THE "ARMENIAN
QUESTION"
Conflict, Trauma and Objectivity
PREFACE
SAM PAPERS is an English-language publication series of the Center for
Strategic Research (Stratejik Arastyrmalar Merkezi, SAM), affiliated with
the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It is being published irregularly
based on events composed of monographs, critiques, seminar minutes and the
like that follow.
Türkkaya Ataöv, professor of international relations recognized for
his numerous thought-provoking published works, not only on the Armenian
question, but also on various aspects of past and contemporary conflicts,
reacts this time to a group of articles which have appeared in the Summer
1994 issue of the Journal of Political and Military Sociology. Judging by
the criticisms that he offers or the new points that he brings to
attention, one may quote, James Russell Lowell, that “a wise scepticism
is the first attribute of a good critic.”
Professor Ataöv’s treatise, entitled The ‘Armenian Question’:
Conflict, Trauma and Objectivity, as the previous printed monograph,
should be considered a contribution to the evaluation of the subject.
THE ‘ARMENIAN QUESTION’:Conflict, Trauma and
Objectivity
TÜRKKAYA ATAÖV*
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 former prints elsewhere.1 Dr. Richard Falk, Professor
of International Law and Practice at Princeton University, and Dr. Roger
Smith, Professor of Government at the College of William and Mary and the
“special guest editor” of this issue, present the topic seemingly in
full agreement with author Dadrian.
None of the three writers employs a wide historical perspective. They
seem to have closed the door to almost a thousand years of
Armenian-Turkish relations, most of which, whether acknowledged or not by
Professors Dadrian, Smith and Falk, had been amicable, even brotherly. The
literature on the “lean years”, that is, of the early 20th century, is
already stupendous in volume, although adding up to few reliable data.
Comparatively, there is so little in print on the centuries of coexistence
and cooperation. The Turks, who faced Byzantium, and not the Armenians, at
the Battle of Malazgirt (Manzikerd, 1071), recognized (1461) the Armenian
(Gregorian) Church, when it was rejected by established Christian centers.
None of the three writers presents a combination of interrelated
factors. Scholars are, not only expected to keep in mind opposing views,
but also to utilize interdisciplinary approaches. Final judgement in
history, especially in a very controversial case like the Armenian-Turkish
conflict, cannot be surrendered to an ethnic participant in a dispute. In
most cases, one side will be painted as an “idealized white”, and the
other as a “gruesome black”.
In all his presentations, Professor Dadrian portrays the Turks as wild,
cruel, ferocious, uncivilized and barbarous savages, and the Armenians as
simple victims, prey in the hands of their fierce enemies. In the
publications of many Western authors, like Dadrian, the Turks are never
the sufferers. This approximation is an oversimplification inconsistent
with historical phenomena. After centuries of peaceful coexistence, on
which Dadrian does not dwell in any of his writings, the Armenians,
supported by foreign circles, considered their Muslim neighbours as rivals
in Eastern Anatolia and the Caucasus, where the majority was made up of
the latter. The Armenians, who had no majority in Eastern Anatolia,
cooperated during the First World War, with the aggressive and expanding
Russians, without whose active cooperation, they thought, they had no
chance of a homeland. The territory, whether in Eastern Anatolia or most
of the Caucasus, which the Armenians claimed as their own, was largely
inhabited by non-Armenians. The demographic reality that disproved
Armenian aspirations could be changed by foreign support and ethnic
cleansing.
Much of the history of Anatolia, the Caucasus, the Balkans and southern
Russia cannot be understood without a proper assessment of the Muslim dead
and Muslim refugees.2 Only about two centuries ago, the Muslims, mostly
Turks, constituted the overwhelming majorities, pluralities or sizable
minorities in these territories. Ottoman weakness in the 19th century,
especially after the 1877-1878 Russo-Turkish War, however, encouraged
Armenian terrorism and separatism as well as the expansionism of some
neighbours, principally Russia and the Christian Balkan peoples. The Turks
were either massacred or forced to migrate. Millions were killed, and
millions fled.3 The population of the contemporary Turkish Republic
consists mostly of the descendants of the surviving immigrants. A host of
Western writers, including Dadrian, Smith and Falk, ignore the massacre
and the forced exile of Muslims, predominantly Turks, from the Balkans,
the Crimea and the Caucasus.
Whenever there is an attempt to challenge this one-sided and biased
approach, there is an almost unanimous accusation of “revisionism”, as
if to revise an entrenched interpretation is scholarly impermissible.
Falsifiability is a criterion in scholarship. All theories should be
checked for correctness. All existing literature relevant to a problem
have to be located and analyzed, and when sufficient new clues are
obtained, the validity of former generalizations have to be re-tested.
There is no need to cling to the original lopsided hypotheses. Scholarship
is like a building in perpetual repair. Perpetuating the existing set of
beliefs is not necessarily a scientific approach. Not only a totality of
facts, but also how a problem is formulated at the very beginning is very
crucial. New dimensions, such as the ones some Turkish scholars have
introduced, may change the focus and parameters. Contrary to what
Professor Falk writes, some Turkish accounts are not just “shoddy
propaganda” and “inept or disingenuous scholarship”. I proved, for
instance, beyond any doubt, that a picture presumably a photograph of
heaps of skulls of “massacred Armenians” in 1915 was actually an oil
painting by a Russian artist (The Apotheosis of War by Vassili
Vereshchagin) who died in 1904.4
Dadrian gives no credit to views that do not serve his particular
purpose. For instance, the Ottomans, through the millet system, allowed
considerable autonomy to all religious communities. The Turks did not
pursue a policy of religious conversion, except in the special case of the
Janissaries. Dadrian neither gives credit to this long Ottoman tradition
of toleration, nor does he assess the heavy price the Turks paid for it.
He does not also mention the intervention of the foreign powers in Ottoman
domestic affairs, under the pretext of protecting the minorities,
principally the Armenians. Foreign missionaries created in the Christian
minorities of the Ottoman Empire a sense of community with the Christian
imperialist powers. They even gave the Christian minorities a posture of
superiority.
* * *
Dadrian’s assumptions go back to the 1894-96 and the 1909 periods,
during which he states “over one million Armenians were put to death”.
He calls the trials of the Sultan Abdülhamid era as “farcical” (p.
133), and maintains that the Turks had “received mild punishments” (p.
134). He makes no reference, for instance, to a report of a British
captain, Charles Boswell Norman, who says the Osmanly (Ottoman) has yet to
be heard. Norman cites “facts” which shifts the blame “on the
shoulders of the real originators of the rebellion in Anatolia.”5 Sent
to Turkey, as an officer in the Royal Artillery, Captain Norman says that
hitherto the British have had “only the Armenian version of the
disturbances embellished with the hysterical utterances of their English
confrères”. He maintains that England has yet to learn that “the
disturbances in Asia Minor are the direct outcome of a widespread
anarchist movement of which she has been the unconscious supporter”.
Noting that so much has been written “for the avowed purpose of proving
the Armenian to be a model of all meekness and the Turk a monster of
cruelty”, Captain Norman deemed it necessary “in the interests of
peace, of truth and of justice to point out the aims and objects of the
Armenian Revolutionists”. He records that the Hunchak Committee was
“directly responsible for all the bloodshed in Anatolia for the last
five years”. He underlines: “To pretend that these regrettable
occurrences that deluged Anatolia with blood were unprovoked assaults by
Mohammedans on Christians is untrue... The disturbances were commenced by
the Armenians”. He refers to a Manifesto, dated 19 November 1895, and
addressed to the Armenians of the Adana region: “Arm yourselves now for
the battle... Let us draw our swords and fall on the foe”. Referring to
another Manifesto on behalf of the Zeitoun Armenians, he says that “it
fully proves that the disturbances there were originated by the
Armenians”. He adds that the British correspondents, reporting on the
“so-called Sassoun atrocities, were hopelessly duped by Armenian
romancers”. Noting that the touching story of the “Armenian matrons
throwing their children over the cliff on the Antokh Dagh and their
jumping over themselves to avoid dishonour, is an absolute myth”, he
writes that, not only the Armenian population figures were very much
exaggerated, but also the number of victims. For instance, at Berecik,
where 2,000 Armenians were supposed to have been murdered, Captain Norman
says that “five lives were lost”.
The Armenian Troubles and Where the Responsibility Lies is the title of
a booklet by a correspondent of a New York newspaper, who apparently
reproduced in 1895 in pamphlet form the five letters he had written in and
sent from Ystanbul.6 Believing that the whole atmosphere on the Sassoun
events of 1894 has been “polluted with falsehoods and exaggerations”,
he states that the disturbances were “brought about by the Armenian
revolutionary committees”. He quotes the Rev. Cyrus Hamlin’s article
in the Congregationalist of 23 December 1893: “An Armenian revolutionary
party...a secret organization...managed with a skill in deceit...[has] the
strongest hopes of preparing the way for Russia’s entrance into Asia
Minor to take possession...These Huntchaguist bands...will watch their
opportunity to kill..., set fire to their [Muslim] villages and then make
their escape into the mountains. The enraged Muslims will then rise and
fall upon the defenceless Armenians...[and] Russia will enter in the name
of humanity...This Huntchaguist revolutionary party...is of Russian
origin; Russian gold and craft govern it.” The author quotes the AP
correspondent who says that the Armenian conspirators murdered the Rev.
Edward Riggs and two other American missionaries and fastened the blame on
the Turks. As to the story that Armenian women, who, rather than “suffer
dishonor at the hands of (their) Turkish persecutors”, threw themselves
into an abyss until the ravine was filled with corpses, the American
correspondent says that “the horrible narrative is a reproduction, with
additions and embellishments to suit the occasion, of an old tale in
poetry by Mrs. Hemans years ago, under the title of ‘The Suliote
Mother’.” He writes: “Provocation and intimidation seem to be the
plan of the Armenian revolutionists”.
The Armenian terrorist groups continued to attack, assassinate and
murder. But each event of such a nature was presented to world public
opinion as one-sided “extermination”, the propagated figures running
into thousands. For instance, the Armenian author H. Pastermadjian writes
that 3,500 Armenians were killed in the Sassoun rebellion of 1894.7 The
Rev. A. W. William, in association with an Armenian writer, quotes a
larger figure-6000.8 The Protestant missionary Edwin Bliss states that the
Armenian losses were “at least 6,000”.9 However, the first combined
report of the foreign consuls establishes a much lower figure, i.e.,
265–with no mention of the Turkish losses.10
The Ottoman authorities tried both Armenians and Turks for defying the
law. Frequently, the Sultan pardoned the convicted Armenians. This was the
case even when a group of Armenians planned to assassinate him on 21 July
1905.
