowledged the Armenian Genocide and took steps to honor the memory of its victims.
(28) President William Jefferson Clinton, on April 24, 1998, stated: ‘This year, as in the past, we join with Armenian-Americans throughout the nation in commemorating one of the saddest chapters in the history of this century, the deportations and massacres of a million and a half Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in the years 1915-1923.’.
(29) President George W. Bush, on April 24, 2004, stated: ‘On this day, we pause in remembrance of one of the most horrible tragedies of the 20th century, the annihilation of as many as 1,500,000 Armenians through forced exile and murder at the end of the Ottoman Empire.’.
(30) Despite the international recognition and affirmation of the Armenian Genocide, the failure of the domestic and international authorities to punish those responsible for the Armenian Genocide is a reason why similar genocides have recurred and may recur in the future, and that a just resolution will help prevent future genocides.
DECLARATION OF POLICY
Sec. 3.
The House of Representatives--
(1) calls upon the President to ensure that the foreign policy of the United States reflects appropriate understanding and sensitivity concerning issues related to human rights, ethnic cleansing, and genocide documented in the United States record relating to the Armenian Genocide and the consequences of the failure to realize a just resolution; and
(2) calls upon the President in the President’s annual message commemorating the Armenian Genocide issued on or about April 24, to accurately characterize the systematic and deliberate annihilation of 1,500,000 Armenians as genocide and to recall the proud history of United States intervention in opposition to the Armenian Genocide
Responsive Comments By Sukru Server Aya on S.316 & H.252 Res
.
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The international correspodent for The Independent -- the British journalist Robert Fisk -- has been banned from entering the United States ever since 2005. Fisk has been covering war zones for decades, but is above all known for his reporting from the Middle East for more than 20 years. His critical coverage of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, and the occupation which followed it. He has repeatedly enjoyed exposing the U.S. and British government disinformation campaigns . .
It should be remembered that it was first the Turkish government who kicked him out of Turkey in 1991 for reporting injurious lies against Turkey siding up with the Kurds, during the first Gulf Oil Crisis. He was banned from returning to Turkey and stayed away from the country eversince
Just a few years ago he was beaten severly by an Afghan mob who almost killed him. This shows that he is not a sociable fellow and not welcome whereever he is. Yet, he still writes without end , uncomplimentary articles against Turkey and Turks.the following is an example:
Bravery, Tears And Broken Dreams
Robert Fisk- The Independent,London,England
Mount Ararat, Towering Symbol Of Armenia, Is An Awful Reminder Of Wrongs Unrighted
04 August 2007
There is nothing so infinitely sad - so pitiful and yet so courageous - as a people who yearn to return to a land for ever denied them; the Poles to Brest Litovsk, the Germans to Silesia, the Palestinians to that part of Palestine that is now Israel. When a people claim to have settled again in their ancestral lands - the Israelis, for example, at the cost of "cleansing" 750,000 Arabs who had perfectly legitimate rights to their homes - the world becomes misty eyed. But could any nation be more miserably bereft than one which sees, each day, the towering symbol of its own land in the hands of another?
Mount Ararat will never return to Armenia - not to the rump state which the Soviets created in 1920 after the Turkish genocide of one and a half million Armenians - and its presence to the west of the capital, Yerevan, is a desperate, awful, permanent reminder of wrongs unrighted, of atrocities unacknowledged, of dreams never to be fulfilled.
“Armenian Americans from across the country are encouraged to place calls asking the panelist a variety of questions on topics ranging from the politics of oil to the Armenian Genocide and how the New York Times is engaging in revisionist denial, a topic Fisk is covering during his current tour of North American cities.”
AN ANSWER TO ROBERT FISK
I know, Mr. Fisk, that you are beholden to your masters the Armenians' slightest wish for the achievement of a negative propaganda in order to blacken the honor, and the good name of Turkey and Turks. I know that you’ve been readying yourself to begin to attack Turkish interest as soon as you find an opening in order to start your diatribes, and pour out your ‘fictitious knowledge” and your heart, on the subject of the alleged genocide by Turks inflicted on the poor unfortunate, lily-white Armenians of the Ottoman Empire. I also know that you’ll begin to claim perhaps with your initial paragraph that you are an expert on this issue and on many other subjects dealing with the Turks. I hope you tell your audience that you were booted out of Turkey for reporting injurious lies concerning Turks during the 1991 Gulf war.
Mr. Fisk, there is nothing worse in this world than being labeled a "know-it-all". A person by that title is one who pretends to know something about everything but really knows nothing about anything . Since the knowledge of things you try to talk about does not seem so great, you shouldn't mind my asking you how and when you became this way? I’m sure it was not by accident . There must have been extensive pecuniary reasons for your accepting to work for the world-wide Armenian interests. .
You want to appear to be a genuine expert in that field of the so-called Armenian genocide I, for one, have been noticing your irrational, biased, and prejudiced behavior through the years, vis-à-vis the venerable nation of Turks. Every article you write concerning the Turks is replete with offensive passages, undeserved accusations, at times innuendoes, and some out and out lies hurled against them. You don’t mind parroting the bulk of Armenian claims when they say that it was the Turks who initiated the very first alleged genocide of the Twentieth century and decimated the Ottoman Armenians. You seem to be stuck on this one subject sound like a broken record every time you bring it up .
The newest form of your idiosyncrasy, showing your obsession in defending the Armenian causes, is apparent in your following sentence: "Turkey's genocide of its Armenian community in 1915 left the bones of one and a half million Christians across Anatolia and what is now northern Syria."
Really, Mr. Fisk . These statements of yours prove that you are an incorrigible Turcophobe. You cannot help yourself. Chances are either you were born with that affliction or someone inculcated that prejudice into you when you were a most vulnerable young child to discriminate against Turks. You see, Mr. Fisk, whatever background you may possess , you cannot denigrate the Turks, no matter how much you try to do so. That honorable nation of 'Turks', whose early ancestors brought civilization to the European continent, when its inhabitants were still wallowing in muddy huts and tribes decimated each other in fratricidal, and animalistic wars.
The Ottoman Turks, on the other hand, knew even then, how to vaccinate people against diseases caused by bacteriological factors. They were reaping the benefits of time-telling devices when the Europeans were about to discover the uses of 'sundials'. A newly produced documentary film called, Empire of Faith and narrated by the British actor, Ben Kingsley, of 'Ghandi' fame extolled the superiority of the Muslim world. More than half of the presentation was consecrated to the achievements of the Turks in various fields, other than military, let alone their legendary tolerance and magnanimity in treating differing religions when Europe imposed on the Jews the cursed inquisitions and forced conversions. When no Christian country wanted to admit into their domain any Jew expelled from Spain and Portugal, it was the Turkish Sultan 'Beyazit' who welcomed them into his vast empire to come and settle there and flourish in freedom of religion, and the pursuit of their own language and culture. Turks even sent sea-faring galleons to Spain to transport these unfortunate people, free of charge, to any and all points of their realm. Turks, for centuries, helped to enlighten your ancestors. Sometime it was a losing proposition. Europeans learned from my ancestors, but they derided them at every chance they had.
There were, however, intellects such as the renown British anthropologist and historian Edson L. Clark (1827-1913) who said in his "Nations of the World” Series,1900,N.Y. (pp. 84,87.) that the Turks whose honor and the dignity you have been pummeling and mauling lo these many years, were, and I quote: "..Turks were.far better men and far abler rulers than the wretched tyrants whom they suppressed....the Turks were in advance, not of their Christian subjects alone, but of the greater part of Christian Europe."
