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Armenian Allegations of Genocide
The Issue and the Facts
The Issue: Whether within
the events leading to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire
genocide was perpetrated against Armenian Ottoman citizens
in Eastern Anatolia.
The Ottoman Empire ruled over all of Anatolia and significant
parts of Europe, North Africa, the Caucasus and Middle East
for over 700 hundred years. Lands once Ottoman dominions
today comprise more than 30 independent nations.
A century of ever-increasing conflict, beginning roughly
in 1820 and culminating with the founding of the Republic
of Turkey in 1923, characterized the disintegration of the
Ottoman Empire. The Ottoman Empire participated in no fewer
than a dozen named wars, nearly all to the detriment of
the empire and its citizens. The empire contracted against
an onslaught of external invaders and internal nationalist
independence movements. In this context -- an imperiled
empire waging and losing battles on remote and disparate
fronts, grasping to continue a reign of over 700 years --
must the tragic experience of the Ottoman Armenians of Eastern
Anatolia be understood. For during these waning days of
the Ottoman Empire did millions die, Muslim, Jew, and Christian
alike.
Yet Armenian Americans have attempted to extricate and
isolate their history from the complex circumstances in
which their ancestors were embroiled. In so doing, they
describe a world populated only by white-hatted heroes and
black-hatted villains. The heroes are always Christian and
the villains are always Muslim. Infusing history with myth,
Armenian Americans vilify the Republic of Turkey, Turkish
Americans, and ethnic Turks worldwide. Armenian Americans
bent on this prosecution choose their evidence carefully,
omitting all evidence that tends to exonerate those whom
they presume guilty, ignoring important events and verifiable
accounts, and sometimes relying on dubious or prejudiced
sources and even falsified documents. Though this portrayal
is necessarily one-sided and steeped in bias, the Armenian
American community presents it as a complete history and
unassailable fact.
Relevance: The truth demands
that every side of a story be told. Fundamental freedoms
enshrined in the U.S. Constitution protect those who choose
to challenge the Armenian American view.
To oppose Armenian American orthodoxy on this issue has
become risky. Any attempt to challenge the credibility of
witnesses, or the authenticity of documents, or to present
evidence that some of the claimed victims were responsible
for their own fate is either wholly squelched or met with
accusations of genocide denial. Moreover, any attempt to
demonstrate the suffering and needless death of millions
of innocent non-Christians enmeshed in the same events as
the Anatolian Armenians is greeted with sneers, as if to
say that some lives are inherently more valuable than others
and that one faith is more deserving than another. The lack
of real debate, enforced with a heavy hand by Armenian Americans,
ensures that any consideration of what genuinely occurred
nearly a century ago in Eastern Anatolia will utterly fail
as a search for the truth.
Ultimately, whether to blindly accept the Armenian American
portrayal is an issue of fundamental fairness and the most
cherished of American rights -- free speech. Simply put,
in America every person has the opportunity to tell his
or her story. Armenian Americans possess the right to promote
and celebrate their heritage and even to discuss ancient
grievances. However, Armenian Americans seek to deny these
very rights to others. This is proven by the punitive nature
and sheer volume of legislation proposed in the state and
federal legislatures, the one-sided curricula proposed to
state boards of education, and by the vast sums of money
and energy devoted to this cause. Together, these efforts
only increase acrimony and antagonism.
The complete story of the vast suffering of this period
has not yet been written. When that story is told, the following
facts must not be forgotten.
FACT 1: Demographic studies
prove that prior to World War I, fewer than 1.5 million
Armenians lived in the entire Ottoman Empire. Thus, allegations
that more than 1.5 million Armenians from eastern Anatolia
died must be false.
Figures reporting the total pre-World War I Armenian population
vary widely, with Armenian sources claiming far more than
others. British, French and Ottoman sources give figures
of 1.05-1.50 million. Only certain Armenian sources claim
a pre-war population larger than 1.5 million. Comparing
these to post-war figures yields a rough estimate of losses.