* * *
No balanced account of Armenian-Turkish relations can be formulated
without a general presentation of the fate of the Turks as well. The Greek
revolt set an example (1821) for other uprisings against Ottoman rule. The
Greeks murdered virtually every Turk they encountered. The whole Turkish
population of many cities, towns and villages were marched out and
slaughtered. The Turks “stood on the way” of minorities who wanted to
create their own states on territories where the Muslims constituted the
majorities. The policy of eliminating the Turks, either through murder or
ethnic cleansing, was repeated during and after several other armed
conflicts carried out under the slogan of national independence.11 The
Muslim peoples, mostly Turks, of the Balkans, the Caucasus and southern
Russia were either killed or forced to migrate to Anatolia. The Turks of
Anatolia also suffered overwhelming mortality. This does not mean,
however, that it was only the Muslims who suffered. But that one-sided
interpretation of Ottoman history has to be corrected.
It is unscientific as well as unfair to describe as “revisionists”
all those who challenge the one-sided traditional view that considers the
non-Muslims as victims and the Turks as brutal victimizers. There is also
a history of Turks as victims, a role in which they are not usually seen.
Had the Turks done the same to the Christian minorities when they had
first encountered them, they could have survived on lands where they had
lived for centuries as majorities. The Ottoman millet system allowed each
religious community great self-government under their own leaders. Each
millet, which enjoyed religious freedom, established and maintained its
own institutions, including courts, schools and welfare systems.
During and after each war the Ottoman armies fought in the 19th century
and the early 20th century, minority groups, supported by the great powers
of the day, revolted. The Ottomans, who got little credit for their
tradition of religious toleration, paid a heavy price for it. Various
foreign governments intervened in Ottoman domestic affairs, ostensibly to
protect the Christian minorities. Missionaries gave the latter a sense of
partnership with the imperial powers.
A vast area from the environs of Bosnia all the way to Central Asia via
southern Russia and the Caucasus was, not only territories where Muslims
ruled but also a wide world where the Muslims constituted the majority,
plurality or sizable minority. The Ottoman Empire, struggling to survive,
was trying to defend its Muslim citizens against massacre and to find
shelter for those who managed to escape from the recurring butchery. This
is the reason why so many citizens of the contemporary Turkish Republic
are sons and daughters of immigrants from Yugoslavia to Armenia. Western
publications record, in exaggerated form, only the sufferings of the
Armenians, Bulgarians, Greeks and other Christian peoples.
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. The Greek
revolution started with the murder of the Ottoman officials and continued
with the wholesale killing of the Muslim inhabitants of various cities,
towns and villages, such as Kalavryta, Kalamata, Missolonghi and Vrachori.
Even those Turks who were given promises of safety were slaughtered in
quiet corners. The Turks of Greece were “in the way” of an independent
Greece. When the Greek Kingdom in the Morea was established (1830), “a
Greek state now existed, but a Greek nation still had to be made”.12
Armenians and others followed the Greek example of “creating a
nation-state” by murdering and expelling Turks and other Muslims. The
Crimean Tatars, a Turkic people, were the first to suffer on account of
Russian expansion. The notable exception to the general wholesale murder
or forced migration of Muslims was the Turkish War of National Liberation
(1919-22). But even in its initial period the Greeks had attempted ethnic
cleansing of Turks in Western Anatolia. Very few Western sources
acknowledge Armenian attacks on Muslims. It was Russian expansion and
assistance principally to the Armenians that brought to the Caucasus
Christian demographic and political domination. Just as it was the case in
the Balkans and the Crimea, the Muslims were pushed out, and Christians
brought into new areas. Similar to the case of Sofia in the Balkans,
Erevan was (until 1827) a province with a Muslim majority. The brochure,
entitled Eliminate Turkey and signed by Vahan Cardashian, an Armenian
living in New York, in the year 1918, is another example of the same
“traditional” attitude.13
* * *
Dadrian overlooks the crucial fact that a substantial number of
Armenians, sympathizing with the objectives of the Russian Government,
have fought against the Ottomans (and the Persians) since the last
century. The Armenian political parties14 worked like terrorist
organizations resorting to assassinations and mass violence. They acted as
spies, received arms from abroad15 and eventually welcomed invading
armies. The Armenians programmed, with the Russians nearby, the massacre
of Turks and the forced migration of the remainder, until vast lands would
be emptied for the sovereignty of the Armenian people. Waves of Muslims
such as the Abkhaz, the Chechen, the Circassians, the Daghestanis, the
Ingush and others had no alternative but to escape to Anatolia.
The Armenian-Turkish conflict escalated on the eve of the First World
War and reached a climax during the white heat of war conditions. It may
be appropriate to refer, at this point, to two important Armenian sources.
Hovhannes Kachaznouni, one of the prominent leaders of the Dashnak Party
and the first Prime Minister of the independent Armenian Republic, wrote:
“...When Turkey had not yet entered the war...Armenian volunteer groups
began to be organized with great zeal and pomp in Trans Caucasia. In spite
of the decision taken a few weeks before at the General Committee in
Erzurum, the Dashnagtzoutune actively helped the organization of the
aforementioned groups, and especially arming them, against Turkey. In the
Fall of 1914, Armenian volunteer groups were formed and fought against the
Turks...16 Another Armenian wrote: “...The leader of the
Turkish-Armenian section of the Dashnagtzoutune did not carry out their
promise of loyalty to the Turkish cause when the Turks entered the
war...They were swayed in their actions by the interests of the Russian
government...A call was sent for Armenian volunteers to fight the Turks on
the Caucasian front.”17
When the Armenian Catholicos of Etchmiadzin wrote to Count Illarion
Ivanovich Vorontsov-Dashkov, the Russian Governor-General of the Caucasus,
on 5 August 1914, and offered him, in addition to his congregation in
Russia, “the sincere devotion of the Armenians in Turkey”,18 the
Russian official wished that the actions of the Armenians on both sides of
the border would be in accordance with his “instructions”. He added:
“I should like to request you, through the exertion of your influence on
your congregation, in case of a Russo-Turkish war, to ensure that our own
Armenians, together with the Armenians inhabiting the border regions,
perform the duties that will be given to them, both under the present
circumstances prevalent in Turkey and also in the future.”19
Dadrian quotes U.S. Ambassador Henry Morgenthau who wrote that “the
Armenians all over Turkey sympathized with the Entente” (p. 186). This
is not the whole truth. Armenian “sympathy” entailed, according to
Armenian sources in addition to a wealth of Ottoman documents, systematic,
and not just sporadic, resort to sabotage and armed revolt. The Armenians
deserted the Ottoman armies en masse. They revolted in a number of places,
destroying telegraph lines, killing officials, soldiers and civilians, and
looting arsenals. They formed troops under the command of their own men
and also under that of Russian officers. They facilitated the advance of
Russian armies, and obstructed the retreat of Turkish troops. They
attacked Muslim quarters and villages, burning houses, and tearing down
everything Muslim.
Dadrian’s totally misleading assertion that when the Turks began to
“rape Armenian girls and women” these clashes were reported to Ottoman
authorities “as instances of Armenian ‘rebellion’” (p. 185) is
negated by a wealth of even Armenian documents. There are ample Armenian
publications to prove their extensive involvement in the war on the side
of Turkey’s enemies. For instance, Garo Pasdermadjian, former Armenian
deputy in the Ottoman Parliament, who defected to become the commanding
general of the sizable Armenian troops, argued later that Armenian
participation in armed hostilities was the leading factor in the winning
of the war.20 In another book, he defended the view that there ought to be
an independent Armenia because of Armenia’s role in the war.21
Pasdermadjian’s books tell, from first-hand experience, Armenian
belligerency in contradiction to Dadrian’s terribly minimizing
assertions. Armenian General Gabriel Gorgarian also published a series of
articles on the subject.22 Several regiments and battalions were formed
under the command of Garo, Antranik, Kari, Vartan, Hamazasp, Dro, Khatcho,
Mourat and others.
Many civilian Armenians expose the same undeniable fact. For instance,
Bogos Nubar, the head of the Armenian delegation to the Paris Peace
Conference, in an official letter dated 30 November 1918, and addressed to
the French Foreign Minister S. Pichon, states that the “Armenians, since
the beginning of the war, had been de facto belligerents” (... les Arméniens,
dès le début de la guerre, ont été des belligérents de facto). Bogos
Nubar’s separate letter on the same subject was printed in The Times of
London.23 A.P. Hacobian, another Armenian writer, admits that the
Armenians cut through the Turkish lines and helped the “Russian
cause”. He adds that the “Armenian support contributed very materially
to the success of Russian arms in the Caucasian theatre of the war.”24
There are also sufficient Western publications, for instance, British and
French books and articles,25 proving Armenian belligerency, and not just
ostensibly misunderstood isolated events of minor importance.
Dadrian writes that Turkey entered the First World War “by a
preemptive attack on Russian seaports” (p. 7), hinting that its
government was eager to participate in the armed hostilities to start the
relocation of its Armenian citizens. In fact, it was Admiral Souchon, the
German commanding officer of the Battleship Goeben (renamed Yavuz), who
opened fire on Russian positions in the Black Sea, destroying several
ships and dragging Turkey into the war. Several Ottoman cabinet members
“were furious and got Enver Pasha to send a cease-fire order to Souchon
as well as apologies to the Entente governments. But it was too late.”26
While quoting Cemâl Pa?a, who stated in his Memoirs27 that their
objective was to free Turkey from measures which constituted a blow to
internal independence, Dadrian construes it to mean to be free to deal
with the Armenian minority. It was, in fact, the elimination of the Public
Debt (Duyun-u Umumiye), which had a monopoly over the revenues of the
country, that the Turkish leaders had in mind. The revenues were turned
over to that commission to help pay off the foreign bondholders. The
representatives of Europe’s financial and political leaders were given
control over Ottoman revenues, which they would administer and collect.
The first agreement to this effect was reached with Sultan Abdülhamid II
in 1879 and supported by a series of decrees between then and 1882. When
the famous Decree of Muharrem (1881) was announced, the Public Debt
Commission was established outside the Ministry of Finance with one
delegate each from six foreign states and one from the Ottoman Empire, as
well as a special representative of the Galata bankers. Thus, a foreign
commission was created as a separate Ottoman treasury to collect taxes.
The measure in the minds of the Young Turk leaders, and later the Kemalist
government, concerned the fiscal privileges of foreign circles which
reduced governmental income and contradicted the principle of sovereignty.
Whatever the subject matter may be, it is the prerogative of any
government to prevent foreign powers from interfering in domestic affairs,
now a principle of international law, explicitly expressed in Article 2/7
of the United Nations Charter. Almost endless examples may be cited from
recent history of Asian, African and Latin American countries proving such
interferences. Especially the 19th century is full of them, Russia
pursuing its own objectives in the Balkans and the Caucasus, France in the
Levant, Germany in the Drang Nach Osten policy, and Britain in overseas
areas.
Dadrian also conveniently eliminates from his narrative the very
crucial Armenian revolt in Van, the massacre of the Turks in that far
eastern city, and the Armenian cooperation with the approaching Russian
army. Such actions, apart from being against law, national and the
international, triggered the reaction of relocating the Armenians.