Mr. Fisk, I know that you are British and do not consider yourself European. However, you must admit that you live on the European continent and are a member of the European Union. What I am driving at, Mr. Fisk, is the fact that your ancestors were then as you are now, an inferior exemplification in comparison to the Turks. Let me elucidate a bit more by adding that you belong to the illustrious school of 'Political Science' of the turn of the century when one British Prime Minister by the name of Lloyd George was getting ready to annihilate the last remnants of the dying Ottoman Empire, and was gloating at every chance he got by saying to the whole world the following:
"The Turks are a human cancer, a creeping agony in the flesh of the lands they misgovern, rotting every fiber of life. I am glad that the Turk is to be called to a final account (referring to the impending Greek invasion of Asia Minor ) for his long record of infamy against humanity." The British PM, not being an adequately -educated British subject, reminded me of you, Mr. Fisk. He was unaware of the above-mentioned quotation from Edson L. Clark. Thus, a rancorous, vindictive and vengeful Lloyd George, not unlike you , launched a 'doomed from the beginning' campaign in the Ottoman Turkish lands in
Gallipoli, against those "human cancers" the Turks. Even though aided by the French and the Anzak military forces and the world's most formidable naval armada, the Allied forces were repulsed. Lloyd George not only lost his post as the Prime Minister of his disgruntled country, but he lost his shirt, too, in the process. In addition he carried down with him, to the abyss, his favorite, but incompetent advisor Winston Churchill, who was the First Lord of the Admiralty.
The glorious victor of the Dardanelles, the military genius of the Gallipoli campaign, the great Mustafa Kemal had taught them a lesson they never forgot. Lloyd George died as a broken, destitute soul after having sheepishly underestimated and unjustly denigrated the noble Turk. Let us hope that you, dear Mr. Fisk, may be spared such a predicament of fate. ( I hope you are listening, Lloyd George, wherever you may be.)
I've been asking myself the following question over and over again concerning you and people like you: "What is their problem.?" I try to answer my very own questions. I find no answers. I am unable to decipher the origin of your arrogance and your disrespectful behavior when it comes to Turks. Your defense of the Armenians who have made a profitable industry of accusing the Ottoman Turks of having perpetrated the most heinous of all crimes, the crime of genocide, and in the same breath denying that they have even bloodied a single Turkish nose. When neutral, non-Turkish historians accept that for every Armenian who was killed in that civil war, within a World War in 1914-1918, four Muslim Turks, Kurds, Sircassians, and Azerbaijanis, lost their precious lives. But I guess you don't pay too much attention to that because they were not Christian.
Most observers can not tell us where this hatred for Turks is emerging. You are a part of that equation. The only source of frustration from which you are suffering may be the result of your government's inability to prove that Turks were guilty of a premeditated so-called genocide. There was not an iota of evidence found in the infamous trials held on the island of Malta by the British occupiers of the Ottoman capital, Istanbul, when they arrested and took with them a goodly portion of Ottoman government functionaries to the Island of Malta and imprisoned them for over a year, trying to extract from them juicy confessions, but at the end they totally failed. The final communiqué sent to Lord Curzon was very disappointing to the Armenians and their 'bootlicker' friend, you Mr. Fisk. The royal report said:
I REGRET TO INFORM YOUR LORDSHIP HERE WAS NOTHING THEREIN WHICH COULD BE USED AS EVIDENCE AGAINST THE TURKS WHO ARE PRESENTLY BEING DETAINED AT MALTA...NO CONRETE FACTS BEING GIVEN WHICH COULD CONSTITUTE SATISFACTORY INCRIMINATING EVIDENCE...THE REPORTS IN QUESTION DO NOT APPEAR, IN ANY CASE,TO CONTAIN EVIDENCE AGAINST THE TURKS."
Nevertheless, Mr. Fisk , if you are still unconvinced, then please listen to what the U.S. government had to say. The American General James G. Harbord, of the U.S. government's investigative commission, sent to Anatolia in the fall of 1919 by none other than President Woodrow Wilson, declared unequivocally the following in his official report. General James G. Harbord concluded :
"The Turks and the Armenians lived in peace, side by side for centuries; that the Turks suffered as much as the Armenians at the time of re-locations, that at the start of World War I and before, Armenians never had anything approaching a majority of the population in the territories they call "Armenia"; they would not have a majority even if all the re-located Armenians returned; and the claims that returning Armenians would be in danger were not justified."
Mr. Fisk, have you read the forged Adonian papers?, have you watched the often exhibited painting of the Armenian skulls piled up in a grotesque heap claiming that it was the Turks who had caused it to happen? Well, the photograph Armenians claim was taken in 1915was actually a stolen copy, a painting done in oil by a late Russian painter, named Vasily Vereschagin. Th e canvas is dated 1905 and it is still hanging in the Tretyakov Art Gallery in Moscow today. Now Mr. Fisk, I got a hunch you'll deny this too, as you always do, instead you will invoke the infamous Hitler quotation as a last resort. Here is a rebuttal for it, also.
Hitler may have been a monster as claimed, but nobody yet accused him for being a stupid individual. According to Prof. Dr. Turkkaya Ataov, Chairman, International Relations Division, Ankara, Turkey, and the Nuremberg Germany NAZI War Crimes Trials, that invented quotation does not hold any water. Adolf Hitler never made such an idiotic statement in his life. Prof. Ataov says, however, that Hitler said a few words about the Armenians, and that is true. He made one reference to the Armenians in a talk delivered on December 12, 1942, in which he described them as unreliable, (Unzuverlassig) and also dangerous,(Gefahrlich). It is rumored also that Hitler was furious about the Armenians when he used those adjectives. I'm afraid those two adjectives are also very appropriate to describe you.
Therefore, you must deservably belong to a distinguished family of international criminals such as Adolph Hitler, Lloyd George and the unreliable and the dangerous Armenians.
Mahmut Esat Ozan
Chairman-Editorial Board
The Turkish Forum -USA
meozan@turkishforum.com
Read Full Post !
Part I:
Turkey is concerned that the Armenian genocide resolution which has been submitted to the US House of Representatives several times in the past will pass due to Nancy Pelosi, . . the new Democratic speaker of the House.
However, I don’t think there is any major significance if the law is passed or not. Firstly, similar resolutions have already been passed in state senates. According to ANCA, 47 states have passed such resolutions. Secondly, the bill cannot impose sanctions. The US president is under pressure to say on April 24 that 1.5 million Armenians were murdered. U.S Republican and Democratic presidents have always used terms similar to the word “genocide” when speaking on April 24. I am not saying that Turkey should stop lobbying against the resolution. Of course, Turkey should fight against this unjust and biased legislation and try to prevent the genocide label from being attached to the nation. Otherwise, those Turkish children who read in textbooks that their ancestors were murderers will suffer an inferiority complex and will become asocial in the countries in which they live.
At the other end of the spectrum, the mentioned resolution that was submitted to the US House of Representatives is laden with incorrect historical information and material mistakes. It seems that those who drafted the resolution were not very concerned about the facts. It was prepared with the assumption that the representatives would approve whatever was submitted and calls on the US president to employ sensitivity to foreign politics regarding ethnic cleansing, human rights and the Armenian genocide. The president is also asked to declare April 24 a day to commemorate the “Armenian genocide.” Certainly this call is intended to hamper Turkey-US relations. So while the resolution lacks the authority to impose punitive sanctions, it is very important because it could prevent Turkish-US relations from moving forward in peace and cooperation. The resolution will increase Turkish opposition to America and will strike a blow to Turkish government efforts to mend relations between the two countries.
