Featuring: Turkkaya Ataov, Professor Emeritus Of International Relations, Ankara University
With: Ali Cinar, President, Federation Of Turkish American Associations
Interview Conducted By: Bircan Ünver, Founding President & Permanent Rep. To The Un Dpi-Ngo Of The Light Millennium
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PART 2/2
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by Professor Türkkaya Ataöv
This short article of mine is a rushed response to an e-mail message informing us that some Armenian quarters in the United States, who neither represent their brethren in that country nor the whole Armenian people, were planning to reprint the New York Times and Missionary . . .
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A CONFERENCE ON ‘TURKISH – ARMENIAN RELATIONS’
29 January 2010, 6 pm
London School of Economics, London WC2B 4JF
GUEST SPEAKERS
Prof. Türkkaya Ataöv
"What Really Happened on April 24, 1915?"
Asst Prof Bestami Sadi Bilgiç
"The Question of “Genocide” in Turkish Foreign Policy: The Cases of Armenians, Pontic Rums and Assyrians"
Chaired By Dr Andrew Mango
The Way Forward
Organised by THE FEDERATION OF TURKISH ASSOCIATIONS UK
www.turkishfederationuk.com
This conference has been organised in the memory of 34 Turkish diplomats and other innocent victims who were murdered by various Armenian terrorist groups between 1973 and 1985. Most of the perpetrators have never been brought to justice, and of the few that were, only some were imprisoned and given very light sentences.
Summary
The Federation of Turkish Associations UK held a conference at the London School of Economics (LSE) in memory of the Turkish diplomats killed by Armenian terrorists between 1973 and 1985. The conference titled "Turkish-Armenian Relations" was chaired by Dr Andrew Mango and the guest speakers were Prof Turkkaya Ataov and Asst. Prof Bestami Bilgic.
The conference began with a one minute silence in memory of the murdered diplomats and was well attended by many diplomats, NGO representatives, academics and students including the Turkish Ambassador to the United Kingdom HE Yigit Alpogan, the Turkish Consul General Bahadir Kaleli, Turkish Military Naval Attaché Gp Captain Ozdem Kocer and the President of the Federation of Turkish Associations UK Sener Saglam. This was the fourth year this event has been held and has become an important calendar date for the Turkish community. The event was also attended by several members of the Armenian community.
Between 1973 and 1985, 110 armed attacks were carried out in 21 different countries by Armenian terrorist organisations, in which a total of 34 Turkish diplomats, 8 members of their immediate families and 4 bystanders lost their lives, and 15 Turks and 66 citizens of other nationalities were injured. . .
FTA UK’s opening speech:
Ambassador, Dear Guests, and Distinguished Panellists,
The Federation of Turkish Associations UK welcomes you to the 4th Memorial Conference in London, organised in the memory of 34 Turkish diplomats and other innocent victims who were murdered by various Armenian terrorist groups between 1973 and 1985. Most of the perpetrators of these terrible attacks have never been brought to justice, and of the few that were, only some were imprisoned and given very light sentences.
FTA UK is an umbrella organisation serving various needs of the Turkish community. We think the best way to solve these problems is through understanding and research. FTA UK condemns all forms of terrorism and wishes a peaceful and better world for all human beings regardless of their race, colour or religious beliefs.
Dear Guests,
May I invite everyone to stand for one minute’s silence in respect of the murdered Turkish diplomats and all the innocent lives lost during that terrible terrorist campaign?
---
Dear Guests,
On behalf of the Federation of Turkish Associations in the UK I would like to thank everybody here for attending this evening.
Now, I would like to leave the floor to our chair Dr Andrew Mango.
We wish everyone an informative conference.
Thank you!
Speakers’ Biographies
Dr Andrew Mango: Dr. Andrew Mango was born in 1926 in Istanbul, where he started his education at the English High School for Boys, going on to the School of Oriental and African Studies in London to study Classical Persian and Arabic. He received a PhD in 1955 for a thesis on the legend of Alexander in Persian Islamic poetry. He joined the External Services (now World Service) of the BBC in 1947, and was in charge of broadcasts in Turkish between 1958 and 1972, before being promoted as Head of the South European and then also of the French Language Services. After his retirement from the BBC in 1986 he has worked full-time as researcher, writer and consultant on modern Turkey.
Prof Türkkaya Ataöv: Türkkaya Ataöv is Professor Emeritus in International Relations at Ankara University, Turkey. He did his graduate work in the United States, where he received two MAs (NYU & Syracuse Univ.) and a PhD (1959, Syracuse Univ., NY). He taught at Ankara University for more than four decades and lectured in several universities abroad. He is the author of close to 140 books, a few hundred academic treaties, and a few thousand newspaper articles. His writings have been translated into 20 different languages. He has been elected to central executive positions of UN-related international organisations, dealing with racial discrimination, human rights, terrorism, nuclear war, and exchange of prisoners of war. Professor Ataöv published 80 books/booklets on the Armenian issue, was invited as "witness of authority" by the Paris court to the two trials (1984 and 1985) of Armenian terrorists, participated in the UN Geneva meetings (1985) of the Human Rights Commission on the Genocide Convention, and partook in several meetings of the European Parliament that dealt with the Armenian issue.
Dr Bestami Sadi Bilgiç: Dr. Bestami Sadi Bilgic is an Assistant Professor of International Affairs at the Canakkale Onsekiz Mart University. Currently he is taking part in a research project on the Ottoman minorities at the Turkish Historical Society in Ankara. Dr. Bilgic’s research interests are Modern Greek History and Politics, Late Ottoman-Early Republican History and Minorities. Dr. Bilgic is a graduate of Bilkent University where he earned a B.A. in International Relations in 1997 and an M.A. in International Relations in 1999. After spending the academic year of 1999-2000 in Greece doing research on the history of Turkish-Greek relations, he went to the United States for his doctoral studies and in 2004 he got his PhD in the field of Modern History at the George Washington University. Dr. Bilgic has published on the history of Turkish-Greek relations, and Turkish Foreign Policy.
Opening remarks by Dr Andrew Mango
This meeting, like its predecessors, is being held to commemorate Turkish diplomats killed by Armenian terrorists between 1973 and 1985. The first to be murdered were the Turkish consul and his assistant in Los Angeles in January 1973 – thirty-seven years ago. Terrorism has since become so common that news of it is often reduced to statistics. But now and then the statistics come to life. For me the moment came when Armenian terrorists killed Necla, the wife of Zeki Kuneralp, the Turkish ambassador in Madrid. I got to know Necla Hanim and Zeki Bey well, during Zeki Bey’s two terms as ambassador in London. It so happened, that I called on Zeki Bey in Madrid a few months before his wife was murdered. The Turkish ambassador lived in an old Spanish mansion with large French windows opening to the garden.
As we had lunch, I asked Zeki Bey whether it was sensible to sit behind large panes of glass at a time when terrorists were shooting at Turkish diplomatic targets. He quoted Schiller to me: “The man who doesn’t know how to die, doesn’t know how to live.” He didn’t know that not he, but his wife was to be the next victim. A tragic irony marked the assassination. Zeki Bey’s father had been lynched by Turkish nationalists who loathed him for his criticism of Turkey’s resistance to the Allies after World War I, and called him “Artin Kemal”, “Kemal the Armenian”. The purpose of terrorism is to perpetuate hatred. Zeki Bey tried to prevent this by encouraging research into the long centuries of peaceful coexistence of Turks and Armenians. Our purpose here tonight should also be to prevent the perpetuation of ethnic hatred through the propagation of myths. Untruths – to use parliamentary language – are constantly being repeated. In the last few weeks, for example, articles I read about an exhibition of the American modernist painter Arshil Gorky, who was of Armenian origin, said that Gorky’s mother had died when the Armenians fled from the siege of Van, and that the Turkish army butchered 2 million Armenians in 1920. In fact there was no siege of Van by the Turks, but an Armenian rising in Van in 1915 which facilitated the capture of the city by the Russian army and resulted in the murder of many of the city’s Muslim inhabitants and the flight of the rest. Nor did the Turkish army kill 2 million Armenians in 1920. In fact there had been 1.5 million Armenians in the whole of Ottoman Anatolia when WWI started, and close on a million of them survived as refugees. What happened were four waves of ethnic cleansing by Armenians of Turks and of Armenians by Turks, which left more Muslims than Armenians dead, as the front moved west, then east twice before a frontier was finally drawn between Turkey and Armenia in December 1920. But I’m impinging here on the talk by our first speaker, Professor Türkkaya Ataöv of Ankara University, who has devoted years of study to the tragic history of Turkish-Armenian relations. His subject tonight is the deportation of Armenians by the Ottoman authorities in 1915 – what lay behind the decision and what justification there was for it.
What Really Happened on April 24, 1915? Why and How?"
By Türkkaya Ataöv
Emeritus Professor of IR at Ankara University
My short talk may be summarized as follows: What really happened on April 24, 1915 and why? Please, do not expect me to summarize Armenian-Turkish relations throughout history, or review all the main points of what occurred just before, during and a little after the First World War. That cannot be done within a matter of about half an hour, the time allocated to me here. I have been studying this very subject, inter alia, since the early 1980s, and published so far 82 books and booklets on it.
I shall concentrate, instead, only (1) on the circumstances related to the Ottoman decision to relocate the greater part, though not all, of the Armenian population and also (2) on the arrests on the 24th of April, a date some Armenian circles are bringing pressure on some foreign parliaments to accept as a “genocide day”.
Almost all Armenian and many Western writers argue that the Armenian revolt at the beginning of the war posed no actual threat to the security of the Ottoman state or its armies facing the better mobilized Allies in several fronts. Apart from a rather long list of commentators, I recall, about a decade ago, a generalized statement by a Purdue University professor, Robert Melson, also the author of a book, in his own words, “on the origins of the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust”. He said, in my presence, that the Ottoman Armenians were calm, weak, gentle, peaceful, helpless, unprotected, unarmed, non-belligerent, good Christian, and totally vulnerable civilians, mostly old men, women and children, upon whom, he added, well-armed regular Ottoman troops ascended with their full force, killing perhaps millions. The Perdue University professor left the auditorium without listening to my reply. The extensive bibliography (of fifteen pages) in his book, by the way, refers to works on Indonesia, Cuba, Cambodia, or “Marx against the peasant”, with no mention of anything that I and my colleagues in Turkey have published on the theme of his book. I personally referred to a host of Armenian writers and their collaborators in many of my publications. My own book of bibliography contains no less than 403 such sources, with the majority of which I hardly agree.