Historian and demographer, Dr. Justin McCarthy of the University
of Louisville, calculates the actual losses as slightly
less than 600,000. This figure agrees with those provided
by British historian Arnold Toynbee, by most early editions
of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and approximates the number
given by Monseigneur Touchet, a French missionary, who informed
the Oeuvre d'Orient in February 1916 that the number of
dead is thought to be 500,000. Boghos Nubar, head of the
Armenian delegation at the Paris Peace Conference in 1920,
noted the large numbers who survived the war. He declared
that after the war 280,000 Armenians remained in the Anatolian
portion of the occupied Ottoman Empire while 700,000 Armenians
had emigrated to other countries.
Clearly then, a great portion of the Ottoman Armenians
were not killed as claimed and the 1.5 million figure should
be viewed as grossly erroneous. Each needless death is a
tragedy. Equally tragic are lies meant to inflame hatred.
FACT 2: Armenian losses
were few in comparison to the over 2.5 million Muslim dead
from the same period.
Reliable statistics demonstrate that slightly less than
600,000 Anatolian Armenians died during the war period of
1912-22. Armenians indeed suffered a terrible mortality.
But one must likewise consider the number of dead Muslims
and Jews. The statistics tell us that more than 2.5 million
Anatolian Muslims also perished. Thus, the years 1912-1922
constitute a horrible period for humanity, not just for
Armenians.
The numbers do not tell us the exact manner of death of
the citizens of Anatolia, regardless of ethnicity, who were
caught up in both an international war and an intercommunal
struggle. Documents of the time list intercommunal violence,
forced migration of all ethnic groups, disease, and, starvation
as causes of death. Others died as a result of the same
war-induced causes that ravaged all peoples during the period.
FACT 3: Certain oft-cited
Armenian American evidence is of diminished value, having
been derived from dubious and prejudicial sources.
Armenian Americans purport that the wartime propaganda
of the enemies of the Ottoman Empire constitutes objective
evidence. Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, who is frequently
quoted by Armenian Americans, visited the Ottoman Empire
with political, not humanitarian aims. His correspondence
with President Wilson reveals his intent was to uncover
or manufacture news that would goad the U.S. into joining
the war. Given that motive, Morgenthau sought to malign
the Ottoman Empire, an enemy of the Triple Entente. Morgenthau’s
research and reporting relied in large part on politically
motivated
Armenians; his primary aid, translator and confidant was
Arshag Schmavonian, his secretary was Hagop Andonian. Morgenthau
openly professed that the Turks were an inferior race and
possessed "inferior blood." Thus, his accounts
can hardly be considered objective.
One ought to compare the wartime writings of Morgenthau
and the oft-cited Gen. J.G. Harbord to the post-war writings
of Rear Admiral Mark L. Bristol, U.S. Ambassador to the
Republic of Turkey 1920 - 1926. In a March 28, 1921 letter
he writes,
"[R]eports are being freely circulated in the United
States that the Turks massacred thousands of Armenians in
the Caucasus. Such reports are repeated so many times it
makes my blood boil. The Near East Relief have the reports
from Yarrow and our own American people which show absolutely
that such Armenian reports are absolutely false. The circulation
of such false reports in the United States, without refutation,
is an outrage and is certainly doing the Armenians more
harm than good. … Why not tell the truth about the
Armenians in every way?"
FACT 4: The Armenian deaths
do not constitute genocide.
The totality of evidence thus far uncovered by historians
tells a grim story of serious inter-communal conflict, perpetrated
by both Christian and Muslim irregular forces, complicated
by disease, famine, and many other of war’s privations.
The evidence does not, however, describe genocide.
A. The Armenians took arms against their own government.
Their violent political aims, not their race, ethnicity
or religion, rendered them subject to relocation.
Armenian Americans ignore the dire circumstances that precipitated
the enactment of a measure as drastic as mass relocation.
Armenians cooperated with Russian invaders of Eastern Anatolia
in wars in 1828, 1854, and 1877. Between 1893 and 1915 Ottoman
Armenians in eastern Anatolia rebelled against their government
-- the Ottoman government -- and joined Armenian revolutionary
groups, such as the notorious Dashnaks and Hunchaks. They
armed themselves and spearheaded a massive Russian invasion
of eastern Anatolia. On November 5, 1914, the President
of the Armenian National Bureau in Tblisi declared to Czar
Nicholas II, "From all countries Armenians are hurrying
to enter the ranks for the glorious Russian Army, with their
blood to serve the victory of Russian arms. … Let the
Russian flag wave freely over the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus."
