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Fadix Analysis: Fadix Analysis (575 kb)

A Letter from The International Association of Genocide Scholars

U.S. House Committee Approves Armenian Genocide Resolution

A key committee of the U.S. Congress on Thursday overwhelmingly approved a resolution recognizing the mass killings of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey as genocide and urging President George W. Bush to do the same.

Ignoring White House objections, the International Relations Committee of the House of Representatives voted by 40 to 7 in favor of the bill after months of intense lobbying by Armenian-American advocacy groups. The panel had endorsed a similar pro-Armenian bill five years ago before its passage by the full House was blocked by its Speaker Dennis Hastert and then U.S. President Bill Clinton.

“This is an important, resounding vote acknowledging the historical truth and squarely combating Turkey’s denial of the Armenian genocide,” Bryan Ardouny, the executive director of the Armenian Assembly of America, told RFE/RL. “We hope that it will encourage Turkey to come to terms with its past.”

“The fight is not over as there are still steps along the way. We will continue to work with our friends in Congress to have this resolution approved by the full House,” Ardouny said.

The bill known as House Resolution 316 was introduced in June and has since been co-sponsored by 115 legislators. It calls on Bush to “accurately characterize the systematic and deliberate annihilation of 1,500,000 Armenians as genocide and to recall the proud history of United States intervention in opposition to the Armenian Genocide.”

Successive U.S. administrations have avoided using the term “genocide” for fear of antagonizing Turkey, a key U.S. ally which maintains that the Armenian massacres occurred on a much smaller scale and were not premeditated by the last rulers of the Ottoman Empire. Bush has instead used phrases like “systematic annihilation of 1.5 million Armenians” which leaders of the influential Armenian-American community say constitute a textbook definition of genocide.

“We have never termed the mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire a genocide. That is why we do not support this resolution,” a senior Bush administration official, who asked not to be identified, told RFE/RL from Washington.

“We believe that the use of the term genocide would not contribute to reconciliation and dialogue between the two communities,” the official said, speaking shortly before the House committee vote. He would not speculate on whether Bush will follow Clinton’s example and ask Hastert to effectively kill the resolution.

Ardouny did not rule out such possibility. “Anything can happen but we will press ahead with this in any case,” he said, adding that White House pressure on the Republican-controlled Congress is not as “intense” as it was five years ago.

The administration official noted that despite its reluctance to call the mass killings a genocide Washington supports “serious examination of the history of that period.” He pointed in particular to a “good” study conducted by a New York-based human rights organization at the request of the U.S.-backed Turkish-Armenian Reconciliation Commission (TARC). The International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) concluded in January 2003 that the Armenian massacres fit the definition of genocide set by a 1948 UN convention. Armenian members of the former TARC say the study dealt a serious blow to Turkish denial of the genocide.

In his last April 24 message to the Armenian-American community, Bush described the ICTJ study as a “significant step toward reconciliation and restoration of the spirit of tolerance and cultural richness that has connected the people of the Caucasus and Anatolia for centuries.” The administration official clarified that this should not be interpreted as U.S. endorsement of its findings.

“We endorsed the process of the study, not its conclusions,” the official said. “We were not part of the study.” He also praised TARC’s four-year activities as a “serious process that involved serious people.”

In his 2005 statement, Bush referred to the Armenian massacres as the “Great Calamity.” The “Great Calamity” was translated as “Mets Yeghern” in the Armenian-language version of the statement released by the U.S. embassy in Yerevan. The Armenians use this term only with regard to the 1915-1918 slaughter of their kinsmen.

The late Ronald Reagan was the first and so far the only U.S. president to recognize genocide in 1981. John Evans, the current U.S. ambassador to Armenia, became the second U.S. government official to do so publicly at a series of meetings with Armenian-Americans last February. “The Armenian Genocide was the first genocide of the 20th century,” Evans declared at one of those meetings, sparking talk of an imminent change in U.S. policy on the issue.

However, the State Department and Bush administration officials were quick to quash the speculation, insisting that the envoy expressed his personal opinion on the matter.

--THOTH 14:38, 16 September 2005 (UTC)

Rather than insist that one party or another endorse the idea that the Turkish massacre of Armenians was an instance of "genocide" - it might be a good idea to explain what the consequences of that endorsement would be.

I've heard that international treaties (or UN policies) require certain harsh and stringent measures be taken against any country found to have "committed genocide". And I've also heard fears from various parties that these adverse measures are so punitive and daunting that no one dares admit to having committed genocide, lest their entire political future be mortgaged, i.e., the stigma of the genocide label is so harsh and painful to bear that no confession or apology is possible to even consider, lest the crushing weight of "you are guilty of genocide" come crashing down.

This makes reconciliation far too risky. I can understand why someone would go to any lengths to avoid making any acknowedgements - even when this prevents reconciliation.

Not that I'm taking sides here: I just think the article should take this issue into account, when covering both sides. If one side only wants an apology, while the other side fears stigma and punishment, we should say so. Is that how it is, or what? Uncle Ed 02:48, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm not sure to understand your point, can you clarify? Fadix 19:13, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Are you suggesting that we list every opinion concerning this - all x # of million of them? --THOTH 04:03, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Likewise I suggest you consider the large number of UN resolutions concerned with the Isreali - Palestinian issue and ask yourself what weight do they really carry. Additionally we are not talking about a UN resolution here - this is US aknowledgement. And I would also ask you if you commited a crime would it be OK for you to lie about it and deny that you did it? Is it OK for others who know that you did it to lie and say you didn't do it because they like you otherwise? Should the victim of your crime be denied justice because of such circumstances? And is there really any legitimacy to the postion that you as the perpetrator of the crime be allowed to continut to deny that you did it when basically everyone knows that you did? Should you be let off the hook and we just tell the victim that thats the breaks - your "conected" so tough luck? --THOTH 04:03, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Oh & BTW - the term genocide was invented to....oh I think we have already mentioned this about 50 times already....please take the time to read some of the discussion and archives and educate yourself. And BTW - by saying you are not taking sides in this you have clearly taken a side...--THOTH 04:05, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Realise you are asking people to read about 2 megs of archives. No sane person should do that. If one suggests there is a problem, it is still a problem and should be resolved. --Cool Cat 10:10, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Talk pages are there as complement to the article, and it is sane to read what there is there justifying the article, before making important changes. It's the least one can do. Fadix 19:13, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Talk page has issues of the past. Current issues are not resolved in the past. If theyw ere resolved we would not be discussing it. If it was discussed in the passed, thats fine, obviously was not fixed so a fresh discussion may make this better rather than the degrated discussion in the archives, lets not go there. --Cool Cat 11:44, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

They were not resolved only for you. It is always for your interest to start back what has been discussed. You have done this from your days when you were archiving fresh talks because, you still wanting to get your POV accepted. This is not how it works. It is SANE to read talk pages, I did the same for the Khmer Rouge talk page just recently for the archives, that were not that short, according to your standards. Fadix 16:12, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Please focus on the topic. This is neither Palestine or Israel. I am not concerned with your views regarding an incident not remotely related to Armenian Genocide. --Cool Cat 10:10, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

A related issue is the one of prosocuting those who deny genocide (and specifically the Armenian Genocide) - such as -

Turk Politician Again Charged In Switzerland For Denying Armenian Genocide

(AP) - Swiss authorities brought a third charge against a Turkish politician for allegedly breaking Switzerland's racial discrimination laws by denying that the killings of Armenians around the time of World War I was a genocide, police said Monday.

Dogu Perincek, the leader of the Turkey's Workers' Party, made the remarks Sunday in a speech in central Switzerland, Bern cantonal (state) police said in a statement. He already had been charged twice by Swiss authorities for two previous, similar incidents.

Denying that the Holocaust or other cases of genocide took place is regarded as racial discrimination under Swiss law, and can be punished by up to three years in prison and an unspecified fine.

"Based on the fact that, in the course of his address, Dogu Perincek denied the Armenian genocide and expressed prejudices against the western world, the Bern cantonal police has put down a complaint because of suspicion of racial discrimination," the police statement said.

Perincek will be questioned Tuesday by police in neighboring Vaud canton, where he already is under investigation for similar remarks made in May, Bern police spokeswoman Anastasia Falkner said. Swiss authorities launched a second investigation into Perincek in July for making similar remarks in northern Switzerland, and Perincek was briefly detained after that speech. Turkey called the Swiss ambassador to the Foreign Ministry to protest Perincek's detention and investigation.

Similar disputes have erupted in the past between Turkey and Switzerland. In June, a Turkish Cabinet minister postponed a visit to Switzerland to protest an investigation of a Turkish historian who denied in a separate speech that the killings were genocide. In July, Turkey canceled a proposed visit by Swiss Economics Minister Joseph Deiss because of "schedule clashes," Deiss's spokesman said.

In a separate development, Turkey's Foreign Ministry said Friday it "greeted with sadness" the passage by a U.S. congressional committee of two resolutions that denounce the deaths of Armenians early last century as genocide, and hoped U.S. legislators would not allow the resolutions out of committee.

"In the period ahead, we believe that members of the U.S. Congress will act with a responsibility befitting the Turkish-American relationship, and strongly hope that the resolutions will stay in the committee and not be carried to the floor," the statement said.

Now - outside of Turkey (and perhaps its vassel Azerbaijan) - where folks such as Pamuk are being prosecuted for afirming the Armenian Genocide - I would highly doubt that there are any instances anywhere in the world where affirming the Armenian Genocide would be prohibited or considered as a criminal act - yet we do have at least one place - Switzerland (and perhaps more - France...Germany etc ) where we can see or conceivably see that denial of the Armenian Genocide is constituted as a crime. BTW - I believe it is important that all of these things be mentioned/illustrated in the article in some way. Note also - the Turkish Foriegn Ministry again uses the issue of harming the Turkish-American relationship - a threat - and such has been used before - even such thigs as suggesting that bases would be closed etc - in order to force the outcome of a resolution which should be concerned with truth and not politics. Perhaps these same Turkish officials will come to regret that they were not more cooperative in regards to US actions against Iraq - shame that - to think that this would not affect the opinions of American legislators at this time - but politics you know...its often a double edged sword.... --THOTH 06:30, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

"Bullshit! US should stop judging other people's history and look at its genocidal history and the current genocidal war in Iraq. "

References, and modification

Thoth, you proposed that article should be changed, after researching a little bit, to find an article that it's structure and order be used to make this article more ordered.

The Armenian Genocide of 1915–1916: Cumulative Radicalization and the Development of a Destruction Policy by Donald Bloxham, published in Past and Present, Nov 2003

This way of presentation can be used for the article. I did find more about the claims about racism, ironically from two works written by ethnically Turkish authors. The origins of Turkish Republican citizenship: the birth of race by Bora Isyar and Imagining the Turkish nation through 'othering' Armenians by Ayla Göl, both published in Nations and Nationalism.

I am in the process of starting footnoting, but I think the article do need some restructuring, without loosing the information that is already in it. There is also a new section that I was working on, regarding German implications, since as we speak, the materials and publications are now considerable enough.

So, what I do propose, is that you read Donald Bloxham work, if you can not find it, I will provide you a PDF version.(if you want, I'll do the same, for the work of the two turkish authors) Fadix 19:13, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Fadix - I will look for these works - though I am not familiar with either. I assume that they are all in English - yes? I have already suggested a high level outline for this piece BTW (more detail in the backround/prior events at this time - but I could complete the rest if there is some interest). I think my proposed outline can now be found at the front of this current talk section. If you consider the arrangement and the sorts of words that could be written within each section I think you might be suprised just how "Wiki" a presentation could be made that could simultaniously be accurate and more then sufficiently tell the whole story of the genocide. I think so....anyway I am very interested in the three articles you reference and am most interested in the Turksh authors - when were these written BTW?

Also the Bloxham article could be of interest. From the title I think I know what will be in the book - and in fact I think there is evidence for such a radicalization of thought and action (again - much as occured with the Nazis as WWII intensified...)(though I would argue its beginning preceeds 1915 - though the fact of the war - Gallopoli in particular - certainly had severe radicalizing effects (in overall scope and aim of action) where the possibility of the CUPs utter defeat was suddenly realized and this sensitized the CUP to the potential consequences of such - with Armenia a cause celeb among certain elements in the West (and the more recent actions only stregthening the rational for removing Armenians from failed/wiked Ottoman/Turk rule...) - also the state of war freed the CUP from many obligations and oversite - and the concept of no Armenians in Anatolia was seen as a solution to many dilemas - this coupled with the sucess of both the early campaigns against the Armenians of the far Eastern Vilyets and against the Greeks of the Aegean Coast regions in 1914/early 1915 - that excesses were effective and where Western political efforts to prevent them were ineffective - also spurred the CUP on to thoughts of far greater/more comprehensive criminality. --THOTH 21:14, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Thoth, I did not post that work, for its title, I just refered to it, because it was a good resume of what happened, simplified etc., and its structure could be used for the article. We can obviously not use structures of any of Dadrians works, because they are either about a specific thing, or it's too big to be a resume. As for the racism stuff from the Turkish authors, both are written in English, and i brought them because of your position that there was racism in the act, but I still disagree there, but now we have three authors who researched the matter and could be used. But those again are positions and should be presented as such. Now, I am ready to email you the work, I will be restructuring the article, but I will first present the possible changes in the talk page and discuss them. Fadix 23:56, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Footnoting process

This section will be used to collect references for the footnoting process.

First, for the claim of most Western scholars. The Association of Genocide Scholars official recognition. Holocaust and Genocide Studies publications, the Armenians cases is cited in 139 articles, Rwanda 78, Cambodia 69, etc. From the most important Journals about genocides, the Armenian cases is the second most used(The Holocaust being the first), which also goes in the same direction as what Rummel say in his book. The Armenian cases also is used in various Journals, like "Journal of Conflict & Security Law," "International Journal of REFUGEE LAW," "Journal of International Ciminal Justice" etc... Also, the Armenian genocide in the past years has even made some people like Yahuda Bauer, adherent to the hypotheses of Uniqueness of the Holocaust, to rethink. In fact, Bauer wites in his The rethinking of the Holocaust published in the Yale University Press. "In the Armenian genocide, arguably the closest parallel to the Holocaust, the motivation was political and chauvinistic, that is, it had a pragmatic basis." Using various database, we come to a clear disproportion in the Western literature, between those that support the theses of genocide, and those that do not. Fadix 17:32, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

On April 24, 1915, the Young Turk government arrested several hundred - or, according to Turkish records, over two thousand - Armenian intellectuals.

Reference, the over two thousand, is more exactly 2345 is from Kamuran Gürun work Ermeni Dosyasi, TTK Basimevi, Ankara, 1983 p. 210, he present it from alleged Ottoman records.

In Van, it is said that the governor Jevdet ordered irregulars to commit crimes and force the Armenians to rebel to justify the encircling of the town by the Ottoman army, the Venezuelan mercenary, Nogales, who served in the Ottoman army, also reports an order by Jevdet to kill every Armenian male in Van. Turkish authors on the other hand, report an Armenian revolution in Van during the same period.