Some other writers, including myself, conclude, on the other hand, that the Armenian armed rebellion constituted a great military danger. The Armenians were hard-working, innovative, enterprising, creative, and artistically-inclined, but hardly pacific and unarmed. The Turkish historian Dr. Erdal Ilter’s 300-pp bibliography on the same subject covers, not only printed Armenian works (almost as comprehensive as those by Hovannissian, Salmaslian and Vassilian, all Armenians), but also many Turkish treatises that offer vast amount of concrete evidence from archival material, reports, yearbooks, theses, dissertations, books, booklets, albums, and recorded witness accounts on Armenian assaults on Turkish and other Muslim quarters, villages and cities and their shedding of blood during war-time.
I am not going to utilize here Turkish material, which nevertheless must be treated of primary importance. If one wishes to establish the British policy in 1588 in respect to that country’s policy towards Spain just before the battle against the great Armada or in 1939 before the German attack on Poland, the first and foremost sources would be the Foreign Office archives. Likewise, if we want to find out what the Ottoman policies regarding the Armenians during the First World War, the rich Ottoman archives are equally indispensable.
However, I shall generally rely here on the evidence provided by third parties as well as by some crucial Armenian sources that should strike one as confessions. C.F. Dixon-Johnson, Edwards J. Erickson, Bernard Lewis, Guenter Lewy, Heath Lowry, Justin McCarthy, Nogales Mendez, Stanford J. Shaw, Masud Akhtar Sheikh and Samuel A. Weeds are some of the non-Turkish scholars. One may also remember the declaration, dated May 19, 1985, of more than fifty American academics, who drew the attention of the U.S. House of Representatives for a fairer treatment of the subject, stripped of anti-Turkish prejudice.
Perhaps the pioneer of an impartial approach was C.F. Dixon-Johnson’s book, courageously printed in the crucial year of 1916 (when the British and the Turks were fighting in Gelibolu, Sinai, Palestine and Mesopotamia), criticizing the propaganda that created more bias “against an already misjudged and badly maligned enemy.” He reminded the British readers how critical the situation was for Turkey, which faced “a matter of life and death.” He added that unless the danger was removed, “the Turkish army on the Caucasus would have been hopelessly cut off...”
Edward J. Erickson, an uncommon Western scholar, presents a comprehensive study on the connection between Armenian insurgency and Ottoman security, in a long article in War in History (2008). There exists, of course, ample evidence in the Ottoman archives on how heavily the Armenians had been armed and how some hundred thousands of Muslim civilians were killed. An average European and an American may be surprised to read in a recent (2003) British book (Dictionary of the First World War by Stephen Pope and Elizabeth-Anne Wheal, p. 34) that the “Armenian rebels slaughtered an estimated 120,000 non-Armenians while the Turkish Army was preoccupied with mobilization.” The authors add that the Armenian rebels took the Ottoman city of Van in April 1915 and proclaimed a provisional government there, and further that the rebels “resumed control in late 1917, killing perhaps another 50,000 non-Armenians.” These are British figures in a book printed in London. Erickson’s fact-finding research “seeks to inform the reader why the Ottoman military reacted in the manner it did.”
Armed Armenian insurrection directly affected the Ottoman 3rd Army in eastern Anatolia and the Ottoman 4th Army in the Syrian-Palestinian front and indirectly influenced but certainly perturbed the position of the Ottoman 6th Army in Mesopotamia. The logistical resupply links of the latter were tied up with the network of the first two armies. The soldier who fights at the front does not carry with himself his whole food and ammunition for the entire duration of the war years. Ovens and bakeries for all kinds of food, fodder for animals (horses, mules, camels and oxen), ammunition and munitions, field hospitals and tents, doctors and medicine, veterinary stations, repair shops, supply depots, basic training facilities, labour and transportation units, wagons and similar support groups were all situated in some hundreds of kilometres behind the fronts. The Ottoman state having suffered through the Tripolitanian (Trablusugarb) War (1911) against Italy and two Balkan Wars (1911-12) opposing the coordinated attacks of Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia, was consequently in very short supply of food, ammunition and medicine. Its stockpiles were about half of the minimum of the other belligerents. Its railways, built by foreigners for the latter’s economic profits, were not designed to serve Ottoman mobilization and supply centres. There were even two uncompleted gaps at Pozanti and Osmaniye. Animal-drawn movement was the main transportation system on immeasurable-looking roads that ran from Sivas to Erzurum and from Diyarbakir to Van.
When the armed hostilities actually started between the Turks and the invading enemies, not only ammunition had to be rushed to the fronts, but also thousands of wounded soldiers had to be carried to the hospitals at the rear. The Ottoman 3rd Army had suffered losses especially at Sarikamis in the east and the 4th Army had to retreat to the Sinai and Palestine following an unsuccessful assault on the Suez Canal. By the Spring of 1915, the 3rd Army had lost half of its men as dead, wounded and POWs, and two-thirds of its animals.
Wide and frequent guerrilla actions and combat operations of armed Armenians in Russian, British and later in French forces were of crucial importance under the circumstances. Quite contrary to the mainstream but arbitrary assertion that the Ottoman Armenians were only an unarmed peaceful lot that had not touched a weapon, two reports submitted by Armenian-Americans to the US Government, later printed in book form in 1924 and 1926, explicitly state (respectively) that “200,000 Armenians fought as independent units or in the Allied ranks” and “more than 200,000 of them fought” on the side of Turkey’s enemies during war time. Consequently, the single-sentence statement of a British professor (David Marshall Lang) in a compendium on the Armenians, that these people “were not all angels” is very much a biased understatement.
Bogos Nubar, the head of the Armenian National Delegation at Versailles (1919) categorically stated, in a letter addressed to the French Foreign Minister, that the “Armenians, since the beginning of the war, had been belligerents.” The Russian Tsar, the Prime Ministers of the Allied Powers and their generals on the battlefield acknowledged the indispensable Armenian armed support. The long list of such confessions and appreciations includes messages of gratitude of Tsar Nicholas the Second, the Russian commanders in the Caucasus (for instance, Count I.I. Vorontsov-Dashkov, Generals Loris Melikoff and Terkhougasoff), D. Lloyd George, Georges Clemenceau, A. J. Balfour, J. Bryce, General E.H.H. Allenby, 116 members of the French Parliament, and many others.
The commanding officers of the Armenian insurgents and war historians of Armenian origin conceded, and even took pride, that they had resorted to arms against the Turks during the war. The title of a post-war book by Armen Garo (Gareguine Pasdermadjian), the former Armenian deputy in the Ottoman Parliament in Istanbul but later a prominent general of the insurgents, asserted for obvious reasons that the Armenians were “A Leading Factor in the Winning of the War.” General Andranik Ozanian, who had led an Armenian contingent in the Bulgarian Army and against the Turks during the Balkan Wars, later joined the Russian forces with his men. Similar armed units, under Dro, Hamazasp and Keri, were ready to move into Erzurum. None other than Samson Harutunian, the president of the Armenian National Bureau, appealed to the Russian Tsar assuring him of their loyalty and adding that they wished to see “the Russian flag wave freely over the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus”.
The Armenians took possession of the ancient city of Van in order to open the way into the interior of Anatolia. Henry Morgenthau, Sr., the US Ambassador reported then that 25,000 armed insurgents had attacked the Muslim quarters causing the inhabitants of the latter to flee for safety. Similar incidents occurred in the neighbouring cities, where thousands of guns, tons of dynamite, bulletins, posters, maps, foreign currency and ciphered messages in Armenian, Russian and French were found in Armenian homes, work places, churches, schools, and bank safes. There were numerous massacres of isolated Muslim villagers by armed Armenians, the Ottoman gendarmerie were attacked openly and frequently, assassinations were carried out, telegraph poles were cut, and roads blocked. The Ottoman functionaries, who collected guns, not only in the eastern Anatolian towns and villages of Askale, Bayburt, Bitlis, Elazig, Erzincan, Kayseri, Malatya, Mus, Sivas, Urfa or Aleppo, but also in Amasya and Adapazari (the latter just next to the capital city of Istanbul), knew that insurgency was worsening considerably.
Bogos Nubar, in a letter dated April 17/30, 1915, and addressed to the Armenian Catholicos of the Adana (Cilicia) region, advised “unified rebellion of the Armenians against the Turkish authorities wherever possible.” The same Armenian leader, in a communiqué sent to Lieut.-General Sir John Maxwell, the Commander-in-Chief of the British Forces in Egypt, assured him to rely on “25,000 Armenian insurgents in Cilicia and on the 15,000 more to come from nearby provinces...to pave the way for the Allies to land forces.” He added that with such a force, they could occupy Musa Dag, Cebel-i Akra, Dört Yol, Iskenderiye, the Beylan Pass, Hacin, Sis, and the like, and that they “could cut the telegraphic wires, destroy railway tracks, blow up bridges, and thus interrupt the enemy’s communication lines” to such an extent that “the Turks will not be able to use their forces against them throughout the winter.” The 4th Army commanders were deeply concerned over the possibility of a concerted Anglo-French amphibious invasion of the Mersin coast, which was already bombarded from the sea several times.
As the Armenian war historian Gen. Gabriel Gorganian recorded in his series of articles in the Boston-based Armenian Review (1967-70), the Armenians fought (as easily comprehensible from the very title of that series) certainly not against the Allies or even the Germans, but against the Turks. The Ottoman leadership knew that their local forces were inadequate to meet the growing threat. The powers that the Turks were fighting in several fronts were in direct contact with the Armenians for coordinated military operations against the common enemy. Initially the 41st Infantry Division and later the 23rd and the 44th Infantry Divisions were forced to abandon their original defence positions and move towards the insurgency areas.