While the previous genocide resolutions had indicated that the genocide was committed by the Ottoman Empire and not the Republic of Turkey, the current one directly charges Turkey with being responsible for genocide. The third article was removed from the current resolution, which is why the history of the genocide was extended to 1923. The Armenian lobbyists have extended their claims of genocide because they want to hold the Turkish state responsible and punish Turkey for the goods and property that were confiscated. What’s worse is that the image of Turks in America will be damaged, and this could affect business and cultural relations between the two countries. Some intellectuals, writers and strategy experts say the US will not offend Turkey in any way until, at least, the problems in Iran and Iraq are resolved and do not expect the resolution to pass in the Senate. However, we should remember that in recent years the US has been guided by an unproductive and visionless administration. Unfortunately, the administration draws its strategy and road map based on the marginal groups of each country. Since the possibility exists for the US administration to err and become confused, it is very important that the American public and its administrative departments are informed of the half truths in the bill.
Below you will find an assessment of the mistakes in the mentioned bill.
(Article 1) The Armenian genocide was conceived and carried out by the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1923, resulting in the deportation of nearly 2,000,000 Armenians, of whom 1,500,000 men, women, and children were killed, 500,000 survivors were expelled from their homes, and which succeeded in the elimination of the over 2,500-year presence of Armenians in their historic homeland.
In the article under dispute, it was claimed that genocide was carried out by the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to 1923. We know that V. Dadrian and many other leading Armenian historians have claimed the loss of the Armenian life during World War I due to the actions of the Ottoman Empire was 1.5 million. Before we comment on these exaggerated figures, we must emphasize that the Ottoman Empire had exited the stage of history in 1923. This fact indicates that the Armenian lobby is directly targeting the Republic of Turkey and aims to keep Turkey from avoiding punishment for the refusal to acknowledge its heritage. As for the figures, we may state with certainty that the claimed number of Armenian victims is an exaggeration. First of all, many independent researchers have estimated that the Armenian population in 1914 ranged between 1,400,000 and1,700,000. Even such pro-Armenian scholars as Dr. Johannes Lepsius do not accept the figures asserted by the Patriarchate, at 2.2 million Armenian citizens in that area at that time, and instead calculated the Armenian population to be around 1,845,450 (Der Todesgang des Armenischen Volkes, Potsdam 1919, p. 308). There is not a single source that would indicate the population of the Ottoman Armenians was as high as 2 million. (See H. Özdemir and others. Armenians: Exile and Migration, Ankara, 2004, p.49-50.)
The claim that 1.5 million Armenians were killed is also a myth. This myth originated from the report of Leslie Davis, the US consul at Harput. He wrote on July 24, 1915 -- the 44th day after the order for deportation -- that “It is impossible to say how many Armenians have been killed, but it is estimated that the number is not far from a million” (NARA 867.4016/269). Even Dadrian vouches for 1 million survivors and estimates the number of Armenian victims at 1.1 million. During the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, the Armenian leader, Bogos Nubar Pasha, spoke about the deportation of 600-700,000 Armenians. In addition, the Patriarchate calculated in 1919 that the total number of Armenians living in Anatolia was 644,000. A document released by the League of Nations stated the number of Armenians in 1922 who originated from Turkey was 817,873 and states that “the total given does not include the able-bodied Armenians” who still lived in Turkey. (NARA 867.4016/816) Last but not least, in a memorandum sent to English and French embassies by the Patriarchate in 1919, it claimed that “200,000 Armenians were buried alive or were drowned in Van Lake, the Firat River and the Black Sea between 1914 and 1918.” (Report presented to the Preliminary Peace Conference by the Commission for the Responsibility of the Authors of the War and on the Enforcement of Penalties, March 29, 1919). These figures clearly demonstrate that the Armenian historians have exaggerated the figures about the number of Armenian victims during the war.
(Article 2) On May 24, 1915, the Allied Powers, England, France and Russia, jointly issued a statement explicitly charging for the first time ever another government of committing “a crime against humanity.”
In the second statement in the proposed resolution, the Allied statement of May 24, 1915 is mentioned, and it is asserted that the Ottoman Empire carried out genocide, although they had been warned before the deportation. The text of the resolution implies that the Ottoman Empire planned and launched a systematic campaign to annihilate the Armenians. It is true that there was such a statement made by the Allies; what is left out is the fact that the states that issued this statement were then at war with the Ottomans, and as we know now, had signed treaties amongst each other to divide the Ottoman Empire, which would complicate any claim they asserted about the Ottoman Empire. What is also striking is that these countries were overlooking their own “crimes against humanity.” For instance Russia was carrying out pogroms on the Jews in their country, and England had already deported citizens of German origin to concentration camps.
(Article 3) This joint statement stated “the Allied Governments announce publicly to the Sublime Porte that they will hold personally responsible for these crimes all members of the Ottoman Government, as well as those of their agents who are implicated in such massacres.”
As is stated above, these statements were the propaganda of the Allies. As a matter of fact, the Ottoman Empire, in its reply to the statement issued by the Allies, stated that a massacre of the Armenians in the empire was out of the question. There was also a very interesting detail in the statement of the Ottoman Empire: The sources of these slanders were English and Russian consuls in Romania and Bulgaria. In fact, political propaganda offices for the Tasnaksutyun [Armenian armed gangs] were present in the capitals of those countries, and many reports about the massacres appearing in the “Blue Book” also originated from these offices.
*Head of Black Sea Technical University, Faculty of Arts & Sciences; Turkish Historical Association, Armenian Desk
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Part 2:
(Article 4) The post-World War I Turkish Government indicted the top leaders involved in the “organization and execution” of the Armenian Genocide and in the “massacre and destruction of the Armenians.”
The third article of the resolution asserts that the Ottoman Empire tried those responsible for massacres and thereby implicitly accepted criminal responsibility during the court-martials. Justin McCarthy, a leading American expert on the Ottoman history, describes those courts as “kangaroo courts” and recalls that they were established by a corrupt administration which was eager for retribution. The British High Commissioner S.A.G. Calthorphe wrote to London on Aug. 1, 1919, that the “trials were proving to be a farce and injurious to our own prestige and to that of the Turkish government” (FO 371/4174/118377). According to Dr. Ferudun Ata, the author of a book titled “Deportation Courts in Occupied İstanbul,” the Ottoman government of the time had established the court-martials to better its conditions in the Paris Peace Conference and also to take revenge against the regime of the “Young Turks.”
