*[highlights and italics are mine]
By Bruce Fein
Both Armenians and Muslims in Eastern Anatolia under the
Ottoman Empire experienced harrowing casualties and gripping
privations during World War I.
Hundreds of thousands perished. Most were innocent. All deserve
pity and respect. Their known and unknown graves testify to
President John F. Kennedy's lament that "Life is unfair." An
Armenian tombstone is worth a Muslim tombstone, and vice versa.
No race, religious, or ethnic group stands above or below another in
the cathedral of humanity. To paraphrase Shakespeare in "The
Merchant of Venice," Hath not everyone eyes? hath not everyone
hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same
diseases healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the
same winter and summer...If you prick anyone, does he not bleed?
if you tickle him, does he not laugh? if you poison him, does he not
die?
These sentiments must be emphasized before entering into the
longstanding dispute over allegations of Armenian genocide at the
hands of the Ottoman Turks during World War I and its aftermath.
Genocide is a word bristling with passion and moral depravity. It
typically evokes images of Jews dying like cattle in Nazi cyanide
chambers in Auschwitz, Bergen-Belson, Dacau, and other
extermination camps. It is customarily confined in national laws
and international covenants to the mass killing or repression of a
racial, religious, or ethnic group with the intent of partial or total
extermination. Thus, to accuse Turks of Armenian genocide is
grave business, and should thus be appraised with scrupulous care
for historical accuracy. To do less would not only be unjust to the
accused, but to vitiate the arresting meaning that genocide should
enjoy in the tale of unspeakable human horrors.
It cannot be repeated enough that to discredit the Armenian
genocide allegation is not to deny that Armenian deaths and
suffering during the war should evoke tears in all but the
stone-hearted. The same is true for the even greater number of
contemporaneous Turkish deaths and privations. No effort should
be spared to avoid transforming an impartial inquest into the
genocide allegations to poisonous recriminations over whether
Armenians or Turks as a group were more or less culpable or
victimized. Healing and reconciliation is made of more
magnanimous and compassionate stuff.
In sum, disprove Armenian genocide is not to belittle the atrocities
and brutalities that World War I inflicted on the Armenian people of
Eastern Anatolia.
I. Sympathy for All, Malice Towards None "War is hell," lamented
steely Union General William Tecumseh Sherman during the
American Civil War. The frightful carnage of World War I confirmed
and fortified that vivid definition.
The deep pain that wrenches any group victimized by massacres
and unforgiving privation in wartime, however, frequently distorts or
imbalances recollections. That phenomenon found epigrammatic
expression in United States Senator Hiram Johnson's World War I
quip that truth is the first casualty of war. It is customary among
nations at war to manipulate the reporting of events to blacken the
enemy and to valorize their own and allied forces. In other words,
World War I was no exception, about which more anon.
II. The Armenian Genocide Accusation
The Ottoman Turks are accused of planning and executing a
scheme to exterminate its Armenian population in Eastern Anatolia
beginning on or about April 24, 1915 by relocating them hundreds
of miles to the Southwest and away from the Russian war front and
massacring those who resisted. The mass relocation (often
mischaracterized as "deportation") exposed the Armenians to
mass killings by marauding Kurds and other Muslims and deaths
from malnutrition, starvation, and disease. After World War I
concluded, the Ottoman Turks are said to have continued their
Armenian genocide during the Turkish War of Independence
concluded in 1922.
The number of alleged Armenian casualties began at approximately
600,000, but soon inflated to 2 million. The entire pre-war Armenian
population in Eastern Anatolia is best estimated at 1.3 to 1.5
million.
A. Was there an intent to exterminate Ottoman Armenians in whole
or in part?
The evidence seems exceptionally thin. The Government's
relocation decree was a wartime measure inspired by national
self-preservation, neither aimed at Armenians generally (those
outside sensitive war territory were left undisturbed) nor with the
goal of death by relocation hardships and hazards. The Ottoman
government issued unambiguous orders to protect and feed
Armenians during their relocation ordeal, but were unable because
of war emergencies on three fronts and war shortages affecting the
entire population to insure their proper execution. The key decree
provided:
"When those of Armenians resident in the aforementioned towns
and villages who have to be moved are transferred to their places of
settlement and are on the road, their comfort must be assured and
their lives and property protected; after their arrival their food should
be paid for out of Refugees' Appropriations until they are definitively
settled in their new homes. Property and land should be distributed
to them in accordance with their previous financial situation as well
as current needs; and for those among them needing further help,
the government should build houses, provide cultivators and
artisans with seed, tools, and equipment."