Changed for

In Van, it is said that the governor Jevdet under the pretext of preventing an Armenian rebelion justified the encircling of the town by the Ottoman army, the Venezuelan mercenary, Nogales, who served in the Ottoman army, also reports an order by Jevdet to kill every Armenian male in Van. Turkish authors on the other hand, report an Armenian revolution in Van during the same period.

Reference: Ussher, Clarence D. and Grace Knapp. An American Physician in Turkey; A Narrative of Adventures in Peace and in War. Boston and New York City: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1917. More particularly the chapters, XVII, XVIII and XIX, which is titled FUN FOR JEVDET BEY. I would like to add those three chapters as Wikiquote., there is no copyright, the book has been published in 1917. Is it too long to be a Wikiquote? Also, adding to this reference, Rafael de Nogales, Four Years Beneath the Crescent Published in London, 1926, en of chapter V and VI. Fadix 18:52, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

It is believed that over a million were deported, though this figure has not been conclusively established.

924,158 "relocated" from a list of cities, according to Talaat notes opened by Murat Bardakçı. Which suggest that over a million may have been evacuated in total. Alexander provides 1.5 million reported in Jemals memoirs. See: Alexander, Edward. A Crime of vengeance: An Armenian struggle for Justice. New York: The Free Press, 1991 pp. 91, 131. The Austrian consul at Trabzon and Samsun, Dr. Kwatkiowski on March 13, 1918 reported to Vienna restricting himself to the six eastern provinces, Trabzon and Samsun district, that a million were deported, while Austria-Hungary's Adrianople (Edirne) consul Dr. Nadamlenzki reported that for the entire Ottoman Empire 1.5 million were already deported. (Austrian Foreign Ministry Archives 12 Türkei/380, ZI.17/pol and 12 Türkei/463, Z.94/P, cited in Dadrians The History of the Armenian Genocide). In all and all, I think that it would be better to delet "though this figure has not been conclusively established." While I am the one that added it, I realise that in publications, it seems that the figure of over a million seems to be established. Any propositions? Fadix 19:41, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Any attempt to establish exact numbers runs into several problems. First - is the number "deported" (or relocated/evacuated or what have you) the same as the number killed or the number who died during this period/do to this process (of uprooting and marching along without provisions) - and are those who were victims of outright killing in lieu of "deportation" included or is this figure only for those affected by "deportation"? Are these figures in fact synonomous with killing in these references as this objective - of death - was a fundemental aim and most common result of the "deportation" process itself)? Somehow I think that these figures are not always refering to the same thing (and how do we know in particular which of these possible meanings the various scholars and observers are refering to?).

Additionally when reporting over 1 million or 1.5 million "deported" does this include (the great numbers of) Armenian men who were first drafted, then either put into labor camps and killed or just taken out of sight and killed outright? And how many of these escaped? Likewise how many "deportees" managed to escape, endure or otherwise survive? (and are these counted in the 1 million etc - or not?) And what of the great many small Armenian villages in remote areas of the East that were attacked and destroyed - with most all inhabitants either killed or driven away - by irregulars (Kurds/crimnals/etc) associated with/sponsored or encouraged by the Special Organization - but that were outside of the official enactment of the "deportation" order? ...that were ussually promulgated through the regional officials and carried out (the initial round up part and the escort) by the local gendarmerie?

And where do all these figures and estimates come from - how reliable could they possibly be? Do they include Armenians from Western Anatolia and Thrace or just the Eastern (traditionally Armenian) Vilyets? What is the time period considered (when does the counting start and when does it stop - dates?)- etc etc and so on and so forth. Certainly the "over a million" figure for numbers of deaths and/or number "deported" seems very supportable (for either case) - and a case could easily be made for the 1.5 million figure (killed) - and even potentially a higher figure if one considers the deaths/killings of Armenians by the Nationalists (in Caucasia, Cilicia and elsewhere) as being part of the Genocide.

So perhaps there is some way to generally quantify and attribute - but we must be clear as to what we are refering to - killing or "deportatio" (and over what time period and who is included and perhaps who is not - etc). Of course in my mind the more important figures are those concering the number of Armenians remaining in Anatolia after WWI and the Genocide, then after the Nationalists complete the job in the 1920s and of course now. I don't think it is possible to ever come up with authoritive/accurate figures for those actually killed and even the CUP/Ottoman records regarding numbers "deported" are suspect IMO. The best we might do is ballpark based on population records/estimates (and there is some controversy here as well) and also report that the 1.5 million figure has generally been accepted - historically - from many (the majority of) accounts at the time (from the press, in-country eyewitness and foreign intelligence reporting...) as well as currently (in various commemorations/recognitions as well as in other arenas - included as accepted by most all scholars). And as I know you have looked into these figures in detail you know that the 1.5 million figure (deaths) is in fact both entirely possible and even highly likely given the best estimate of pre-Genocide Armenian population in Anatolia and the accounts and dispersion of survivors - etc. Still it is not any kind of exact count - and likely never will be - and neither will the 6 million figure for Jews in WWII or other such estimates that become part of the lexicon. Still the fact that it is part of the lexicon and is generally/widely accepted is worth noting in and of itself. --THOTH 05:40, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

Interesting - New York Times - DECEMBER 6, 1918 - SALONIKI, Dec. 4. -- M. Khanzadian, an Armenian leader and a former officer of high rank in the Turkish Navy, on his arrival here today declared that German and Turkish statistic which he saw in Constantinople in 1916 showed that 1,396, 350 Armenians had been deported and that of that number 1,056 550 had been massacred. --THOTH 06:37, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

More - "I quote the words written by Deschanel, when President of the French Chamber of Deputies and later President of France, in the introduction to "Au Pays de l'Epouvante," which was written by Henry Barby, the war correspondent of Le Journal:

At the beginning of 1915 there were in Turkey 2.000.000 Armenians, of whom less than 900.000 survive today, and the murdering of these more than a million people has been carried out with the most shameful cruelty. They were not all sent in platoons to execution. Those who were shot were the least unfortunate, because their suffering was short. Many hundred thousands of them were deported , constituting those sinister death caravans. * * * The Armenians furnished no provocation; they were mere victims. Their killing was consummated through a carefully prearranged plan. The infamous work was carried out systematically, so that not a city, not a village, not a family was spared."

By George R. Montgomery, Director of the Armenia-America Society as published in the New York Times monthly magazine Current History October 1922. The article stated that it was intended as a "refutation, from authentic sources, of the allegation that the Turks were not guilty of wholesale slaughter of the Armenians - Testimony of German and Turkish eyewitnesses of the crime."

In the same article - "Dr. Johannes Lepsius, who has had access to German and Turkish official reports, in his book, "Deutschland und Armenien," published in 1919, makes the following estimate of losses:

According to the Patriarch's lists, the total number of Armenians in Turkey was 1.845.450. If those who fled into the Transcaucasus and into Egypt are estimated at 244.400, and those who were not deported at 204.700, the total number of deportees would be 1.396.350. According to the latest accounts, those who are still living in the districts around the desert are some 200.000 to 250.000. If, furthermore, we assume that 200.000have either become Moslems or represent the women and children in Turkish homes, that would mean that a round million of the Armenians met their death.

I quote the words written by Herr Stuermer, Constantinople correspondent of the Kölnische Zeitung, in his book, "Zwei Kriegsjahre in Constantinople," published in 1917:

Here I can only give my final judgment on all these pros and cons, and say to the best of my knowledge and opinion that after the first act in this drama of massacre and death - the brutal "evacuation of the war zone" in Armenia proper - the meanest, the lowest, the most cynical, most criminal act of race fanaticism that the history of mankind has to show was the extension of the system of deportation, with its willful neglect and starvation of the victims, to further hundreds of thousands of Armenians in the capital and interior. And these were people who, through their place of residence, their preoccupation in work and wage-earning, were quite incapable of taking any active part in politics. * * *

With the most cold-blooded calculation and method, the numbers of Armenians to be deported were divided out over a period of many months; indeed, one may say over nearly a year and a half. * * * For the most part it was the sad fate of those deported to be sent off on an endless journey by foot to the far-off Arabian frontier, where they were treated with the most terrible brutality. There, in the midst of a population wholly foreign and but little sympathetic to their race, left to their fate on a barren mountainside, without money, without shelter, without medical assistance, without the means of earning a livelihood, they perished in want and misery.

The women and children were always separated from the men. That was characteristic of all the deportations. It was an attempt to strike at the very core of their national being and annihilate them by the tearing asunder of all family ties. That was how a very large part of the Armenian people disappeared." --THOTH 06:59, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

I was not talking about the massacres, or deaths, but the number of people having been evacuated from 1915 to 1917. This excudes, the losses during the evacuation. I was already aware of the figures you presented, but again, they say basically what I have said, that the figure of over a million having been evacuated is something that has been established, and that part about not having been clearly established could lead people to believe that that much having been evacuated is still not established. Fadix 22:01, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

OK - but to some degree my point is also that we must be clear in what we are presenting here. To say that 1 million (or such) were "deported" is not the same thing as stating the nmber who were killed. There were those (plenty) who were killed by other means then those associated with the "deportation" process - and there were those who were "deported" who survived and did not die. --THOTH 06:20, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

If you think, it can be more clear, do propose alternatives, as to how to write that sentence. Fadix 22:45, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

It is believed that twenty-five or twenty-six major "concentration camps" (Dayr az-Zawr, Ra's al-'Ain, Bonzanti, Mamoura, Intili, Islahiye, Radjo, Katma, Karlik, Azaz, Akhterim, Mounboudji, Bab, Tefridje, Lale, Meskene, Sebil, Dipsi, Abouharar, Hamam, Sebka, Marat, Souvar, Hama, Homs and Kahdem) existed, under the command of Şükrü Kaya, one of the right hands of Talat Pasha. The majority of the camps were situated near the Iraqi and Syrian frontiers, and some were only temporary transit camps. Others are said to have been used only as temporary mass burial zones—such as Radjo, Katma, and Azaz—that were closed in Fall 1915. Some authors also maintain that the camps Lale, Tefridje, Dipsi, Del-El, and Ra's al-'Ain were built specifically for those who had a life expectancy of a few days. Like in the cases of the Jewish KAPOs in the concentration camps, the majority of the guards inside the camps were Armenians.

Reference: It is documented in various maps of the genocide. But, three works in particular, I think worth mentioning(the three of them are in French). "Le Siècle des camps" by Joël Kotek and Pierre Rigoulot, JC Lattes, 2000. The authors say that there is 25 recorded camps, and present a map. The reason why I added 26, is because there is another camp, which is either separated, or used as transit rather than concentration camp. The other two works are « Ahmed Djémal pacha et le sort des déportés arméniens de Syrie-Palestine. » by Raymond H. Kévorkian , published in Der Völkermord an den Armeniern und die Shoah, Zürich: Chronos, 2002. by Hans-Lukas KIESER et Dominik J. SCHALLER (dir.), and from the same author: « L’extermination des déportés arméniens ottomans dans les camps de concentration de Syrie-Mésopotamie (1915-1916), la deuxième phase du génocide », in Revue d’Histoire arménienne contemporaine II (1998), notamment pp. 7-61. I will add more reference about the camps, and more about Sukru later.

Even though nearly all the camps, including all the major ones, are said to have been open air, according to Ottoman records, some were not. Dr. Ragib and Dr. Vehib, both, the colleagues of Dr. Said (Health inspector) testified during the Military court, that Red Crescent camps were used to kill by morphine injection and from which bodies were thrown into the Black Sea. In other instances, according to witnesses, there were some small-scale killing and burning camps where the Armenian population was told to present itself in a given area, and was subsequently burned en masse. Eitan Belkind, an ethnic Jew, who served in the Ottoman army as an official, and who also was assigned to the headquarter of Jamal Pasha, has witnessed the burning of 5000 Armenians in such a camp. Other records from the military tribunal suggest that gassing installations existed as well. Testimonies during the persecutions put forth that Dr. Saib and Nail, an Ittihadist deputy, were heading two school buildings used as extermination camps for children. Both Saib and Nail were allegedly in charge of providing the list of infants who were to be distributed among the Muslim populace; the rest were to be sent to the mezzanine floor to be killed by a mass gassing installation. The children were sent allegedly there under the pretext of taking baths but were poisoned instead.

« First we didn't realize what was happening. But one day we heard cries that abruptly ceased and were followed by a deathly silence. We then paid closer attention to what was happening. The baskets at the door of the "disinfection" hall told everything. It appears that Dr. Saib trapped the victims in a chamber equipped with some kind of toxic gas equipment with fatal effects. Those baskets were used elsewhere, such as at the Red Crescent Hospital, then the bodies of the dead or dying were disposed by dumping them in the Black Sea nearby. »

Istanbul Newspaper Renaissance, 27 April 1919

On the same sirection: « Moreover, Dr. Ziya Fuad, health services inspector of Trabzon at the time of the massacres, and Dr. Adnan, public health services director of Trabzon, also submitted affïdavits (authenticated oaths) which corroborate the charges of poisoning and drowning of children.

The killings by poisoning were not taking place on the regular sites of the Red Crescent Hospital but in two school buildings being used as collecting places for children divided for distribution (for some among them) and for destruction (of the remainder). Nail, Ittihad deputy, and Dr. Saib, Health inspector, would provide the lists of the victims which would be then collected by Turkish women employees of these schools. On the mezzanine floor of one of those schools there was a room covered with tiles that was supposedly vapour bathroom (islim). The Turkish women would accompany the groups of young children to this part for a steam bath. » (My translation, of a French translation)

But for now, I propose to only keep the gassing installations, and delet, about the children being sent etc. It eats much too spaces in proprtion to the camps section. We must consider that most denied in the usual 25 concentration camps, and the killings from the special organization etc. In the future, when I creat an entry related to the Physicians complicty in the genocide, those things might be covered more precisely.

For the injection killing, I will add, injection of typhus.

The Turkish surgeon, Dr. Haydar Cemal wrote in “Türkce Istanbul, No. 45, 23 December 1918, it was also published in Renaissance, 26 December 1918

« What I would like to bring to your attention are the barbarities committed against the Armenians in some fashion through scientific methods. It is against the conscience to allow this question to lapse and to be consigned to oblivion. Thus I would like to submit to the sense of honor and conscience of the members of the Inquiry Commission the facts I personally observed; it is up to them to decide on the measures to adopt against the authors of these misdeeds.

On the order of the Chief Sanitation Office of the IIIrd Army in January 1916, when the spread of typhus was an acute problem, innocent Armenians slated for deportation at Erzican were inoculated with the blood of typhoid fever patients without rendering that blood ‘inactive’. This experiment, suitable only for animals slated for vivisection, resulted in the death of a great number of unfortunate Armenians who were duped into believing that the injection was for remedial purposes. When publishing the results in the Journal of Military Medicine, the honorable Professor simply stated that the subjects were men ‘condemned to death’, without identifying them as Armenians. I personally was a witness of the criminal experiment which the Professor in question inflicted upon people whose sole guilt was that they belonged to the Armenian nation.

…

These atrocities committed against the Armenians were at once administrative and scientific. They constitute a stain for the medical profession. I am ready to furnish details on this affair.