The Ottoman decision-makers, obviously, reacted to an actual internal threat. They had to solve an acute military problem that threatened the security and the total operations of three full-fledged armies in eastern and southern Anatolia. Their reaction was a response to a fast-growing threat. There is no evidence of a premeditated plan of extermination. They initially considered the removal of the Turkish and other Muslim civilians who were running away, in pitiful conditions, from renewed Armenian attacks. The Turks also entertained the idea of exchanging the Muslim minorities in the Caucasus with those Armenians who would rather live in Russia. But when they finally decided on the removal of the bulk of the Armenians principally from the battle zones to the safer areas in the southern territories of the Ottoman state, the military and the civilian leadership knew, via the information gathered from the German General Staff, that the Spanish had already relocated the Cubans in 1898 and that the British had done the same to the Boers and the Blacks in South Africa after the Boer Wars. Moreover, the Turks themselves had temporarily removed groups of the ethnic Bulgarian and Greek minorities in Thrace during the Balkan Wars (1912-13) and the small Greek minority in Gelibolu during the combined Anglo-French assault on the Dardanelles in April 1915. In both cases, these minorities were sent to the resource-rich Aegean region, where they lived rather comfortably and survived.
The first move of the Ottoman Interior Minister (Talât Bey) came on April 24, 1915, when he sent a circular to 14 provinces and 10 counties ordering the termination of the activities of the Armenian revolutionary committees. As well analyzed by Yusuf Sarinay, who reproduced genuine Ottoman documents on those arrested that day, the date in question was destined to become the “Genocide Day” for the Armenians in diaspora. The individuals taken into custody on April 24 were believed to be the master-minds behind the massacre of the Muslims in the east. One reason for the haste was the alarm caused by the suspicion, originally expressed by the German Ambassador in Istanbul, that the Armenians might carry out a series of bomb attacks on April 27, during the anniversary ceremonies of Sultan Mehmet Resat’s accession to the throne.
It was again on April 24, 1915, that 235 high-brows, out of 77,735 Armenians living in Istanbul, were taken out of their homes and offices and moved to Çankiri, a central Anatolian town in the north of Ankara. Although much higher figures are given in various Western sources, which also generally assert that “they were shot” immediately or on their way to a new place, none were killed by the state. Two of them were murdered, however, on personal initiative, and the culprits were summarily tried and executed for manslaughter.
The arrested Armenians were distributed to the homes of the local residents, but were told that they could go out, sit in the cafés, and walk in and around the city but should report to the police station once every 24 hours. They could apply (so did Arsak, the son of Mardiros, and Arsak Diradorian) for daily payments from a special Interior Ministry fund. Perhaps unexpectedly, 44 of them escaped; no less than 14, who proved that they were Armenians but foreign (American, Russian, Iranian, and Bulgarian) nationals, were simply deported. Some (like Vartabet Gomidas) were let go for the need of medical attention (eventually to Vienna in the case of Gomidas). Some were pardoned and allowed to go back to Istanbul or to other cities such as Eskisehir. Some (like Dr. Allahverdian and Hayik Tiryakian) had been mistakenly arrested and consequently released. No charges could be brought on 35 of them and were set free. The rest were sent either to Ayas near Ankara or to Zor in the south. Those whose custody continued were all members of the executive boards of the Armenian Hinchak and the Dashnak Parties, which may now be better described as terrorist organizations in terms of their programs and activities. Some (like Akrik Keresteciyan), who were transferred to Zor, were soon released, however. Dikran Bagdikian, a Dashnak member, died on March 9, 1918, in Ayas, apparently on account of natural causes.
But Krikor Zohrab and Seringulan Vartkes were murdered by two individuals (Ahmed the Circassian and Halil of Galata), both of whom had no official connections whatsoever. They were caught by the Turkish police, tried and found guilty by an Ottoman court, and duly executed by state functionaries.
Most of the Ottoman Armenian population, especially those near the war fronts, were moved towards the south. Catholic and Protestant Armenians, civil servants in the state bureaucracy, army personnel functioning as officers, soldiers, doctors, and medics, some tradesmen, some construction workers and foremen, those working in the Ottoman Bank, Tobacco Administration, and in the foreign embassies and consulates, orphans and widows, the sick, the disabled, and the like were all exempt, together with the members of their families. The Prime Minister’s directive, dated May 30, 1915, set the general guidelines, which included orders for their safety, funds for their upkeep, work equipment in new places and the safekeeping of abandoned property. It was especially underlined that this was certainly not an order for their extermination and that those guilty of attacks and neglect for their protection would be immediately court-martialled and punished severely.
The texts of these orders and their translations into the leading European languages are available in the foreign archives. Attacks and dereliction, in some cases, nevertheless occurred. As indicated in some Armenian and third party reports, the great majority reached their destinations, sometimes in orderly fashion and at times exhausted, but alive.
The Ottoman courts tried 1,974 individuals in 1915-16, and gave 67 capital punishments, 524 imprisonment sentences and 63 harsh captivity verdicts (for solitary confinements). Some court judgements involved minor misdeeds, such as “purchase of an Armenian unmovable at a low-price” or for “an act contrary to good behaviour.” The fascist regimes in Europe, decades later, never displayed such open-mindedness and threw the book at their own men for mistreating a group proven or at least suspected for cooperation with the invading enemy.
However, court judgements in Istanbul, the Ottoman capital occupied at the end of the war, call for an entirely different evaluation. The sine qua non of a court of law is its independence. Although the Nazi racists and the Japanese militarists deserved punishments, even the Nurnberg and the Tokyo trials were the products of the victors’ justice. Let us imagine, for the sake of the argument, that a tribunal had existed in 1918 like the International Criminal Court of today, with judges and prosecutors elected by all the contracting states by secret ballot, representing the principal legal systems, equitable geographical representation and gender balance. Had both the Armenians and the Turks applied to that court with evidence and witnesses, but with no political influence from outside, the verdict would probably have been that groups of Armenians and Muslims, after centuries of peaceful coexistence, had killed each other, the sword dangling sometimes more over one side and at times over the other. On the basis of bloodshed on both sides, no independent court could have then decided that one group represented the victims only, and the other the victimizers. Let us remember at this point that the courts in occupied Istanbul did not try those Armenians for the extensive crimes that they had committed.
The years between 1914 and 1922 were also the period during which all the inhabitants of Asia Minor had to live through –or die- because of unhealthy war conditions including the spread of epidemics. The mere mention of unsanitary predicaments involving the dissemination of fatal bacteria and virus, or even of the far-flung hunger and unavoidable misery of so many consecutive years is almost instantly chastised as outright propaganda intended to downgrade the actual loss of Armenian lives. The truth is that Armenian (and Muslim) lives were reduced on account of many reasons, including voluntary or enforced outward migration, attacks on some people, fatalities brought about by almost a dozen wars in which the Armenians participated, general war circumstances, and rampant epidemics.
During the First World War, the British lost 120,000, the French 179,000, the Germans 166,000, and the Russians 395,000 soldiers, solely on account of diseases, according to their own official statistics. Casualties among the Armenians and Turks far exceed the figures that all interested parties are prepared to accept. Even Damat Hafiz Hakki Pasa (The Commander of the Turkish Eastern Front, who happened to be the son-in-law of the Ottoman Sultan), the German General Colmar von der Goltz (the Commander of the Ottoman Army in Iraq), and Sir Frederick Maude (the Commander of the British Expeditionary Force in Iraq) lost their lives on account of cholera or typhus. There is no doubt that the Armenian people also suffered, not only in 1915-16, but also during the last two decades of the Ottoman Empire. But it was part of a tragedy that engulfed all the citizens. As far as the general war conditions were concerned, the heaviest toll hit the Turkish soldiers and civilians.
Armenian-Turkish controversy proves once more that coming to terms with the past needs to be an exercise in good faith, free from domestic and international politics. Historical analysis should be all-inclusive, based on research and solid evidence. The blame cannot be put on the shoulders of a whole people, or on the future generations. One cannot reactivate the out-dated theologian concept of “original sin” and deduce from it the obsolete assertion that the new generations are born with guilt for all. Justice abhors double standards. In a book printed in Chicago in 1896, just four years before the world entered the 20th century, an American Protestant missionary (A.W. Williams) and the president of the Armenian Patriotic Alliance in New York (M.S. Gabriel) stated that the Turk was “a wild beast to be caged.” The authors begged “pardon of the hounds, hyenas...and all other wild beasts for using their names...” to describe...the ferocity of Kurd or Turk.” Nor can one explain past events via political organs that act like Orwellian ‘truth ministries’. All sources must be examined without preconceptions or prejudice. The gates of research on the Armenian issue is not closed yet. One cannot argue like a prosecuting attorney seeking to suppress information unfavourable to one’s position. One cannot rely on wartime propaganda and politically and racially motivated reports, reflecting the feelings or experience of one side only. The outstanding British historian Arnold J. Toynbee had described Wellington House, the war-time British propaganda center, where he had worked as a young scholar and brought out the controversial book on the Armenian issue, as a “mendacity bureau.”
The many facets of truth will appear only when an inquiring mind examines all the interpretations. That is why the British Government today repeatedly states that it cannot define the events of 1915 as genocide. That is why the spokesman of the Office of the UN Secretary General categorically declared that the “United Nations have never approved nor supported a report that describes the Armenian experience as ‘genocide’”.
Probing into the past cannot be restricted only to a nation, region, date, or to an ethnic/religious group. No nation can demand from another to examine solely the past of the latter. No nation may be singled out by others and made a scapegoat. No nation may be forced to serve the interests of another under the label of “coming to terms with its past.” If need be, the records of all countries, without any exception, and no veto privilege operating in favour of anyone of them, should be open for close scrutiny. If all agree to do so without exception, some of us will not be surprised when the Turks come out among those with the whitest record.
If my presentation does not conform to the mainstream interpretations, I may remind my colleagues that scholarship is like a building that needs continuous repair. One cannot have the frame of mind of the past European generations most gullible and thirsty for stories of blood-curdling atrocities, and be satisfied with them. It is the duty of the academic people to question the validity of the mainstream ideas. This is what I have basically attempted to do. 