Armenian treason is also plainly documented in the November
1914 issue of the Hunchak Armenian [Revolutionary] Gazette,
published in Paris. In a call to arms it exhorted,
"The entire Armenian Nation will join forces -- moral
and material, and waving the sword of Revolution, will enter
this World conflict ... as comrades in arms of the Triple
Entente, and particularly Russia. They will cooperate with
the Allies, making full use of all political and revolutionary
means for the final victory...."
Boghos Nubar addressed a letter to the Times of London
on January 30, 1919 confirming that the Armenians were indeed
belligerents in World War I. He stated with pride,
"In the Caucasus, without mentioning the 150,000 Armenians
in the Russian armies, about 50,000 Armenian volunteers
under Andranik, Nazarbekoff, and others not only fought
for four years for the cause of the Entente, but after the
breakdown of Russia they were the only forces in the Caucasus
to resist the advance of the Turks...."
One of those who answered the Armenian call to arms was
Gourgen Yanikian who, as a teenager, joined the Russians
to fight the Ottoman government, and who as an elderly man,
on January 27, 1973, assassinated two Turkish diplomats
in Santa Barbara, California.
B. Logic and evidence controvert the allegation of genocide.
1. No logic can reconcile the two positions that Armenian
Americans promote. Eminent historian Bernard Lewis, speaking
to the Israeli daily Ha’aretz on January 23, 1998,
expanded on this notion,
"The Armenians want to benefit from both worlds. On
the one hand, they speak with pride of their struggle against
Ottoman despotism, while on the other hand, they compare
their tragedy to the Jewish Holocaust. I do not accept this.
I do not say that the Armenians did not suffer terribly.
But I find enough cause for me to contain their attempts
to use the Armenian massacres to diminish the worth of the
Jewish Holocaust and to relate to it instead as an ethnic
dispute." (translation)
2. None of the Ottoman orders commanding the relocation
of Armenians, which have been reviewed by historians to
date, orders killings. To the contrary, they order Ottoman
officials to protect relocated Armenians.
3. Where Ottoman control was weakest Armenian relocatees
suffered most. The stories of the time give many examples
of columns of hundreds of Armenians guarded by as few as
two Ottoman gendarmes. When local Muslims attacked the columns,
Armenians were robbed and killed. It must be remembered
that these Muslims had themselves suffered greatly at the
hands of Armenians and Russians. In the words of U.S. Ambassador
Mark Bristol, "While the Dashnaks [Armenian revolutionaries]
were in power they did everything in the world to keep the
pot boiling by attacking Kurds, Turks and Tartars; [and]
by committing outrages against the Moslems …."
Where Ottoman control was strong, Armenians went unharmed.
In Istanbul and other major western Anatolian cities, large
populations of Armenians remained throughout the war. In
these areas Ottoman power was greatest and genocide would
have been easiest to carry out. By contrast, during World
War II, the Jews of Berlin were killed, their synagogues
defiled. The Armenians of Istanbul lived through World War
I, their churches open.
C. The Armenian Allegation of Genocide Fails the Minimum
Standards of Proof Required by the 1948 United Nations Convention
on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
The term "genocide" did not exist prior to 1944.
The term was subsequently defined quite specifically by
the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention of
the Crime of Genocide. This high crime is now recognized
by most nations, including the Republic of Turkey.
The standard of proof in establishing the crime of genocide
is formidable given the severity of the crime, the opportunity
for overlap with other crimes, and the stigma of being charged
with or found guilty of the crime. While presenting the
Convention for ratification, the Secretary General of the
U.N. emphasized that genocide is a crime of "specific
intent," requiring conclusive proof that members of
a group were targeted simply because they were members of
that group. The Secretary General further cautioned that
those merely sharing political aims are not protected by
the convention.
Under this standard of proof, the Armenian American claim
of genocide fails. First, no direct evidence has been discovered
demonstrating that any Ottoman official sought the destruction
of the Ottoman Armenians as such. Second, Ottoman Armenian
Dashnak and Hunchak guerrillas and their civilian accomplices
admittedly organized political revolutionary groups and
waged war against their own government. Under these circumstances,
it was the Ottoman Armenians’ violent political alliance
with the Russian forces, not their ethnic or religious identity,
which rendered them subject to the relocation.