"This order is entirely intended against the extension of the
Armenian Revolutionary Committees; therefore do not execute it in
such a manner that might cause the mutual massacre of Muslims
and Armenians."
(Do you believe that anything comparable has been issued by
Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to his troops in Kosovo?)
The Ottoman government prosecuted more than one thousand
soldiers and civilians for disobedience. Further, approximately
200,000 Ottoman Armenians who were relocated to Syria lived
without menace through the remainder of the war.
Relocation of populations suspected of disloyalty was a customary
war measure both at the time of World War I and through at least
World War II. Czarist Russia had employed it against Crimean
Tatars and other ethnic Turks even in peacetime and without
evidence of treasonous plotting. The United States relocated
120,000 citizens and resident aliens of Japanese ancestry during
the Second World War despite the glaring absence of sabotage or
anti-patriotic sentiments or designs. Indeed, the Congress of the
United States acknowledged the injustice in the Civil Liberties Act
of 1988 which awarded the victims or their survivors $20,000 each.
In sum, the mass wartime relocation of Ottoman Armenians from
the Eastern front was no pretext for genocide. That conclusion is
fortified by the mountains of evidence showing that an alarming
percentage of Armenians were treasonous and allied with the Triple
Entente, especially Russia. Tens of thousands defected from the
Ottoman army or evaded conscription to serve with Russia.
Countless more remained in Eastern Anatolia to conduct sabotage
behind Ottoman lines and to massacre Turks, including civilians.
Their leaders openly called for revolt, and boasted at post-World
War I peace conferences that Ottoman Armenians had fought
shoulder-to-shoulder with the victorious powers. Exemplary was a
proclamation issued by an Armenian representative in the Ottoman
parliament for Van, Papazyan. He trumpeted: "The volunteer
Armenian regiments in the Caucasus should prepare themselves
for battle, serve as advance units for the Russian armies to help
them capture the key positions in the districts where the
Armenians live, and advance into Anatolia, joining the Armenian
units already there."
The Big Five victors -Great Britain, France, the United States, Italy,
and Japan acknowledged the enormous wartime service of Ottoman
Armenians, and Armenia was recognized as a victor nation at the
Paris Peace Conference and sister conclaves charring the post-war
map. Armenians were rewarded for their treason against the
Ottoman Empire in the short-lived Treaty of Sevres of 1920 (soon
superceded by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne). It created an
independent Armenian state carved from large swaths of Ottoman
territory although they were a distinct population minority and had
always been so throughout the centuries of Ottoman rule. The
Treaty thus turned President Woodrow Wilson's self-determination
gospel in his Fourteen Points on its head.
The Ottoman government thus had overwhelming evidence to
suspect the loyalty of its Armenian population. And its relocation
orders responded to a dire, not a contrived, war emergency. It was
fighting on three fronts. The capital, Istanbul, was threatened by the
Gallipoli campaign. Russia was occupying portions of Eastern
Anatolia, encouraging Armenian defections, and aiding Armenian
sabotage. In sum, the mass relocation of Armenians was clearly an
imperative war measure; it did not pivot on imaginary dangers
contrived by Ottoman rulers to exterminate Armenians.
The genocide allegation is further discredited by Great Britain's
unavailing attempt to prove Ottoman officials of war crimes. It
occupied Ottoman territory, including Istanbul, under the 1918
Mudros Armistice. Under section 230 of the Treaty of Sevres,
Ottoman officials were subject to prosecution for war crimes like
genocide. Great Britain had access to Ottoman archives, but found
no evidence of Armenian genocide. Scores of Ottoman Turks were
detained on Malta, nonetheless, under suspicion of complicity in
Armenian massacres or worse. But all were released in 1922 for
want of evidence. The British spent endless months searching
hither and yon for evidence of international criminality- even
enlisting the assistance of the United State yet came up with
nothing that could withstand the test of truth. Rumor, hearsay, and
polemics from anti-Turk sources was the most that could be
assembled, none of which would be admissible in any fair-minded
enterprise to discover facts and to assign legal responsibility.
None of this is to deny that approximately 600,000 Ottoman
Armenians perished during World War I and its aftermath. But
Muslims died in even greater numbers (approximately 2.5 million in
Eastern Anatolia) from Armenian and Russian massacres and
wartime privations as severe as that experienced by relocated
Armenians. When Armenians held the opportunity, they massacred
Turks without mercy, as in Van, Erzurum, and Adana. The war
ignited a cycle of violence between both groups, one fighting for
revolutionary objectives and the other to retain their homeland
intact. Both were spurred to implacability by the gruesome
experience that the loser could expect no clemency.