Excerpts from Dr. Bestami S. Bilgic’s talk at LSE
“Thanks to the Armenian terrorist activities in the 1970s and 80s against Turkish diplomatic representatives and their families around the world and to the efforts of Armenian Diaspora in Europe, the UK, and Americas which has relentlessly worked for recognition of an “Armenian genocide” by countries with most of which Turkey has had close political and economic relations, the issue of “genocide” has become one of the foreign policy items of the Turkish Republic…”
“… a “genocide” is not something for parliaments to decide. A genocide verdict can be given only by an international court particularly designated for “genocide” issue. In some countries, interpretation of the events of 1915-16 as “not genocide” has been labeled as “denial” of a “truth” and thus unlawful…”
“…Recognition of the events of 1915-16 as “genocide” by national parliaments has been one of the steps for the Armenian genocide claimers in their way to have Turkey convicted for committing the first genocide in the twentieth century, which is itself legally problematic given the fact that the Genocide Convention was signed after the alleged genocide was perpetrated…”
“…Despite close French-Turkish relations especially in terms of large French investment in Turkey and handsome contracts for French companies in Turkish defense industry, the French parliament with active lobbying of the Armenian community passed a resolution in 2001 that recognized the events of 1915-16 as “genocide”. In 2006 the French lower chamber passed another resolution that would make the “denial” of the so-called genocide a crime.
Actually, already in 1995 Prof. Bernard Lewis was convicted by a French court since he said that there was no Armenian genocide. Of course, the French parliament’s decision was taken with political concerns. And the French court’s decision can easily be interpreted as a violation of freedom of expression in a EU country, which has claimed to be the ‘champion’ of ‘liberté’ since the eighteenth century…”
“… Genocide is worst of all crimes… The odd thing in this entire affair is that historians and lawyers, who perhaps of all must be best equipped, to shed light on what happened, are silenced by the Armenian genocide claimers and some national parliaments who are endorsing their claims…”
“…Turkish side calls onto all countries including Armenia for the establishment of a historical commission that will discuss the events of 1915-16, while Armenian side and its third party supporters declare a historical event historically non-debatable…”
“… Turkish-Armenian relations did not start in 1915. It did not start in 1815, either.
Perhaps not even 1215 is the starting date. Therefore, one needs to put aside the “genocide vs. denial” dichotomy in order to make a scholarly evaluation of the Turkish-Armenian relations in general and the events of 1915-16 in particular…”
“…Research on the events of 1915-16 is still going on. It is not complete, yet, if it will ever be. But, it will come close to completion some time. Be that as it may, it is constantly being marred by political decisions and considerations…”
“..All parties interested in the events of 1915-16 need to hear what others have to say…”
“…If one considers national parliaments’ recognition of the so-called Armenian genocide and thus putting pressure on Turkish foreign policy makers to recognize the “genocide”, and then compensate claimers in cash and territory a success of the Armenian Diaspora, then this success seems to have inspired other anti-Turkish groups in the world. Pontian Greek and Assyrian groups as well have been putting forth their own genocide claims lately…”
“… “Genocide” issue has become one of the tools through which anti-Turkish groups in the world have been attempting to apply pressure upon Turkey… It is a low-cost policy, for the Diaspora communities are using the “fire range” of their host countries, which they deem, enjoy a better range at Turkey than Turkey has at them…” CLOSING REMARKS BY DR ANDREW MANGO
Turks and Armenians are not doomed to eternal hostility. The two communities lived together in peace and amity for centuries – roughly from the conquest of Anatolia by the Seljuk Turks in the 11th century to the Congress of Berlin in 1878. The Armenians were so closely integrated into Ottoman society that the German military adviser von Moltke described them as “baptised Turks”. Most of them spoke Turkish as their mother tongue; they were active as merchants, craftsmen and intellectuals in the development of the Turkish theatre, in publishing, in promoting relations with Europe. There were Armenian civil servants, ambassadors and an Armenian minister in the Ottoman government right up to 1914. Then in the space of less than forty years – between 1878 and 1915 – the ideology of nationalism wrenched the two communities apart. Today, a small Armenian community continues to thrive in Istanbul, and thousands of illegal Armenian immigrants are finding employment in Turkey.
If the past is any guide, and as the admittedly small-scale current coexistence shows, amity between Turks and Armenians is still possible if not within the same state than across frontiers as good neighbours. A few months ago, a protocol was signed between the foreign ministers of Turkey and Armenia. It provided for the establishment of full diplomatic relations, the opening of frontiers, and the formation of a scientific commission of historians to establish an agreed version of past events. This agreement which was widely welcomed in the USA and the EU is today threatened. The Armenian Constitutional Court has ruled that first, there should be no linkage between the opening of frontiers and a solution of the dispute about Karabakh between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and that, second, before historians are asked to examine the record, Turkey should recognise that Armenians had been subjected to genocide. The two demands negate the protocol. Unless the Armenians at least begin to withdraw from the large slice of Azeri territory they occupy in and around Karabakh, Turkey cannot allow the exploitation of past tragedies in order to perpetuate a current one, for, let us not forget that close to a million Azeris have fled from the territory now occupied by the Armenians.
Secondly, a commission of historians must be allowed to study the past without any preconditions. The best way to break the deadlock is to press on with academic research even if there is no agreed framework for it. On the other hand, the surest way to perpetuate hatred is to conduct propaganda campaigns, seeking to turn politicians into historians by demanding that parliaments should pronounce on historical claims. In any case, while deadlock persists the search for truth should continue, and every effort should be made to avoid stirring up inter-communal hatred. Our purpose tonight is, therefore, not to score points but to show that truth and reconciliation go together, and that Turkish-Armenian reconciliation cannot be founded on lies. Surely, people of good will cannot disagree on this point.
END
About FTA UK
The Federation of Turkish Associations UK (FTA UK) was formed in 2002 consisting of sixteen independent and diverse Turkish associations to bring together the voice of their members on common issues. The FTA UK represents a large proportion of the Turkish community which is estimated at nearly 500,000 ethnic Turks who live mainly in London and its surrounding areas and includes Turkish Cypriots.
The Federation’s main aims and objectives are; to bring together the Turks living in Britain in solidarity and strengthen their relationship; to help the community to integrate better within the British system whilst maintaining their own culture and identity; to find solutions to their common problems and protect their common interests; to promote and enhance the British - Turkish friendship and to share the Turkish culture and history.
The Federation carries out its duties completely independently without being influenced by any political party, ethnic influence, religion or any form of discrimination and in the interest of the British-Turkish Community. It is a non profit - non governmental organisation and acts as an umbrella organisation and communication vehicle for the whole community.
Contact FTA UK :
· E-mail: turkishfederationuk@yahoo.co.uk
· Post: FTA UK, 41 Camberwell Church Street, London SE5 8TR
· Telephone: + 44 (0)7788 908 803
Prepared by Servet Hassan
.
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You Are Kindly Invited To Attend An Evening Conference :
Friday, 29 January 2010, 6 pm for 6.45 pm*
*6.00 pm Refreshments available in the Senior Dining Room, Old Building, 5th Floor,
6.45 pm Conference (Hong Kong Theatre – St Clement’s Building)
Hong Kong Theatre
St Clement’s Building,
London School of Economics,
Houghton Street,
London WC2A 2AE . .
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Türkkaya Ataöv is professor of international relations at Ankara University.
The White House statement, 22 April 1997, on Armenian-Turkish relations during the First World War, apparently publicised on the occasion of what is portrayed as ‘Remembrance Day’, needs comment and correction through academic probing.
24 April was the day when the Ottoman authorities arrested 235 Armenians . . in Istanbul, then the Ottoman capital. These arrests were made in response to an Armenian revolt in the far eastern Anatolian city of Van. They were followed by the massacre of Muslims in Van and the Armenian cooperation with the approaching Russian army, and the eventual relocation of groups of Armenians believed to have committed seditious acts in what was, after all, wartime—conduct which we call today terrorism or treason.
The US president’s selectively focussed and inaccurate statement does not include, even for purposes of some semblance of fair treatment, the following: that there was armed revolt in several strategic places; officials were being assassinated; Muslim quarters and villages were being attacked; the blood of other ethnic and religious groups was being shed; homes of peaceful citizens were being burned; arsenals were being looted; telegraph lines were being destroyed, and the like.
There is ample evidence of the existence and the recurrence of such outrageous crimes, summarily condemned by domestic and international law, not only in the singularly rich Ottoman archives, but also in the writings of various Western witnesses and analysts, and even in the confessional memoirs of Armenian leaders. Some of the latter put up a big front boasting that they have caused bloodshed. Most of this material is printed in the USA. In any case, the Government of the Republic of Turkey presented microfilms of pertinent Ottoman documents to the leading libraries of the world, including the US Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Non-Turkish sources attesting to armed Armenian assaults and the slaughter caused are also available in the same libraries. Some of them, such as the celebrated ‘Manifesto’ of Hovhannes Katchaznouni, the first prime minister of the independent Armenian Republic in the early 1920s, on account of their criticism of Armenian policies and actions, have been systematically eliminated from these centres of public service, and probably destroyed.
It is important to remember that Armenian terrorism cannot be placed side by side with the American suspicions that led to the apprehension of citizens of Japanese ethnic background on the eve of the Second World War. The White House statement’s reference to the “noble response” of the Armenians is an even more extreme position than the expressions of some other writers to the effect that the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire “had not been all angels.” Allow me to remind that some US citizens have presented scholarly papers in international fora on the ingredient of continuity between nineteenth and twentieth century Armenian terrorism. They have underlined in academic frameworks that historians who venture into reality long enough to examine the activities of Armenian terrorists were immediately struck by the high degree of similarity between the stated aims, tactics and rhetoric of later terrorist groups and those of the earlier epochs.
Knowing the official American stand against contemporary terrorism, one hopes that a lack of proper reference to the role of terrorism and bloodshed does not feed the young who perceive in such behaviour national heroism and role models. History is not repetition, but contains some lessons. The failure to openly condemn Armenian terrorism of the last decades of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century contributed to the Armenian terrorist activities that started in 1975, -by the way, in Los Angeles, U.S.A. In both cases, Armenian terrorism was rooted in a false view of history. In addition, references to ever-growing figures of massacred Armenians, at times quoted by the same author in successive articles printed within a short span of time, indicate a seemingly incurable inclination to bias and the distortion of information.