The interrogations in the courts-martial were not duly conducted, many witnesses were faked and only testified against the defendants. For example, a certain Artolos, a shoemaker, who testified against Maj. Tevfik during the trials in Yozgat, was brought to İstanbul and was paid to speak against the defendant. According to Dr. Ata, he later appeared before the court in another trial as a Muslim convert. Dr. Ata’s book reveals many false witnesses like this. Those who spoke in favor of the suspects were not brought to court. The chairmen of the courts never charged those false witnesses, although they were sometimes revealed in court. Dr. Ata also found that some false witnesses, before bearing testimony at the court, had been trained and instructed in the “Armenian-Greek Branch” established at the offices of the British High Commissioner. What is most important to note about the decisions of these courts is that the Court of Appeal declared the verdicts null and void. Unfortunately, among such cases was the verdict of Nusret Bey, who had been executed upon his death sentence. Such facts about the nature of the post war courts-martial become more meaningful when we read that the then US high commissioner, Lewis Heck, reported on April 4, 1919 that “many here regard executions as necessary concessions to Entente rather than as punishment justly meted out to criminals,” and that “it is popularly believed that many of them are made from motives of personal vengeance or at the instigation of the Entente authorities, especially the British.” (NARA 867.00/868; M 353, roll 7, fr. 448). Lastly we should remember that England also arrested 144 outstanding politicians of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) for crimes against Armenians and took them to Malta for trial, but later released all of the detainees without charge.
(Article 5) In a series of courts-martial, officials of the Young Turks regime were tried and convicted, as charged, for organizing and executing massacres against the Armenian people.
Besides the findings of Dr. Feridun Ata, historians like Justin McCarthy and Gunter Lewy stated that post war courts-martial were a travesty of justice, the findings of these courts were unreliable, interrogations were not legal, the right of defense for the arrested was denied and the presiding officer, when questioning the defendants, often acted more like a prosecutor than like an impartial judge. As Lewy stated, “The legal procedures of Ottoman military courts, including those operating in 1919-20, suffered from serious shortcomings when compared to Western standards of due process of law.” The court did not listen to any testimony during judgment and the decisions were made by relying solely on false witnesses without considering the answers of the defense.
(Article 6) The chief organizers of the Armenian Genocide, Minister of War Enver, Minister of the Interior Talaat and Minister of the Navy Jemal were all condemned to death for their crimes; however, the verdicts of the courts were not enforced.
The courts-martial operating in the occupied Istanbul tried Enver, Talat and Cemal and convicted them to capital punishment in absentia. Yet, they were not found guilty of “organizing and performing massacres against Armenians,” as stated in the resolution, but they were found guilty of political crimes for dragging the country into a terrible war. The fact that the verdicts of the courts were not enforced has nothing to do with ignorance or being indifferent to the suffering of Armenians, but that the guilty parties had fled the country after the war. Anyhow, the untold verity about these people is that they were assassinated by a secret Armenian organization called “Nemesis” in the countries where they sought refuge. Sadly, the Nemesis organization also killed some statesmen like Sait Halim Pasha, Bahaeddin Takir and Cemal Azmi without judgment although the courts found them innocent.
(Article 7) The Armenian Genocide and these domestic judicial failures are documented with overwhelming evidence in the national archives of Austria, France, Germany, Great Britain, Russia, the United States, the Vatican and many other countries, and this vast body of evidence attests to the same facts, the same events, and the same consequences.
This is also untrue. I have personally dug out the documents preserved at the US National Archives and Research Foundation and found no concrete evidence in the documents that can be qualified for use in court. The documents in the archive contain reports by the consul and the testimony of the missionaries who were biased toward the Muslims and the Turks and reported information that they had not witnessed, but rather heard through secondary sources. It can safely be claimed that an overwhelming amount of these documents and reports are based on hearsay. There are also large amount of documents, or rather statements, from the Patriarchate and Taşnaksutyun political propaganda offices. As a matter of fact, documents and reports from the United States consuls had been examined by the officials “for any mention of forty-five Malta detainees accused of outrages against Armenians and other Christians” and found no information that could “be employed in a court of law.” Thus, one cannot help thinking that this might be the reason why the proposal of the Turkish government to set up an international committee of historians have so far been refused by the Republic of Armenia.
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Part III
(Article 8) The United States National Archives and Record Administration possesses extensive and thorough documentation on the Armenian Genocide, especially in its holdings under Record Group 59 of the United States Department of State, files 867.00 and 867.40, which are open and widely available to the public and interested institutions.
The documents in the American archives have been classified under various categories. The collection that is mostly used by the Armenians as basis for their claims is from the Records of the Department of State, especially the section classified as “Internal Affairs of Turkey 1910-1929.” Most of these documents were collected with the help of the two Armenian secretaries of Ambassador Henry Morgenthau. Reports from the Armenian political propaganda offices were also included in the mentioned reports. When one studies these documents carefully, and ignores the lines of hearsay cited in the reports, he/she can gather a wealth of information about the implementation of the relocation process. For example, we learn from the reports of J. Jackson, the consul of Aleppo, that the number of Armenians who reached the city of Aleppo was up to 500,000, that these people were settled in the houses and camps in and around the city. The consul also gives lists of arrivals by sex, religion and sect.
(Article 9) Henry Morgenthau, US Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1913 to 1916, organized and led protests with officials from many countries, among them the allies of the Ottoman Empire, against the Armenian Genocide he said occurred.
The use of Morgenthau’s book to support genocide claims is not a scholarly approach. Heath Lowry, a professor of history at Princeton, has documented without a shadow of a doubt that the Armenian secretaries of the ambassador changed the contents of the reports that came from towns and cities in Anatolia. As a matter of fact, there are in the archives the original documents of the reports of the missionaries and a scholarly approach requires the use of this material. An important detail about Ambassador Morgenthau is that he had never been to Anatolia and was pro-Armenian throughout his career. Adm. Bristol, who was his successor, accused him of taking sides and exaggerating the reports about the massacres. Historians specialized in American politics share the opinion that Morgenthau wrote his book in support of the Armenian National Delegation at Paris in 1919, which had been waging a campaign to persuade the Allies to carve out independent Armenian state in the eastern part of Anatolia.
(Article 10) Ambassador Morgenthau explicitly described to the United States Department of State the policy of the government of the Ottoman Empire as ‘a campaign of race extermination,’ and was instructed on July 16, 1915, by United States Secretary of State Robert Lansing that the `Department approves your procedure . . . to stop Armenian persecution.’
Such statements in Morgenthau’s report show how much he had been influenced by his interpreter, Arshag Schmavonian, and his secretary, Hagop Andonian. We must remind the reader that when the ambassador made these remarks, the relocation of Armenians had not started yet or had been implemented in a few strategic towns. It should be kept in mind that the transportation began in many eastern cities after the 1st of July. To name but few, the transportation of Armenians began in Harput on July 4 and in Yozgat on July 18. So, when Morgenthau wrote his report in July, it was very early to call the events “a campaign of race extermination.” This report is an indication of the prejudice of the consul. The quotation in the resolution must be considered in line with the wordings of the reports of the consular since at it is impossible for the US Department of State to have knowledge of the events that took place in the Near East at such an early date.
(Article 11) Senate Concurrent Resolution 12 of Feb. 9, 1916, resolved that ‘the President of the United States be respectfully asked to designate a day on which the citizens of this country may give expression to their sympathy by contributing funds now being raised for the relief of the Armenians,’ who at the time were enduring `starvation, disease, and untold suffering.’
In fact, Robert Lansing in his report dated Nov. 21, 1916 to President Wilson claimed that the Armenian deportation was due to the betrayal of the Armenians. The resolution in question aimed at initiating a relief campaign to increase America’s support to the refugees in the Armenian camps. Thus, it is obvious that resolution of Robert Lansing did not have a purpose like the resolution worded. It should be underlined that Muslim villagers were also suffering from the same conditions. Justin McCarthy in his book (”Death and Exile”) puts the losses of Muslims above 2 million, most of which were caused by epidemics and starvation. Prof. Hikmet Özdemir, in his book “March with Epidemics 1914-1918,” stated the victims to the epidemics among military personal was exactly 401,859.