… in the same city of Erzincan there was another series of serum the main purpose of Professor Hamidi Saud's experiments was examining the "differential impacts of the serum on such organs as the heart, brain, liver, etc., for which he used Armenian soldiers engaged in labour battalions. »

More, in “The Role of Turkish Physicians in the World War I Genocide of Ottoman Armenians.” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 1, no. 2 (1986): 169-192; Vahakn N. Dadrian.

Eitan Belkind, who I cited in the article, writes: « After a three day ride I reached the heart of Mesopotamia where I was a witness to a terrible tragedy... The Circassian soldiers ordered the Armenians to gather thorns and thistles and to pile them into a tall pyramid... afterwards they tied all of the Armenians who were there, almost five thousand souls, hand to hand, encircled them like a ring around the pile of thistles and thorns and set it afire in a blaze which rose up to heaven together with the screams of the wretched people who were burned to death by the fire... Two days later I returned to this place and saw the charred bodies of thousands of human beings. » It is from the « Flames of Nili ,» cited in, Yair Auron book: « The Banality of Indifference: Zionism and the Armenian Genocide. » New Brunswick, N.J., 2000, pp. 181, 183

There were various witnesses of such burnings, another I might add, is Hasan Maruf, a Lt of the Ottoman army, who discribes how a population of a village were taken all together, and then burned.(Source: British Foreign Office 371/2781/264888, Appendice B., p. 6)

I will add more about this later.(note that when I submit references, when I document other things in the article, I will still come back to previous ones to add more references, for the footnoting process.

While there was an official special organization founded in December 1911 by the Ottoman government, the second organization that participated in what led to the destruction of the Ottoman Armenian community was founded by the lttihad ve Terraki. It technically appeared in July 1914 and was supposed to differ from the one already existing in one important point; mostly according to the military court, it was meant to be a "government in a government" (without needing any orders to act). Later in 1914, the Ottoman government decided to influence the direction the special organization was to take by releasing criminals from central prisons to be the central elements of this newly formed special organization. According to the Mazhar commissions attached to the tribunal as soon as November 1914, 124 criminals were released from Pimian prison. Many other releases followed; in Ankara a few months later, 49 criminals were released from its central prison. Little by little from the end of 1914 to the beginning of 1915, hundreds, then thousands of prisoners were freed to form the members of this organization. Later they were charged to escort the convoys of Armenian deportees. Vehib, commander of the Ottoman third army, called those members of the special organization, the “butchers of the human specy.” This organization was led by the Central Committee Members Doctor Nazim, Behaeddin Sakir, Atif Riza, and former Director of Public Security Aziz Bey. The headquarters of Behaeddin Sakir were in Erzurum, from where he directed the forces of the Eastern vilayets. Aziz, Atif and Nazim Beys operated in Istanbul, and their decisions were approved and implemented by Cevat Bey, the Military Governor of Istanbul.

According to the same commissions and other records, the criminals were chosen by a process of selection. They had to be ruthless butchers to be selected as a member of the special organization. The Mazhar commission, during the military court, has provided some lists of those criminals. In one instance, of 65 criminals released, 50 were in prison for murder. Such a disproportionate ratio between those condemned for murder; and others imprisoned for minor crimes is reported to have been generalized. This selection process of criminals was, according to some researchers in the field of comparative genocide studies, who specialize in the Armenian cases, clearly indicative of the government's intention to commit mass murder of its Armenian population. Also, according to records, physicians participated in the process of selection; health professionals were appointed by the war ministry to determine whether the selected convicts would be fit to apply the degree of savagery of killing that was required.

Sources: Vahakn N. Dadrian, “Documentation of the Armenian Genocide in Turkish Sources.” In Israel W. Charney, ed., Genocide: A Critical Bibliographic Review. Vol. 2. London: Mansell; New York: Facts on File, 1991, pp. 86-138, Vahakn N. Dadrian, “The Documentation of the World War I Armenian Massacres in the Proceedings of the Turkish Military Tribunal.” International Journal for Middle East Studies 23, no. 4 (1991): 549-576, Vahakn N. Dadrian, “A Textual Analysis of the Key Indictment of the Turkish Military Tribunal Investigating the Armenian Genocide.” Armenian Review 44, no. 1-173 (1991): 1-36. Also, the Martial Court transcript, Takvim-i Vekayi April 27, 1919 N. 3540. More to come.

A Letter from The International Association of Genocide Scholars

Please see:

A Letter from The International Association of Genocide Scholars

— Davenbelle 08:13, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

I am wondering if it isn't more appropriate to add this in the wikiquote. Fadix 00:07, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

Not opposed, it's rather long... I've not looked much at wikiquote... — Davenbelle 04:13, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

I think such material is supposed to be at Wikisource. So I added it there. -- Karl Meier 09:51, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Good job - I like. I would have to think that this one entry alone should put all semantics issues and really basically all denialist issues to rest permanently. I really don't see where any who deny the Armenian Genocide as a genocide and who deny it in general (those who claim that it was essentially something other then innocent Armenian civilian citizens of the Ottoman Empire being killed en mass on orders and as a result of actions of the government) really have any leg to stand on. I think that it is far past time that we agree on this and move on to make the article right. --THOTH 20:17, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

BTW, I've sent you the three articles. Fadix 00:07, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

THOTH, that is my hope; see: this proposal and this comment. — Davenbelle 04:13, 24 September 2005 (UTC)

This letter was published as a full-page ad in the International Herald Tribune on Friday, September 23, 2005 — at least in the edition printed in Jakarta.

Legitimacy of the word "genocide" in the case of the Armenian genocide (again)

More concerning the legitimacy of the use of the word "genocide" for the Armenian Genocide - from a very recent interview of German scholar Hilmar Kaiser. I suggest that all who doubt the proper use of the word in this instance take head. This interview apeared in the Lebanese newspaper Aztag on Saturday, 24 September, 2005. K.M. is Khatchig Mouradian. This is not the entire interview which primarily covered the issue of the openess of the Ottoman Archives.

K.M. - You mentioned the issue of `abandoned property'. Some scholars who have studied that aspect of the Armenian genocide consider the theft of fixed and moveable assets as an integral part of the genocide and maintain that that theft was organized by the leadership of the CUP.

H.K. - It was the state. It was from the top of the government, from Talat and Ali Munif Bey. The Armenian genocide is the Ottoman government's answer to the Armenian Question: Deportations can only be analyzed in terms of expropriation. It was grand theft. It was the surgical separation of Armenians from their movable and immovable property. The Ottoman government was very careful of not wasting any assets while being not concerned about the fate of the Armenians.

To make the expropriation permanent, you have to replace the Armenians. The expropriation was part of a settlement program; this process created a surplus population and this surplus population was taken care of. The Armenians were mathematically a surplus population. Killing or, in the case of children and women, assimilating them solved that problem. What took place was genocide, not massacres.

In 1990, I spoke about the `so-called Armenian genocide.' I was a student in Germany and the library wasn't good enough and for that reason, I wasn't good enough myself. After I started my archival work, in one month, I spoke about the genocide, not the `so- called genocide'. I'm not just a believer in the Armenian genocide; I'm someone who has acquired that knowledge from his own work. No one taught me the Armenian genocide and no one taught me to use the word. It's a result of my own work. I use the word because it's the appropriate term that covers the phenomenon. The more I study the Armenian genocide, its various aspects and its systematic nature, the more it becomes evident that there is only one word. It's not a question of having preferences; if you want to present yourself as a scholar, you have to use the word. If you want to talk about the massacres of Armenians in one village or the deportations in another village, you don't have to use genocide, but the moment you want to put the wider perspective, you have to use the word. And every scholar that wants to play games, like some people going to Yerevan and telling everyone `don't use the `G' word', have a political agenda.

K.M. - Some Turkish scholars refrain from using the `G' word because they say that it's highly politicized and that they do not want to get involved in the war between Turkish and Armenian nationalists.

H.K. - I don't care about the Armenian and Turkish nationalist, no matter who my friends are and who are not my friends. I use the word `genocide' because it adequately describes the phenomenon. It's the only term we have that describes it. If one day we have a better word, fine. The English, German, and Turkish languages have only one word to describe. That this has a negative consequence on the Turkish government is something I can't change; I can't change history. I'm not prepared to haggle over it. If a Turkish scholar says its too politicized and he or she doesn't want to use the word, then let him/her take a different subject. If you want to be part of this debate, apply proper terminology and if you don't want to do it, you aren't a scholar. I don't like the fact that I get trouble from some Turkish quarters because I use proper terminology; but you have to face the music. If you don't want to face the music then don't play. That certain people living in Turkey had to take certain precautions at least in the past is unfortunate, that's why I don't provoke them, but I'm not dealing with people who have no academic knowledge on the issue suddenly turning up and trying to renegotiate academic terminology.

--THOTH 01:32, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Indeed, I agree whole-heartedly with the last statement. Just because Turks are embarrassed by the past and/or feel the term is "unfair", that doesn't mean that we can re-write history or change the definition of words. Accept what happened and let us improve the standard of this article, rather than trivialise the issue by focusing on symantics. John Smith's 10:13, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

Genocide Debate

As an American citizen currently residing in Armenia, I thought I could currently offer some insight into some false claims on this page.

1) Unconditional talks are occuring between the Armenian and Turkish Governments concerning re-opening the borders between the two countries, Armenian recognition of the 1921 Kars Treaty, and the formation of a bilateral parlliamentary comission to study the Armenian Genocide 2) There have been no demands for monetary reimbursement or territories from the Turkish Government on behalf of the Armenian Government. (The only reference to this that I can find is from the ultra-nationalists publications, which are in the minority, this is not the official stance of the Armenian Government) 3) U.S. Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-IL) has been recently accused of accepting $500,000 dollars on behalf of the Turkish lobby to kill the Recognition of the Armenian Genocide bill in the US house in 2000. (This came as part of the Sibel Edmonds controversy, The ACLU has appealed Edmonds' case to the Supreme Court) 4) A new Armenian Genocide recognition has passed the house commitee on foreign affairs and is coming up for a vote in the U.S. House 5)"Turkey vs. Western countries, but Azerbaijan agrees with Turkish position" There is a good reason for this. Currently Azerbaijan and Armenia are at war. There is no actual fighting, but a peace treaty has never been established. Add this to the fact that Azeris are ethnic Turks, and I would not present the Azeri position as unbiased. 6) Venezuela can be added to the list of countries who officially recognize the Armenian Genocide of 1915

Is there really any reason to list the Armenian Genocide site as "Disputed"?83.217.229.146 11:19, 26 September 2005 (UTC)EAB

Disputed will have to remain, until the article is source, even though, nearly of of the things there were source in the talk page. It still need work. I will footnote it, and propose and make some changes, and then, will request from some to read it, and ask for their opinions on if the disputed banner be removed. And then, probably I will pass it to a vote, so that there is no rv war between those removing it, and those adding it. Fadix 18:10, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Armenian Genocide and Democracy

I have no information on what happened,nor any comment about it.But there is something disturbing me; When a country (for example switzerland) "accepts" this case,it becomes illegal to defend your own toughts;which is totally anti-democratic.EU wants Turkish Republic to be "more" democratic,but they raze the system to the ground. And have another question also; if Turkey accepts this so called genocide,what does genocide-supporters want in return? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wounded Knee (talk • contribs) 17:54, September 27, 2005 (UTC)

First of, we still don't really know that it is illegal in Switzerland, we should wait and see what will happen with the present cases. Also, it is not illegal to deny the Armenian genocide in most or maybe all of the countries that recognize it. I am personaly against making illegal taking position, unless it is for reasons such as racism etc. And some times, it is hard to say the motivation of the person that take position. Now concerning the differences between trialing someone that support the genocide theses in Turkey, and someone who does not in an European country, is that in the first cases, the person is trialed for supporting a theses that most of those scholars that have written about the topic support. There are other differences, but if you'd like we could discuss about them in our respective talkpages. For your last question, no one can answer to this one clearly, because there is no absolute answers. What I want, is the burial of my encestors and the preservation of their memory. This has no monatery or territorial price. But here, I am talking about myself. And lastly, while you ask legitimate questions, they don't have much to do with the article, so we must continue this discussion elsewhere, email, or member talkpages. Regards. Fadix 18:06, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Well,a Turkish politician was arrested in Switzerland.His name is Dogu Perincek (a guy i dont like and once supported pkk).He was released after a while... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wounded Knee (talk • contribs) 17:52, September 30, 2005 (UTC)

Interesting read about a researcher

Here's a story and interview about a Turkish/Kurdish scholar: http://insidehighered.com/news/2005/09/30/yektan. I'm not trying to make any point here but just saying that there are similar people on both sides that will see anything containing the label of the other side as suspicious and complicit. --Muz 03:56, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

On another note, if you read the article again, not about the genocide but about borders and relations between current Turkey and Armenia, you can almost say that it is written by an Armenian "official". Just barely escaping using "we". Please read once again and tell me I'm wrong. Seriously, it's written like an answer to some fictitional claims that might have come up from the "other" side --Muz 04:22, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't understand what you mean. Can you clarify? Fadix 17:09, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Fadix, not sure if you'll see this:

(1)Turkey also criticizes similarities with the Holocaust, stating that unlike the Armenians, the Jewish population of Germany and Europe did not agitate for separation. Genocide scholars answer to those claims, that Holocaust revisionists also claim that the Jews agitated to destroy Germany by allying with the Soviet Union to bring Bolshevism into Germany, which according to them would mean the annihilation of the German people.

(2)Those who support the genocide theses state that Turkey is denying its past and accuse it of suppressing international attempts to recognize a genocide. To support their positions, they point to the fact that mention of an Armenian genocide almost anywhere in the world was met with rebukes from Turkish Ambassadors, while mention of it in Turkey itself led to the possibility of prosecution.

(3)There was a recent offer by the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in March 2005 inviting Turkish, Armenian and International historians to form a Commission to establish the events of 1915. The offer was accepted by Armenia but with a condition of having first good relations with the Turkish state.

(4)Relations between Turkey and Armenia remain frozen. Turkey has closed its land borders with Armenia, citing Armenian control of Nagorno-Karabagh. Armenia has repeatedly declared that it is ready for relations and an open border without preconditions, however Turkey claims that opening its borders would show support for the occupation of Nagorno-Karabagh.

Read the last sentence of each paragragh. All of them are judging Turkey, in its entirety, trying to show a hole in the arguments. Let's look at par. 4. Relations between Turkey and Armenia seems not very related to the discussion, at least to me. Misplaced Pages is not a newspaper although I can see how it can be useful to someone doing research. But we also know all of the statements in there are highly political maneuvers. I won't be able to write more right now, sorry no time. --Muz 04:10, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing that up, maybe his cases can have a place in the or an article, if not, at least an important section in the timeline. Fadix 17:08, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

The Camps

Please read "The Camps" section in the article. It sounds to me as being pure popaganda. The mentioned military courts were kangaroo courts "With almost no presentation of evidence, the courts found nearly every defendant guilty as charged." The article continues this propaganda by being very short on facts and full of bravado: "Morphine" being used to kill people, "the corpses being thrown in the Black Sea" and "having gas chambers" do sound pure fantasy. I gives one the impression that this article is used to further some agenda rather than being an factual encyclopedic source.