The horrifying scale of the violence and retaliatory violence,
however, were acts of private individuals or official wrongdoers. The
Ottoman government discouraged and punished the crimes within
the limits of its shrinking capacity. Fighting for its life on three
fronts, it devoted the lion's share of its resources and manpower to
staving off death, not to local law enforcement.
The emptiness of the Armenian genocide case is further
demonstrated by the resort of proponents to reliance on
incontestable falsehoods or forged documents. The Talat Pasha
fabrications are emblematic.
According to Armenians, he sent telegrams expounding an
Ottoman policy to massacre its Armenian population that were
discovered by British forces commanded by General Allenby when
they captured Aleppo in 1918. Samples were published in Paris in
1920 by an Armenian author, Aram Andonian. They were also
introduced at the Berlin trial of the assassin of Talat Pasha, and
then accepted as authentic.
The British Foreign Office then conducted an official investigation
that showed that the telegrams had not been discovered by the
army but had been produced by an Armenian group based in Paris.
A meticulous examination of the documents revealed glaring
discrepancies with the customary form, script, and phraseology of
Ottoman administrative decrees, and pronounced as bogus as the
Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the Donation of Constantine.
Ditto for a quote attributed to Adolph Hitler calculated to liken the
Armenians in World War I to the Holocaust victims and to arouse
anger towards the Republic of Turkey. Purportedly delivered on
August 22, 1939, while the Nazi invasion of Poland impended,
Hitler allegedly declared: "Thus for the time being I have sent to the
East only my Death Head units, with the order to kill without mercy
all men, women, and children of the Polish race or language. Who
still talks nowadays of the extermination of the Armenians."
Armenian genocide exponents point to the statement as evidence
that it served as the model for Hitler's sister plan to exterminate
Poles, Jews, and others. Twenty-two Members of Congress on or
about April 24, 1984 in the Congressional Record enlisted Hitler's
hideous reference to Armenian extermination as justification for
supporting Armenian Martyrs' Day remembrances. As Princeton
Professor Heath W. Lowry elaborates in a booklet, "The U.S.
Congress and Adolph Hitler on the Armenians," it seems virtually
certain that the statement was never made. The Nuremburg tribunal
refused to accept it as evidence because of flimsy proof of
authenticity.
The gospel for many Armenian genocide enthusiasts is
Ambassador Henry Morgenthau's 1918 book, Ambassador's
Morgenthau's Story. It brims with assertions that incriminate the
Ottoman Turks in genocide. Professor Lowry, however, convincingly
demonstrates in his monograph, "The Story Behind Ambassador
Morgenthau's Story," that his book is more propaganda, invention,
exaggeration, and hyperbole than a reliable portrait of motivations
and events.
According to some Armenian circles, celebrated founder of the
Republic of Turkey, Atat�rk, confessed "Ottoman state
responsibility for the Armenian genocide." That attribution is flatly
false, as proven in an extended essay, "A 'Statement' Wrongly
Attributed to Mustafa Kemal Atat�rk," by T�rkkaya Ata�v.
Why would Armenian genocide theorists repeatedly uncurtain
demonstrative falsehoods as evidence if the truth would prove their
case? Does proof of the Holocaust rest on such imaginary
inventiveness? A long array of individuals have been found guilty of
participation in Hitler's genocide in courts of law hedged by rules to
insure the reliability of verdicts. Adolph Eichmann's trial and
conviction in an Israeli court and the Nuremburg trials before an
international body of jurists are illustrative. Not a single Ottoman
Turk, in contrast, has every been found guilty of Armenian genocide
or its equivalent in a genuine court of law, although the victorious
powers in World War I enjoyed both the incentive and opportunity
to do so if incriminating evidence existed.
The United Nations Economic and Social Council Sub-Commission
on the Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities
examined the truthfulness of an Armenian genocide charge leveled
by Special Rapporteur, Mr. Benjamin Whitaker, in his submission,
"Study of Genocide," during its thirty-eighth session at the U.N.
Office in Geneva from August 5-30, 1985. The Sub-Commission
after meticulous debate refused to endorse the indictment for lack
of convincing evidence, as amplified by attendee and Professor Dr.
Ata�v of Ankara University in his publication, "WHAT REALLY
HAPPENED IN GENEVA: The Truth About the 'Whitaker Report'."