(Article 12) President Woodrow Wilson concurred and also encouraged the formation of the organization known as Near East Relief, chartered by an Act of Congress, which contributed some $116 million from 1915 to 1930 to aid Armenian Genocide survivors, including 132,000 orphans who became foster children of the American people.
First, the first formation of this organization was in 1916 under the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief. The US Ambassador Morgenthau had an important role in the foundation of the committee, also the most active members of this committee were missionaries and consul generals in particular.
For example the coordinator at Aleppo was Consul General J.J. Jackson. In 1919 all relief organizations in the Near East came under the umbrella of a new organization called Near East Relief. One of the most important details that were not mentioned in the resolution is that these relief organizations helped the Armenians with the help, support and permission of the Ottoman government.
In the beginning of the war the Ottoman Empire rejected aid from foreign organizations to the Armenians on the grounds that it may have “encouraged resistance against relocation orders” and that all needs of refuges were to be met by the state. However when the economic condition of the state worsened all relief organizations were given permission to work and full access to the camps. The presence of relief organizations at camps is self-evident of the fact that the empire had no intention to implement of race extermination to the Armenians as often claimed by the Armenian historians.
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(Article 13) Senate Resolution 359, dated May 11, 1920, stated in part, “the testimony adduced at the hearings conducted by the sub-committee of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations have clearly established the truth of the reported massacres and other atrocities from which the Armenian people have suffered.”
Unfortunately, then as now, US politicians relied strictly on deceptive Armenian propaganda and close their eyes to the other side of the story in order not to alienate Armenian voters.
As a matter of fact there was a civil war in Anatolia and both sides were involved in massacres, but historical documentation proves that Armenians killed 500,000 Turks and Muslims in Anatolia between 1914 and 1920. During his term in Turkey as high commissioner, Admiral Mark L. Bristol wrote on March 12, 1926, about the Armenian massacres in the East, saying that “the extent of the excesses committed will never be known.”
He also noted this: “I have received reports from Americans who were there at the time to the effect that the Christians cleared out the Moslem population completely so that ‘there was not a living thing, even a dog, a cat or a chicken left in the country.’
“Russians also reported that the Armenians had killed most of the Muslims in the districts of Erzurum.” (NARA 767.90g15). Unfortunately, little scholarly attention has been paid to the atrocities committed by the Armenians.
(Article 14) The resolution followed the April 13, 1920 report to the Senate of the American Military Mission to Armenia led by General James Harbord, that stated “[m]utilation, violation, torture, and death have left their haunting memories in a hundred beautiful Armenian valleys, and the traveler in that region is seldom free from the evidence of this most colossal crime of all the ages.”
Although Gen. Harbord was a pro-Armenian person, he listened to Muslim villagers about the massacres perpetuated by the Armenian bandit Andranik and changed the tone of his report. As a matter of fact, in spite of all Armenian propaganda, Harbord argued that the US must not overtake the mandate of Armenia without the whole of Anatolia -- Rumelia, Istanbul and Caucasia included -- since Armenia alone could not survive without a large amount of money and military presence. This report seems to have played an important role in changing the attitude of the congressmen to the creation of Armenia under the American mandate.
(Article 15) As displayed in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Adolf Hitler, on ordering his military commanders to attack Poland without provocation in 1939, dismissed objections by saying “[who], after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” and thus set the stage for the Holocaust.
To refer Adolf Hitler in the resolution (Article 15) is very deceptive. Armenian historian Dr. Robert John, American historian Heath Lowry and Turkish historian Türkkaya Ataöv have proved that this quote is false. That quote was not found in any speech delivered by Hitler or filed in the documents of Nuremberg. The court had filed two versions of Hitler’s speech to army commanders in August 22, 1939, from the German military records. These have the numbers of US-29/786 PS and US-30/1014 PS and none of these files have this quote.
(Article 16) Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term “genocide” in 1944, and who was the earliest proponent of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, invoked the Armenian case as a definitive example of genocide in the 20th century.
When Rafael Lemkin defined the crime of genocide he might have used this expression, but that does not prove anything. First of all, Lemkin was not a historian and surely he read only the Armenian version of the story. Since then, many valuable contributions have been made about the details of the relocation of the Armenians, most of which demonstrates that the relocation and settlements were not in line with the definition of the term genocide.
(Article 17) The first resolution on genocide adopted by the United Nations at Lemkin’s urging, the Dec. 11, 1946 United Nations General Assembly Resolution 96(1) and the Untied Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide itself recognized the Armenian Genocide as the type of crime the United Nations intended to prevent and punish by codifying existing standards.
This is another false claim. The UN never recognized “the Armenian Genocide.” On the contrary, a sub-committee, which gathered in 1985, refused to receive the report of Mr. Whitaker in the light of evidence against the genocide convention and that only “took note” of the report.
(Article 18) In 1948, the United Nations War Crimes Commission invoked the Armenian Genocide “precisely . . . one of the types of acts which the modern term ‘crimes against humanity’ is intended to cover” as a precedent for the Nuremberg tribunals.
This article of the resolution is based on wrong conception. First of all, it should be stated that the suspects in the Nuremberg courts were punished for crimes against humanity. In fact, the adverse of it is not possible because the genocide convention was accepted in 1951.
(Article 19) The Commission stated that “[t]he provisions of Article 230 of the Peace Treaty of Sevres were obviously intended to cover, in conformity with the Allied note of 1915 ....offenses that had been committed on Turkish territory against persons of Turkish citizenship, though of Armenian or Greek race. This article constitutes therefore a precedent for Article 6c and 5c of the Nuremberg and Tokyo Charters, and offers an example of one of the categories of ‘crimes against humanity’ as understood by these enactments.”
As explained in the previous article, Nuremberg courts were established by the Allied states to punish the defeated governments for the crimes committed in World War II. The lawsuits of those courts were not “genocide lawsuits.” Therefore, 6c and 5c articles of Tokyo agreement can never be an example for the Armenian thesis.
(Article 20) House Joint Resolution 148, adopted on April 8, 1975, resolved: "[t]hat April 24, 1975, is hereby designated as the 'National Day of Remembrance of Man's Inhumanity to Man,' and the President of the United States is authorized and requested to issue a proclamation calling upon the people of the United States to observe such day as a day of remembrance for all the victims of genocide, especially those of Armenian ancestry."
Unfortunately, as a result of that decision taken under the influence of the Armenian propaganda, US presidents discriminate against the victims of World War I by race and religion, and only speak for Armenian losses on the Remembrance Day. It is not a civilized attitude and I believe that one should not use the victims of the wars for their political causes.
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Part V
(Article 21) President Ronald Reagan in proclamation number 4838, dated April 22, 1981, stated in part “like the genocide of the Armenians before it, and the genocide of the Cambodians, which followed it -- and like too many other persecutions of too many other people --the lessons of the Holocaust must never be forgotten.”
If the fact that the speechwriter of President Ronald Reagan was Kenneth L. Khachigian is taken into account, one can understand why the president used this terminology as opposed to that of his predecessors.
(Article 22) House Joint Resolution 247, adopted on Sept. 10, 1984, resolved: “[t]hat April 24, 1985, is hereby designated as ‘National Day of Remembrance of Man’s Inhumanity to Man,’ and the President of the United States is authorized and requested to issue a proclamation calling upon the people of the United States to observe such day as a day of remembrance for all the victims of genocide, especially the one and one-half million people of Armenian ancestry.”