I have Ottoman Turkish transcrips of most of those quotes, and will be posting them here if required. I have a complete list of the Ottoman law gazzettes, numbers and pages about the Court. That it was a Kangaroo court is your opinion, the Mazhar commission contradict this, since it has over 40 people investigating, and they have used Military Ottoman investigation process, which means that they take anyone, and then if there isen't enough evidence, they "kick" them out of the court. For this reason, most of the witnesses testimonies were not permitted within the 4 major trials. Also, just to remind you that Misplaced Pages does not establish the truth, it report, the Court exist, and such claims presented in the court exist, so Misplaced Pages present them. The question is, wherever or not, you agree that such claims exist, and not if wherever or not you think it is the truth. Regards. Fadix 18:23, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

FYI - regarding these camps - most all are mentioned and to some degree described by German citizens - railroad workers, teachers, missionaries, military men, as well as other forigners - again missionaries (incl doctors, nurses, teachers), mercenaries, U.S. consuls etc in addition to being described in numerous survivor accounts as well as in the accepted testimony and memoirs. Some mass delusion it would seem. Though I imagine that you are likely a person who is ready to believe and to state to the world that most all accounts of mass killings, brutalities and such inflicted upon Armenian elderly and women and children were some sort of war propoganda and that nothing of the sort ever occured - that perhaps the Syrian deserts were lush with greenery and overflowing with abundent supplies - perhaps the Armenians' property and goods were shipped down their by the Turks awaiting their arrival - yeah thats the ticket....and Armenians are only "sore losers" and such - and that they killed 500,000 Turks and were on the verge of overthrowing the Empire - what was done was necessary for the survival of the nation...yeah thats it...and I suppose Hitler was justified in taking all those defensive actions against his subversive minorities and unwanted and that fanciful and unbelievable reports of "death camps" must tooo be wartime propoganda - don't you think? --THOTH 02:39, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

My views are inconsequential: I am not the author of this article. All I am saying is that this article does not seem to adhere to NPOV. Muesli 03:12, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Dear Fadix, could you please provide references for Camps section? Thanks.Cansın 3 October 2005

Read the section, "Footnoting process," I took a brake from it due to the Arbcom cases.

I checked that section, what I am interested in is checking the resource. Could you please put the reference(s) here or send it to me, so that I can read that reference? Cansın 3 October 2005

Which exact sections do you want? Fadix 23:35, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Uses of morphine injection, gassing practices, burning en masse, burning of 5000 Armenians are very bold claims. Gross allegations. Hard to believe. I want to check the references as stated in the article: "...according to witnesses..., ...estimated by some sources...,"...Said's testifies...","...Some authors...", "...It is believed that...". Let me know if you can send anything by email so that I can provide my email address.

By the way, the footnote discussions didn't result in a conclusion. The discussions of photo use, photo references (you may remember), photo captions didn't result in any productive conclusion as well. When I have time I will reiterate those discussions, hopefully there will be more contributions by people and the article may be more balanced. Cansın 3 October 2005

I don't see why this should be sent by email, when it belongs here. I will post it here. As for the pictures, come on, I am not thousands tasked person, I can't remember everything that is brought here, if you think they have not been addressed, fine request it again, you don't have to ask me. Fadix

Fadix, I requested the email way if you have large pdf documents which you cannot post here. I didn't want to mean something. For the pictures, I am not asking you anything and I didn't expect you to remember, I just said 'you may remember', again I didn't mean anything. I will address those issues regarding the photos later. I am looking forward to see/read your references regarding Camps section. Regards. cansın 3 October 2005

Yes it is all hard to believe isn't it...but then again here we are - living in peace and comfort - not blelieveing (I hope not) that our particualr group is human and superior to another - and that these others deserve little or nothing - in fact these others are just seen a a group - and a group that is "other" - is non-deserving of consideration - in fact is deserving of death - of slaughter - and deserving of armend criminals - released from jails to be sent forth to descend on them on their women, children and elderly - while their men are otherwise imprisoned and/or driven away - yeah - all very hard to stomach isn't it? ...all very hard to believe - to thin possible.. then again perhaps Adolph was really a swell guy after all eh? Just like you and I - just a patriot - nothing more - nothing less - surely not capable of.....yeah...hard to belive isn' it? --THOTH 01:42, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

An Armenian Source: Hovhannes Katchaznouni

When I made a search on web for Hovhannes Katchaznouni, the first prime minister of the Independent Armenian Republic, this was the first thing I met. Following, I excerpted some parts of the websites , . I hope there will be some response from Fadix or someone who did research over the history of the Independent Armenian Republic from 1919 to early 1920s. Cansın 3 October 2005

Here is the beginning part of it: "

The Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnagtzoutiun) Has Nothing to Do Any More (The Manifesto of Hovhannes Katchaznouni, First Prime Minister of the Independent Armenian Republic)

Translated from the Original by Matthew A. Callender Edited by John Roy Carlson (Arthur A. Derounian)

Published by the Armenian Information Service Suite 7D, 471 Park Ave. New York 22

1955 Price 75c

Introduction

However the propagandist may try, historical truth cannot be subverted forever in a free country. However hard Dashnag propagandists may try to twist and bury the truth, and glorify the failure of their Independent Armenian Republic, truth must eventually prevail. Now, for the first time in English, is a deep and incisive self-study by a competent Dashnag observer.

The author was a pillar of Dashnagtzoutiun. He was the first prime minister of the Republic. He knew every Party secret before, during, and after the founding of the ill-fated Republic. Few were in a position to know more, nor to express themselves with greater clarity, logic and foresight than Hovhannes Katchaznouni.

Unlike most Dashnag leaders who were revolutionists, and reared in the early Russian socialist-revolutionary schools, Katchaznouni was born in Akhaltzkha in the Caucasus, the son of a revered Armenian priest. He was graduated from the Architectural School of the University of Moscow. His notable works include the magnificent Cathedral at Baku, among many others.

This booklet is a condensation of his parting words to Dashnagtzoutiun, given in the form of an address to the Party congress in 1923—words which proved remarkably prophetic, and currently are as true as when they were first spoken.

In reprinting Katchaznouni’s address neither the translator nor the editor are assumed to agree or disagree with his views. Katchaznouni’s work is published at this time as a refutation to the grandiose, exaggerated and even outrageously false claims of the Dashnag leadership today, mouthed by men who for the most part were mere party functionaries during the days of the Republic, but through the years have blown up themselves into intellectual giants, saviors of Armenia, etc.

Katchaznouni’s work is a basic source of Dashnag history, and the Armenian Information Service considers it a privilege to be able to present, for the first time, the writings of this Armenian patriot and prophet to an American audience.

August, 1965 JOHN ROY CARLSON (Arthur A. Derounian)

To the reader

This is a manifesto which I am presenting to the Convention of foreign branches of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation convened during this month of April, 1923.

Deeply convinced that all the questions raised here will be subjected to the most serious consideration of not only the members of the Party but also of every single Armenian, I thought it was my duty to have this manifesto published and thereby make it public property.

I am having it printed complete and without any alterations* except the final three or four pages which contain concrete proposals that are reserved to the governing bodies of the Party.

Bucharest, July, 1923 HOVHANNES KATCHAZNOUNI

Comrades:

These matters have had my deliberate and serious consideration. I do not know whether you, too, have arrived at the same conclusions. Allow me to say more: I am afraid that my final conclusion—those very difficult words which I shall here state with all singleness of heart—will cause general embarrassment, perhaps resentment, in the Convention.

I am prepared for that.

I only ask that you believe: a) that it is more difficult for me to write and sign those words than for you to listen to them from my own lips; b) that those words are not the result of thoughtless or petty, transient dispositions or hasty resolve. I beg of you therefore that you be patient and approach the matters with an open mind, unhampered—something which is not easy for men who have lived a Party life and have thought from a Party angle.

Let me now proceed with my subject.

In order to present my conclusions in proper sequence I feel it is necessary for me to refresh your memory with the various phases of the Armenian Cause — from the Great War to the Lausanne Conference — and the role played by the Dashnagtzoutune during that period. So that I may not abuse your attention, I shall curtail my speech and present to you a concise yet accurate commentary.

At the beginning of the Fall of 1914 when Turkey had not yet entered the war but bad already been making preparations, Armenian revolutionary bands began to be formed in Transcaucasia with great enthusiasm and, especially, with much uproar. Contrary to the decision taken during their general meeting at Erzeroum only a few weeks before, the A.R.F. had active participation in the formation of the bands and their future military action against Turkey.

In an undertaking of such gravity, frought with most serious consequences, individual agents of the Transcaucasian A.R..F. acted against the will of our superior authority, against the will of the General Meeting of the Party. Why? This example urges us to recall that the A.R.F. in Transcaucasia in the past had been a follower rather than an originator of movements that had their inception beyond their control. Thus it was in 1903 (rebellions and demonstrations on the ocassion of the seizure of Church properties); thus it was in the year 1905-1906 (bloody encounters between Tartars and Armenians); and thus it was also during the first big movements of the laboring classes (1903-1906) when the A.R.F. was being led at Baku, Tiflis and Batoum by the policies of foreign socialistic parties.

The same characteristic line of action appears, as we see a little later, in the conduct we pursued afterwards generally.

It would be useless to argue today whether our bands of volunteers should have entered the field or not. Historical events have their irrefutable logic. In the Fall of 1914 Armenian volunteer bands organized themselves and fought against the Turks because they could not refrain themselves from organizing and refrain themselves from fighting. This was in an inevitable result of a psychology on which the Armenian people had nourished itself during an entire generation: that mentality should have found its expression, and did so.

And it was not the A.R.F. that would stop the movement even if it wished to do so. It was able to utilize the existing conditions, give effect and issue to the accumulated desires, hopes and frenzy, organize the ready forces — it bad that much ability and authority. But to go against the current and push forward its own plan — it was unfit, especially unfit for one particular reason: the A.R..F. is a people’s mass strong in instinct but weak in comprehension.

If the formation of bands was wrong, the root of that error must be sought much further and more deeply. At the present time it is important to register only the evidence that we did participate In that volunteer movement to the largest extent and we did that contrary to the decision and the will of the General Meeting of the Party.

The Winter of 1914 and the Spring of 1915 were the periods of greatest enthusiasm and hope for all the Armenians in the Caucasus, including, of course, the Dashnagtzoutiun. We had no doubt the war would end with the complete victory of the Allies; Turkey would be defeated and dismembered, and its Armenian population would at last be liberated.

We had embraced Russia whole-heartedly without any compunction. Without any positive basis of fact we believed that the Tzarist government would grant us a more-or-less broad self-government in the Caucasus and in the Armenian vilayets liberated from Turkey as a reward for our loyalty, our efforts and assistance.

We had created a dense atmosphere of illusion in our minds. We had implanted our own desires into the minds of others; we had lost our sense of reality and were carried away with our dreams. From mouth to mouth, from ear to ear passed mysterious words purported to have been spoken in the palace of the Viceroy; attention was called to some kind of a letter by Vorontzov-Dashkov to the Catholicos as an important document in our hands to use in the presentation of our rights and claims — a cleverly composed letter with very indefinite sentences and generalities which might be interpreted in any manner, according to one’s desire.

We overestimated the ability of the Armenian people, its political and military power, and overestimated the extent and importance of the services our people rendered to the Russians. And by overestimating our very modest worth and merit we were naturally exaggerating our hopes and expectations.

The deportations and mass exiles and massacres which took place during the Summer and Autumn of 1915 were mortal blows to the Armenian Cause. Half of historical Armenia —the same half where the foundations of our independence would be laid according to traditions inherited from the early eighties and as the result of the course adopted by European diplomacy — that half was denuded of Armenians: the Armenian provinces of Turkey were without Armenians. The Turks knew what they were doing and have no reason to regret today. It was the most decisive method of extirpating the Armenian Question from Turkey.

Again, it would be useless to ask today to what extent the participation of volunteers in the war was a contributory cause of the Armenian calamity. No one can claim that the savage persecutions would not have taken place if our behavior on this side of the frontier was different, as no one can claim the contrary, that the persecutions would have been the same even if we had not shown hostility to the Turks. This is a matter about which it is possible to have many different opinions.

The proof is, however — and this is essential — that the struggle begun decades ago against the Turkish government brought about the deportation or extermination of the Armenian people in Turkey and the desolation of Turkish Armenia. This was the terrible fact!

Civilized humanity might very well be shaken with rage in the face of this unspeakable crime. Statesmen might utter menacing words against criminal Turkey. “Blue”, “yellow”, “orange” books and papers might be published condemning them. Divine, punishment against the criminals might be invoked in churches by clergymen of all denominations. The press of all countries might be filled with horrible descriptions and details and the testimony of eye-witnesses. . . . Let them say this or that .. . but the work was already done and words would not revive the corpses fallen in the Arabian deserts, rebuild the ruined hearths, repopulate the country now become desolate. The Turks knew what they ought to do and did it.

The second half of 1915 and the entire year of 1916 were periods of hopelessness, desperation and mourning for us. The refugees, all those who had survived the holocaust, were filling Russian provinces by tens and hundreds of thousands. They were famished, naked, sick, horrified and desperate floods of humanity, flooding our villages and cities. They had come to a country which was itself ruined and famished. They piled upon each other, before our own eyes, on our thresholds dying of famine and sickness

And we were unable to save those precious lives. Angered and terrified, we sought the culprits and quickly found them: the deceitful politics of the Russian government. With the politically immature mind peculiar to inconsequential men, we fell from one extreme to another. Just as unfounded was our faith in the Russian government yesterday, our condemnation of them today was equally blind and groundless.

By an extraordinary mental aberration, we, a political party, were forgetting that our Cause was an incidental and trivial phase for the Russians, so trivial that if necessary, they would trample on our corpses without a moment’s hesitation.

I am not saying that we did not know the circumstances. Of course we knew and understood and so we stated when it was necessary to explain the situation. Deep down in our hearts, however, we did not grasp the full meaning of that word-formula; we forgot what we already knew and we drew such conclusions as though our Cause was the center of gravity of the Great War, its cause and its purpose. When the Russians were advancing, we used to say from the depths of our subconscious minds that they were coming to save us; and when they were withdrawing, we said they are retreating so that they allow us to be massacred.

In both cases we misinterpreted the consequence with the purpose and intention. We sought proofs of Russian treachery and of course we found them — exactly as we sought and found proofs of the same Russians’ undeniable benevolence six months before. To complain bitterly about our bad luck and to seek external causes for our misfortune —. that is one of the main aspects of our national psychology from which, of course, the Dashnagtzoutiun is not free.

One might think we found a spiritual consolation in the conviction that the Russians behaved villainously towards us (later it would be the turn of the French, the Americans, the British, the Georgians, Bolsheviks — the whole world — to be so blamed). One might think that, because we were so naive and so lacking in foresight, we placed ourselves in such a position and considered it a great virtue to let anyone’ who so desired to betray us, massacre us and let others massacre us.

...