The Armenians of Zeitun rebelled immediately after the Ottoman
Government decreed mobilization (3 August 1914). While the Russians
started distributing arms to the Armenian deserters, the first Ottoman
report (29 November 1914) focussed on the planned Van rebellion. The
Turkish governor there suggested sending Muslim (not Armenian) families to
safer areas in Western Anatolia to protect them from Armenian assaults.
Turkish men were at the fronts facing the enemy. The Van rebellion finally
occurred on 17 April 1915. The rebels opened fire on Ottoman police
stations and on the Muslim quarters. The Turkish governor ordered the
evacuation of Van. After the Russians entered Van, the rebellion spread to
neighbouring Mu?. The Russians, who nevertheless exploited Armenian
violence and separatism for their own ends, frequently moved towards areas
within Ottoman sovereignty but with some Armenian population.
It is important to remember at this point that the British began the
naval action against the Dardanelles on 19 February 1915, and occupied the
island of Lemnos as a base, four days later. It was on the 18th of March
that Admiral de Robeck and eighteen warships tried to force the Turkish
Straits. About a month later, 75,000 men under the command of Sir Ian
Hamilton succeeded in landing at several places at the tip of the Gelibolu
(Gallipoli) peninsula, while Australian troops made a feint farther north,
and a French force landed on the Asiatic side. There was a landing at
Suvla after many additional divisions had been sent out from Britain.
The Anglo-Indian forces took Qurna from the Turks in the Mesopotamian
theater (9 December 1914). Sir John Nixon repulsed Turkish attacks on
British positions near Basra (11-13 April 1915). General Charles V.F.
Townshend took the town of Amara (3 June 1915) on the Tigris, and then
Nasiriya on the Euphrates (25 July 1915). A general British advance toward
Baghdad started, and the Turkish retreat as far as Aziziya took place
after the Battle of Kut-al Amara (28 September 1914). The Turkish forces
near the Suez Canal, the Sinai Peninsula and Palestine retreated during
the campaigns of 1915 and 1916.
It was during the climax of Armenian-Russian cooperation against the
Turks that the British and the French warships were trying to pass through
the Dardanalles, the Suez Canal operation was progressing in the Palestine
front, and the British had started moving upward from Basra and Baghdad,
both Ottoman provinces. What Dadrian never mentions is the fact that every
part of Eastern Anatolia was subject to attacks by Armenian brigands while
Turkish men capable of bearing arms were fighting at Gelibolu, the
Caucasian front, Palestine and Mesopotamia.
* * *
There are numerous Western sources that prove Armenian desertions to
the Russian army, series of local revolts, and Armenian cooperation with
Turkey’s wartime enemy in various ways. Clair Price28 writes that the
Armenian bands “captured Van...and having massacred the Turkish
population, they surrendered what remained of the city to the Russian
armies.” He adds: “The news from Van affected the Turks precisely as
the news from Smyrna affected them when the Greeks landed there in May
1919.” In his words, “streams of Turkish refugees were pouring
westward into central Asia Minor. The British had launched their
Dardanelles campaign at the very gates of Constantinople.” The British
appealed, in the meantime, “for funds to equip these [Armenian]
volunteers.”
Rafael de Nogales29 states that Garo Pasdermadjian, the Armenian deputy
in the Ottoman parliament, “passed over with almost all the Armenian
troops and officers of the Third Army to the Russians...burning hamlets
and mercilessly putting to the knife all of the peaceful Musulman
villagers that fell into their hands.” He adds: “The altogether
unjustifiable desertion of the Armenian troops, united to the outrages
they committed outwards, on their return,...did not fail to alarm the
Turks and rouse their fear lest the rest of the Armenian population in the
frontier provinces of Van and Erzurum revolt likewise, and attack them
with the sword. This indeed is precisely what happened.”
Stating that “thousands of Russian bombs and muskets were found” in
the hands in the Dashnag members, Felix Valyi also concurred30 that the
Armenians “seized the town of Van, established an Armenian ‘General
Staff’ there under the command of Aram and Vardan, which delivered up
the town to the Russians troops.” M. Philips Price also says: “When
war broke out, the Armenians of these regions made secret contact with the
Russian authorities in the Caucasus.”31 Philip de Zara, then, asks:
“How can anyone deny that, in the opinion of the Turks, according to the
law of all states, the conduct of the Armenians, facilitating during the
war the task of the adversary, can be recognized as anything but a crime
of high treason?”32 French General M. Larcher observed that “the
Armenian population in the zone of operations overtly exhibited a common
cause with the Russians...some migrating to Transcaucasia... [and]
frequently attacking Turkish convoys.” He noted that “the loyalty of
the Armenians recruited in the Turkish troops seemed doubtful.”33
* * *
The articles in the Journal of Political and Military Sociology
frequently refer to a number of oft-used sources, such as Morgenthau,
Bryce, Lepsius and Werfel. They treat such sources, and others inspired by
them, as authoritative and trustworthy.
It is quite possible to disagree with them. Ambassador Morgenthau’s
Story, for instance, is a book by a former New York real estate developer
who was rewarded by President Woodrow Wilson, a year after his election,
with a political appointment to Istanbul. His book, written in 1918, and
focussing on the Armenian episode, had great impact. Reprinted several
times, it is still in print, and is cited on the floor of the U.S.
Congress. There are frequent references to it, including quotations of
passages that appear even in American high school texts.
Dr. Heath W. Lowry is an American scholar and a leading Turcologist,
who published a brilliant academic monograph entitled The Story Behind
Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story.34 Utilizing the public collection of
papers relating to Morgenthau, he ably questioned the credibility of the
Morgenthau book as a source to explain the events of 1915. They are in the
Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress and consist of 30,000 items
in 41 reels of microfilm. He consulted the Morgenthau Papers in the F.D.
Roosevelt Presidential Library in New York, and analyzed the personal
papers of the late Burton J. Hendrick who “ghosted” the Morgenthau
book. He traced sons, cousins and other relatives to check information.
But he relied on first-hand material, such as Morgenthau’s “Diary”,
his family “Letters”, his cabled dispatches and written reports. These
materials present another story, much more reliable than that wartime
printed propaganda piece.
Ambassador Henry Morgenthau’s book was also a key source for three
influential wartime anti-Turkish books - the publications by Lord Bryce,
the German Pastor Dr. Johannes Lepsius and young Arnold J. Toynbee. The
so-called “Blue Book” was an important British war propaganda
publication. Toynbee, later a celebrated historian but then a young man,
worked in the preparation of this biased work. In his later book, The
Western Question in Greece and Turkey, he confessed that the “Blue
Book” was a piece of war propaganda.35 Many of the stories published by
Toynbee in the wartime period were apparently supplied through Ambassador
Morgenthau. At times, Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey’s signature was
added to such publicity material to give it an official look. Grey was a
total ignoramus with respect to Armenian-Turkish relations.
With regard to the Armenians, Lord Bryce was also a propagandist.
Morgenthau became acquainted with him during the course of a trip to
Palestine (1914). In a letter (7 August 1915) to Morgenthau, Bryce asked
the U.S. ambassador to provide him with material that he could use in
Wellington House’s propaganda schemes. This “house” was actually a
secret office for a committee, headed by C.F.G. Masterman, to serve war
propaganda. It issued 17 million copies of such publications only in the
United Kingdom.
Morgenthau was also the main source for the German Lepsius. Who was Dr.
Johannes Lepsius? Having decided on a strategy to further German influence
among the Armenians of the Caucasus, the Germans searched for ways and
means, during the war, of being popular in some Armenian circles. They
were planning a “White Book” to impress, not only the Armenians, but
also the Germans and Allied public opinion. No one could be a better
instrument than Lepsius, who, in the words of Frank G. Weber, was not
objective,36 his sources of information being the Armenians in Ystanbul
and Ambassador Morgenthau. Having dined with Lepsius (3 August 1915),
having had several other talks and having received the authorization of
Washington, D.C. to pass material to him, Morgenthau was certainly a key
source for the Lepsius work.
Morgenthau was also influential in creating pro-Armenian and
anti-Turkish public opinion in the United States. He achieved these
purposes initially through his role as a provider of one-sided information
to Toynbee, Bryce and Lepsius, and then publishing a book that bears his
name. He had returned to the United States in early 1916. In a letter to
President Wilson (26 November 1917), he expressed the desire to write an
anti-German and anti-Turkish book to increase support for Wilson’s war
effort. It was intended as wartime propaganda. When he was about to give
up the idea, he received the president’s blessing, and started serious
negotiations with the printers. The book was finished within a year of
Morgenthau’s letter to Wilson. It was first serialized in The World’s
Work (circulation: 120,000), then appeared in the largest newspapers
(combined circulation: 2,630,256), and was finally published in book form
by Doubleday, Page and Company (22,234 copies). Morgenthau also received a
Hollywood offer for film rights. But Wilson disapproved, saying that they
had gone far enough.
It is the duty of scholars to establish how credible that book is as a
source of history. It is still a primary source, as the “observation of
a bystander” who asserts a “premeditated massacre or genocide.” This
book has served to shape public opinion in the world. Decades later after
its first appearance, it is still being reprinted, and quoted in speech
and in writing. Not only has it been used as reference by politicians and
writers, it has probably influenced many young Armenians who assassinated
Turkish diplomats and bystanders.
Dr. Lowry’s monograph is a fine example of scholarly investigation
and the desire to find out the truth. In the world of academics, after
Lowry’s book, the Morgenthau propaganda should be laid to rest. Lowry
exposes concrete clues right from primary sources as to who wrote the
Morgenthau book, and how it was written.
Among the collections of Morgenthau papers, there is a transcript
called “Diary”, which apparently was typed by Hagop S. Andonian, a
Turkish-Armenian. Morgenthau also wrote lengthy weekly letters to members
of his family. They were likewise prepared by the same Andonian. The
American ambassador writes that this relieved him “of all responsibility
for any errors.” These writings formed the basis of the future book that
created a sensation and which is still regarded in some quarters as if it
is a reliable source of history.
Andonian, formerly a student at the (American) Robert College, had
become Morgenthau’s personal secretary. He bears the same family name
with Aram Andonian, who published the so-called “official documents”37
that the Turkish scholars proved to be forged.38 Hagop Andonian left
Turkey with the ambassador to assist him with the book. Morgenthau writes
that his services were “indispensable.”
Another key Armenian was Arshag K. Schmavonian, interpreter and
advisor. Morgenthau knew none of the languages spoken in Istanbul. He
accompanied the ambassador on almost every official visit and also to
meetings with American businessmen and missionaries. He assisted the
ambassador in the writing of his cables. He was also transferred to
Washington, where he remained “Special Advisor” in the employ of the
U.S. State Department.