The Armenian-Turkish controversy is part of Ottoman history, and as such, Turkish material is indispensable. If one wishes to establish what Turkish policies had been in respect to the Armenians some eight decades or more ago, the Ottoman archives constitute the primary sources, just as American documents are essential for the treatment of US positions on any issue or country. But linguistic and historical training are imperatives for proper utilisation of such relevant material, and in the case of Turkish studies that involves serious preparation encompassing decades.
Some of us, on the other hand, seized the opportunity of studying American history and share the thought that an appropriate date for a Remembrance Day on American soil might be either 29 November, which marks Colonel Chivington’s attack on a Cheyenne encampment near Fort Lyon in 1861, striking without warning, in spite of a signed treaty of peace, taking no prisoners but even scalping screaming women and children pleading for mercy. Or the last days of December, after US soldiers opened fire in 1890 on Oglala Sioux dancers at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, killing not only them, but also the hopes of the original inhabitants of the Americas. Rather than describing this process as part of “Manifest Destiny”, one may treat the demotion of the original Americans to the status of the poorest and the most depressed ethnic group in the United States as “one of the darkest chapters” in history, a description unfairly attributed to the Turks in the White House statement.
Focussing on the events of 1915 within the Ottoman Empire, one may also correct in passing that the channelling of Armenians to a new place was not deportation, but a relocation (both of which may nevertheless be unpleasant), because all new destinations were within the frontiers of the Ottoman state. A great majority of the relocated Armenians reached their destinations, and that crucial fact is admitted by some Armenians such as Bogos Nubar, the head of the Armenian delegation at Versailles, in his official letter to the French foreign minister in 1918. Some of them, supposedly massacred by Turks, had willingly become immigrants in Tsarist Russia.
One should also note that the Ottoman census of 1914, which a number of American historians consider as reliable, indicates that there were 1,294,851 Armenians living on Ottoman soil. This total figure is less than the figure that the White House statement selected to quote, a figure allegedly indicating the loss of Armenian lives. It should be significant that almost all of the opinionforming leaders of various societies make no reference to Turkish losses. This “egoism of victimisation”, coined as such by John E. Mack, leaves little or no room for empathy for one’s enemy’s losses.
Moreover, it is unscientific as well as unfair to describe Armenians as mere victims and the Turks as brutal victimisers. There is also a history of Turks as victims, a role in which they are not usually seen but is scholarly treated by an American professor- Justin McCarthy. For about a whole century (1821-1922), it was the Turks who were the main victims. The Turkish losses began with the Greek revolt, which set a pattern for the rest of the Christians in the Ottoman Empire. It is a historical fact that some of the other Christians followed the Greek example of creating a nation-state through the process of massacring or expelling Turks and other Muslims. The policy of ridding regions of their Turkish population through mass killings and forced migration in the name of national independence, was repeatedly witnessed in successive wars.
Creating a new nation-state by eliminating the Turks and other Muslims in the vast territories of the Balkans, the Crimea and its hinterland, and the Caucasus was a principle followed by the Greeks, Bulgarians, Russians and Armenians. The suffering of the Turks was ironic because had the Turks been the same kind of nationalists as the Greeks or the Armenians, they would in their days of power have driven the Christians out and all these lands would have remained Turkish or Muslim. Had the Turks not been tolerant in the fifteenth century and indulged, on the contrary, in ethnic cleansing, they would have survived on lands where they had stayed for about five centuries. In each of the nineteenth and twentieth century wars in the region, the Turks were massacred and forced from their homes. Millions of them died, and millions more were exiled. No understanding of Armenian, Balkan, Caucasian, Crimean and Turkish history is possible without presenting the fate of the Turks and other Muslims in an objective manner.
It is certainly true that the Armenians established “vibrant and prosperous communities throughout the world.” The influence of the Armenians, talented and hard-working wherever they may be, on American life is also noteworthy. I had the pleasure of personally meeting some of them, for instance, the late nuclear physicist and Armenian-American Vazken Parsagian, and it is not just a coincidence that I have rendered into Turkish and published some of the works of William Saroyan. But it should also be noted that the Armenian-American community is a powerful group, which wants to use its preponderance for aims of its own. Interest groups translate economic power into social power and share with parties and formal state structures the function of transforming social power into political decisions to serve particular and selected purposes. Political parties rely on the support of such groups to make their appeal to the electorate effective. They need various pressure groups for growth and sometimes for mere survival. One may add that the association between militant Armenian-American circles and the formal decision-making bodies in the United States are of such a reciprocal character.
The same Armenian circles pursued an intense campaign to enter the halls of the Holocaust museum in Washington, DC in early 1993, on the coat-tails of world Jewry. The Armenian drive to set into motion a connecting link with the Jewish genocide was unfair both to the Jews and the Turks. The former had truly suffered a genocide and the latter stood out as a nation stretching a helping hand to the Jews in the most distressing periods of their history.
It is also true that the Armenian dream of a “free and sovereign Armenian state” has become a reality. In connection with this dream one may refer as well to the three United Nations Security Council resolutions, which are highly critical of each step of Armenian aggression and occupation of neighbouring Azerbaijan’s territories, including Nagorno-Karabakh. It may safely be assumed that the “commitment to peace and stability in the Caucasus” that the White House statement refers to, requires respect for territorial integrity and discouragement of such aggression and occupation. It is generally acknowledged that historically the Americans have a strong sense of fair play—even in war. They are known to have insisted on their rights but granted the same to others. They do not want to be seen in the position of aggressor. The American Civil War could not begin until each side decided by itself that it was not the one to have started the aggression. The Americans have treated General Lee, the Confederate commander, as one of their heroes, but the US president who started the Mexican War on the doubtful assumption that American blood had been shed on the country’s soil went down in history as ‘Polk the mendacious’. When General G.E. Pickett, who had served the Confederate cause had a child, the Yankees lit bonfires, and when the famed Irish Brigade of T.F. Meager charged up Marye’s Heights to inescapable death, the Confederates cheered their gallantry. It is regrettable that the text of the White House statement joins the group of widely-circulated but unacademic statements that reflect only a one-sided victimisation in Armenian-Turkish relations. Such persistence, not only fails to reflect historical fact, even during the year 1915, but also prevents reconciliation. Cure demands impartiality and fairness.
Perceptions, Center For Strategic Research
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Turkey
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Modern democracy, which may be identified with popular sovereignty, majority rule, constitutional Liberace, participation in decision-making at all levels, egalitarianism, protection of minorities and much else, is a complicated package. No matter how composite it may look, however, democracy is incompatible with terrorism. 1
Fascist parties excluded, most political groupings and governments have seldom failed to claim a democratic legitimacy. Democracy, which seems to promise a form of government based on the harmony between the rulers and the ruled, is irresistible, at least as a slogan. It is conceivable, however, only when sectional as well as public interests are acknowledged and organized for political action. Another assumption is that no state is seriously democratic unless opposition is permitted to organize and participate in the contest for power.
In some countries, opposition rests on tribes or regions, which may not accept a common good in the overall state. In societies where opposition forces arc of this type, democratic institutions lead to flashes more than bringing harmony. In such instances, some kind of unifying principles in the form of an ideology, "guided democracy" and "army above politics" may . .
Ankara University Journal Database
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The Journal of Political and Military Sociology (Illinois, U.S.A.) printed in one of its recent (22/1, Summer 1994) issues five articles on the "Armenian question" by Professor Vahakn N. Dadrian, an Armenian-American researcher. it stated that four of the essays were "adapted" from form er prints elsewhere.1 Dr. Richard Faik, Professor of International Law and Practice at Princeton University, and Dr. Roger Smith, Professor of Government at the College of William and Maryand the "special guest editor" of this issue, present the topic seemingly in full agreement with author Dadrian . .
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Why Not?
Close to a hundred years have elapsed since the outbreak of the First World War. Armenian-Turkish relations during those four years are politicized that miscolour historical facts. Exclusively one-sided views, reflected in the sways of some third party parliaments, only convey rash pre-arrangements serving power politics instead of justice. In some Western mainstream media and legislative organs one perceives calls for “coming to terms with the past”. The presumption is that the Turks will have to do that.
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Historian Prof. Dr. Türkkaya Ataöv said: “We should do our homework very well as Turks`` against Armenian claims on 1915 incidents.
Prof. Dr. Ataöv gave a conference in English entitled “Armenian Question: Confronting the Past” which was organized with the cooperation of the graduates of Istanbul University and the Association of Turkish-American Architects, Engineers and Scientists and answered the questions.
Indicating at the presentation, which was supported with documents, that some parliaments of the foreign states are saying: “confront your past” to the Turks via some laws and resolutions, Ataöv stated that the Turks are ready for this, but . . in this context, the concept of “confronting the past” should be defined, and confronting the past is a question of the history, so historical documents should be exposed “ extensively, completely, accurately, objectively and in a balanced way”, and while doing these, the decisions of the politicians and certain campaigns should put aside.
Expressing the importance of listening different opinions of both sides equally, besides scientific approach, good intention, impartiality, and saying: “Closing the doors tightly by the foreign parliaments like France for research and accepting only one comment, is leaving the truth aside that should cause to a scandal and definitely, it is not a scientific and impartial approach”, Ataöv underlined that independent evaluation which would be away from the effects of politics, during the historical research, is a condition that cannot be abandoned.
In this framework, criticizing not taking the claims into account other than the Armenian claims in a country like France, even though he called the authors of the articles, editors and administrators of the newspapers repeatedly, who give untrue, exaggerated, incoherent information, they have not get in contact with him intentionally, and in the same context, Armenians have nourished themselves with “victim’s psychology”, they even have not read and taken into consideration the different documents that are written by their own historians since they cannot endure any kind of different opinion.
Expressing that countries or nations cannot be separated into two, as “the good” and “the bad” with a prejudice when dealing with the historical incidents, Ataöv stated that the USA libraries contain books, which include various insults against Turks that were written prior 1915 incidents, and he read a part from one of these books.
Pointing out that a special importance should be given to the Ottoman documents on the Armenian question, and it is not convenient to disregard the Ottoman documents by characterizing them as “Turkish documents”, Ataöv said: “There is not a single document, which shows that the Ottoman administration had planned and applied genocide.”