This is a summary of an important book, entitled « The Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnagtzoutiun) Has Nothing To Do Any More ». The author is Hovhannes Katchaznouni (1), the first Prime Minister of the independent Armenian Republic. It is actually a manifesto which he had presented to the Convention of foreign branches of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation convened in April 1923 in Bucharest, Romania. Convinced that the questions raised there would be subject to serious consideration of, not only the members of the Dashnag (Dashnak) Party, but also of other Armenians as well, Hovhannes Katchaznouni thought it was his duty to have the manifesto published and thereby made public property.

The Armenian version of the book was published in Vienna by the Mihitarian Press in the year 1923. The English version appeared in New York in 1955 through the Armenian Information Service. It was translated from the original by Matthew A Callender and edited by John Roy Carlson (Arthur A. Derounian).

One small detail worthy of remark is the fact that it is rather difficult, even impossible, to find it nowadays in the libraries of the world. On account of what the former Prime Minister says of the Dashnag expérience, it is quite possible that certain Armenian circles prefer it to be dropped from the list of acquisitions of libraries. In some libraries it appears in the card cataloques, but cannot be found in the stacks.

Cansın, The verbatim can not concord with the original. There is an elementary mistake that is proper to Darounian. Transcaucasia has nothing to do with the Ottoman Armenians, the Erzeroun congress content has nothing to do with what is reported in Darounians version of the manifesto, this is confirmed by the Dashnaktoutiun official press organ, and a copy of this is even found in Uras book. Katchadouni was a leader; when his town was destroyed by the Turkish army.

The Alxendriopole investigation presented 60,000 as directly killed, in a total of 150,000 victims which condition would have ultimately led to their death sentences, including in the vicinity of the city, that 80% of the population were aging under 12 years old, mostly orphans from the genocide.(Soviet Archival records: CGAKA, f. 109, op. 3, d. 241, 1. 12. / Politarxiv MID SSSR., inv. No. 53351, 1.14. and Arxiv vnesnej politiki SSSR, f. 132, op. 4, p. 6, d. 14, 1. 52.) And Katchadouni was there and in the “officials” during that investigation. The commission formed was abruptly stopped when the Red army had reverted the Armenian administration and jailed and killed Armenian intellectuals, Tashnaks etc., Katachadouni was under threats and had to retract his “Tashnakism.” The sites claim the work is hard to be found, insinuating that Armenians have destroyed them, but nothing is said about what was really the "Armenian Information Service," la plume de Darounian, during the Bolshevic vs Tashnak propaganda war, the work made through only a restricted and limited production, no one knows how many copies were published in the first place.

"Exchange of notes between the USSR and Turkey concerning Soviet claims on Turkish territory and regulation of the Black Sea Straits

On May 30, 1953, the USSR sent Turkey a declaration renouncing claims made by the Armenian and Georgian SSR's in 1945 to Turkish territory and stating that the USSR considered it possible to reach a settlement on the problem of the Straits which would be acceptable to both States. In its reply of July 17, 1953, Turkey noted the declaration concerning renunciation of territorial claims and reminded the USSR that the question of the Straits was regulated by the Montreux Convention (see 36/vii/20/Pl). "

“A Calendar of Soviet Treaties, 1917-1957” by Robert M. Slusser, Jan F. Triska; Stanford University Press, 1959 p. 298

I post this, to give a clue of the situation in those years(when the said translation was published), when from one side Tashnak intellectuals were pulling the Soviets to get lands from Turkey, and Armenian Bolshevic intellectuals from the other side, being concerned that this will awaken nationalism. This was first engaged a little before World War II, but after the war started, it was left forgotten until its end. In fact, we don’t even know if this Matthew A. Callender is not one of the aliases of Darounian, that wrote by a nom de plume. Darounian was in politic, and it is not only his works relating to the Armenians that are controversial, but even others, he had a “conspirationist” mentality. Under Cover, his best known work, was a best seller, I think we’re something like at the sixteenth edition. The work, related to an American underground link with the NAZI, his name “Carlson” was allegedly to protect him from attempts for his life, since he was “spying” … While the work provides interesting materials, his allusions to “rightist” extremism, in the same time saying to fight for democracy. This was somehow true in his era, but to dump nationalism as something intrinsically harmful and something that would directly bring fascism is in my sense his biggest mistake. He throws Tashnaks, and any others in the same bags, in fact, his accusations are directed at the Tashnaks(calling all of them terrorists). He himself, in the first chapter of his book, (Under Cover) gives the story of the Archbishop Tourian(whom he adored) that was killed while he was giving a sermon. Darounian was still a boy, until that time, he has never forgotten what the Tashnaks have done.(He writes on the last paragraph of that chapter: “It is difficult to express in words the effect the brutal murder of Archbishop Tourian by Dashnag henchmen had on me. For a long time I was bewildered and then gradually I began to learn that the Dashnags, while they represented a vicious political clique of terrorists, were not the only fascistic organization then engaged in violating the principles of our Democracy. Five years later the second incident occurred which was to crystallize for me the certainty that a concerted attempt was being made to destroy Democracy in the United States.) In the same chapter, he also wrote: “Turk nationalists embarked on a Moslem ‘holly war’ of massacre, starvation, brutality and mass deportations which up to that time had been unparalleled among the so-called civilized nations.”

I know I am diverting the subject, what I am trying to say, is that neither Katchadouni, and neither the author of the English version, deny what has been done to the Armenians, Katchadouni made the statement that we know as verbatim(the page 7-8, that mostly, the Turks uses, is verbatim BTW), when the administration was throwing Armenian officials to jail, but to complicate things, Darounian comes in, in his flavour of the text, dumping TansCaucasia, as if it was about the Ottoman Armenians, while Trans Caucasia is not.

This text is worthless here, since it does not permit to conclude there was no genocide, to the contrary, both Katchadouni and Darounian recognize that. So, the question to ask is why do you find in this text that is relevant for the article, and even supposing that it was not in TransCaucasia, but in the Ottoman, how would it justify what has been done? Fadix 22:05, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Katchaznouni's manifesto may state a reply to those who claim that there were no 'serious' uprisings by the Armenians against the Ottoman Empire. To my understanding Katchaznouni states in his manifesto that, Armenians tried everything (every way of violence and politics) to gain independence and territory from Ottoman Empire under the influence of British, France and Russia and they lost, they were deceived mainly by Russians and were abandoned by the West. What Ottoman Government did was a reaction they had expected to some extent and now that they have a capital in Yerevan (1923), they have to stop dreaming about the territories and focus on the future in their own territory in peace with their neighbours. I put here only a small part of the text and I do not have the whole manifesto. And I am not sure if I can find it. Even if I can find it, it would be the English version which is not credible according to you. I just wanted to know what you (and other contributors of the article) know/think about Katchaznouni and his manifesto since the manifesto has been cited oftenly by Turkish scholars. And about your Trans Caucasia point: I really couldn't understand your point? Katchaznouni says "...At the beginning of the Fall of 1914 when Turkey had not yet entered the war but bad already been making preparations, Armenian revolutionary bands began to be formed in Transcaucasia with great enthusiasm and, especially, with much uproar. Contrary to the decision taken during their general meeting at Erzeroum only a few weeks before, the A.R.F. had active participation in the formation of the bands and their future military action against Turkey..." Anyway I see that you don't give credit to Katchaznouni and his manifesto since he was under pressure of Bolsheviks. Cansın 3 October 2005

Cansin, I don’t remember this being quoted by several Turkish scholars, at least not in English, Ataov, I think is the only that quoted it generally. My point was not more about the pressure from the Soviet, but rather, the fact that the part that contain most of the elements used, are the verbatim parts. That is my problem, it was meant to be a declaration, and not written. We don’t know who wrote the transcription, the part that is not verbatim, is not as direct. Maybe that may be explained by the fact that when someone speaks, he is more direct than when he writes. I don’t know. Now, the part of my post you did not understand has to do with the quote you present. The meeting of Erzeroum, was to take a decision, if either or not the Ottoman Armenians would ally and fight with the Ottoman, or maintain neutrality. The decision was that, they would be neutral, and will oppose to a war, but if a war happens, they will be forced to side with the Ottoman, but that they can not be held responsible of the position that the Armenians in transcaucasia will take. The Armenians in transcaucasia did not decided to be neutral, they decided to fight for the Empire(Russian), but the decision they took, had nothing to do with the one taken by the Ottoman Armenians, and the Erzeroum congress(the meeting in question), only included the Ottoman Armenians. And more, the official Tashnak press organ, report the decision that is considered by scholars in Turkey as revolution, here from Uras book.

“ It was not enough to arrest and imprison the well-known and respected members of the Armenian community or exile them to remote areas; to create fear and terror among the whole nation. No, it was not enough, for the whole of Cilicia and Armenia had to be turned into one vast graveyard. We wished to convince you of the consequences of ill-fated policy you wished to pursue. We begged you not to bring about your downfall by starting hostilities with Russia. We implored you not to be swayed by German influence and not to take up arms against the Triple Entente, two of whose members, England and France, have always been loyal allies who have repeatedly saved the state from danger. You behaved with ingratitude and turning your upon your former allies you threw yourself into the arms of Germany whose power turned your head. And, by abandoning the policy of neutrality which you had so far been pursuing you dragged the Ottoman state to destruction. The country, already poor, was totally ruined. You prepared the ground for serious disorders and the bloody defeats that violated the borders of Armenia. You destroyed and annihilated innumerable young lives. Today, incapable of saving your country, you are desperately fighting your last battle and are treacherously assaulting the unfortunate, unarmed and helpless Armenian nation. It is your own policy that has forced the Armenians to take up weapons and form bands in order to protect their communities from systematic extermination. You are reaping what you have sown. The press organ of the Armenian Revolutionary committee, independent of the Party, on its own responsibility, accuses you – those members of the government and of the Society of Union and Progress involved in these incidents – of having inflicted atrocities and murders on the Armenian nation and, likewise, of having committed crimes against the Ottoman state, and declares that it holds you morally and legally responsible. Signed: Dashnaktsutiun”

Uras, Esat, “The Armenians in History and the Armenian Question,” Istanbul: Documentary Publications, 1988. pp. 874-77

Uras version is different than the one submitted to the press, I will try to bring that Friday, since I can’t sooner. But, still, from that letter, there is no declaration of rebellion which has caused the Ottoman to answer. The Ottoman Empire has seized the documents of the bureaus of the revolutionary federation, and all the sort of evidences they could get, are like this one above. Violated the borders of Armenia, is the allusion to Russian Armenia, which the Ottoman Empire decided to invade.

So, here is my main problem with the text in question. How could we conclude that the Erzeroum meeting decision was not respected, when it only concerned the Ottoman Armenians, and that those in trancaucasia were serving for the Russian empire? Beside, just to remind you, that the decision to remove the Armenians was proposed in February 1914, during a Turkish and German meeting. The proposition was to replace the Armenian economic predominance in the East with the one of Germans and Turks. Edib, writes this in her own memoirs also. Fadix 23:30, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Much of this account - that which is true/accurate - and how much of this is such is highly debatable - is still even not something that we can entirely take on face value as Katchaznouni clearly has a political axe to grind against his rivals whom I think essentially banished him and his verion of events just does not seen to match the facts as witnessed by outsiders - at least not for Anatolia proper - not at all. Regardless (if what he claims was true perhaps in part - for the Caucuses)- armed bands of Armenians forming in the Caucuses in 1914 is nothing surprising (this does not aply to Anatolia - and these are entirely two different places and different people - citizens of different nations with opposite loyalties...and in very different power positions) -

In fact it has been documented that many months prior to the actual declaration of war in Oct-Nov 1914 the Ottoman's had been sponsoring bands of Azeri, Turkish and Kurdish irregulars in the Caucuses, Persia, (what is now Iraq) and in Eastern Anatolia - for the purposes both of harrasing Russian (and later British and French) military and infrastructure as well as for riling up the locals (Muslim) against foriegn (Christian/Russian/British) presence and also specifically for massacring and driving out local Christian (primarily Armenian) groups (to pave the way for incorporation of the Caucuses into the Ottoman Empire and genreally to clear the area of non-Muslims to further Pan-Turan aspirations in the East. Again there exists a great deal of documentation that corraborates these actions. The Russian sponsoring of Armenain groups (for self protection as well as to undertake similar cleanising actions against Muslims in the Caucuses) is also a known phenomonon. However - in fact this has little to do with the Genocide of Armenians as it transpired in Anatolia - except in that the Special Organization units and chettes sponsored by them in the East were able to be used to turn on the civilian Armenian populations of Anatolia proper once they were essentially driven out of the Caucuses (at least to a large degree) by regular Russian forces.

The Ottoman Dashnaks - as an organization - and to a great degree the male Ottoman Armenian population in general - took part in no actions against Ottoman forces or civilians either prior to or during WWI and the main period of the Genocide. Armenian guerilla activity in the Anatolian East had largely diminished to entirely negligible levels after 1908 and the acendency of the CUP. The Dashnaks were largely taken by surprise at the turn of events that made them outlaws - banned form carrying weapons, unable to legally gather together and unable to legally advocate any political platform outside of the one specifically approved by the CUP. These accounts of the Caucuses are at best tangental to the situation within the Ottoman Empire where the process at work was one of the radicalization of a revolutionary political party whose wing that emerged triumphant was one possesing a radical racist xenophobic agenda (and sure lets discuss why such a group was able to rise to the top...again much as the Nazis - another seemingly abhorent racist political movement was able to gain acendency in pre-war Germany some 25 years later and like the CUP was able to manipulate the nation into a wartime situation allowing the gloves to be taken off and political enemies to be made to pay). Are you so unsophisticated and/or uniformed to not understand the processes and the events that unfolded and were at work? How can you attempt to lay blame at a largley unimpowered and persecuted minority who was ultimatly forced to pay in their blood for the 15 minutes of fame of such scoundrals. Surely you can see the CUP for what they were and understand the depths of extremism and madness in their agenda? This claim that Armenians were some sort of equal party to such acts (on any kind of noticible scale - that such a group would even have the wherewithal and ability to compete with an Empire with its militarized posture, its noteworthy and unequalled in the annals of history to that point secret police and armed agents - its doctine of superiority and the prevailing racism and degradation of the minority Christians - that such a disenfranchised minority group could pose any kind of a threat to such - is both absurd and is just untrue - it never happened this way - not at all...come now - are you truly so blind? Outside of a very few instances of single point uncoridinated resitance to having their homes, villages - all that these people had ever known torn usunder beneath them - these poor people - after having experienced two previous generations of massacre and abuse - of having no say and no ability to defend themselves - so few were able to secure any kind of defense - most just passively were led to their deaths - particularly since the men had already been taken - they were as lambs in the slughterhouse. While some men managed to desert and escape and join up with the Russians and Russian Armenians accross the border - well - this is understandable considering their circumstance - and the opposite was occuring where various Muslim men were crossing into Anatolia from the Caucues and joinig with the Ottoman Armies - so - what doe sthis prove really?