Still another participant was U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing,
who read and commented upon every page of the manuscript before it was
published in instalments or in book form. He made notes suggesting
alterations or omissions. Lansing asked Morgenthau, in a letter dated 2
October 1918, not to mention his name in connection with the book. The
book itself came from the skilled hand of the Pulitzer Prize winning
journalist Burton J. Hendrick, in whose mind the actual concept of the
book, according to Hendrick’s letter of 7 April 1916 to Morgenthau,
seems to have originated. As another letter, dated 5 July 1918, proves,
Hendrick was guaranteed, throughout the lifetime of the book, forty
percent of the profits. Some months before he died (1949), Hendrick stated
that he had the job of ‘ghosting’ Morgenthau’s book.
Then, what may more or less be called a “committee”, composed of
two Armenians, the eyes and ears of Morgenthau, Secretary Lansing and
journalist Hendrick collectively brought out a publication, which includes
“statements” also by the Ottoman Ministers Talât and Enver, given in
quotation marks. The latter look as if they want to condemn themselves
which certainly suits the tastes of Andonian, Schmavonian, Lansing and
Hendrick, but which has no basis in reliable records. Hendrick portrayed
the Turkish leaders as thoroughly inhuman characters. Author Dadrian has a
similar disposition. Alleged conversations have no foundation even in
Morgenthau’s “Diary” and the “Letters”. Dr. Lowry, who carefully
examined everything written by Morgenthau, could not locate a single
reference to some very important alleged conversations. Apart from
outright inventions, the “authors” take rumors and put them in the
mouths of Turkish leaders - moreover, in quotation marks. The authors,
united in anti-Turkish propaganda and “victory for war policies”, try
to portray the Ottoman ministers as criminals publicly boasting of their
crimes. They take rumors, through interpreter Armenians, and credit them
to the Turkish leaders. They feel utterly free to change, add, subtract
and quote. An example of a Lansing contribution in pencil: “...with the
usual insincere oriental politeness.” Consequently, there are also
out-and-out contradictions between two statements signed by Morgenthau. In
one (Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story, p. 20) Talât Pa?a is made to say
that he “scoffed at all religions and hated all priests, rabbis and
hodjas”, but in another (“Diary” for 10 July 1914) that he is “the
most religious” in the Ottoman Cabinet.
There is at least one other book by George A. Schreiner, who was also
in Turkey as Morgenthau’s contemporary and who finds the American
ambassador’s books “remarkably unreliable”.39 He adds that Talât
Pa?a was “on the best terms” with Morgenthau.40
* * *
There are likewise frequent references to the events at Musa Dagh and
to a certain Franz Werfel who wrote a novel about it. Werfel’s
now-famous novel, Die vierzig Tage des Musa Dagh, is supposed to be a
modern saga of a persecuted minority, determined to fight back. Roger W.
Smith writes: “The evidence Dadrian presents attests to the fact that
the Armenians were defending themselves from exterminatory assaults” (p.
vi). Werfel’s American edition41 brought the novel worlwide fame. His
book is not a documentary, not meant to be a scholarly work. It is a tale,
in which he makes Enver and Talât Pa?as converse, according to Werfel’s
own perception and fancy, planning the “genocide”. Werfel writes that
Talât’s “fat fingers... composed... [the] order, sent out to all
valis (governors) and mutasarryfs: ‘The goal of these deportations is
annihilation.’” There is not a single genuine document bearing the
signature of Talât Pa?a or of any other Ottoman dignitary to that effect.
The assertion of anyone that this was in the mind of Talât Pa?a is not an
acceptable argument.
People “learn”, nevertheless, not from dispassionate and
non-partisan studies, but from sensational fancy work. For instance,
although the Hollywood movie (Amadeus) on composer Mozart, granted a
successful piece of drama, depicts Salieri as a minor but ambitious and
wicked man in the world of music, the latter, far from being a black
character, was a first rate man of this branch of art, who had given
lessons to Schubert. Very few interested people will endeavour to read
enough of history of music to place Mozart and Salieri in a fair
perspective.
Werfel records the Armenian uprising in Van occurring after the
relocation order. The truth is just the opposite. The uprising was not a
desperate attempt of self-defence. It took place about two months before
the relocation, which developed as a consequence of the revolt. This
crucial historical fact is presented head over heels by Werfel, who relied
on Armenian sources and Johannes Lepsius’s book Deutschland und
Armenien.42 Although shockingly biased, Lepsius, nevertheless, presents
Cemâl Pa?a, one of the ruling Ottoman Triumvirate, in a comparatively
better shade. So does Werfel in the German original. But the American
“censor” apparently crossed out, in the English translation, even that
minute point. After all, there should be no favourable reference, even if
a small one, to someone (Cemâl Pa?a) assassinated by the Armenians.
An Austrian writer quotes Abraham Sou Sever, a Sephardic Jew born in
Izmir (Turkey) and later emigrated to the United States: “My dear
departed friend, Franz Werfel, who wrote that book, The Forty Days of Musa
Dagh, never was in that region to investigate what he wrote. He wrote it
as his Armenian friends in Vienna had told him. Before his death, Werfel
told me that he felt ashamed for the many falsehoods and fabrications the
Armenians had foisted on him. But he dared not confess publicly for fear
of death by the Dashnag terrorists.”43 Sever also said that thousands of
Armenians, all armed, ascended the summit of that mountain after
provisioning it to withstand siege. Daily sallies from that summit of
armed bands attacked the rear of the Ottoman armies, and disappeared into
the mountain. It stood siege for forty days, an indication of the
preparations the Armenians had made. They had been fostered, organized,
financed and supplied with arms by the Russians. The thousands who
occupied the summit escaped by descending the mountain and reaching the
Mediterranean coast, where they communicated with the French and the
British naval ships. They were taken aboard, only a small contingent of
Armenians remaining behind, who finally surrendered to the Turks.
* * *
Dadrian does not make it clear that it was under these circumstances
that the ringleaders of the Armenians were arrested on 24 April 1915, in
Istanbul, and the decision to relocate them taken afterwards. They were
not deported or expelled to a foreign country. Wherever they were sent, be
it Aleppo, Damascus or Musul, all of these cities were then within the
Ottoman frontiers. They were not headed for a camp or prison. In some
areas, individuals who had not taken part in any terrorist or treasonable
activity were also transferred from one place to another, and even
arrested. But, on the other hand, on some occasions, this was cause for
instructions from the Ottoman Government to avoid their repetition.44
However, as Enver Pa?a’s communication, dated 2 May 1915, to Talât Pa?a
indicates, the Armenians were relocated in such a way that they would not
form large communities, minimizing the chance of a rebellion.45
The 24th of April was the day when 235 people were arrested in the
Ottoman capital. The Council of Ministers adopted, on 30 May 1915, the
temporary law to “transfer and settle Armenians in other quarters”.
The law was temporary because the Ottoman Parliament was not in session.
It opened on 15 September, and approved the temporary law, which included
provisions that should the relocated be attacked, the assailants would be
court-martialled. The elaborate procedures to govern the forced migration
could not be properly applied. When news that some convoys were attacked
reached the Ottoman authorities, written messages were sent, stating that
every possible measure ought to be taken to protect the Armenians, and
those guilty of violence be punished. No less than 1,397 individuals who
failed to comply with these instructions were indeed punished, including
executions. Their conviction proves that the Ottoman authorities were
willing to call to justice those responsible, at least many of them, for
the deaths. Those convicted may not be as many as some people may desire,
or punishments may not be as severe as some would prefer. It is
unfortunate that there are always some who escape justice. But there were
trials, accusations and punishment - all taking place in Ottoman courts.
A national court was set up to try and punish its own nationals. An
Inquiry Commission was also formed in the Ottoman Chamber of Deputies.
This occurred while parts of the country, including the capital, were
under foreign occupation. While it was true that some individuals,
officials as well as some private citizens were guilty of neglect,
mismanagement or outright murder, there was, in addition, a tendency
especially in the governmental circles of the capital to appease the
victorious powers. Ali Kemal, Behramzade Nusret and Abdullah Avni, the
first two lieutenant-governors, and the third gendarmerie commander, were
condemned to death and executed. All of the condemned men who had fled,
except Dr. Nazym, were assassinated by Armenians - Talât Pa?a and
Bahaeddin ?akir in Berlin, Cemâl Pa?a in Tbilisi, and Enver Pa?a in
Central Asia.
No matter what kind of terminology may be used by some writers, the
event that they are supposed to describe is the transfer or relocation of
the bulk of the Armenian population, most of whom, as Bogos Nubar admitted
in his aforementioned written statement to the French Foreign Minister,
have reached their destinations, but some unfortunately perished from
general war conditions as well as attacks of criminals. The Armenians
participated, in addition, in about a dozen armed conflicts between the
years 1914 and 1922, costing Armenian and non-Armenian lives.
Relocation took place for reasons of security. It also involved some
Armenians residing in Bursa, Eski?ehir or Konya and even in Istanbul, none
of which are in Eastern Anatolia, not because they were Armenians but
because they had, or believed to have had, connections with terrorist or
treasonable acts in the east. Security forces, generally well-informed,
may have erred in some cases. Some reactions might be uncalled for, some
acts may be overzealous, and circumstances may provoke criminally inclined
or revengeseeking people to indulge in murder and robbery. The descendants
of the Armenians in Istanbul today prove that not everyone was involved in
the relocation.
One cannot generalize on the basis of fanaticism or intrigues of
certain individuals, Bahaeddin ?akir for instance, that the whole
relocation was actually a cloak for ultimate destruction. There were also
other Turks who made accusations and helped sentence the culprits, except
those who eluded justice by flight or other tricks. No matter how some
writers (including the celebrated Turkish professor Taryk Zafer Tunaya)
might have translated certain Ottoman words (“taktil”, for instance,
meaning “killing”, Dadrian’s articles in the Journal of Political
and Military Sociology, pp. 35 and 130), the only possible conclusion
still stands true that there is no evidence in the Ottoman archives
supporting the view that the central Ottoman Government planned or
executed the massacre of the Armenians.
There are also frequent references to Pan-Turkism as an argument for
the removal of the Armenians from places of origin. To properly gauge the
weight of this argument, it is important to remember that the ideas
related to Turkism did not even originate in the Ottoman Empire or later
in the Republic of Turkey, but in the diaspora. In this way, it differs
from Pan-Hellenism, Pan-Germanism or Pan-Italianism. Moreover, Turkism,
which originated among the Turkic peoples living outside the Ottoman
Empire, emphasized similarity in language, literature, folklore and
history. Further, its propagators felt themselves justified because they
had more than their share of competitors or opponents in the forms of
Pan-Slavism of Tsarist Russia, the Megali Idea of the Greeks and the
racism or the irredentism of some other neighbours. Many other nations
usually had only one “opponent image”. Finally, Pan-Turkism never went
beyond acknowledging the fact that there is an obvious cultural affinity
among all Turkic-speaking peoples.