Indicating that the evidences of massacres which were caused by Armenians are not only in the Ottoman documents, but also in the third party publications; even in the memoirs written by the former commanders of the Armenian armies and also in the books of the Armenian writers, who examined the history of war, Ataöv stated that the following expression was taken from the prominent English book (based on English documents) entitled “The Dictionary of World War I”: “While the Turks were preparing for the mobilization, the Armenians killed 120 thousand people, who were not Armenians, at the East.
Pointing out that none of the Armenians were judged in the end of the war and only Turks were punished, Ataöv stated that this situation symbolizes the “justice of the winners”. And in this context, indicating that the military representatives of the winning side were judges and prosecutors in Nurnberg and Tokyo courts, Ataöv gave some examples which pointed out the courts in question are not independent.
Ataöv stressed that Armenians do not accept that they had attended to 13 wars during 1914-1918, revolted against the Ottoman Empire, got armed, killed the Muslims, collaborated with the states, which invaded the Ottoman and both Turks and themselves died due to contagious diseases during the relocation.
Türkkaya Ataöv stated that the past of many countries, which accuse Turkey, were dark, in the end of the World War II, there were almost no Jews left in Poland, where 2, 5 million Jews lived in 1939, and even Germany, where Jewish genocide occurred in the past and currently, neo-Nazi movement is being experienced, is in an attempt of accusing Turkey on the Armenian claims.
Answering a question Ataöv expressed that Turkey or any country alone cannot be chosen as a scapegoat, and in this context, countries should face their own pasts and history. Ataöv added that the ones, who had founded the Turkish Republic, primarily Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, also knew what had happened very well, but their goal was to built the future for the future generations instead of being stuck in the past and this definitely does not mean to “neglect, hide or distort the truth” but to prevent uneasiness that could occur when the new state was founded for the ones, who came to Turkey by leaving their country behind.
He encountered the question “What should be done next?” when studying his master degree; Ataöv stated that he started making a research on this issue. Stating that Turks should know the Armenian question thoroughly, he said: “We, Turks, should study our homework very well. When I first came here two years ago, there were few people, who came to listen to us; the increasing number is a positive development. We should all study our homework well and should rise our voices against the ones, who attempt to accuse us. This is what I do, but we should all do this or it is attempted to accuse our nation with a crime, which would be carried for centuries long. ”
Mehmet Samsar, the Consul General of New York stated that the time Prof. Dr Ataöv came to the USA as one of the most important experts of the issue, was very important and the Turkish society in the USA have started attacking instead of just defending themselves on the Armenian claims and the Turkish thesis are being heard and listen to more frequently than they used to in the public opinion and the USA Congress.
Prof. Dr. Ataöv, who signed his book for his readers that attended the conference, will also be giving conferences in the cities of Francisco and Washington.
Source: Anadolu Agency 06.06.2008
www.genocidereality.com
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“The issue that is called as Armenian question and is attempted to be solved in accordance with the economic interests of the world capitalists, more than the real interests of the Armenian nation, has reached its best solution with the Kars agreement. The friendship ties of the two diligent nations, who have coexisted friendly, were established once again.
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
1 March 1922-GNAT Opening Speech of Third Assembly
The First Claim against Atatürk
The claims against Atatürk were expressed frequently by Armenians at various platforms and these were (and still are being) used with propaganda intentions. The first mistake or intention on the issue has resulted from the expression at the footnote on the pages 121 and 122 at the book entitled “Lé Désastre d’Alexandrette, 1934–1938”, which was published in 1938 at Paris by a French author called Paul du Véou. According to Paul du Véou Mustafa Kemal had witnessed at “Divan-i Harb-i Örfi’ Court in Istanbul on 27 January 1920 and during his testimony, he expressed that Turks had massacred Armenians.
French author Paul du Véou has probably put the quotation in question without making a research to the footnote of his book with the influence of untrue news entitled “Déclaration de Mustafa Kemal”, which had been published in the newspapers of Le Bosphore and La Renaissance by the Armenians in French under the supervision of the Allied Forces during 1919-1920 when Istanbul was under invasion.
The footnote that was used by Paul du Véou was later used by Armenian priest Jean Naslian as well.
Stating that “Mustafa Kemal, who has always been proud of not committing murder, has confessed the following to ‘Divan-i Harp’ court on 28 January by blaming several people”, Naslian had confused Mustafa Kemal with Mustafa Pasha from Süleymaniye, who was called “Cruel Mustafa” due to his cruelties and who was a member of the court, which was to be found later. And again Guergian, an Armenian author had warned the priest in question before his book was published for the mentioned expression was a mistake and stated that the expression should be taken out of the book. However, it was not taken out.
“Similar mistakes were repeated by many Armenian authors one year later on 27 February 1919 or 28 January 1920.
“…After Guergian, whom we mentioned above, James Tashjian, an Armenian author, also indicated that Mustafa Kemal was confused with Cruel Mustafa by the Armenian authors and it was insisted on this mistake. Again an American priest, who inhabited in New York, had written an article, which attempted to correct this mistake at Masis weekly, which was published in Beirut in 1967.
The most significant point, which turns this claim into invalid argument, is Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s presence in Ankara on 27 January 1920.
In other words, it was also technically impossible for Mustafa Kemal to be a witness at this court, which was located in Istanbul.
Another point, which turns this claim into an invalid argument, is the fact that “the Divan-I Harb” on 27 January 1920. Mustafa Kemal was in Ankara together with many others as it was expressed above on 27 January 1920.
Second Claim against Atatürk
Another point that was attributed to Mustafa Kemal, is the so-called statement of his to “Los Angeles Examiner” newspaper in 1926. This issue was repeated at various publications and it was even carried to the USA Congress and used as a propaganda tool by the Armenians. For instance; during his speech at the USA House of Representatives in 1985 Lehman, member of House of Representatives, indicated that Atatürk had admitted that genocide had occurred, so Turks should also admit this fact. A similar speech was delivered by Senator Lewis of the USA Senate in 1994. However, the interview in question was proved to be completely fake in the book entitled “Another Falsification “Statement” (1926) Wrongly Atributed to M.Kemal Atatürk” (Ankara: Sistem Ofset, 1988) by Professor Türkkaya Ataöv at Political Sciences Faculty of Ankara University without leaving a space for any doubt.
As it was indicated in professor Ataöv’s book, Atatürk had never made such a statement. Because;
1. All the statements and speeches of Atatürk were recorded by more than one official and semi-official publication. There is no such a statement in the mentioned newspaper.
2. There is no evidence pointing out that the Swedish journalist Hilderband, who is claimed to be the person, whom Atatürk had made his statement there is even no proof for the existence of a person carrying this name at the documents that were given by the Switzerland officials.
3. The statements that were made to the other foreign institutions by Atatürk contain just the opposite information that the afore-mentioned newspaper claimed.
4. The mentioned publication contains many mistakes on the names of people, location and date.
Third Claim against Atatürk
It was stated that Mustafa Kemal Atatürk had condemned the genocide policy of Jon Turks leaders during a speech, which was delivered on 24 April 1920.
On Saturday, 24 April 1924, the day after GNAT was opened, a session that contained five hearings was realized and Mustafa Kemal Pasha had only delivered long speeches during the four hearings, but he didn’t delivered a speech on the fifth hearing. During the first three hearings, where Mustafa Kemal Pasha delivered speeches, the negotiations were not closed, but the fourth hearing was secret.
Mustafa Kemal Pasha had made a general evaluation over the incidents (political, military) that had developed from Montreux until the month of April of 1920 by means of quite a long speech.
During the secret and open hearings of these sessions, all the speeches of Mustafa Kemal Pasha were carefully examined, nevertheless, a sentence, which is expressed at the New Thousand Years Newspaper dated 8 October 2000, had not been encountered. On the contrary, they encountered to some expression of Mustafa Kemal Pasha indicating that he does not consider acting hostile against the “Ittihat ve Terakki” is right. Mustafa Kemal had made the following statements on the Armenians and Armenian question:
After reading the telegram that was sent to him by Celal Pasha, Mustafa Kemal Pasha read the respond he had given to him at the chair of the Assembly. He had expressed his views as following:
“As a matter of fact, we do not consider the hostility against the non-Muslims and “Ittihat ve Terakki” is right. We only oppose to the owners, who misuse their powers, which ruined the country.”
In any event, when the speeches of Mustafa Kemal Pasha were closely examined, it was determined that he did not make any statement of this kind, and on the contrary, he had make attention provoking statements on the issue.
A New Claim that was Attributed to Atatürk
The following declaration was made on the membership of Turkey to Europe Union at the draft law of the Foreign Relations Committee of the European Parliament on 22 November 2001 :
Turkey’s candidacy for EU membership presents exceptional opportunities and motives which guarantees intensifying Turkey’s flexibility on the conflicts in the region particularly for Armenia. This is true both for the closure of the border and for the view on 1915 genocide. The recognition of the Armenian genocide by European parliament and some member countries and the heavy punishment that was applied by Turkish regime against the ones who were responsible of genocide after the World War I, enables an opportunity for European Union for dealing with the issue by presenting constructive precautions like forming a constitution, where international in addition to multi-sided historians would come together on the 1915 Armenian genocide.”
There is a footnote at the above-mentioned paragraph of the draft, which is mentioned in the European parliament:
The demand for the recognition of genocide is mostly presented by Armenian politicians. As it is reported, during the speech that was delivered in the GNAT on 10 April 1921 Kemal Atatürk stated that the Jon Turks regime committed genocide against Armenians during the World War I…”
It was impossible to deliver such a speech at the Grand National Assembly of Turkey (GNAT).
During 2.IV.1337 (2 April 1921) and 30.IV.1337 (30 April 1921) thirteen (13) sessions had been realized at GNAT. All the sessions at GNAT that was made at the month of April, 1921 were examined from the minutes of GNAT and it was designated that Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the speaker of the assembly, did not attend to any of these sessions-including the covered sessions-and as a result he had not delivered a speech.
In the end of the examinations, it was designated that a bill on “amnesty”, which dated 3.XI.1336 and numbered 5/2685 during the 4th Hearing of the 23rd Session was read in the absence of Mustafa Kemal Pasha and again it was designated that “resolutions” dated 28.IV.1337 were read, and it was observed that he had not made any statement on the issues of Armenia or Armenians.