To my knowledge there is not a single instance where a "deportation convoy" was ever rescued - not a one - no instance where armed Armenians - who by Turkish claim were armed and running amok throughout the countryside causing all sorts of havoc - there is not one single instance where such "rebels" managed to intercede and save their own women and children - not a one. (any resisitance - the very few and well knonm instances of such - were pretty much entirely local and defensive). Could they (roving armed Armenian bands) have really been such cowards to have not acted repeatedly to save their people? Were they really so universally callous in the face of the documented depravity and suffering that thier woemn and children - elderly parents and such were subjected to? Could you imagine allowing your own to suffer such and do nothing if you had the power to prevent it? We have multitudes of accounts concerning how lightly armed the escorts were - compared to an organized armed band of rebels or bandits - who are accused of killing thousands of Turks in Anatolia during this period - could they not have sparred a few bullets to have freed their own? - to have prvented the slaughter - witnessed and corraborrated by so many to have no doubt as to what occured - what these people were subjected to...the horror and barbarity of it all... Don't you think - if such forces indeed existed in Anatolia during this time - that such a thing would have been accomplished...that some would have been rescued while en route - if such bands of armed Armenians were indeed present and active during this time....at least once? Don't you think? --THOTH 01:29, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Cansin request of picture authentification

The next time Cansin, present your requests yourself. :)

The one I submitted, I verified it. Image:Armenianmassacres.jpg That picture, is the one of a burning camp in Moush, the picture was taken by the Russians, and is in the Armjanskij Central’nyj Komitet (Izd.): ,Al’bom’’ armjan’-bežencev’’. Tiflis (um 1918). There is scan of the text in Russian character, I will try to find a Russian member to retranscript it if you want. I will authentificate others, tommorow or the day after. Fadix

Thanks, but what did you mean by "The next time Cansin, present your requests yourself"? I already requested by myself, didn't I? Did I miss something? Cansın 3 October 2005

Ok, I am tired, I got the joke a bit late :). Maybe you can put this into the page of that picture as a reference. The German sentence in the picture says "Schädel von lebendig verbrannten Armeniern aus dem Dorf Ali-Srnan" which can be roughly translated as "The heads of the Armenians buried alive near the village of Ali-Srnan". I don't know if Ali-Srnan is near Muş (Moush). Cansın

It's a village in Mush(I don't know from the new agglomeration though), the first time I saw that picture was from Un génocide exemplaire by Jean-Marie Carzou, the picture is said to be a mass grave of burned Armenians(and that's also what http://www.imprescriptible.fr, which the author I already wrote to, writes (the site is probably the most credible out there)) found by the Russians. The picture is not a German originated, the site presented here is in German, and the text seems to be part of the text. The same picture is included in a German article, that's from where I took it. Fadix 03:56, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

If you look at the picture in , just above the Russian text there is Armenian text, right? Is there a possible way to translate it or isn't it in Armenian? The other pictures in the article are from armeniapedia.org and their references are not clear. Can't be the resources of the all photographs used in the article given explicitly? Cansın 3 October 2005

: Text in russian: Skulls of armenians who were burnt alive in village Ali Zrnan. If you need, I will help you in other translations from russian. --Gvorl 05:07, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks Gvorl. Cansın 4 October 2005

Thanks, I was waiting a translation of the Russian text. Fadix 21:45, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Reference Request for Camps Section

I request the disclosure of the references, which were used to create the Camps section. As I stated before (under Camps headline) the allegations are gross and I am not sure if these allegations are well established, and accepted/referred by scholars. Use of morphine injection, gassing practices, burning en masse, burning of 5000 Armenians are bold claims. I strongly urge the disclosure of the references as stated in the article vaguely: "...according to witnesses...", "...estimated by some sources...","...Said's testifies...","...Some authors...", "...It is believed that...". As also stated before in footnote discussions in archives, Schizophrenia article is a very good example for the use of footnotes and this way helps to increase the credibility of the Misplaced Pages to become a serious reference. Cansın 4 October 2005 Cansin, the 5000 figure, I have already sourced it, in the footnoting process section here on this same page. I will requote it again.

There were various witnesses of such burnings, another I might add, is Hasan Maruf, a Lt of the Ottoman army, who describes how a population of a village were taken all together, and then burned.(Source: British Foreign Office 371/2781/264888, Appendice B., p. 6)

The gassing is sourced, from the Third Session p.m., of the Martial Court, April 1, 1919. Published in the Turkish newspaper "La Renaissance, " 27 April 1919. Those are cited in Yves Ternons works, Baghdjian also cite them(both authors write in French), and of course Dadrian. But, I also agreed in the footnoting process section “But for now, I propose to only keep the gassing installations, and delete, about the children being sent etc. It eats much too spaces in proportion to the camps section. We must consider that most died in the usual 25 concentration camps, and the killings from the special organization etc. In the future, when I creat an entry related to the Physicians complicity in the genocide, those things might be covered more precisely.” The instances of poising and burning are not the norm, and that most died in the major 25-26 camps, so, it will be logical to shorten the thing covering the other more brutal camps. The poising by morphine. Dr. Saib (Director of Trabzon’s Health Services) was also implicated on the killings. Dr. Ziya Fuad, the health service inspector during the Trabzon trial sitting, recognised that Dr. Said "caused the death of untold numbers of Armenian children who were injected with morphine." These information’s were provided by Drs. Ragib and Vehib, Saib’s colleagues at Trabzon’s Red Crescent hospital. This is quoted in Dadrians, “The Turkish Military Tribunal's Prosecution of the Authors of the Armenian Genocide: Four Major Court-Martial Series,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Volume 11, Number 1, Spring 1997

I also added in the footnoting process, Dr. Haydar Cemal writing in the “Türkce” Istanbul, No. 45, 23 December 1918, it was also published in Renaissance, 26 December 1918, about the injection of typhus. Those things are also related to the medical experiments, Jeremy Hugh Baron writes: “Individual doctors were directly involved in the massacres, having poisoned infants, killed children and issued false certificates of death from natural causes. Nazim's brother-in-law Dr. Tevfik Rushdu, Inspector-General of Health Services, organized the disposal of Armenian corpses with thousands of kilos of lime over six months; he became foreign secretary from 1925 to 1938. The mass murders were witnessed and reported by relief organizations, the Red Cross, war correspondents and diplomats from Austria, Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and the USA, and were recorded in the post-war newspapers and trial supplements of the official gazette of the Ottoman government. Many doctors were arrested after the war but most of the courts martial were soon dismantled. Only fifteen Turks were ever given death sentences for their part in the massacres, and just three were executed. And when Mehmat Kemal, a sub-district governor, was hanged in April 1919 a crowd which demonstrated in protest consisted largely of students of the medical school of Istanbul University: Kemal is commemorated by a statue in a public square.” “Genocidal Doctors,” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, November, 1999, 92, pp.590-593, by Jeremy Hugh Baron. The psychiatrist, Robert Jay Lifton, writes in a parenthesis when introducing the crimes of NAZI doctors in his book "Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide" p. xii: “(Perhaps Turkish doctors, in their participation in the genocide against the Armenians, come closest, as I shall later suggest)”

But, I agree with you about, "...according to witnesses...", "...estimated by some sources...","...Said's testifies...","...Some authors...", "...It is believed that..." are not the best of words, I introduced them to neutralize the article, and probably that part will be modified. If you have any more questions, about this part or any other, feel free to ask. Regards. Fadix 21:43, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

Eiten Belkind was a spy working for the British Intelligence against the Ottoman State at that time. Eiten Belkind's accounts could hardly be an unbiased source. Here is the source:

"The nephew of Bilu founder Israel Belkind and the son of Bilu pioneer Shimshon Belkind, Naaman Belkind was born in Eretz Yisrael. He grew up in the Bilu community of Gedera, and was later employed in the wine cellars of Rishon LeTzion.

Along with his cousin Avshalom Feinberg and his brother Eytan, Belkind joined the Nili espionage group, which was formed in 1915 to assist the British against the Turkish authorities. The group encountered much opposition to its operations, in part from the British themselves, but largely from the members of the Yishuv, who regarded the espionage as subversive and endangering Jewish settlements. Nili's independence from mainstream Zionist politics also lent it a controversial nature, but the group maintained its activities.

In September, 1917, Belkind set out for Egypt to look into the circumstances regarding Feinberg's death earlier that year. Caught by Beduin in the Sinai, he was handed over to the Turks and brought to Damascus. Shortly after, the principal Nili figures were arrested and the group incapacitated. Belkind was convicted of spying and was hanged on December 16, 1917, along with Nili leader Yosef Lishansky. He was later re-interred in Rishon LeTzion."

Naaman Belkind Also please see the Wiki article http://en.wikipedia.org/Nili for further info. Muesli 01:44, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

I have never heard of this(Nili woking for propaganda). Can you be kind to provide any ressources pointing that the Nili participated in a propaganda war(since what you copypasted, doesn't say that)? I always thought that they concentrated on espionage, and that since they had among their group, Jewish ranked among the Ottoman army and officials, they were valuable source for the British, and were composed of "underground"(and here underground, should be highlined) Jewish intellectuals. Sarah, one of the founders of the group, pushed the acceptance to serve for the British, with his brother and a friend, after what has been done to the Armenians, and was concerned that the decision may extend to the Jews. She wrote on December 13, 1915, on the way of « engaging »(in its formation, and as one of the founders) in this « secret service » as indirect justification. "How terrible the Turks are ! If we don't succeed in getting free from them in time, they are quite capable of doing to us what they did to the Armenians. Will the Jews be next ?" She goes on also, to discribe the conditions on the railway, where the bodies of "hundreds of Armenian men, women and children" were lying.

Beside, just to remind you that, our interpretations of sources are irrelevant for the article. That you think that the Nili have fabricated reports, or that the Germans have fabricated reports against their own alies, or that the Martial Court, fabricated telegrams etc. Is irrelevant. It is not the job of Misplaced Pages to find the truth here, but only report about what is said about a topic. Fadix

I understand your point. But stating that "Eiten Belkind was an official in the Ottoman army" and omitting the fact that he was a certified British spy certainly does not seem a neutral position to me. If you add the fact that he was also a spy (or an intelligence officer) working for the British together with "he was as an Ottoman army official" in the same sentence in the main article, this would be a move towards NPOV. Thanks.

Muesli 03:28, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

OK, but what prevent you to add it? I must have forgotten to add he was from the Nili. That he was in the Ottoman army, picture him to be close to the scenes, that he was a spy was in my sense secondary. But I admit that he was from the Nili is an important omission, more particularly, when there is a Misplaced Pages article about the group. I will add it, if I don't, or forget, nothing prevent you to do it. Fadix 17:00, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

This is exacly why I see a problem with "neutrilization" - and such - lets just state the facts as known and accepted by legitimate scholars and reference them as we are able...--THOTH 01:32, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

THOTH, It turns out the persons you call "legitimate authorities" turn out to be British spies assisting British on war propaganda against the Turkish authorities.

Muesli 01:56, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Well - to tell you the truth I was entirely unfamiliar with this specific account - thus it is not part of the collection of authentic sources that I have relied on to verify that Ottoman death camps for Armenians in fact were a reality witnessed/corraborated by numerous persons from different backgrounds and situations who were not likely able to coordinate any kind of story - yet in fact they report pretty much the same awful things. Again though - it seems that this individual was reporting secretly - and not for propoganda purposes - but to provide useful intelligence concerning real situations - thus I see no reson to place doubt on the authenticity of this account at least as far as I can see based on what has been revealed about this person. If you have some evidence of this person being a propogandist then by all means let us know - but from what you have presented thus far I see no reason to doubt the veracity of the information - in fact it seems that the accuracy is - if anything - bolstered by what you have presented...though for the most part I think the verdict is unchanged - it stands as a legitimate recorded observation of such things (barbaric treatment and deliberate atrocities against civilians by military/quasi military forces of the Ottoman Turkish Government) ...one reported instance of a great many very much like it (all comprising a pattern of behavior seemingly sanctioned if not encouraged...)...most (acounts) of which BTW - were provided by German citizens working in Turkey on behalf/allied with the Ottoman Government (who were able to be in places where such thigs occured and even then there are numerous accounts that suggest that rigourous attempts were made to conceal such acts and to engage in them away from observing eyes...) - (the German citizens whe reported/documented such barbaric acts) had to overcome much difficulty and be corageous individulas to report what they witnessed - because such things wee decidely not encouraged or rewarded - very much the opposite (and in fact we have officail corrspondence from Talat and the CUP central comtte that specifically call for supression and punishment for those who attempt to report such things). --THOTH 04:15, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Fadix, is "La Renaissance" full name of the newspaper you mentioned. Could it be "La Renaissance Albanaise" published in Bucharest? Thanks, Muesli 02:46, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

It's the full name, published in Istanbul. Fadix

Reverting changes by Tommiks

Turkish government was also shows the criminal cases opened and concluded against the Ottoman administrators and military personal for their wrong doings, under the sight of Allied forces. Turkish government also brings the agreements signed during that time and new republics efforts to compensate the issues not just covering Armenians but/and all other ethnic groups affected during the WWI. Turkish government claims that it is willing to share the pains of Armenians, but this process is impossible if other side does not show the same sensitivity for an issue that runs as deep as Armenian feelings for them.

Last sentence is clearly POV, so shouldnt be included. Possibly you are making a point by the references to criminal cases, but the formulation as is is not encyclopedic. Anybody know what he might mean or intend to say? Thought i'd include it here just to make sure. --The Minister of War 00:12, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't understand what he is trying to say. Fadix 01:05, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree - there is no clear point to this addition - it does not really present any information whatsoever - it is entirely too cryptic and has no place in the artical or in any artical and requires elaboaration and explanation in these talk pages to be addressed - if in fact it warrents such. --THOTH 01:28, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Camps section change

As I already said to Cansin.

I propose a change.

Changed for.

Even though nearly all the camps, including all the major ones, are said to have been open air, mass burning, poisonings, mass killing camps according to sources also existed, and the bodies in many instances were thrown in the sea.

The reason why I propose it is because that text is way too long when compared with the paragraph before it, covering the major camps. I find it logical to somehow maintain from the paragraph, the importance of that element, in comparison to how much have died with such methods compared to the major camps. The details could be left on the footnote section, or in separate articles covering specific things. Any opinion?