It should be well-known that it originated in the diaspora, mainly in
response to the pan-ideologies of other nations. The official Tsarist
policy of Russification, often accompanied with Christianization, provoked
the Turkic groups in the Tsarist empire, principally the Tatars, to be
increasingly aware of common ties with each other. The spokesman for the
Tatars was Ismail Gaspyraly (1851-1914), the mayor of the Crimean town of
Bahçesaray, who founded a Turkish newspaper (Tercüman) and devised a new
standard school curriculum introducing the Turkish language as a means of
instruction. His ideas were repeated by other Turkic intellectual circles
in Azerbaijan and Central Asia. These ideas were carried to Istanbul by
leading Tatars and Azerbaijanis, who had left Russia. But the Turks,
influenced by these ideas to a certain extent, never totally abandoned
Ottomanism or Pan-Islamism.
On the other hand, much of the history of the Balkans, Anatolia, the
Crimea and the Caucasus cannot be understood without discussing systematic
Muslim (mostly Turkish) massacres and forced migrations. The unity of the
other ethnic and religious groups was accomplished through the expulsion
of the Muslims. For about a century, the new states were founded on the
suffering of the Muslims, mainly Turks.
* * *
Contrary to what Dadrian asserts, “intercommunal clashes” and
“wartime privations” (p. 100) are not irrelevant. The view that many
Armenians perished on account of epidemics and general war conditions is
not a propaganda to belittle the events of 1915. In the past centuries,
considerably more soldiers died from sickness and contagious diseases than
from enemy weapons during wars. This was also true for the Ottoman scene
during the First World War, and affected both Turks and Armenians.46 The
Turkish army losses in the war were tremendous, the number of dead from
disease reaching figures unheard of in the 20th century wars. The
Armenians lived and fought on Ottoman territory almost under the same
conditions, suffering huge losses, just like the Turks. For instance, a
Frenchman’s article in the Paris-based journal Turcica47 informs us that
when the French, evacuating the Turkish town of Mara? in February 1920,
took with them about 5,000 Armenians, half of the latter died on account
of exceptional difficulties connected with the journey.
One should also add that Talât Pa?a allowed the American missionaries
to do relief work among the Armenians, in spite of the fact that Turkey
and the United States were on the opposing camps during the war. How many
examples are there in history of a combatant country permitting the
citizens of another country fighting in the other camp to stay, feed,
cloth and educate the people it is accused of exterminating?
Several civil and conventional wars took many more Armenian lives than
generally acknowledged by contemporary Armenian writers. Plentiful
evidence support the view that there had been an armed Armenian uprising
behind the Turkish Eastern Front, and that Armenian guerillas, assisted by
the Russians, fought on the side of the Tsarist armies. Hostilities
continued between the Turks and the Armenians after the Bolshevik
Revolution. Sections of Armenians participated in the civil war in the
Caucasus during and after the triumph of Communism in Russia and the
adjacent territories. There had been a conventional war between the Ankara
government and the independent Armenian Republic immediately after the
creation of the latter. There have also been conventional wars between the
same independent Armenian Republic, on the one hand, and Georgia and
Azerbaijan, on the other. Professor Falk writes (p. ii) in the Journal
that the Armenians have “reexperienced the reality of atrocity in
relation to the unresolved fight over the future of Nagorno-Karabagh
region.” That region is legally a part of Azerbaijan, and the Armenians
are holding it as occupied territory, contrary to international law. Back
in the 1920s, while the Armenians conducted a war against the Azeris, some
Armenians revolted against the authority of the newly-created Armenian
Soviet Republic. The Armenians joined forces with the French against the
Turks in Southern Anatolia. Armenian irregular units have also
participated in the Turco-Greek War of 1919-1922.
In all these armed conflicts, whether civil wars, guerilla warfare,
underground fighting or outright conventional wars, the Armenians
inflicted sufferings on other peoples, but they themselves also died in
the process. A consequence of these conflicts was that many Turks lost
their lives as well. Some Turks were also victims during the whole
duration of the First World War and after. While whole Turkish cities,
towns and villages became ruins, and Muslim corpses filled ditches and
wells, before the Bolshevik Revolution, the dramatic events following 1917
left the armed Armenians, whether regular soldiers or irregular bands, as
the only authority in parts of Eastern Anatolia. The whole region was a
graveyard after the Armenian retreat. The Armenians destroyed everything
on their road. A number of foreigners witnessed these pillages and
murders.48
While Professors Dadrian, Falk and Smith do not see the evidence of
Armenian crimes, especially some recent Turkish publications include
interviews with elderly people as well as a host of new documents prove
Armenian mass murder of Turks in various corners of Eastern Anatolia,
principally in Van, Kars, Bitlis and Erzurum.49 The Turkish documents
complement grandiloquence in the memoirs of Armenian commanders or
spokesmen that they have wiped out enemy forces or groups.
* * *
Professor Falk further states that the Turkish state has
“outrageously muddied the waters of truth by obscuring and distorting
the story of Armenian genocide in the 1915-18 period” and that the
“shameful” ongoing campaign of the same disseminated “various
fabrications of the historical record, and through cajolery and
intimidation.” He adds that Turkish accounts were “shoddy
propaganda” or “inept or disingenuous scholarship” (p. i).
An appropriate reminder in respect to “intimidation”: Fred C. Ikle,
United States Under Secretary of Defence for Policy defined the Armenian
terrorist attacks against Turkish diplomats and property as “one of the
most dangerous and most neglected of all terrorist movements.”50 In the
past, Armenian terrorists murdered official diplomatic representatives of
the Turkish state and members of their families as well as non-Turks.
Turkish embassies and consulates in Athens, Beirut, Berne, Brussels,
Lisbon, Los Angeles, Lyons, Madrid, Ottowa, Paris, The Hague, and Vienna,
as well as Turkish delegations in various places, including the Turkish
center at the United Nations, have been attacked. Some Turkish consulates
have been seized, occupied and officials inside have been killed and
wounded. Turkish Airlines offices in Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Frankfurt,
Geneva, London, Milan, Paris and Rome as well as non-Turkish airline
offices such as Air France, Alitalia, British Airways, El Al, KLM,
Lufthansa, Pan Am, Sabena, Swissair, and TWA were bombed, the latter for
their commercial relations with Turkey. Several foreign governments such
as Canada, France, Italy, Portugal, Sweden, and Switzerland were
threatened for having brought legal proceedings against Armenian
terrorists. The Turkish folk dances had to be cancelled in California on
account of various intimidations, and Armenian groups broke up a Turkish
history class in Los Angeles and bombed the residence of an university
professor (Stanford J. Shaw), who went into hiding. Dr. Falk, as professor
of international law and practice, knows that all of these activities are
against accepted legality. The legal evidence of all these events and
others are available. But Dr. Falk mentions so-called “initimidation”
of the Turkish Government without bothering to explain what he means.
Quite a few Turkish publications on this issue are compilations of
reliable documents, (exposing several Armenian falsifications), and
individual scholarly works. I am aware from personal experience as well
that Armenian propagandists frequently demanded the “release of Ottoman
documents” but resisted using them when they contradicted their choice
of conclusions. I participated, on the basis of invitation by two French
courts, as a “witness of authority” (témoin d’autorité) in the
trials of Armenian terrorist groups, one concerning the occupation of the
Turkish Consulate-General, the murder of a Turkish official and the
wounding of another, and the other involving the explosion of a bomb at
the Orly Airport shedding the blood of some sixty people. I was asked by
the lawyers of the defendants as to when the Ottoman documents would be
available. A vast amount of Ottoman documents are indeed available in the
form of series of printed material, often with transliterations and
translations, or in microfilm, distributed world-wide, including various
governments and leading libraries.51 Thousands of reliable Ottoman
documents, printed by Turks and setting the issue in a balanced
perspective, are not utilized by those who wish to persist in presenting
the Turks only in an adverse light.
The Turks have also published various studies exposing a number of
falsifications. For instance, one of my publications carries this very
title: The Andonian “Documents”, Attributed to Talat Pasha, Are
Forgeries!52 An Armenian writer, Aram Andonian, who had separately
published (1920) a book in three languages (English, French and Armenian),
either referred to or printed 48-50 so-called “documents” that he
attributed to the Ottoman leaders, principally to Talât Pa?a, war-time
(1914-18) Ottoman leader. Turkish scholars analyzed them and concluded
that the book was based on forgeries. Andonian has never been able to show
the originals of the so-called “documents”, because there are no such
documents. What he calls “telegrams” have been fabricated by him and
his circle. He later said that he “lost” them. Some circles entertain
the wrong conviction that the German court, which tried Soghomon
Tehlirian, Talât Pa?a’s assassin, had accepted these “documents” as
authentic and as evidence (1921). Even Tehlirian’s counsel (Von Gordon)
had to withdraw them, and the German prosecutor said that he knew of
“documents”, carrying the signatures of high dignitaries, later proved
to be falsifications. While the victors of the First World War were
searching all corners for such documents to accuse the Ottoman leaders,
then detained in the Island of Malta, they chose not to assess the
“telegrams” fabricated by Andonian.
The British could not also use the so-called “Ten Commandments”
which Professor Smith rashly considers as “further proof of the
existence of a central plan for genocide” (p. vi). What Dadrian presents
as a Turkish “document” is a correspondence between the British High
Commission in Istanbul (which Dadrian still calls Constantinople) and the
Foreign Office in London in early 1919 (p. 173f). Where is the original of
that “document”?
Forgeries are too common in history to be considered impossible.
Referring to writer Gwynne Dyer, Dadrian says that “the British
eventually ignored the document” (p. 193). They chose to ignore it while
they were searching the whole Ottoman archives for a single reliable
document to be used against Turkish leadership and moreover reaching to
other archives in search for similar material. The British, in fact, did
everything they could, but the 118 individuals, including the former
Ottoman premier and other high dignitaries, had to be released from
Malta.53
The British knew that these so-called “documents” could not be
relied upon. For instance, Aram Andonian himself admits, in a letter (26
July 1937) to an Armenian lady (Mary Terzian) residing in Geneva
(Switzerland) that his book was not an historical piece, but a propaganda
work, and that others used it freely in the way that they preferred. In
terms of appearance and contents, the Andonian “documents” abound in
various factual errors, omissions and contradictions that give him away.
These supposed papers, in the way they were printed in Andonian’s books,
are not the kind used by the old Ottoman bureaucracy. In fact, no papers
were used but various cryptogram systems at different times, during the
war. But Andonian’s ciphering does not agree with the coding complex
that we have in the Ottoman archives. Apparently, the Armenian writer has
made up a cipher system of his own. The dimensions of the forgery gain
more gravity especially when the confusion involving dates and numbers of
the “documents” that Andonian seems to have fixed are analyzed. He has
committed blunders on account of his ignorance concerning the difference
between the Julian and the Gregorian calendars. Not knowing the
intricacies of this system, Andonian made miscalculations in putting
“appropriate” dates. Sometimes, he errs with a margin of nine months.
He habitually forgets to add the 13 days to find the Gregorian date. There
is an utter confusion in terms of the numbers of the “documents”. The
numerals on the forged “documents” do not coincide with the numbers
(and the dates) of authentic documents. The corresponding documents in the
Ottoman archives concern the digging up of new artesian wells in the Sinai
Peninsula or the condition of railroad workers. The signatures are forged.