Even if it is a draft report, the move of the European Parliament for taking a false statement under records without making a research on it, is not something very strange in a way. The same things are done by the Armenian lobby intentionally at the USA Parliament frequently. For instance; news, which is published at a newspaper are presented to the Congress without making any research on it and it is insisted to be taken under registrations. In the forth coming years, these news, which have been taken under registration, are used as “source Congress minutes” by the Armenian propaganda makers as official congress documents.
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who was accused by the Armenians, responded the issue in his “Great Speech”, which was written by himself, as following:
“Gentleman, in order to give an idea on how much the offer is inappropriate, let us remember the circumstances at those days. It should not be doubted that the statements on Armenian massacre were unreal. On the contrary, the Armenians, who were armed by the foreign powers at the Southern regions attacked Muslims, where they inhabited, taking courage of the protections they enjoyed. They followed a policy towards killing and destroying with the intention of taking revenge. That’s how the incident in Maras occurred. The Armenians, who united with the foreign powers, destroyed an old Muslim city such as Maras with guns and cannons. Thousands of homeless and innocent mothers and children were murdered with torture. It was the Armenians, who had done this violence, which has never been experienced in the history. The Muslims resisted and defended themselves only for protecting their lives and honors. The telegrams that were sent to their representatives in Istanbul, of the Americans, who were staying in the city with the Muslims, during the Maras massacre, which lasted for 20 days, put forward the owners of this targeted.
The Muslims in the province of Adana faced the danger of being killed under the pressure of the bayonets of the Armenians, who had been armed from top to toe.
While the cruelty and annihilation policy towards Muslims, who did not demand anything but to protect their lives and independence, was in a character that would attract the attention of civilized humanity and show mercy, how could an offer which claims the contrary and demands giving up taken seriously? ”
Atatürk did not only deliver speeches, but when he became the president he made moves, which consolidated his speeches and actions. During his presidency, Atatürk claimed the members of the families, who were the remainders of martyrs that were killed by Armenian terrorists and the innocent ones who were executed at “Divan-i Harbi Örfi”, which were founded by the Ottoman government with the pressure of England during the invasion years. Atatürk also allocated a house and salary to them.
1- Paul du Véou, Lé Desastre d’Alexandrette, 1934–1938, Paris, 1938, p.121-122.
2- Süslü, Armenians and 1915…, p.155-156.
3- See. Gotthard Jaeschke, Salvation War with English Documents, Translation Cemal Köprülü, Ankara, 1986, page 148–156.
4- Süslü, Armenians and 1915… …, page 156.
5- U.S. Cengressional Record, 12 December, 1985.
6- U.S. Cengressional Record, April 19, 1994, page S4461.
7- By Prof. Dr. Türkkaya without leaving a space for any doubts: Another Falsification “Statement” (1926) Wrongly Attributed to M.Kemal Atatürk, Ankara, 1988, page 3–17
8- New Thousand Years, 8 October 2000.
9- GNAT Minutes, V.1, P.20.
10- European Parliament, Draft Report, 22 November 2001.
11- European Parliament, Draft Report, 22 November 2001.
12- European Parliament, Draft Report, 22 November 2001. The continuation of the footnote is as following: “President Koçaryan also desires Turkey to recognize genocide. This is not a precondition that should absolutely be put in practice for normalizing the relations between the two countries.”
13- GNAT Minutes, V.9-10.
14- GNAT Minutes, V.10., page 134.
15- See for a clear instance for this: Senol Kantarci, “Armenian Question: The Psychological Dimension of the Issue with Oppressed Nation Identity”, New Turkey: Armenian Question Special Edition, I, Number:37 (January-February 2001), page 518–519.
16- Kemal Atatürk, Nutuk, Zeynep Korkmaz, Ankara
Source: Education in the Light of Science and Mind-Year 4, Number 38
Senol Kantarci
www.soykirimgercegi.com
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TAT contributor Gokalp has performed invaluable research exposing the fakery behind certain widely distributed images presuming to be "genocide evidence." Some of these have been featured on TAT's "Forgeries" page, but the new discoveries here, often from Armenian sources, are simply stunning.
Gokalp has written an introduction to his discoveries, but has not had the time to finish the article. This slightly edited intro has been presented, but the main value of this page regards his exposés for the notorious images in question.
Armenian Photo falsifications Exposed –Yet again
It is sometimes necessary to lie damnably in the interests of the nation.
Hilaire Belloc 1870-1953, British Author
"You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.” Exodus 20:16
In 2005 Prof. Turkkaya Ataöv was in the University of California at Los Angeles when he saw a Poster calling for a meeting about the events of 1915. He instantly realized that there was something terribly wrong with it. In the Poster Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founding father of the modern Turkish republic was sitting on a chair while a corpse of a poor starved child was lying under his feet. After Ataöv returned to Turkey he found the original photo, and there were four little dogs in front of the seat occupied by Atatürk instead of a dead body. Ataöv immediately publicized this forgery in a prominent Turkish newspaper, “Hürriyet”.
The Armenian Diaspora, lobbying organizations and the professors participating in the meeting were not thrilled. They kept a low profile about the issue and when somebody did respond the answer was calm and simple, along the lines of “the photo manipulation was made only to draw attention and to make a point." A somewhat good and convincing argument, one might say… But Mustafa Kemal being a middle rank officer who was fighting in the western (Dardanelles) front at that time had not been involved in the Ethnic conflict or civil war between Turks/Kurds and Armenians. He was not involved in the relocations by any means. This fact brings out the question; What was the point? Could it be that “Armenians can use any means — ethical or not — for the interest of their nation”?
Armenians employed all types of falsifications and forgeries since the beginning of their “Cause." The famous Hitler quote “Who, after all, speaks today of the extermination of the Armenians?” for example never existed in the Nuremberg trials. Actually the court rejected that version of the speech on the grounds that it was altered. This fabrication despite being proven to be “highly dubious” at best, still shows up in many genocide web pages, many pro-Armenian demonstrations and even in the USA's congressional resolutions. “The Andonian documents," which involve supposedly secret Ottoman documentations giving direct massacre orders, have been proven to be forgeries. Today there is no single decent historian (apart from notorious Armenian “historians” as Dadrian) who will use these fabrications in any kind of research. Yet quotations from these fake letters and telegrams are all over the “Genocide” museum walls and monuments erected after the event. But Who, after all, speaks today of the fact that these are forgeries…
The History of Armenian Photo Falsifications
Erich Feigl's caption partly reads: "Vicious
propaganda comes in various forms. One of the
most sinister is the hidden falsification... Casual
observers — and they are... the majority — will
inevitably make a connection between Talaat and the
crania on the cover." (From "A Myth of Terror.")
See TAT's "Tessa Hofmann" page for more.
The history of Armenian photo falsifications start with the publication of the book "Der Völkermord an den Armenien vor Gericht. Der Prozess Talaat Pascha," in 1920 (or 1921) in Berlin. On The cover of the book there is a horrid pyramid of skulls which is accompanied by a picture of Talat Pasha, the Ottoman Minister of the Interior. The book presented the image as a proof of the “Ottoman” barbarity. The “photo” appeared also in 1352 copies of a "well published" book entitled The Massacre of Armenians (Katliami Ermeniyan), by Ismail Ra'in, in 1979 Iran... supported by "some Armenian circles during the Shah's time." The Persian legend under the “photograph” says: Serha-yi eramene-ike katliam shudend der sal 1917 (or "the skulls of Armenians massacred in the year 1917"). But the real great public appearance of this “photo” was in Canada. It was enlarged and shown to the Canadian public in the 1970's, in the Yerevan Pavillion at the annual Metro International Caravan festivities in Toronto, as proof of the Armenian "Genocide." Further, the daily Nova-Svetlina, dated April 23, 1985, of Bulgaria, published an article entitled "Tragic Memories" (Tragichni Spomeni) and signed by an Armenian, M.Sofian. It reproduces the same pictures with the following legend: "The terrifying traces of barbaric massacres of the Armenians in Turkey in the year 1915." Also it was printed on to Postcards by "Committee for Support to Max Hrair Kilnjian" in France.
But the truth behind this “photo," which “displays the evil nature of the Turks “and their ”organized violence against Armenians”, was a bit different… This “Photo” was not a photo at all but a painting by a Russian artist Vassili Vereshchagin (1842-1904). This Russian painting named "The Apotheosis of War," was created in 1871 and it still hangs in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. Only after Prof. Ataöv exposed the truth about this so called photographic evidence in 1980 it slowly faded away in the depths of the Armenian propaganda.
It indeed is puzzling to see that this outrageous and careless falsification really made it that far. But thanks to the immense prejudices of the western public and their reluctance to hear what the Turks say, the quick recipe of preparing careless fake and falsified photos still works very well today.
Armenian Photo “Arsenal”
We all know that in most cases “seeing is believing” and that is the point where Armenians are lacking any hardcore material. The real bulk of Armenian photographic documentation comes from two sources: Armin Theophil Wegner and the Near East Relief.
The Near East Relief photos mainly show Armenians who are in relocation camps and being aided by the organization. The question, which is generally not posed about these photos, is “do they prove genocide or disprove it." After all, it is absurd for a government, which is pursuing a goal of extermination, to let an international aid organization to help the people that are meant to perish. If you stab someone you don’t let a doctor near him. If you wish to kill people by starvation you don’t let them get help. However, since the 100 years of Armenian propaganda arrests the basic logic of many individuals. This simple discrepancy is overlooked and these photos are there to “prove the genocide."
Armin T. Wegner was a German soldier who enrolled as a volunteer nurse in Poland at the outbreak of World War I during the winter of 1914-1915. He traveled along the Baghdad railroad in Mesopotamia. He gathered information on Armenians, collected documents, annotations, notes, and letters and took many photographs in the Armenian relocation camps. Later He dedicated a great part of his life to the fight for Armenian cause.
Again His photos mostly show the daily life of the relocated Armenians apart from these are several pictures showing people who died of starvation or disease. There are only a handful of photos by Armin Wegner that show corpse remains or skulls of people who he claims to be of Armenians. The trouble with these photos, however, is that they are far from present proof of a whole scale organized massacre.