B. If the evidence is so demonstratively faulty, what explains a
widespread credence given to the Armenian genocide allegation in
the United States?
As Napoleon once derisively observed, history is a fable mutually
agreed upon. It is not Euclidean geometry. Some bias invariably is
smuggled in by the most objective historians; others view history
as a manipulable weapon either to fight an adversary, or to gain a
political, economic, or sister material advantage, or to satisfy a
psychological or emotional need.
History most resembles truth when competing versions of events
do battle in the marketplace of ideas with equally talented
contestants and before an impartial audience with no personal or
vested interest in the outcome. That is why the adversarial system
of justice in the United States is the hallmark of its legal system
and a beacon to the world.
The Armenian genocide allegation for long decades was earmarked
by an absence of both historical rigor and scrupulous regard for
reliable evidence and truth. The Ottoman Empire generally received
bad reviews in the West for centuries, in part because of its
predominant Muslim creed and military conquests in Europe. It was
a declared enemy of Britain, France, and Russia during World War
I, and a de facto enemy of the United States. Thus, when the
Armenian genocide allegation initially surfaced, the West was
predisposed towards acceptance that would reinforce their
stereotypical and pejorative view of Turks that had been inculcated
for centuries. The reliability of obviously biased sources was
generally ignored. Further, the Republic of Turkey created in 1923
was not anxious to defend its Ottoman predecessor which it had
opposed for humiliating capitulations to World War I victors and its
palsied government. Atat�rk was seeking a new, secular, and
democratic dispensation and distance from the Ottoman legacy.
Armenians in the United States were also more vocal, politically
active and sophisticated, numerous, and wealthy than Turks. The
Armenian lobby has skillfully and forcefully marketed the Armenian
genocide allegation in the corridors of power, in the media, and in
public school curricula. They had been relatively unchallenged until
some opposing giants in the field of Turkish studies appeared on
the scene to discredit and deflate the charge by fastidious research
and a richer understanding of the circumstances of frightful
Armenian World War I casualties. Professor of History at the
University of Louisville, Justin McCarthy, and Princeton Professor
Heath Lowry stand at the top of the list. Professor McCarthy's 1995
book, Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims,
1821-1922, is a landmark. Turkish Americans have also organized
to present facts and views about the Armenian genocide allegation
and other issues central to United States-Turkish relations. But the
intellectual playing field remains sharply tilted in favor of the
Armenians. Since public officials with no foreign policy
responsibilities confront no electoral or other penalty for echoing
the Armenian story, they generally acquiesce to gain or to solidify
their standing among them.
The consequence has been not only bad and biased history
unbecoming an evenhanded search for truth, but a gratuitous irritant
in the relations between Turkey and the United States. The former
was a steadfast ally throughout the Cold War, and Turkey remains
a cornerstone of NATO and Middle East peace. It is also a strong
barrier against religious fundamentalism, and an unflagging partner
in fighting international terrorism and drug trafficking. Turkey is also
geostrategically indispensable to exporting oil and gas from Central
Asia to the West through pipelines without reliance on the Russian
Federation, Iran, Afghanistan or other dicey economic partners.
Finally, endorsing the false Armenian genocide indictment may
embolden Armenian terrorist organizations (for example, the
Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia) to kill and
mutilate Turks, as they did a few decades ago in assassinating
scores of Turkish diplomats and bombing buildings both in the
United States and elsewhere. They have been relatively dormant in
recent years, but to risk a resurgence from intoxication with a
fortified Armenian genocide brew would be reckless.
III. Conclusion
The Armenian genocide accusation fails for want of proof. It
attempts to paint the deaths and privations of World War I in prime
colors, when the authentic article is chiaroscuro. Both Muslims and
Armenians suffered horribly and neither displayed a morality
superior to the other. Continuing to hurl the incendiary charge of
genocide on the Turkish doorstep obstructs the quest for amity
between Armenia and the Republic of Turkey and warmer relations
between Armenians and Turks generally.
Isn't it time to let the genocide allegation fade away and to join
hands in commemorating the losses of both communities during
World War I and its aftermath?
Author is an attorney and Adjunct Scholar of ATAA (Assembly of Turkish-American Association).
Sourse: http://www.ataa.org/ataa/ref/armenian/fein.html
If you would be interested in more comprehensive information regarding this issue go to Armenian Question Revisited ,a very useful compilation of related articles and exerpts from books to get more complete information.