At times, a governor is supposed to have signed an official document
before taking up that post. There are notable differences between the
English and the French texts, words altering, sentences and paragraphs
changing places, and certain phrases disappearing or replaced by others.
The Turkish used is poor at times.
Falsifications in respect to the “Armenian question” are not
confined to the Andonian “telegrams”. Another falsification concerns a
“statement” wrongly attributed to Adolf Hitler. While talking to his
generals in Obersalzburg a week before (22 August 1939) the attack on
Poland, the German dictator is supposed to have said: “I have given
orders to my Death Units to exterminate without mercy or pity men, women
and children belonging to the Polish-speaking race...After all, who
remembers today the extermination of the Armenians?” This quotation has
appeared in hundreds of publications. Dadrian also asserts that
Armenian-Turkish relations during the First World War “served to
stimulate Hitler to embark upon his own initiatives of genocide” (p.
31). Although even this forged statement makes reference to Poles, and not
the Jews, Dadrian frequently uses terminology of the Jewish genocide. In
Dadrian’s choice of words, even the “responsible secretary” of the
ruling Ottoman party is comparable to the Nazi Gauleiter (p. 99).
This is an attempt to link the planned extermination of European Jewry
in the course of the Second World War to the events connected with
Armenians. First of all, there is no historical basis for attributing such
a statement to Hitler.54 I have traced in a booklet that the Nuremberg
Tribunal accepted two versions of this Hitler talk, initially numbered as
USA-29 and USA-30, refusing to approve a third one. None of these texts
contains such a statement. Likewise, Dr. Lowry traces, in a scholarly
article, the manner in which this purported quote has entered the lexicon
of U.S. Congressmen, and the manner in which it continues to be used by
Armenian-Americans in their efforts to establish a linkage between their
own history and the tragic fate of European Jewry.55
Further, there has been an anti-Jewish sentiment with roots in the
past. Much has been written about anti-Semitism. There are even full
bibliographies on the subject, especially in the European context. Its
roots should be traced to the early forms of sentiments of the
pre-Christian world. In Hellenic times, the Jews, who believed in
monotheism and shared certain ethical considerations, were quite apart
from other groups. Hellenism, with its family of gods and goddesses, and
other sets of values, was a rival to, if not an opponent of, Judaism. In
Roman times as well, Judaism was still a vigorous religion,
“horrifying” many Romans threatened by potential changes in their
imperial civilization. Even when Christianity became the official religion
of the Roman Empire, some of the old prejudices were carried on into the
“Christian” attitudes towards the Jews, and new misconceptions were
added. Apart from the old pagan notion that the “gods” hated the Jews
because the latter did not recognize them gave way to “collective
responsibility” for the crucifixion of Jesus. The entire Jewish
community was considered to be the “culprit”.
Discrimination intensified with the First Crusade, leading to Jewish
massacres and ridiculous accusations of ritual murders, supposedly carried
out by Jews. Renewed and intensified anti-Jewish prejudice was part of an
overall campaign of discrimination, plunder and exploitation. Government
services being closed to them, the Jews indulged more and more in trade,
becoming distinguished as “usurers” and hence target of further
resentment. Such “theological hatred” of the Jews frequently led to
demands that they wear a mark on their clothes. What became tragically
required much later in Nazi Germany had its roots in the Middle Ages.
Centuries before they were hunted in Germany, the Jews were expelled from
a number of European cities, and finally from the Iberian peninsula
(1492). Already held responsible for the “poisoning of wells” and the
plague epidemic, the expelled Jews were welcomed by the Turks of the
Ottoman Empire. Jak V. Kamhi, the President of the Quincentennial
Foundation (1492-1992) in Turkey, said the following at the “Seminar on
Racism and Anti-Semitism” in Istanbul (1995): “The Muslim and the
Jewish faiths...managed to live together in peace and without any kind of
clashes for eight centuries in Spain and six-hundred years in the Ottoman
Empire and the Republic of Turkey.”56
The Reformation, and especially Calvinism, was more understanding
towards the Jews in Protestant areas. Some other “Christians” did not
stop believing in the “inherent evil of the Jews”. This general
picture continued until the 19th century, when the able and hard-working
Jews became part and parcel of the economic, cultural and scientific life
of Europe. It was inevitable that the Jews would create their own
capitalist class in the process. The new allegation that there was an
essential link between Judaism and capitalism, and that the Jews as such
were essentially the exploiting capitalists only missed the point once
more. Capitalism is a socioeconomic formation, replacing feudalism, with
no direct connection with any race or religion. But this basic truth did
not prevent some romantic German nationalists from considering even
assimilated Jews as “aliens” in their homeland, as well as supporters
of left causes from describing them as the enemies of the working classes,
and rightists from seeing a Jewish influence in every leftist move. All
these extremists provided part of the background for the murder of German
and European Jewry in the coming 1930s and the 1940s.
Germany was not the only country where anti-Semitism was rampant. In
France, the allegation that the Jews benefitted most from the fruits of
the French Revolution gave way to accusations that they were plotting to
destroy Christian culture. Such discriminatory sentiments were fanned by
influential publications after the notorious Dreyfus affair, which helped
to institutionalize anti-Semitism in France. Tsarist Russia gave the world
anti-Semitic pogroms, which made life unbearable for the Jews. These
events were parallelled all over Europe by the emergence of pseudo-racial
theories, justifying inequality, and even wars. Racists divided human
beings into “higher” and “lower” races, which in theory gave the
former the “right” for mass annihilation.
It was this historical accumulation that provided the National
Socialists in Germany with the opportunity to use every accusation and
tool of oppression, culminating first in the Nuremberg laws, and then in
genocide. The Nuremberg trials were inevitable. Hundreds of thousands of
captured Nazi documents were assembled as evidence in the trial of the
major Nazi war criminals. One cannot find the oft-repeated Hitler
“statement” among these documents.
Even then, some Armenians and their like-minded colleagues cling to
this so-called “statement” because they wanted to set it into motion
as a “connecting link” with the Jewish genocide. Reliable methodology
in historiography contradicts such a pursuit. It is tremendous injustice
to the Jews and the Turks alike. The Jews have gone through a genocide
another example of which is very difficult to find. Moreover, apart from
the extraordinarily good relations between the Jews and the Turks since
the Middle Ages, Turkey’s role in helping European Jews during the
Holocaust has been largely ignored. As Professor Shaw notes, the world
does not realize the extent to which Turkey, and the Ottoman Empire which
preceded it, over the centuries served as major places of refuge for
people suffering from persecution, Muslims and non-Muslims alike.57 Turkey
was a haven, not only for those who escaped the Inquisition, but also
hundreds of well-known intellectuals during the 1930s58 and thousands of
other less well known persons were rescued.
Extreme right-wing political movements in Western Europe, previously
fringe phenomena, have once again become much more significant.59 The Jews
and the Turks are among the victims of present-day racism, xenophobia, and
intolerance. Some Westerners, apparently, externalize and project their
own unwanted “bad” parts onto the Jews, Turks and others to make
themselves appear “good”.
Still another falsification is a so-called “statement” attributed
to Mustafa Kemâl Atatürk. This founder of the Turkish Republic is
supposed to have confessed Ottoman state responsibility for the
“Armenian genocide”. This statement is false, probably initially
stemming from confusing the celebrated Turk with someone from the Istanbul
military court bearing the same first name. This error, which might have
started as an oversight, a mere misunderstanding or a simple lapsus
linguae, is repeated in print and in word, with the hope of strengthening
a case by “quoting” against the Turks no less an authority than the
founder of their state. While fancy escalates, falsity itself develops
from misapprehension to fraud and trickery. Some Armenian authors have
already printed articles calling the story a “fiction”, and requesting
that “this fable die”. I offered in a booklet60 a summary of the
origins of this apocryphal episode, tracing its growth through some
Armenian and foreign sources, quoting Atatürk as well as the Armenian
writers who have established this fallacy. I reproduced there genuine
Mustafa Kemâl letters, among other evidence, to clarify several points
surrounding the untruth in question.
A separate booklet61 of mine aims to expose yet another Armenian
falsification, which attempts to use the name of the same statesman. The
Los Angeles Examiner published (1 August 1926) an article, announcing
simultaneously that it was written “by” Mustafa Kemâl Pa?a”, and
that it was also “an interview with Emile Hilderbrand, a Swiss artist
and journalist”. Some Armenian circles have been using this article,
expecting others to believe that the words have fallen from the mouth of
the Turkish leader. In view of the evidence I presented in the booklet, I
conclude that no such interview has ever taken place with Turkey’s
Mustafa Kemâl.
There are also a number of works by Turks, available in foreign
languages, which compare authentic documents with forged ones.62 Several
forged “documents” were presented to world public at a time when
schemes to dismember Turkey had reached its climax. There are enough
authentic documents in print now, whose numbers will increase, shedding
light to the issue in conflict. These are all contributions to the study
of Armenian-Turkish relations and not “muddling the waters of truth”.
Exposure of forgeries and falsifications, such as the one connected with a
well-known Vereshchagin painting presented as a massacre photograph,
cannot be briskly described in a few phrases as “shoddy propaganda” or
“inept or disingenuous scholarship”.
* * *
The approach of the Journal of Political and Military Sociology brings
to mind the need for interdisciplinary analysis. The latter is especially
appropriate since the review is presented on the cover pages as an
“interdisciplinary” publication. There are many factors that influence
who we are, and how we act, both individually or as members of groups.
Hence, one’s ethnic or national identity is determined by a complex
interaction of causes and effects, ranging from individual psychodynamic
mechanisms to broad historical events. The interdisciplinary analysis
offers insights into the underlying psychopolitical factors that affect
interactions between groups, especially those in conflict. Conversely,
emphasis on a selected logic of events, which are, in fact, the results as
well as the moulders of far more complexities than offered, reveals an
identity formation, more and more sustained by repetitive one-sidedness to
the exclusion of other crucial facts.
It may be proper to recall the following statement by Erik H. Erikson,
who was a psychoanalyst distinguished by his prevailing studies63
outlining the relationship between culture and the individual: “We
cannot leave history entirely to nonclinical observers and to professional
historians who often too nobly immerse themselves into the very disguises,
rationalizations, and idealizations of the historical process from which
it should be their business to separate themselves. Only when the relation
of historical forces to the basic functions and stages of the mind has
been jointly charted and understood can we begin a psychoanalytic critique
of a society...”64
Groups need others to define themselves, in the process of which they
learn how to hate out-groups. Vamyk D. Volkan introduced the subject of
the human need for enemies and allies.65 He underlined that people
sometimes have a psychological investment in the continuation of a given
conflict, and that they actually use them as external stabilizers of their
sense of identity and inner control. Not only they have an investment in
the continuation of this enmity, but their militancy partly marks their
internal conflicts. Since they need the enemy, they are afraid to lose it.