Even after such a decision, it is important to note that US presidents have since then not recognized April 24 as “Armenian Genocide Day.” The resolution of the House of Representatives was certainly a political one; few of undersigned persons cared about its truthfulness.
(Article 23) In August 1985, after extensive study and deliberation, the United Nations SubCommission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities voted 14-1 to accept a report entitled “Study of the Question of the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,” which stated “[t]he Nazi aberration has unfortunately not been the only case of genocide in the 20th century. Among other examples, which can be cited as qualifying, are….the Ottoman massacre of Armenians in 1915-1916.”
This is one of the untrue articles of the resolution. The UN has never accepted the report of Mr. Whitaker and as we have shown below, the Subcommittee did not receive the report in question, but only “took note of.” (File E/CN.4/1986/5-E/CN.4/Feb.2/1985/57; Para.57) and instead of that, it is added to the special report as “noted” (E/CN.4/1986/5 E/CN.4/Feb.2/1985/57 page 99. Para 1). Unfortunately, we have encountered that big lie even in scientific meetings.
(Article 24) This report also explained that “[a]t least 1,000,000, and possibly well over half of the Armenian population, are reliably estimated to have been killed or death marched by independent authorities and eye-witnesses. This is corroborated by reports in United States, German and British archives and of contemporary diplomats in the Ottoman Empire, including those of its ally Germany….”
It is obvious that Mr. Whitaker’s report was prepared with the direction of Armenian historians. As a matter of fact, in the meeting of the subcommittee, US representative Mr. Carey said: “All the existing sources have not been taken into account and the matter has not been elaborated sufficiently in depth. The question of genocide has not been elucidated sufficiently.” Carey added, “He was not in a position to approve any resolution on this issue.” In the same meeting of the committee, French representative Mr. Joinet said, “The debate on Mr. Whitaker’s report is in fact a debate on history.”
(Article 25) The United States Holocaust Memorial Council, an independent federal agency, unanimously resolved on April 30, 1981, that the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum would include the Armenian Genocide in the Museum and has since done so.
This resolution cannot be taken as a proof of the international acceptance of the so-called Armenian genocide, nor does it strengthen the false Armenian thesis.
(Article 26) Reviewing an aberrant 1982 expression (later retracted) by the United States Department of State asserting that the facts of the Armenian Genocide may be ambiguous, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 1993, after a review of documents pertaining to the policy record of the United States, noted that the assertion on ambiguity in the United States record about the Armenian Genocide “contradicted longstanding United States policy and was eventually retracted.”
Like other decisions that were taken without consulting the Turkish side, this resolution also is not obligatory.
(Article 27) On June 5, 1996, the House of Representatives adopted an amendment to House Bill 3540 (the Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 1997) to reduce aid to Turkey by $3 million (an estimate of its payment of lobbying fees in the United States) until the Turkish government acknowledged the Armenian Genocide and took steps to honor the memory of its victims.
Again this decision was taken under the pressure of the effective Armenian lobbying in the House of Representatives. Unfortunately, the politicians are not very interested in reality. In fact, Turkey has a very strict policy concerning US aid, and will not accept any stipulation of this kind in order to benefit from US aid.
(Article 28) President William Jefferson Clinton, on April 24, 1998, stated: “This year, as in the past, we join with Armenian-Americans throughout the nation in commemorating one of the saddest chapters in the history of this century, the deportations and massacres of a million and a half Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in the years 1915-1923.”
As it is seen, President Clinton talked about massacres and deportations but did not define that tragedy as “genocide.” Genocide is a crime against humanity as defined by the UN Convention of 1948. Moreover, “massacre” and “genocide” are very different terms from the perspective of law. No need to say that massacres may occur anywhere and anytime during wars.
(Article 29) President George W. Bush, on April 24, 2004, stated: “On this day, we pause in remembrance of one of the most horrible tragedies of the 20th century, the annihilation of as many as 1.5 million Armenians through forced exile and murder at the end of the Ottoman Empire.”
Again the events that took place in Anatolia between 1915 and 1923 were defined as tragedy in the speech of President Bush. A moment of silence for the victims of war is a duty for all human beings.
(Article 30) Despite the international recognition and affirmation of the Armenian Genocide, the failure of the domestic and international authorities to punish those responsible for the Armenian Genocide is a reason why similar genocides have recurred and may recur in the future, and that a just resolution will help prevent future genocides.
Unfortunately those who are saying this carried out a massacre in Hocali in Feb. 26, 1992, deported 180,000 Azeris from the Karabag enclave and occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan’s territory. Today there are more than 1 million refugees in the city of Baku from the occupied areas and these people live in deplorable conditions.
Prof. Dr. KEMAL ÇIÇEK*
* Head of Black Sea Technical University, Faculty of Arts & Sciences; Turkish Historical Association, Armenian Desk
27-31 Mar 2007
Zaman
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They put great emphasis on General Harbord’s final report, which not only destroyed all the assumptions of an independent Armenia, but also of the long established Armenian lobby in America. But the real merit of the mission was its long-range effects on Turkish-American relations. The mission’s findings gave support to the relatively few Americans trying desperately to change the American view of Turkey and establish healthy relations unbiased from the Armenian lobby. The other important side of the mission was unpublished findings about Turkey, Armenians, the independence movement, etc., which had been buried under the archives.
The Harbord mission was totally different and unique from its predecessors. First of all, its members were mainly composed of military personnel. They had the necessary cadre and sources to fulfill their duty. They talked to most of the main actors, visited all sides, and traveled across Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia. They managed to produce a body of expert reports on all the aspects of these three countries. Unfortunately most of these reports and findings were never published. So, in short the mission’s document collection is a kind of time capsule, which has a variety of information especially about the first phase of Turkey’s independence war.
Please Read The Full Document Below:
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Part 1
One of the basic aims of the social sciences is to try to solve the contradictory issues and problems between people, groups, communities and societies, and their political and social systems. The problems must be fixed objectively and according to cause and effect. The other necessity during scientific research is to avoid making propaganda and invoking the wrath of one group against another. In addition, researchers should not attempt to persuade others relating to their political beliefs. While studying the political history of the world, which has consisted of many wars that have caused the loss of uncountable human lives, the documents one must depend on are primary resources rather than secondary ones. Another important step in scientific research is to use the terms, notions and concepts related to the topic in the correct form.
In this context, since 1965 there has been an unfounded allegation that genocide was carried out against 1,500,000 Armenians by the Ottoman government in 1915 during World War I. First of all, it should be remembered what kind of position the Ottoman Armenians had before and during the war.
In addition, although nearly 25 million people, including Turks, Kurds, Arabs, Britons, French, Germans and Russians, died during World War I, what distinguished the Armenians' deaths, which have been discussed for nearly 41 years, is the subject of this paper.
Ottoman Armenians organizations before the war:
After living together in peace with Turks for more than 850 years, the Ottoman Armenians were encouraged to rebel against the Ottoman state by imperialist England, France and Russia, which aimed to divide and share the Ottoman Empire in the late 19th century.