There is no doubt that Armenians suffered terribly and there is no doubt that many Armenians were killed in a country, which was in a word war and civil war in the same time. But when it comes to saying 1.5 million were killed systematically, the Armin Wenger photos which show a total of couple of dozens of people with unidentifiable ethnicity is in no way a serious documentation.
Photo Fakery: Alive and Well
The above served as Gokalp's introduction, and what will follow are his discoveries, along with some thoughts of his that have been incorporated into the text.
This photo is all over the place. Above, it appears on a YouTube video. It has also appeared on Rudy Rummel's "Democide" site (Gokalp pointed out the fakery to Rudy, and at least Rudy added a note of caution; but come on, Rudy. You're supposed to be a "professor," and it doesn't take much brains to figure out what's what. Rudy still can't shake his deep belief in "cilicia.com," where he got the photo, a site that represents the law to the faithful genocide believer that Rudy is.) The photo has also appeared on Wikipedia, dressing its "Anti-Armenianism" page, but of course, Wikipedia has been taken over by Armenians and their supporters. Better termed "Wicked"pedia, the online encyclopedia can easily be manipulated by those with the strongest numbers and tenacity, and is a source that cannot be trusted, save only for the most innocuous of topics.
And here is the version from a site called "Bibleprobe":
The caption reads "Turkish soldiers proudly posing with bodies of their Christian victims. To these Muslims, the 'Christians were like animals to be hunted.'" (The article on Bibleprobe was written by retired Navy man Steve Keohane, a "historian" whose real job is a real estate appraiser in Massachusetts, and a hopelessly faithful — and hateful — Christian. (Jesus would be the first to tell us that hateful Christians are pseudo-Christians.)
An Ottoman soldier, as depicted in
Andrew Goldberg's PBS propaganda,
"The Armenian Genocide."
While Rudy Rummel wrote in his half-hearted disclaimer that the soldiers "appear to be wearing Russian and not Turkish army uniforms," one only needs a pair of good eyes to see whether that is the case or not. The ones wearing the fur hats look like Cossacks, and the "Cossack hat" is well-known. (Here is a company that sells them; note the photos.) But the real giveaway are the ones wearing the caps, that viewers of Dr. Zhivago will recognize instantly. The greatwardifferent.com site gives us an excellent idea of the Russian war uniforms of the period, on this page. ("Russian soldiers as portrayed on the covers of 'Lukomorie' a Russian magazine.") The same site also displays nine different military uniforms of Ottoman soldiers, on this page. (Another page gives us a more detailed look at the costume of the Ottomans.)
It is really a "no-brainer." The "professor," Rudy Rummel, has no excuse; but, of course, he — as the rest of the "genocide scholars" — only care about affirming their agendas, and are strangers to the concept of "honest research."
As detailed in TAT's "Forgeries" page, this photo, when blown-up, reveal the victims to be circumcised, which tells us the victims were not Christians, but most likely Muslims, or even Jews.
But let's move on with "proof positive."
Here is another variation of the photo, curiously plastered on a bonafide "Armenian genocide" web site, the Comité de Défense de la Cause Arménienne, or The Armenian National Committee of France (CDCA), "the largest French-Armenian grassroots political organization."
And do you know what the site says? The photo is from 1904, and that the ones who have committed the massacres are Cossacks. (Since the site's idea is to stress 1915, your guess is as good as mine as to why they went with "evidence" from 1904, with culprits who weren't even Turks. In case they see this, and change their wording, what is below is a screenshot of their page, as from April 2008.)
Turkish Victims Massacred by Armenians Become Armenian
The photo above has been shamelessly appropriated by genocidists, which is really awful, given that the victims were Turkish/Muslim victims of the Armenians. The scene is from Kars Subatan, 1918, and the original photo is in the Turkish Army Archives. (Note the frayed edges, direct from the negative.)
Bibleprobe also used the above familiar
shot with the caption: "Turkish soldiers
posing proudly with the decapitated heads
of Armenian community leaders, 1915." The
odds are that the victims were Bulgarians,
beheaded by Serbs in 1905; see the TAT
Forgeries page.
The aforementioned Bibleprobe site has featured this shot, naming it "christianbodies7." The shot has seen wide usage in Armenian videos in YouTube. A German television channel has used this picture in a news editorial about the Armenian genocide resolution.
(The picture comes up at 00:55.)
An article in the "Armenian Genocide Resource Center" site tells us that Armenians also used pictures from the 1992 Khojali massacre of Azeri civilians as if they were Armenians. Gokalp asks, "Is this an innocent mistake or a deliberate attempt to enrich the Armenian photo arsenal?"
The Famous "Starving Mother and Child" Photo
Caption by Erich Feigl, "The Myth of Terror."
Now we know where this photograph came from! And we have another bonafide "Armenian genocide" web site to thank. (It is the aga-online.org site, or AGA, a German site that stands for "Acknowledgement Against Genocide" (Or something like that.)
The photo comes courtesy of a book that the French published for propaganda. It is named “The famine in Lebanon. French assistance to Lebanonese (people of Lebanon) during the great war”
The rough translation of the caption accompanying the pages above, from here:
"Hunger emergency in Lebanon 1915-1919: In 1922 a French magazine published photos showing obviously homeless persons, often half-naked or naked victims of the hunger emergency in Lebanon, probably Armenians. Some are looking for food in the garbage, and others are dead."
Note that the book is describing the starving people as “PROBABLY” Armenians. So basically there is no way to prove that they are Armenians. Yet, as Gokalp pointed out, we do know several things: 1. The French did not help Arabs or Muslims. 2. Armenians were a very small minority in Lebanon. 3. The French were in league with Maronite Christians, and they were the main Christian minority.
No surprise the Turks are to blame again; as good old Rudy Rummel wrote: “During the war the British navy blockaded Turkey, including the Turkish Levant. No food was allowed in by sea. The resulting famine in Lebanon and Syria (with consequences shown on lines 208a to 208d) would not have become as deadly as it did had not the Turks commandeered available food supplies and refused to help the starving. As a result they bear the greater responsibility for the famine, which I calculate as probably around 75 percent of the total dead (line 208i).“
(As if calculating famine responsibility would be an exact science; Rudy, Rudy... Rudy. Let's not forget, gang, that this was during a desperate time where "all over Turkey thousands of the populace were daily dying of starvation," as Ambassador Morgenthau himself instructed us. Thousands of Ottoman soldiers were dying of famine (see link), the situation was that desperate; of course the available food would have been commandeered to feed this first line of defense. If the powers were making sure no food was coming in, we don't blame the victims for causing the famine.)
A German source, misplaced for now, described the famine as follows: “1916-1918 hunger emergency in Turkish-German occupied Lebanon during the First World War due to an allied sea-blockade as well as requisitioning by the badly supplied troops; in addition due to the high specialization degree of the Lebanese agriculture, where basic food imported and instead e.g. viticulture and silk crawler-type vehicle breed were operated (approx. 100,000 dead ones, in at that time of 450.000 humans inhabited area).”
Heads or Tales
Do we all recognize this one? The "heads" are often presented either as genocide victims or as Armenian notables. Steve Keohane of Bibleprobe provided the following caption: "Heads of Christians, traditionally treated like trophies by the Turks." (Yes, Mr. Keohane is surely an expert on the traditions of the Turks.)
The AGA site gets to the bottom of the story behind this photo; we are given the names of these heads as well as the source. They are the members of Dashnaktsutiun and resided in a village in Iran. From its own page:
"... If such partisans fell into the hands of the Ottoman authorities, they had to count on execution. The photo shows the heads of eight of nine Armenians from the village Mahlam in Salmast (Iran), who were executed on 26 October 1898 on instruction of the Ottoman government and to which the Dashnaktsutiun had belonged to a social-revolutionary Armenian party. It concerned Chatschatur Harutjunjan out of Moks (left above), Harutjun out of Ulnia (Sejtun), Stepan of Chisan, Harik of Schatach, Gabriel Muradjan, Nahapet Jeriasarjan ("Nacho" from Wosm), Harutjun Chatschatrjan out of Moks as well as Galust Galojan. Awetis Ohanjan, the ninth victim, is not to be seen in the picture."
The source is none other than the official news organ of the Dashnaktsutiun, "The Droshak," Jan. 31, 1899, S. 5.
As these Dashnaks were executed in October of 1898, Gokalp has made the excellent point that since the time window somewhat fits, "we can easily and rightfully assume that these are the ones who are responsible" of the events recorded below; it's very possible some of these desperadoes got nabbed in the following year:
The Reported Armenian Aggression.
From The Liverpool Courier, August 10,1897:
The Reported Armenian Aggression.
Terrible Barbarities.
Constantinople, Sunday.
The following telegram was received to-day by the Porte from Veli? : — On August 6th several thousand Armenian agitators crossed the frontier from Persia and attacked the Mizriki tribe, killing about two hundred persons, among whom were women and children. They further put the wife of the chief of the tribe to the most cruel death, and cut off the noses of several others of their victims. It is officially declared that the necessary precautions have been taken by the Imperial authorities not only to capture these marauders, but also to provide against eventualities in the vilayet of Van. The Ottoman Government has also requested the Persian Government to arrest these criminal bands, who on being pursued by Turkish troops may attempt to recross the frontier. The Persian Government is also urged to take proper measures for preventing in future these incursions of Armenian revolutionaries into Turkish territory. — Reuter,
THE RECENT ARMENIAN RAID.
From The Bristol Times And Mirror, September 9, 1897:
THE RECENT ARMENIAN RAID.
TEHERAN, TUESDAY.
A prolonged inquiry has just been concluded by the Persian authorities regarding the Armenian raid on the Turco-Persian frontiers last month, which was followed by serious fighting between Armenians and Kurds, with heavy losses on both sides. The result of the inquiry shows that the bulk of the raiders were from Turkish territory, and that fewer than 300 came from Persia. Nine villages were sacked, and there were massacred over 300 Mussulmans and Christians, including women and children. Twenty-nine of the ringleaders have been arrested, and handed over to the authorities to be dealt with. — Reuter.
© Holdwater
The source site of this article gets revised often, as better information comes along. For the most up-to-date version, links and the related photos, the reader may consider reviewing the direct link as follows:
www.tallarmeniantale.com/forgeries-fotos.htm
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