Although a number of other scientists had previously served the
development of pertinent knowledge and literature in the general field of
political psychology, Volkan’s contributions bring forth the relevance
of anxieties in a people or nation. His approach, shared by some other
scholars, encourages one to go beyond the surface phenomena in history and
politics.
Volkan uses the term “chosen trauma” to refer to the mental
representation of an event that causes a group to feel victimized.66 The
group mythologizes an event, and draws it into its identity, passing the
mental representation, along with associated feelings and defenses, from
generation to generation. For each generation, the event is modified. What
remains is the central role it plays in the group’s identity, even
though the modified version of the event is different from the historical
truth. This tendency goes hand in hand with the temptation to seek out a
scapegoat. For groups of Armenians, that scapegoat are the Turks.
Groups also have “chosen glories”, which are also part of the
identity. For some Armenians, these glories may be how a handful of them
stood against the attacks of so many, how they drove their enemies back
inflicting heavy losses on them, how they contributed to the victory of
freedom and democracy or how modest and humanitarian they were while there
were no limits to the cruelty of their enemies!
Both chosen traumas and chosen glories support the group’s sadism and
masochism. The enemy is imagined as a stereotype of negative qualities.
The stereotyped enemy is frequently referred to in non-human terms.67 For
instance, in Dadrian’s articles the “evil” is projected onto the
Turks, to such an extent that there is no sympathy for the enemy’s
losses. There is no consideration of the possibility that an ethnic
group’s unwanted aspects may well be projected to another group.
Instead, the chosen trauma is passed to the new generation, which
mythologizes the original trauma, and replaces historical truth by
one-sided, sensational narrative.68 Various ritualistic outlets, such as
demonstration on the 24th of April, supposedly the beginning of
“Armenian genocide”, also provide further opportunities to accentuate
the same chosen trauma and pass it on, once more, to the next generation,
which will be more and more removed from what really occurred, whether a
trauma or a glory. Dadrian joins a number of other writers who seem to
project onto the Turks almost all of the unwanted aspects of the
Armenians.
Why and how does this transformation come about? It is necessary to
know the histories of the parties in conflict, and the characteristics of
their respective cultures. While the details of these ingredients may be
the topic of a full-sized book, it is at least necessary to underline the
significance of constantly-motivated forces which define much of group
interactions. Volkan compares ethnic identity to a “tent”, which
ordinarily provides a stable and functional habitat, but which may
“shake”, rendering the self vulnerable.69 The Ottoman tent provided
stability for the Armenians as well for some centuries. The tent is a
covering into whose fabric chosen traumas and chosen glories are woven.
The individuals will go about their business if the tent is strong, but
they will be preoccupied with repair and restoration when the tent is
shaken. The more the instability, the more the desire to prove the
identity. A group may need to rediscover and reformulate its identity each
time its “tent” is shaken.70
Several Armenian writers resorted to the “enemy Turk” image to
sustain the self. But this change occurred, not when the Ottoman
Government recognized the rights of the Armenian community in the 15th
century or the few centuries that followed, but at the time of the shaking
of the same tent, forcing many Muslim intellectuals to redefine their
selves as well. The Armenians apparently felt this need, initially after
the 1877-78 Ottoman-Russian War, not only disastrous for the Turks, but
also destabilizing the identity of many nationalities within the Ottoman
Empire, which asked in anguish, “what will happen to us?” The
“Armenian tent” was shaken several times afterwards with the end of
the First World War (1918), the installation of the Bolshevik rule in
Armenia (1920), the Lebanese Civil War (1975), and the disintegration of
the Soviet Union (1991).
The psychodynamics of ethnic terrorism, which some Armenians resorted
to in the recent past as well as decades before that, is also related to
the “shaking of the tent”. It is an undeniable fact that the Armenian
terrorists were rampant during the last decades of the Ottoman Government,
and that they have also murdered Turkish diplomats or members of their
immediate families and a number of non-Turks who happened to be in their
line of attack.71 Heath W. Lowry convincingly argues that each succeeding
Armenian generation produced and nurtured a new group of terrorists.72 The
appallingly minimizing tendency of some writers, David Marshall Lang for
instance, that the Armenians “were not all angels”73 represents a
shocking under-statement. Dadrian severely undermines the obvious
phenomena of Armenian treason and terrorism by casually referring to
“sporadic acts of sabotage” and “alleging treasonable acts” (pp.
6-7). Even the 15-year old Mardiros Jamkotchian, apprehended by Swiss
authorities after he assassinated (1981) the Turkish diplomat, Mehmet Yergüz,
in Bern, told the court that he shot him in the back because this was a
war, and that they were both “soldiers”.
Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire were the allies of the Ottomans
during the First World War. This does not automatically convey the thought
that they peel off, at once, their age-old bias and produce impartial
opinions to be relevant eternally. The whole Western world knew that the
Ottomans had expanded their holdings to the outskirts of Vienna, and some
European parents intimidated their children with the threat that “the
Turks are coming!” These stereotyping of Turks by Westerners, including
the Germans and the Austrians, stems from a number of recurring events -
for instance, “the loss of Constantinople”. This is another chosen
trauma, shared by several European peoples. Moreover, the Germans and the
Austrians, with whom the Ottoman Turks frequently came into conflict even
during the First World War, eventually needed potential friends from the
rival camp, just in case they would be defeated. It was especially
Berlin’s policy to cultivate good relations with quarters close to the
decision-makers among the opposing group of states.
* * *
While presenting Professor Vakakn N. Dadrian’s articles in the
collective volume of the Journal of Political and Military Sociology,
Professor Roger Smith describes them as a model historical and
sociological narrative and analysis, and states that certain lessons may
be drawn from the topic in question. I consider Professor Dadrian’s
approach a one-sided presentation of a complex phenomenon. In his
appraisal, questioning the authenticity of documents supposedly proving
the existence of genocide, testimony of authentic Ottoman documents
challenging the genocide assertion, legal scrutiny in the light of the
1948 Genocide Convention, mention of general war-time conditions or any
reference to Armenian participation in armed conflicts and terrorism are
attempts of “revisionism”.
Some Armenians cannot abandon a series of myths, such as past “wide
frontiers”, ethnic “homogeneity” on those lands, “continuous”
Armenian-Turkish conflict or Armenian “innocence” against untold
“cruelty” of their enemies. The truth, documented by abundant sources,
is that it was the terror of organized Armenian bands, their seizure of
power in parts of Eastern Anatolia, their co-action with invading foreign
troops, and the expulsion of the Muslim population that led to the Ottoman
decision to relocate the Armenians in the southern portions of the state.
The defeat of the Ottoman state at the end of the First World War, and
the very likely prospect of harsh conditions to be imposed on the Turks
fed the resurgence of a strong anti-Ittihadist sentiment, in spite of the
adherents of the former ruling group, and played a role, not only in the
decision to hold trials, but also in the proceedings and verdicts.
Dadrian, on the other hand, considers the designation of some Ittihadist
leaders as the culprits as “a convenient device to exonerate the Turkish
people as a whole” (p. 133). No matter to what degree a writer may
entertain ethnocentric views, to search for ways to involve a whole nation
in a one-sided evaluation of a dramatic event brings to mind a racist
approach, especially incompatible in the United Nations’ Year of
Tolerance (1995), and the Third Decade To Combat Racism and Racial
Discrimination (1993-2003).
Not only one-sided victimization in Armenian-Turkish relations fail to
reflect historical facts, but chosen traumas, persistently presented from
a lopsided viewpoint, prevent reconciliation. Insistence on the
victimization of the Armenians only delays mutual benefits which should
outweigh the advantages to the Armenians of continued enmity. While old
habits contradict future relations of trust, a cure favors fair diagnosis.
The disintegration (1991) of the Soviet Union motivated Turkey to embark
on a new policy in the Caucasus, the Black Sea and the Balkans. Turkey
suggested the membership of Armenia (and Greece) in the cooperation scheme
around the Black Sea, although none of the two is a riparian state. All
parties interested in cure and peace may utilize new circumstances to
replace decades of old assumptions and interpretations. Since 1991 the
Turks have taken steps to overcome barriers that imprisoned relations with
Armenia behind unsurmountable bars. One needs fresh definitions.
* The author is professor of international relations at Ankara
University, Turkey.
References
1 Armenian Review, 44/1-173 (Spring 1991), 1-36; Holocaust and Genocide
Studies, 7/2 (Fall 1993); The International Journal of Middle East
Studies, 23/4 (November 1991); The Yale Journal of International Law, 14/2
(Summer 1989), 221-234.
2 Justin McCarthy exposes this little known fact in his latest scholarly
work: Death and Exile, Princeton, The Darwin Press, 1995.
3 Bilâl Þimþir, Rumeli’den Türk Göçleri, Ankara, Türk Tarih
Kurumu, 1968.
4 Türkkaya Ataöv, An Armenian Falsification, Ankara, Sevinç Matbaasy,
1985.
5 Captain C.B. Norman, “The Armenians Unmasked,” copy of a
hand-written manuscript (1895) at the Institute of the Turkish Revolution,
Faculty of Languages and History-Geography of Ankara University. Also see:
Türkkaya Ataöv, A British Report (1895): “The Armenians Unmasked”,
Ankara, Sevinç Matbaasy, 1985.
6 Türkkaya Ataöv, An American Source (1895) on the Armenian Question,
Ankara, Sistem Ofset, 1986.
7 H. Pastermadjian, Histoire de l’Arménie, Paris, 1949, p. 384.
8 A.W. William and M.S. Gabrielian, Bleeding Armenia, New York, 1896, p.
331.
9 Edwin Bliss, Turkey and the Armenian Atrocities, Philadelphia, 1896, pp.
370-371.
10 Kamuran Gürün, The Armenian File: the Myth of Innocence Exposed,
London, K. Rustem and Bro. and Weidenfeld and Nicholson Ltd., 1985, p.
142.
11 McCarthy, op. cit.
12 Hugh Seton-Watson, Nations and States, London, Methuen, 1977, pp.
110-117.
13 New York, The American Defense Society, 1918.
14 Louise Nalbantian, The Armenian Revolutionary Movement: The Development
of Armenian Political Parties, through the Nineteenth Century, Berkeley
and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1963.
15 Türkkaya Ataöv, “The Procurement of Arms for Armenian Terrorism:
Realities Based on Ottoman Documents,” International Terrorism and the
Drug Connection, Ankara, the University of Ankara Press, 1984, pp.
169-177.
16 Hovhannes Kachaznouni, The Armenian Revolutionary Federation Has
Nothing to Do Any More, New York, Armenian Information Service, 1955, p.
5. Also: Türkkaya Ataöv, An Armenian Source: Hovhannes Katchaznouni,
Ankara, Sistem Ofset, 1984, p. 4.
17 K.S. Papazian, Patriotism Perverted, Boston, Baikar Press, 1934, pp.
37-38. Also: Türkkaya Ataöv, An Armenian Author on “Patriotism
Perverted”, Ankara, Sistem Ofset, 1984.