Professor Langer, a diplomatic historian from Harvard University, explained how the Ottoman Armenians organized at Istanbul, Trabzon, Van, Harput, Izmir and Aleppo against the Ottoman Empire to work toward its collapse and create an independent Armenian state. Thus the Hunchak Armenian bands and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) secretly arranged revolutionary bands that could fight the government and “terrorize government officials, traitors and usurers and all kinds of exploiters” during the 1890s. [1] One of the revolutionary Armenians told Dr. Hamlin, [2] who was the founder of Robert College in Istanbul, that the Hunchak Armenian bands would:
… watch their opportunity to kill Turks and Kurds, set fire to their villages and then make their escape into the mountains. The enraged Muslims will then rise, and fall upon the defenseless Armenians and slaughter them with such barbarity that Russia will enter in the name of humanity and Christian civilization and take possession. [3]
Dr. Hamlin was shocked. He told the revolutionary that the scheme was atrocious and infernal beyond anything ever known, and he got this reply:
It appears so to you, no doubt; but we Armenians have determined to be free. Europe listened to Bulgarian horrors and made Bulgaria free. She will listen to our cry when it goes up in the shrieks and blood of millions of women and children … We are desperate. We will do it. [4]
Therefore, the Hunchak Armenians decided that social organization in the Ottoman Empire could be shifted by violence against Turks. They explained how to terrify the Ottoman government. To achieve it, their methods included “propaganda, agitation, terror organization and peasant and worker activities” led by guerrilla bands. [5] For example, the Hunchak Armenians arranged a demonstration of Bab-i Ali (the Sublime Porte), which caused much bloodshed on Sep. 18-30, 1895 in Istanbul. [6] Similarly, on Aug. 26, 1896, members of the ARF bombed the Imperial Ottoman Bank in Istanbul in an event similar to the Sept. 11, 2001 Al Qaeda ????? attack against the United States. The event at the Imperial Ottoman Bank caused an uprising by Muslims in which more than 900 Armenians and 700 Muslims died in Istanbul. Hayik Tiryakian, who was one of the people who bombed the bank, spoke about the attack:
…6 people were sufficient to begin the operation. We set out, with sack[s] full of bombs on our shoulders and guns in our hands. … The bombs were giving incredible results; they did not kill [the staff of the bank and the people around the bank] instantly, but tore their flesh apart, and made them writhe with pain and agony. We went with Garo to the president's office and wrote down our conditions. We demanded that the Powers [referring to England, France and Russia] fulfill our requests, that those who took part in this confrontation be freed; if not, we would blow up the bank along with ourselves … 3 had died, 6 of our friends were wounded. Our enemies' casualties [implying Turks] were also heavy. [7]
Footnotes:
[1] William L. Langer, “The Diplomacy of Imperialism 1890-1902” Volume 1, New York & London Alfred. A. Knopf 1935, p.155
[2] Dr. Cyrus Hamlin was one of American missionaries in the late term of the Ottoman Empire. So he had good friendship with Armenians as well as Turks.
[3] Langer, op.cit., p.157
[4] ibid, p.158
[5] Louise Nalbandian, The Armenian Revolutionary Movement, University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1967 pp.110-111
[6] ibid, p.122
[7] Kamuran Gürün, “The Armenian File The Myth of Innocence Exposed,” K.Rustem& Bro.and Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd. London. Nicosia. Istanbul 1985, p.158 quoted from Vartanian's book “History of Dasnaksutyun” pp.160-163
Part 2
The position of Armenians during the war:
By 1914, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) had recruited many militants and in the spring of 1915, besieged the city of Van, massacring tens of thousands of Muslims and spearheading a Russian invasion of Eastern Ottoman Anatolia. For example, a report I obtained from the National Archives (N) proved that the ARF admitted to killing 60,000 Muslims in Sarikamis, Kars, in 1914 and massacring many Muslims who lived in Eastern Anatolia by collaborating with the Russian and French armies, which occupied eastern and southeastern Anatolia from 1914 to 1918.[1]
According to this report, the ARF explained what they had done, which was admitted by the Ottoman Armenians who had migrated to the United States as follows: In August 1914, a Turkish mission visited the ARF, which had congregated for its annual meeting at Erzurum in eastern Anatolia. Afterward, the Turkish mission suggested to the ARF that “if the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire and of Russia [make] common cause with Turkey, Turkey [will agree] to create, with a guarantee from Germany, an autonomous Armenian state by giving Erzurum, Van and Bitlis in Turkey.” However, the ARF rejected this arrangement. (p.3-4)
Meanwhile, before the entry of the Ottoman Empire into the war in October 1914, Russia, through Russian Commander Count Varantzoff Dachkoff, “proposed to Armenian political organizations that if Turkey should enter the war and if Armenians [make] common cause with Russia, thereby contributing to a Russian victory over Turkey, Russia [will] incorporate in the peace treaty stipulations for the complete autonomy of the six vilayets (provinces) of Turkey,” and the Armenians accepted the proposal. Therefore, “With the Armenians' excellent fighting qualities, especially when in the presence of a hereditary enemy [Turks are implied], these troops really made the difference between success and failure to the Russians in the Caucasus." (p.7)
Another comment in the report is that more than 200,000 Armenians fought with the allies [England, Russia and France, which wanted to divide and share the Ottoman Empire] or independently, and 100,000 lost their lives. “Of the 900 college and university students, especially of those whose families were in Turkey, (p.21) that enlisted in the Foreign Legion and fought on the Western front all, but 55 were killed in action and of the survivors every one received one or more decorations for gallantry in action. Following the defection of Russia, the Armenians took over the Caucasus front -- 600 miles long – and prevented the Turks from reaching the Baku oil fields for nine long months.” (p.1)
The Armenians had achieved the plan of the ARF, which was related to Dr. Hamlin, step by step, during the war on the Caucasus front. The report says: "In 1914 … the 10th Turkish Army, on its way from Olti to Sarikamis, was held up for 36 hours at the Barbuz Pass by the first Armenian battalion, under Armenian Col. Keri. This delay enabled the Russians to concentrate their forces at Sarikamis, where Enver Pasha [the minister of war in the Ottoman government] failed utterly in his offensive.” It adds: “The Turks lost 30,000, largely due to freezing conditions. Ali Ihsan Pasha and his staff were captured and shipped to Siberia. … When Enver returned to Istanbul, he publicly announced that his failure was due to the intervention of the Armenians. … Enver told the truth. … In April, 1915 … Armenian leader Andranik fought off Gen. Khalil Bey for three days. When Russian reinforcements arrived, 3,600 Turks lay dead and wounded in front of Armenian trenches." (pp. 9-10)
As a matter of fact, this information, that 100,000 Armenians had fought against the Turks in World War I, was confirmed at the U.S. Senate as well. [2]
Finally, the ARF declared “a people's war” [3] against the Turkish government and began to implement its plan by massacring hundreds of thousands of people. According to information provided by the Turkish State Archive, more than 523,000 Turk Ottoman subjects were killed by the ARF from 1910 to 1922. [4] As is well known, American and European Armenians have been claiming since 1973 that on April 24, 1915 there was an Armenian genocide by the Ottoman government. As explained in the report, the situation is so confused that it is almost impossible to understand who massacred whom in April 1915.
There has been an allegation that after the entry of the Ottoman Empire into World War I, a so-called Armenian genocide paralleled the genocide of Jews by the Nazi regime during World War II. As Professor Bernard Lewis mentioned, this allegation is unfounded because what happened to the Ottoman Armenians was the result of a massive Armenian armed rebellion against the Turks, which began even before the war broke out, and continued on a larger scale.