A recent comment on the U.N. position was rendered by,
U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq on October 5, 2000 when he confirmed
that the U.N. has not approved or endorsed a report labeling
the Armenian experience as genocide.
FACT 5: The British convened
the Malta Tribunals to try Ottoman officials for crimes
against Armenians. All of the accused were acquitted.
The Peace Treaty of Sevres, which was imposed upon the
defeated Ottoman Empire, required the Ottoman government
to hand over to the Allied Powers people accused of "massacres."
Subsequently, 144 high Ottoman officials were arrested and
deported for trial by the British to the island of Malta.
The principal informants to the British High Commission
in Istanbul leading to the arrests were local Armenians
and the Armenian Patriarchate. While the deportees were
interned on Malta, the British appointed an Armenian scholar,
Mr. Haig Khazarian, to conduct a thorough examination of
documentary evidence in the Ottoman, British, and U.S. Archives
to substantiate the charges. Access to Ottoman records was
unfettered as the British and French occupied and controlled
Istanbul at the time. Khazarian’s corps of investigators
revealed an utter lack of evidence demonstrating that Ottoman
officials either sanctioned or encouraged killings of Armenians.
At the conclusion of the investigation, the British Procurator
General determined that it was "improbable that the
charges would be capable of proof in a court of law,"
exonerated and released all 144 detainees -- after two years
and four months of detention without trial. No compensation
was ever paid to the detainees.
FACT 6: Despite the verdicts
of the Malta Tribunals, Armenian terrorists have engaged
in a vigilante war that continues today.
In 1921, a secret Armenian network based in Boston, named
Nemesis, took the law into its own hands and hunted down
and assassinated former Ottoman Ministers Talaat Pasha and
Jemal Pasha as well as other Ottoman officials. Following
in Nemesis’ footsteps, during the 1970’s and 1980’s,
the Armenian terrorist groups, Armenian Secret Army for
the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA) and Justice Commandos
for the Armenian Genocide (JCAG), committed over 230 armed
attacks, killing 71 innocent people, including 31 Turkish
diplomats, and seriously wounding over 520 people in a campaign
of blood revenge.
Most recently, Mourad Topalian, former Chairman of the
Armenian National Committee of America, was tried and convicted
in federal court in Ohio of terrorist crimes associated
with bombings in New York and Los Angles and with the attempted
assassination of the Turkish Honorary Consul General in
Philadelphia. The Armenian youths whom Topalian directed
and who conducted these attacks were recruited from the
Armenian Youth Federation and Armenian Revolution Federation
in Boston.
FACT 7: The archives of
many nations ought to be carefully and thoughtfully examined
before concluding whether genocide occurred.
Armenian Americans make frequent reference to the archives
of many nations while carefully avoiding calls for the examination
of those archives. They know that no evidence of genocide
has been found to date, as was the case in the Malta Tribunals.
They also know that the national archives of several nations,
including the U.S., speak primarily of the deaths of Armenians
because the recorders were only interested in the Armenians,
while intentionally omitting reports of Muslim deaths. Take,
for example, the 1915 Armenian revolt in Van where at least
60,000 Muslims perished. Though the evidence for this is
overwhelming, the official archives of several countries
mention only Christian deaths.
Still, Armenian Americans carefully avoid calls for the
collection and examination of all records regarding the
events in question. Such would include Ottoman records describing
the activities of Armenian rebels and the Russian invaders
whom they supported, as well as the archives of Germany,
Russia, France, Britain, Iran, Syria and the United States.
Most importantly, the unedited records of the Armenian Republic
in Yerevan, Armenian Revolutionary Federation in Boston,
and ASALA in Yerevan, ought to be examined but remain closed.
Only those who fear the truth would limit the scope of an
investigation.
FACT 8: The Holocaust bears
no meaningful relation to the Ottoman Armenian experience.
1. Jews did not demand the dismemberment of the nations
in which they had lived. By contrast, the Ottoman Armenians
openly agitated for a separate state in lands in which they
were numerically inferior. The Hunchak and Dashnak revolutionary
organizations, which survive to this day, were formed expressly
to agitate against the Ottoman government.
2. Jews did not kill their fellow citizens in the nations
in which they had lived. By contrast, the Ottoman Armenians
committed massacres against local Muslims.