18 Esat Uras, The Armenians in History and the Armenian Question,
Ystanbul, Documentary Publications, 1988, pp. 843-845.
19 Ibid., p. 845.
20 Garo Pasdermadjian, Armenia: A Leading Factor in the Winning of the
War, New York, American Community for Armenia, 1919.
21 Garo Pasdermadjian, Why Armenia Should Be Free? Armenia’s Role in the
Present War, Boston, Hairanik, 1918.
22 Armenian Participation in World War I on the Caucasian Front,” The
Armenian Review, 82 (Summer 1968) and the following issues.
23 30 January 1919, p. 6.
24 A.P. Hacobian, Armenia and the War, London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1917,
pp. 66 f.
25 For instance: G. Kotganoff, La Participation des Arméniens à la
guerre mondial sur le front du Caucase: 1914-1918, Paris, Imp. Massis,
1927; A. Poidebard, Le Role militaire des Arméniens sur le front du
Caucase après la défection de l’armée russe, Paris, Imp. Nationale,
1920; R. Pinon, “L’Arménie belligèrante,” La Voix de l’Arménie,
Paris, Année 1 (1918); E.J. Robinson, “The Case of Our Ally Armenia,”
Asiatic Review, London, Vol. XV (1919); F.R. Scatchard, “Armenia’s
True Interests and Sympathies in the Great War,” Asiatic Review, Vol. VI
(1914).
26 Stanford J. Shaw and Ezel Kural Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and
Modern Turkey, Vol. II, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1977, p.
362.
27 Cemâl Paþa, Hatyralar, Ystanbul, 1977, p. 438.
28 Clair Price, The Rebirth of Turkey, New York, 1923, pp. 86-87.
29 Rafael de Nogales, Four Years Beneath the Crescent, tr. Muna Lee, New
York, 1926, p. 45.
30 Felix Valyi, Revolutions in Islam, London, 1925, pp. 233-234.
31 M. Philips Price, A History of Turkey, London, 1956, p. 91.
32 Philippe de Zara, Mustafa Kemal, Dictateur, Paris, 1936, pp. 159-160.
33 Commandant M. Larcher, La Guerre turque dans la guerre mondiale, Paris,
E. Chiron-Berger Levrault, 1926, pp. 395-396.
34 Heath W. Lowry, The Story Behind Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story,
Ystanbul, Isis Press, 1990.
35 New York, 1970, p. 50.
36 Eagles on the Crescent, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, pp. 150-152,
187.
37 Aram Andonian, Documents officiels concernant les massacres arméniennes,
Paris, Imp. Turabian, 1920.
38 Þinasi Orel and Süreyya Yuca, Ermenilerce Talât Pa?a’ya Atfedilen
Telgraflaryn Gerçek Yüzü, Ankara, Türk Tarih Kurumu, 1983. Also: Türkkaya
Ataöv, The Andonian “Documents”, Attributed to Talat Pasha, are
Forgeries! Ankara, Siyasal Bilgiler Fakültesi, 1984.
39 George A. Schreiner, The Craft Sinister: A Diplomatico-Political
History of the Great War and Its Causes, New York, G. Albert Geyer, 1920,
p. xxxi.
40 Ibid., p. 126.
41 The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, New York, Carroll and Graff Publishers.
42 Potsdam, Tempelverlag, 1919.
43 Erich Feigl, A Myth of Terror - Armenian Extremism: Its Causes and Its
Historical Context, Freilassing-Salzburg, Edition Zeitgeschiechte, 1986,
pp. 87-88.
44 Gürün, op. cit., p. 211.
45 Ibid., pp. 199, 204-205.
46 Türkkaya Ataöv, Deaths Caused by Disease, in Relation to the Armenian
Question, Ankara, Sevinç Matbaasy, 1985.
47 Georges Boudière, “Notes sur la Campagne de Syrie-Cilicie:
L’Affaire de Mara?,” Turcica, Vol. IX/2-X (1978), p. 160.
48 For instance: Justin McCarthy, “American Commissions to Anatolia and
the Report of Niles and Sutherland,” report to the Turkish Historical
Society, General Conference, Ankara, 1990; Türkkaya Ataöv, The Reports
(1918) of Russian Officers on Atrocities by Armenians, Ankara, Tynaz
Matbaasy, 1985.
49 For instance: Azmi Süslü, Gülây Ö?ün, Mehmet Törehan Serdar,
Genocides commis par les Arméniens Van, Bitlis, Mu? et Kars: interviews
des témoins vivants, Van, Université Yüzüncü Yyl, 1995; Enver Korukçu,
Ermenilerin Ye?ilyayla’daki Türk Soykyrymy: 11-12 Mart 1918, Ankara,
Atatürk Üniversitesi, 1990; Cezmi Yurtsever, Kalekilise, Ankara, Kamu
Hizmetleri Ara?tyrma Vakfy, 1995; Hüseyin Çelik, Görenlerin Gözüyle
Van’da Ermeni Mezalimi, Ankara, 1994; M. Fahrettin Kyrzyo?lu, Kars Yli
ve Çevresinde Ermeni Mezalimi: 1918-1920, Ankara, 1970.
50 Testimony by the Honorable Fred C. Ikle, Under Secretary of Defense for
Policy, Before the Subcommittee on Security and Terrorism of the Senate
Judiciary Committee,” Washington, D.C., mimeographed, March 11, 1982,
p.6. Also: Michael M. Gunter, “Pursuing the Just Cause of Their
People”: A Study of Contemporary Armenian Terrorism, New York, Greenwood
Press, 1986.
51 For instance: The Foundation for Establishing and Promoting Centers for
Historical Research and Documentation, Ottoman Archives: Yyldyz
Collection, the Armenian Question, Vols, I-XV, Istanbul, 1989- ; Askeri
Tarih ve Stratejik Etüd Baþkanlýðý, Askeri Tarih Belgeleri Dergisi,
No. 81 (1982) and the following, Ankara. For a general review of the
value, diversity and features of the Ottoman archives, see: Türkkaya Ataöv,
The Ottoman Archives and the Armenian Question, Ankara, Sistem Ofset,
1986.
52 See supra., fn. 38.
53 Bilâl Þimþir, Malta Sürgünleri, Ankara, Bilgi Yayynevi, 1985.
54 Türkkaya Ataöv, Hitler and the “Armenian Question”, Ankara,
Sistem Ofset, 1984.
55 Heath W. Lowry, “The U.S. Congress and Adolf Hitler on the
Armenians,” Political Communication and Persuasion, Vol. 3/2 (1985), pp.
111-139.
56 Jak V. Kamhi, “Racism...Anti-Semitism,” Seminar on Racism and
Anti-Semitism, Istanbul, 19-20 January 1995 (under the auspices of the
Council of Europe), p. 3. Also: Stanford J. Shaw, The Jews of the Ottoman
Empire and the Turkish Republic, London, Macmillan; New York, New York
University Press, 1991; Mehmet Suphi, “The Expulsion of Safarad Jews:
Regression in the Development of Modern Society,” Mind and Human
Interaction, Vol. 4, No. 1 (December 1992), pp. 40-51.
57 Standford J. Shaw, Turkey and Holocaust: Turkey’s Role in Rescuing
Turkish and European Jewry from Nazi Persecution, 1933-1945, New York, New
York University Press, 1993.
58 For instance: Horst Widmann, Exile und Bildungshilfe: Die
deutschsprachige akademische Emigration in die Turkei nach 1933, Bern,
Frankfurt, 1973; Fritz Neumark, Zuflucht am Bosphor, Frankfurt, 1980.
59 Ruth Gruber, Right-Wing Extremism in Western Europe, New York, the
American Jewish Committee, 1994.
60 Türkkaya Ataöv, A ‘Statement’ Wrongly Attributed to Mustafa Kemâl
Atatürk, 3rd pr., Ankara, Meteksan, 1992.
61 Türkkaya Ataöv, Another Falsification: “Statement” (1926) Wrongly
Attributed to M. Kemâl Atatürk, Ankara, Sistem Ofset, 1988.
62 For instance: Türkkaya Ataöv, Documents on the Armenian Question:
Forged and Authentic, Ankara, Barok Ofset, 1985.
63 Erik H. Erikson, Young Man Luther, New York, W. W. Norton, 1958; ,
Gandhi’s Truth, New York, W. W. Norton, 1969.
64 Erikson, Young Man Luther, op. cit., p. 21.
65 Namyk D. Volkan, The Need to Have Enemies and Allies: from Clinical
Practice to International Relationship, Northvale, New Jersey; London,
Jason Aronson Inc., 1994. As J. V. Montville states in the presentation of
the book, with the publication of Volkan’s work psychological elements
in political analysis can no longer be overlooked (p. x). Volkan was the
first president of the International Society of Political Psychology to
come from a medical background. He is now the Director of the Center for
the University of Virginia’s School of Medicine. The center, which
publishes the quarterly Mind and Human Interaction, focusses on the
psychodynamics of large group processes or studies history with a
psychoanalytic point of view. It sheds light on the hidden underpinnings
of relations between neighbours in conflict. See: Vamyk D. Volkan,
Cyprus-War and Adaptation, Charlottesville, University Press of Virginia,
1980; and Norman Itzkowitz, Turks and Greeks: Neighbours in Conflict,
Cambridge, U.K., the Eothen Press, 1994. These studies suggest new methods
to improve our understanding of the complex human dimensions of some
ethnic/religious problems.
66 Vamyk D. Volkan, “On Chosen Trauma,” Mind and Human Interaction,
Vol. 3, No. 1 (1991), p. 13.
67 W. W. Bernard, P. Ottenberg and F. Redl, “Dehumanization: a composite
psychological defence in relation to modern war,” Sanctions for Evil:
Sources of Social Destructiveness, ed., N. Sanford and C. Comstock, San
Francisco, Jossey-Bass, 1973, pp. 102-124.
68 R. R. Rogers, “Intergenerational Exchange: Transference of Attitudes
Down the Generations,” Modern Perspectives in the Psychiatry of Infancy,
ed., J. Howells, New York, Brunner-Mazel, 1979, pp. 339-349.
69 Vamyk D. Volkan, “The Dynamics of Global Ethnic Conflict: General
Reflections and Specific Cases,” paper for conferences at Havenford and
Bryn Mawr Colleges, 1-2 October 1993.
70 Vamyk D. Volkan and Max Harris, Shaking the Tent: the Psychodynamics of
Ethnic Terrorism, Virginia, Center for the Study of Mind and Human
Interaction, 1993.
71 See supra., fn. 50.
72 Heath W. Lowry, “Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Armenian Terrorism:
‘Threads of Continuity,’” International Terrorism and the Drug
Connection, Ankara, the University of Ankara Press, 1984, pp. 71-83.
73 David Marshall Lang, The Armenians: a People in Exile, London, Allen
and Unwin, 1981, p. 7.
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