How about this: Even though nearly all the camps, including all the major ones, were said to have been open air , mass burning, poisonings, mass killing camps according to sources also were reported , and the bodies in some instances were thrown into the Black Sea . Cansın 5 October 2005

Sounds fine for me. I'll give you the opportunity of doing that change. :) Fadix 17:49, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

You may help me with the references ? Cansın 6 October 2005

Well, I think much of the refference has already been posted it. The refferences will be added in the article, but for now I think, sourcing it in the talk page could be enough. The footnoting process could happen after. Fadix 00:17, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

BTW, if I have forgotten to source anything, just remind me. Fadix 00:20, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

A long time ago when I first came accross this article I thought and expressed here that I felt the "camps" section was perhaps disproportionate in length and emphasis as opposed to the rest of the article. Its not that I think it is too long - just that it is recieving emphais where other vital and important aspects of the Armenian Genocide - necessary for properly understanding it - are not presented or are not presented well. I believe that there are factors necessary for understanding the Armenian Genocide that are given short shift. Several subjects that merit discusion come to mind. For instance: The article lacks - but IMO reuires a presentation of the CUP - the agents of the Genocdide (much as an article on the Holocaust would naturally discuss the rise of the NAzi party, their philosophy and their actions) - the Genocidea rticle should address the CUP rise to power (and the rise of radical Pan-Turanists within the CUP central commitee), their hold on the Empire (both over the Sultan and in the provinces - with placement of party operatives throughtout the Empire and their control of the gendarme and secret police, and their control of the Ototman military through a major purge of military officers loyal to the Sultan replaced by younger officers with CUP leanings/ties and such), (evolving/hardening) philosophy pertaining to minorities and Pan-Turanist plans/aspirations and their specific actions first in cooporation with the Dashnaks and later in outlawing/criminalizing them and their (CUP radical wing) obsessiveness with the Armenians/Armenian Question - and why...much relevant history needs presenting IMO (much in regards to the falling Ottoman Empire - history/events related to this and the role of such an environment in the shaping of the values/motivations of the CUP - as well as for various Turkish and Kurdish groups of the Empire .

And of course a more comprhensive and detailed presentation of the events of the Genocide itself is required - to include a chronology - of the actual enactment and progress of the Genocide - through "deporations" from various regions and towns etc - along with a description of the type of Ottoman/Turkish/Kurdish etc units/personel and their various respective roles in carrying out the Genocide - including those Govenors and regional officials who directed such - (and even the fact that some of these resited orders to deport/massacre Armenians etc). We need to present an idea of who directing and participatedin in the genocide - be it through direct massacres, involvement in deportations and so on and so forth - and we should include some accounts of involvement by "common" Turks and such has well. This requires a more comprehsive presentation then currently in the articel - but I think that this is necessary. We also should attempt to provide a more personal depiction of the victims - who were they - from where - how did their experiences differ - what occured in the East of Anatolia vesus the West and the SOuth - what about those who lived in Istanbul and Smyrna, those who worked on the Bagdad railroad - etc. I feel as though we do not get to actually know/understand who the Armenians were in this peice at all - as currently written.

These death/concentration/transit camps and the like need to be mentioned of course - and I think described a bit better (where were they - how did they differ - etc) - and of course we need to enumerate the various methods of killing Armenians - be it at camps through starvation, disease, various brutalities or en route in a deportation march, or by direct massacre and so on and so forth - I think all require some elaboration (and at least some examples - enough to understand both the enormity of these criminal acts and to appreciate the brutalities invilved - all key to understand genocide and this one in particualr) -and I am refering not just to the experiences in the camps themselves - but overall - as this genocide was multifaceted. Some estimates for numbers who died in camps versus in deportaion march versus direct massacre might be useful to present if such estimations can be found and corroborated somewhow - as again this will impart a greater understanding of what occured. Likewise I think that the article should make it very clear the means of how we know all of these things took place - the eyewitness accounts - and who observed and what they saw - etc. And while I initially thought that the camps section might have been too long - I think the way it was orignially written - though not perfect (and the presentation can be cleaned up and be more communicative IMO) - is preferable to the proposed edit - which says basically nothing IMO - perhaps references to specific instances or observers who saw these various things - people being burned or gassed or bodies or living thrown into the see can be referenced (and specifically where some of these things occured - and who observed or reported such) - versus some generic statments as seen in the proposed edit that to me are less then satisfying. --THOTH 19:47, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

Thoth, again, consider that this is an encyclopedia, what you propose is a thesis writing. "this, this and that happened etc." is not encyclopedic. The history of the Armenian genocide, is not what really goes here. Believe me, I would love to write something like that, but it will not be wiki. This does not mean that important changes can not be made, like I told you, present your propositions, and not what you want to see done. And we'll see how they can be neutralized. The reason why there are sections about the camps, the martial court, the special organization, and that there is no real flow etc., is because in an encyclopedic article, it is hard to do what you propose, and in the same time respecting NPOV, I am ready to try, but again, as I said, bring propositions on, and not what you want to see. I want to see the result, and not what the results should be. Fadix 04:02, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

It is my opinion that your obsessiveness in being overly Wiki correct (applying the philosophy in practice to an extent not practiced in most every other article in Misplaced Pages and holding this above all other considerations - such as describing the events correctly and in sufficient detail to impart an understanding of history!) will only result in an article that is so watered down and so lacking in any true presentation to be entirely useless and not even a true depiction. - (as anyone who writes and presents information knows that without a perspective there is nothing being said - nothing being coveyed - no truth). It certainly will not be useful to anyone reserching this subject. An Encylopedia article only exists to be a resource for someone who is after the facts to obtain an accurate understanding of the subject. Your watering down of an already severly lacking article will only make it worse and less useful. It will not impart any real understaning of the Armenian Genocide. Perhaps the artical ultimatly will be given the Misplaced Pages ultimate neutrality award...for adhering religiously to Wiki in every possible way (so that even those who don't acknowledge the existance of the subject itself will not be offended by its presence in the encyclopedia)...and I can only imagine one day reading several pages here supposedly on the Armenian Genocide to come up with the fact that many historians think that a genocide occured and that the Turks do not admit that this is so and that every claim for it is countered by a Turkish counter claim of some sort - and see this statement is fully referenced - someone somewhere said it - but outside of the reader comming away with this (seemingly to me already obvious and not so useful knowledge) - the article will impart no real understanding or PERSPECTIVE on the Armenian Genocide - so why bother at all? - when the reader will look at it and just shrug and move on to something more interesting. Think man - this piece - this encyclopedia exists to EDUCATE. And it cannot do so if it is not allowed to present the facts of the history - regardless of what particular government and what particular nationalistic portion of its citizens will be hurt/offended/displeased. Look - I admire the efforts you have made here as well as your knowledge and access to resources on this subject (and I understand the issue of disputes/reverts/etc and what we are dealing with here)- still I disagree that the purpose for which we are contributing here is to obtain kudos from Wiki heads for following precisely some idealic Wiki principles - we are here to contribute to the knowledge data base and to ensure that false (politically motivated) positions are not presented as factual when they are not. Again i suggest thaty you read the Holocaust section and numerous other sections where the prevlaing facts are laid our in a clear and concise and fairly thorough manner and nowhere do I see any political based objectives given equal treatment nor do I see a focus on what some particlar scholar has said - as opposed to just what the real history is - and the neo Nazi denials are treated as a phenomon in themselves - just as Turkish denial should be treated - anything less is a diservice to the truth --THOTH 04:12, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Thoth, again, I repeat, the Holocaust section is what it is, because there are no side obsessivaly denying it en mass. I disagree with you that I am watering down the article. Yes, true, it is a cold article, and this is because it is not an epic, or a book. Again, I repeat, it simply present what is said about the subject, and not what happened. People that will consult encyclopedias, will consult to have a clue of what is Armenian Genocide, and what is said about it, who disagree with this position etc. Besides, Neutral Point of View, is the best tool against politically motivated oppositions, because it stop right on, those so-called truth seekers, on the bases that Misplaced Pages is not here to establish what the truth is. If you open the door to an "epic" entry, you open the door to revert wars, and Torque to come on here again and spamming Misplaced Pages all over the place. Torque was forced to leave, because Neutral Point of View, was not a good environment for what he came to do. So, I advance that the price to pay to conform to the highest standard of neutrality is insignificant when compared to the gains, wich clearly outweight the disavantages. I propose you to visit me two other articles, while they conform to NPOV, they are informative, and on the other hand, this way of writting is a defence against POV pushers, that will have to "kill" NPOV to advance their position. Neutrality is our ally against revisionism, not our enemy. Fadix 23:18, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

If one gives into terrorists - lets the terrorists' change the way you live to the point where you feel you have to compromise your most sacred values in order to combat terrorism - then the terrorists win. --THOTH 04:45, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Museli, your add-in is POV

It is hard to assess the authenticity of such claims since the occupying force Britain was actively involved in creating war time propaganda some could be termed black propaganda blurring the distinction between the real events and personalities with the fabricated ones. Proper NPOV way, is to say, for example, according to Ataov..., besides, most of the material there is not of British origin, while you are alluding to. Vehib the commander of the Ottoman Third army, confirm the theses of the burning camp in Mush, in his 12 pages affidavit report, has himself presented the cases of a village near Mush where, the entire population was burned. Besides, if we were to use your logic, the revisionist position would not have a cases to stand on, because there is clear cases of Ottoman propaganda bureaus fabricating news to justify the Armenian decision. And beside, the destruction of Ottoman records are also recorded and even from Turkish sources, but it isn’t me that tries to place such a discreditation in the Turkish government section. I think the situation of Ottoman archive is clearly described by what Pierre Caraman wrote in 1989, in “L'ouverture des archives d'Istanbul” in "Nouvel Observateur, January-Febuary. P. 145

The year 1931 proved to be a landmark in the history of Ottoman Archives. Defying the most elementary rules, the government of Mustafa Kemal decided to sell the contents of a considerable part of the Archives to Bulgaria - at the price of its value as paper. The idea was to erase from human memory four centuries of Ottoman history. More discerning than the Turks, the Vatican bought these documents from Bulgaria at a price which for that time was rather high. As soon as the news of the sale broke out in Istanbul, the intellectuals cried 'scandal'; a sudden interest began to spring up and develop the remaining Archive depositaries. As a result, between 1932 and 1937, 184,256 items, whether registers or documents, were classified under 17 categories, with the collaboration of the Turcolog Lajos Fekete. In 1937, the ‘Hazinei Evrak’ disappeared and was supplanted by the new ‘Basvekalet Arsivi’ (The Archives of the Directorate of the Prime Ministry) … The Turkish authorities will allow the most ‘green’ foreign historians to consult data which will consist of selected, deleted and sanitized documents lest the present government is compromised relative to the problems of the Armenian genocide. Linguist-archivists, who have been working in theses archives for more than a decade, have taken care of this new project as far as the need for purging is concerned … It is most likely that nothing new will emerge from this new arrangement of accessibility. One has to be truly naïve or inept to believe in the obverse. The history of the tragic period has already been written and the archives of all other countries already contain and preserve the unalterable evidence of the first genocide of the twentieth century … As former Ambassador Zeki Kuneralp declared: ‘The liabilities of not publishing the historical documents outweigh the advantages.’ It is for this deplorable (Turkish) obsession (for concealment) that we rely upon foreign documents to learn about our history.

I have also, presented other materials documenting the destruction of records, here.

What I am trying to say, is that while the destruction of records and building propagandas justifying the anti Armenian decision are recorded(see for instance Refik booklet, in which he exposes this), and this even from Turkish sources, there is yet to be any records from the British themselves, that their own records were purged and sanitized. The uncensored version of the Blue Book has been published in the last years, Wolfgang Gust, has published the uncensored records from German archives. Hilmar Kaiser, for the last year, had finally access to Ottoman archives,(having the decision of life ban removed), during a lecture here in Montreal, he affirmed, that sections of listed records, were actually missing in the archive, and when place in scrutiny, it appears that even Ottoman records confirm with what other archives in the world confirm.

In conclusion, the statement you present, the way you present it, is not only is POV, but this POV is not really supported by most scholars writing about the subject. But since that section will probably change, would maybe good to let it as you placed it, since it doesn’t worth having a debate over something that will not be left as is. Fadix 17:46, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Okay, let's change it without dropping Eiten Belkind, his being a British spy and his Nili membership.

Muesli 23:36, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

As I said, it is not really a worthy debate, most the specifities will be deleted, and only later, in the footnoting process will be added. Read the proposition that I and Cansin agreed on. I don't think, you'll have a problem with it. Fadix 00:19, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

That's the version proposed: Even though nearly all the camps, including all the major ones, were said to have been open air , mass burning, poisonings, mass killing camps according to sources also were reported , and the bodies in some instances were thrown into the Black Sea .

Fadix, I beg to disagree with you on this. Since the "Armenian Genocide" page should tackle the problem of how it is conducted, how it was depicted in the accounts and by who and under what conditions, this page cannot sidestep the heart of the matter. I don't think dealing with these in the footnotes would do justice. Besides, WikiPedia seems to be the only place where people of different opinions on this matter "have to" work together and create a joint product. I see the "real" product as the process of working together, not the copy-lefted article that will be copied and hosted all over the Internet.

Muesli 00:47, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Naming someone out of thousands is misleading and a misrepresentation. Don't you agree? Fadix 01:41, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't understand the context of "naming someone out of a thousand". It may or may not be appropriate depending on the context. I would think naming Talat, Enver, Cemal, Vehib and Belkind is certainly appropriate. Muesli 06:24, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Talat, Cemal, Enver, Sukru, Sakir etc. are leading figures, while Belkind is just a witnesses among many. Placing him in a general overview of the genocide, in a section, and giving him that much spaces is misleading, as if there are various works using him to bases their thesis of mass burning on. It is just not the cases, and this is how I realised my mistake. I added him there, because I was under pressure of providing refferences. Fadix 16:20, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

So Muesli - are you implying or actually contending that the Armenian Genocide didn't happen - as basically all historians and scholars believe it did - because somehow all who observed and commented on these events where perhaps anti-Turkish or such? Is this your position? Is this the point you feel needs to be so strongly made? And BTW do you have some reference to some published analysis that concludes this - specifically citing which opservers are suspect and which events that (most all scholars accept as fact and) are commonly accepted to have occured are false and contrived? I'm truly curious to see/read such analysis and wonder how it might affect what I believe to be true concerning the Genocide...could it be that Armenian women and children and elderly were well taken care of and that there was not a systemic plan and coordinated (barbaric) actions that caused their death, suffering and the wholsale destruction of the Armenian people as was seemingly witnessed and corroborated by countless observers of all nationalities and in every corner of Anatolia? Coul this truly somehow be some sort of great deception? An imperialistic plan to bring down and carve up the Empire from the very beginning - and Talat, Enver, Jemal, Shakir and their ilk have been undeservedly villianized? Is this your story and your sticking to it? If so then I suggest you bring something scholarly that backs it up - referenced with mutliple sources - etc - give us some reason to give any credence at all to such views...and if you cannot - then I suggest you read the archives here and the various links to sources and perhaps a few books about this subject written by obseveres such as Morganthau - and the reams and reams of published accounts from American counsuls who were stationed throughout Anatolia during the war (and who were not at war with Turkey BTW), additionally you should check out the writings and published reports of the many Germans who were present in Anatolia througout the war - read what they had to say about events and patterns of actions occuring in Anatolia during this period - particulalry the confidential reports being sent back to Berlin by the various German (and Austrian) ambasadors and from their consuls and the very military officers stationed in Anatolia. Also read the miriad of accounts from foriegn (German, American and other) missionaries and workers who were in Anatolia during this period - and don't forget the surviving transcrpts of the Post War trials and the Ottoman Parlimentary Investigative findings, and even the memoirs of Ottoman CUP members, regional officals and military officers - most of whom played parts in the genocide or at the very least observed and commented on the process and what they saw (sure a few like Talat were obviously trying to avoid blame - but there is much to be found in these accounts - and don't forget Rapheal de Nogalas observations...particularly concerning the Ottoman/Turkish seige of Van and their instigation and perpetuation of the violence...but oh yes - he also was witness to various concentration camps - please do avail yourself of his observations and commentary...etc etc....yeah - then perhaps we can talk...--THOTH 21:43, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