"To make this a parallel with the holocaust in Germany you would have to assume the Jews of Germany had been engaged in an armed rebellion against the German state, collaborating with the allies against Germany. That in the deportation order the cities of Hamburg and Berlin were exempted, persons in the employment of the state were exempted and deportation only applied to the Jews of Germany proper, so that when they got to Poland they were welcomed and sheltered by Polish Jews." [5]
The Russian occupation continued from 1914 to 1916 in the eastern region. Consequently, it means that it was impossible to massacre Armenians who lived in eastern Turkey in 1915 because neither the Ottoman government nor the army had control over the region. Afterward, it is probable that the German and Ottoman governments, which were allied with each other during World War I, decided to deport the AFR members and their families temporarily to Syria, which was a province of the Ottoman Empire and far from all active fronts at that time.
Finally, the Ottoman government had to deport them at the insistence of the ARF on May 27, 1915. However, during the deportation some Armenians were killed in revenge by Kurdish tribes and by local officials whose members and relatives had been massacred by the AFR between the 1880s and 1915. The situation in the region is well described by Gen. Harbord: "In the territory untouched by war from which Armenians were deported, the ruined villages are undoubtedly due to Turkish deviltry, but where Armenians advanced and retired with the Russians their retaliatory cruelties unquestionably rivaled the Turks in their inhumanity." [6]
Footnotes:
[1] National Archives (N) RG 59 Records of the Department of State Relating to Political Relations Between the United States and Turkey, 1910-1929 Roll No: 6, M : NO:365 Document No:711.672/473, and Date: June 7,1926, Herbert Adams Gibbons “Armenia in the World War,” 1926, New York.
[2] Congressional Record Proceedings and Debates -- Senate, Volume LXVII, Part-1, March 17, 1925, Washington, Government Printing Office, 1926, p.292
[3] Nalbandian, op. cit. p.156
[4] The New York Times, April 18, 2005
[5] Gunay Evinch, “The Armenian Cause Today,” The Turkish American, Vol.2 No.8, Summer 2005, p. 24
[6] Maj. Gen. James. G. Harbord, U.S. Army, Conditions in the Near East, Report of the American Military Mission to Armenia, Presented by Mr. Lodge, April 13, 1920 -- Ordered to be printed, Washington, Government Printing Office, 1920, p. 9
Part 3
The Armenians after the armistice:
After being deported by the Ottoman government to Syria, the Armenians restarted their fight against the Turks by collaborating with the French Army, which was located in the Levant. They formed an Armenian Legion and massacred thousands of Turks. The chief of the bureau of operations of the French troops explained how the Armenians killed Turks. He describes the military quality of an Armenian soldier while fighting against the Turks as capable of learning quickly and as having a passion to bear arms and for military exercises, proud of his volunteer's uniform and impatient to meet the Turks.[1] Col. Romieu, the other French commander, also explains how the Armenians killed Turks during the funeral ceremonies of Armenians on Sept. 20, 1918 as follows:
"The Armenian battalion approached the objective assigned using an obstinate assault; it maintained itself stubbornly under the shadow of the hills of Arara[t], which the Germans had converted into the most powerful point of Turkish resistance in this region, and it was right at this point that the Turkish line of resistance was broken. … The magnificent behavior of the battalion, not withstanding its losses, made it possible for us to fulfill the mission that had been entrusted to us … our Armenian heroes, who fell in the first line, facing the enemy [Turks are implied] … rest in your glory." [2]
In short, although there was not any genocide during World War I, Armenians and Muslims massacred each other because of the imperialistic aims of the British, French, Russians and Germans.
As a matter of fact, Professor Richard G. Hovannisian, an expert on the Armenian issue from the University of California, criticizes the European Powers on the Armenian issue without discussing the ARF massacre of hundreds of thousands of Muslims before and during World War I. But he states that after the Central powers lost the war in 1918, there was a small Armenia in existence and the desire of Armenians was that Turkish Armenia be added to the existence of the one in the southern Caucasus. According to him, the realization of this hope was dependent on the ?benevolence? of the Allies, who were the victors of the war. He adds, ?The key determining the course of that independence was in the hands of the nations of Europe and America.? [3]. He implies that although these nations promised justice to the Armenians, they ignored the representatives of Armenia in Western Europe in late 1918.
Though Bliss [4], extremely and subjectively blamed the Ottoman government on the Armenian issue, he shares a similar idea with Hovannisian by questioning the European Powers and Russia of that time. He believes that they might have prevented the massacres if they had made the correct decision. [5]
American Gen. James Harbord, who wrote the report about eastern Anatolia after visiting the region in 1919, confirmed the massacring of both sides. He says that the situation of the Turks was worse than that of the Armenians. [6] According to Harbord's report, before the war the population of Turkish people in Armenian provinces had been 1,750,000; after the war there were 1,000,000 left. [7] In the report, after objective observation, Harbord's Commission says that:
"Some Turkish officers were pointed out to us by American missionaries as having refused to carry out the 1915 order for [Armenian] deportation. That order is universally attributed to the Committee of Union and Progress, of which Enver Bey, Talat Bey and Djemal Pasha were the leaders. A court has been sitting in the capital practically since the armistice, and one man and an unimportant subordinate, has been hung. Talat, Enver and Djemal are at large and a group of men charged with various crimes against the law of war are at Malta in custody of the British, unpunished except as restrained from personal liberty." [8]
Although they had not been found guilty by the British court in Malta, both Talat Bey and Djemal Pasha were killed by Armenian terrorists in Berlin and Tbilisi in the early 1920s.
Conclusion:
In my opinion, which side first began to massacre the other and who killed more than the other is not as important as who encouraged the Armenians and Muslims, who were equal subjects of the Ottoman Empire at that time, to massacre each other for the sake of expanding and exploiting the desires of imperialism. It was catastrophic that both innocent Turks and Armenians died during World War I. Consequently, it is understood that War World I caused the massacre of too many people as current wars do in the world. According to U.N. figures, more than 50 ethnic or religious massacres or genocides occurred in the 20th century, and some of them are still continuing. Therefore, every person who identifies himself/herself as a human being must struggle to stop wars through nongovernmental organizations by supporting the United Nations to prevent the most shameful events of the 20th century from occurring in the contemporary world.
Footnotes:
[1] N (National Archives) ?RG 59 Records of the Department of State Relating to Political Relations Between the United States and Turkey, 1910-1929" Roll No: 6, M : NO:365 Document No:711.672/473, p.18,21
[2] ibid, p.20
[3] Richard G. Hovannisian, ?Armenia on the Road of Independence,? University of California Press, 1969, p. 242
[4] He was one of the Christian missionaries in the late 19th century in the Ottoman Empire.
[5] Edwin Munsell Bliss, ?Turkish Cruelties Upon the Armenian Christians,? Monarch, Chicago, 1896 p.557-558
[6] Major General J.G. Harbord, ?Plain Pact About Asia Minor and the Trans-Caucasus,? The New York Times, Feb. 22, 1919
[7] ?Report to Maj. Gen. James. G. Harbord, US Army Chief, American Military Mission to Armenia on Political Factors and Problems,? Capt. Stanly, K. Hornbeck, Ord. Dept., United States, on board USS Martha Washington, Oct.16,1919, p. 6
[8] Harbord, "Conditions in the Near East," p.10
October 11-12-13, 2006
Opinion by Professor Nursen Mazıcı
ISTANBUL - TDN Guest Writer
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