3. Jews did not openly join the ranks of their countries’
enemies during World War II. By contrast, during World War
I, Ottoman Armenians openly and with pride committed mass
treason, took up arms, traveled to Russia for training,
and sported Russian uniforms. Others, non-uniformed irregulars,
operated against the Ottoman government from behind the
lines.
4. Solemn tribunal at Nuremberg proved the guilt of the
perpetrators of the Holocaust and sentences were carried
out in accordance with agreed-upon procedures. By contrast,
the Malta Tribunals, which were convened by the World War
I victors, exonerated those alleged to have been responsible
for the maladministration of the relocation policies.
5. Open Armenian-Nazi collaboration is evident in the activities
of the 812th Armenian Battalion of the [Nazi] Wehrmacht,
commanded by Drastamat Kanayan (a.k.a. "Dro"),
and its successor, the Armenian Legion. Anti-Jewish, pro-Nazi
propaganda was published widely in the Armenian-language
Hairenik daily and the weekly journal, Armenian.
6. Hitler did not refer to the Armenians in plotting the
Final Solution; the infamous quote is fraudulent. All sources
attribute the alleged quote, "Who remembers the Armenians?"
to a November 24, 1945 Times of London article, "Nazi
Germany’s Road to War." The article’s unnamed
author says Hitler uttered the phrase in an address on August
22, 1939 at Obersalzburg. The Times of London author claims
the speech was introduced as evidence during the November
23, 1945 session of the Nuremberg Tribunal. Yet the Nuremberg
transcripts do not contain the alleged quote.
In fact, the quote first appeared in a 1942 book by Louis
Lochner, the AP’s Berlin bureau chief during World
War II. Lochner, like the Times of London author, never
disclosed his source. The Nuremberg Tribunal examined and
then rejected Lochner’s third-hand version of Hitler’s
address and rejected it. Instead, it entered into evidence
two official versions of the August 22, 1939 address found
in captured German military records. Neither document contains
any reference to Armenians, nor in fact do they refer to
the Jews. Hitler’s address was an anti-Polish invective,
delivered years before he conceived the Final Solution.
7. The depth, breadth, and volume of scholarship on the
Holocaust are tremendous. The physical and documentary evidence
is vast and proves indisputably the aims, methods, and results
of the racist Nazi policies. By contrast, scholarship on
the late Ottoman Empire is comparatively scarce. Much research
has yet to be completed and many conclusions have yet to
be drawn. Non-biased research from that period has thus
far revealed tragedies afflicting all sides in a conflict
with numerous belligerents. Nothing has yet been uncovered
which establishes genocide. In light of the ongoing research
and the other distinctions raised above, it would be improper,
if not malicious, to equate a desire to challenge Armenian
American assertions with Holocaust denial.
Bibliography:
- Armenian Atrocities and Terrorism ed. by the Assembly
of Turkish American Associations (Assembly of Turkish
American Associations, Washington, DC 1997);
- Death and Exile: the Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims,
1821-1922 by Justin McCarthy (Darwin Press, Princeton,
NJ 1995);
- Muslims and Minorities, The Population of the Ottoman
Anatolia and the End of the Empire by Justin McCarthy
(New York University Press, New York, 1983).
- Pursuing the Just Cause of Their People by Michael Gunter
(Greenwood Press, New York 1986);
- The Armenian File: The Myth of Innocence Exposed by
Kamuran Gürün (K. Rustem & Bro. and Weidenfeld
& Nicolson Ltd., London 1985);
- The Armenian Question 1914-1923 by Mim Kemal Öke
(K. Rustem & Bro. London 1988);
- The Story Behind Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story
by Heath W. Lowry (Isis Press, Istanbul 1990);
- The Talât Pasha Telegrams: Historical Fact or
Armenian Fiction by Sinasi Orel and Süreyya Yuca
(K. Rustem & Bro., London 1986);
- The U.S. Congress and Adolf Hitler on the Armenians,
by Heath W. Lowry (Vol. 3, no. 2, Political Communication
and Persuasion, 1985); and
- Proceedings of Symposium on Armenians in the Ottoman
Empire and Turkey (1912-1926), (Bogazici University Publications,
Istanbul, 1984).
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