Thoth, Do I need to be a "believer" of either one or the other version? Do I need to read millions of articles before anything I say would count? Is this the Misplaced Pages way? Muesli 06:41, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Muesli - you are free to say whatever you want - and question and such - don't minsinterpret my position as one that wishes you to be silenced per se, this is not true - however I think it is clear that the perspective you hold contains some rather dubious basis (willfully or as a result of ignorance I do not know) and (based on the holding of the position that you llikely do - no Genocide and adherence to the Turkish government political position. caveat - if this is so as it seems) that you are (perhaps/likely?) lacking in an understanding of certain facts and for whatever reason are not in acceptence of the overall historical truths regarding this topic. Either this or you know more then you let on but are attempting to slant things towards a postion/perspective that you hold that is in denial of known facts for some particular purpose (that is possible for us to surmise). All that being the case we have reason to seriously doubt the value of some of what you might contribute. I am only making a point that if you demand such specific sourcing of our contributions we have every right to demand the same of yours...and frankly I have found the factual baisis of a great amount of what comprises the Turkish "objections" to the widely/internationaly known/accepted (by most all serious scholars) facts concerning the Armenian Genocide to be essentially without merit and certainly without and real support that can stand up to even the most basic scrutiny. This is not to say that I think the standard "Armenian perspective" on these events is not in some ways flawed or incomplete - as I thin it likewise is - but this is not the perspective I take either - not in its entirety. Where it has merit I am fully in favor of incorporating the truths that lie within twhat might commonly be stated as the "Turkish perspective" in that they are factually supported - and I do believe that there is value to certain aspects of this perspective and that the history can be presented which accuratly incorporates such as represents the essential truth of what occured, how and to a great extent why. But please be advised that claims, challenges and edits based upon questionable politically motivated positions will be treated as such (at least by me) and not allowed to be presented as truth or fact when they are not (and Fadix is very good about monitoring the actual article - as it now stands - in this regard). I am entirely comfortable knowing the body of evidence that supports the various positions and understandings I know to be essentially true/truth to have confidence in what version of events and what facts and such will ultimatly be presented here. I don't presume to know everything about this issue - every fact and perspective (hardly) - however I think I do have a much greater appreciation/understanding then most and I am entirely open to the idea that others - even persons such as you who believe perhaps ultimatly radically different about these events then I - might have something of value to contribute and might possibly enlighten us (and myself specifically) with some specific facts and perspectives on things that to this point are entirely unknown or even unsuspected...always possible... and I entirely welcome such input. --THOTH 19:47, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Thoth, My only contribution so far is that Belkind is a British spy. I found this info on the Net and added it in the article. Now it is challenged by Fadix on the grounds whether it is worth appearing in the article. Maybe it is just bad luck that Belkind was deemed not worthy after his being a British spy hit the Net but I see it as my only contribution is being excluded. I am not quite sure how to interpret "we" in your post. Whenever I use "we" on Misplaced Pages, it refers to Misplaced Pages readers and contributors. Trusting the other Wikipedians is the foundation that this project is based on. Muesli 04:04, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Muesli, I raised the worth of him being included in the main, a while before you pointed him being a spy, starting with the section I started about the footnoting process. Fadix 05:38, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Also, both of us knows that he was not a British spy. Being a spy and providing informations in the profit of the British is not the same as being a British spy. The last time I have checked he was not a British. Also, I raised the importance of including him being a spy, when, NILI aiisociation was made, with a wiki-link. It is like saying, he is a spym yes a spy... instead of just saying he was a spy. Fadix

Fadix, an American working for the Russian intelligence would be called a "Russian spy" and an Ottoman official working for the British intelligence would be called a "British spy". It is as simple as that. Muesli 18:57, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Apple with oranges. He was working for the Nili, a Jewish espionage network which assisted the United Kingdom, which is different than him being a British spy. Someone spying for the profit of another country, is one thing(and even then, it would not be really accurate), someone being part of a network, which provides informations to another country is another. In war, such connections between allied powers are made. When the united States joined the War during World War II, the British have provided them many valuable informations, and were exchanging such informations, it doesn't mean that the British that was providing informations was an American spy. The Nili had purpouses beyond being "British spy," they were also adherent to the formation of a Jewish State, and their underground connection was centered around Palestine. That the organization agreed to provide the informations they gathered to the British, doesn't make of the members of the organization as British spy, more than a Jewish one. In fact, any informations about the Nili, picture the organization, as a Jewish underground organization, consisting of intellectuals, using their privilaged situations for esionage, and, only then, providing the information to their allies, in this cases the British. So, limiting ourself, to the Nili, is much much more accurate, and Nili is already a wiki-link. Fadix 19:03, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Fadix, I am apalled at your logic here. Nili was formed to help the British in their war effort against the Ottoman state. Belkind was an Ottoman official and a Nili member. This makes him a British spy. (Not an Ottoman spy, not an Israeli spy, but a British spy. There is no adjective form for United Kingdom. One has to use "British" for the adjective form of U.K.) Muesli 00:30, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

I won't call this appalling. I don't know how to place this, to make the understanding easier. He was a member of a Jewish espionage network, Nili is an acronym, from a Hebrew text(as its wiki link shows), for "the Glory of Israel does not deceive." When Feinberg was arrested, he was not still spying(and again, as the wikipedia entry explains). Also, from the same Wiki article. For months, the group was not taken seriously by the British intelligence and attempts by Alex Aaronsohn and Avshalom Feinberg to establish communication channels in Cairo and Port Said failed. Only after Aaron Aaronsohn arrived in London (by way of Berlin and Copenhagen) and by using his reputation, was he able to obtain cooperation from diplomat Sir Mark Sykes. Nili was not founded as a British espionage network, but as a Jewish one, even thought it took its name after Feinberg(passing through the Turkish lines abroad the U.S. destroyer “Des Moines”) contacted Lt. Leonard Wooley at Port Said. It was founded to serve the Jews in their foundation for a Jewish state. Had they not provided informations to the British, the group would have still existed. Aziz Bey himself tried to target Arab and Jewish espionage networks, that were first and foremost used to secure an Arab and Jewish state. I know of what I am talking about, I already studied the network. And knows much more than what is in the link there. The Nili was not only limited with espionage, neither was it limited to only British interest. The Nili profited by gaining British support and became a channel for distributing shipments of gold raised by Western Jews to aid the Yishuv (Zionism and the Creation of a New Society by Ben Halpern, Jehuda Reinharz; Oxford University Press, 1998). The same work, call the group, a pro-British espionage cell, and NOT a British, a group that was attempting to gain the control of the Yushuv(p. 193). Throwing the words “British spy,” is both an oversimplification, and misleading. You take the name, google it, and then decide to attach the title “British spy,” when the man was neither British, and neither working for a direct British espionage group, but rather a pro-British, Jewish espionage network. That you make of this simple thing, a big story is beyond my understanding. Fadix 03:10, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Istanbul vs Constatinople

Cansin, as I told previously, there was a reason why the article says Constantinople. It is due to name conventions. Name of places are called based on the name it was called(by most and mire paricularly in English) during the period it covers. This convention is even maintained in the article covering Istanbul. Fadix 02:08, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

I missed the discussion over Istanbul-Constantinople naming however, in Misplaced Pages, Constantinople article refers to pre-1453 and Istanbul article refers to post-1453 (which I also find arguable). Ottomans used Konstantiniyye and early 1900s, Istanbul was largely adopted. The proper use of all the places/cities who had ancient names is actually using the current version and specifying the ancient/old name in parantheses. If you want we can follow this convention: Istanbul (Constantinople)Cansın 8 October 2005

The name Istanbul was officialy adopted in 1930, and was it only after that that English language publications used the term Istanbul. Works published prior to 1930, were using the term Constantinople, while the term Stanbul was used in some occasions. English language convention don't bases themselves on what the Ottoman Empire called the place, but rather what it was called in the English language. Fadix 00:24, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Just another sign that whoever has power has power to call something whatever it likes and similarly say whatever suits their ideology. --Muz 01:38, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

That is such a petty statement. This is obviously not about ideology. John Smith's 08:26, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

I disagree, thinking that something is not about ideology is pettiness and -have to say- naiveness. Anyways, that's how the world is, I'll shut up now :) --Muz 23:48, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

You are looking way too far. That's simply name convention, it is English wikipedia, and that land was called Constantinople, or some times Stanbul, before the term Istanbul was officialized in 1930. I really fail to see what the problem is. This convention for historic names is used everywhere, not only in Misplaced Pages but other encyclopedias too. Fadix 19:20, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Revisiting the Armenian Genocide

This article is written by Guenter Lewy and appeared on Middle East Forum . It gives an analysis of the situation and I believe it may help our discussions over the issue since it covers The Turkish Courts-Martial of 1919-20, The Role of the Teşkilat-i Mahsusa, The Memoirs of Naim Bey with 56 references. Cansın 7 October 2005

Guenter Lewy is professor emeritus of political science, University of Massachusetts, and the author of The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide (University of Utah Press, 2005).

Revisiting the Armenian Genocide, by Guenter Lewy

The debate over what happened to Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during World War I remains acrimonious ninety years after it began. Armenians say they were the victims of the first genocide of the twentieth century. Most Turks say Armenians died during intercommunal fighting and during a wartime relocation necessitated by security concerns because the Armenians sympathized with and many fought on the side of the enemy. For genocide scholars, the claims of the Armenians have become incontrovertible historical fact. But many historians, both in Turkey and the West, have questioned the appropriateness of the genocide label.

The ramifications of the dispute are wide-reaching. The Armenians, encouraged by strong support in France, insist on a Turkish confession and apology as a prerequisite for Turkey's admission into the European Union. Ankara's relations with Yerevan remain frozen because of the dispute. Across the West, Armenian activists try politically to predetermine the historical debate by demanding various parliaments pass resolutions recognizing the Armenian genocide.

The key issue in this controversy is not the extent of Armenian suffering; both sides agree that several hundred thousand Christians perished during the deportation of the Armenians from Anatolia to the Syrian desert and elsewhere in 1915-16. With little notice, the Ottoman government forced men, women, and children from their homes. Many died of starvation or disease during a harrowing trek over mountains and through deserts. Others were murdered.

Historians do not dispute these events although they may squabble over numbers and circumstances. Rather the key question in the debate concerns premeditation. Did the Young Turk regime organize the massacres that took place in 1916?

Most of those who maintain that Armenian deaths were premeditated and so constitute genocide base their argument on three pillars: the actions of Turkish military courts of 1919-20, which convicted officials of the Young Turk government of organizing massacres of Armenians, the role of the so-called "Special Organization" accused of carrying out the massacres, and the Memoirs of Naim Bey which contain alleged telegrams of Interior Minister Talât Pasha conveying the orders for the destruction of the Armenians. Yet when these events and the sources describing them are subjected to careful examination, they provide at most a shaky foundation from which to claim, let alone conclude, that the deaths of Armenians were premeditated.

The Turkish Courts-Martial of 1919-20

Following the Ottoman Empire's defeat in World War I, a new government formed and accused its predecessor Young Turk regime of serious crimes. These accusations led to the court-martialing of the leadership of the Committee on Union and Progress, the party that had seized and held power since 1908, and other selected former officials. The charges included subversion of the constitution, wartime profiteering, and the massacres of both Greeks and Armenians.

By all accounts, the chief reason for convening military tribunals was pressure from victorious Allied states, which insisted on retributions for the Armenian massacres. The Turks also hoped that by foisting blame on a few members of the Committee on Union and Progress, they might exculpate the rest of the Turkish nation and, thereby, receive more lenient treatment at the Paris peace conference.

The most famous trial took place in Istanbul, but it was not the first. At least six regional courts convened in provincial cities where massacres had occurred, but due to inadequate documentation, the total number of courts is not known. The first recorded tribunal began on February 5, 1919, in Yozgat, the province which includes Ankara, charging three Turkish officials, including the governor of the district, with mass murder and plunder of Armenian deportees. On April 8, the tribunal found two defendants guilty, and referred the third to a different court. Two days after they passed the verdict, local authorities hanged Mehmet Kemal, former kaymakam (governor) of Boğazliyan and Yozgat. A large demonstration organized by Committee on Union and Progress elements followed his funeral. The British high commissioner in Turkey reported popular perception "regard executions as necessary concessions to entente rather than as punishment justly meted out to criminals."

The main trial began in Istanbul on April 28, 1919. Among the twelve defendants were members of the Committee on Union and Progress leadership and former ministers. Seven key figures, including Talât Pasha, minister of interior; Enver Pasha, minister of war; and Cemal Pasha, governor of Aleppo, had fled, and therefore, were tried in absentia. "Embedded in the indictment," writes Vahakn N. Dadrian, the best-known defender of the Armenian position, were "forty-two authenticated documents substantiating the charges therein, many bearing dates, identification of senders of the cipher telegrams and letters, and names of recipients." Among these documents is the written deposition of General Vehib Pasha, commander of the Turkish Third Army, who testified that "the murder and extermination of the Armenians and the plunder and robbery of their property is the result of decisions made by the central committee of Ittihad ve Terakki ." The indictment quoted another document in which a high-ranking deportation official, Abdulahad Nuri, relates how Talât Pasha told him that "the purpose of the deportation was destruction." On July 22, the court-martial found several defendants guilty of subverting constitutionalism by force and found them responsible for massacres. Talât, Enver, Cemal, and Nazim Bey, a high Committee on Union and Progress official, were sentenced in absentia to death while others received lengthy prison sentences.

Despite widespread hatred of the discredited Young Turk regime, the Turkish public was lukewarm to the trials of the Committee on Union and Progress leadership. On April 4, 1919, Lewis Heck, the U.S. high commissioner in Istanbul, reported that "it is popularly believed that many of are made from motives of personal vengeance or at the instigation of the Entente authorities, especially the British." Opposition to the trials increased after the Greek army occupied Smyrna (Izmir) on May 15, which led to an outburst of patriotic and nationalistic feeling.

Under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, a highly decorated Turkish officer, a nationalist movement emerged that would eventually overthrow the sultan's government in Istanbul. From the beginning, the Kemalists criticized the sultan for his abject surrender to the Allies, and they increasingly expressed the fear that the trials were part of a plan to partition the Ottoman Empire. On August 11, 1920, the Kemalist government in Ankara ordered a stop to all court-martial proceedings; the resignation of the last Ottoman cabinet on October 17, 1920, marked the end of the trials.

Armenian writers have praised the contribution of the military tribunals for their elucidation of historical truth, but such broad conclusions are problematic given both the procedures of the trials and questions over the reliability of their findings. The tribunals lacked the basic requirements of due process. Few authors familiar with Ottoman jurisprudence have a positive assessment, all the more so with regard to military courts. The Ottoman penal code did not acknowledge the right of cross-examination, and the role of the judge was far more important than in the Anglo-American tradition. The judge weighed the probative value of all evidence submitted during the preparatory phase and during the trial, and he questioned the accused. At the 1919-20 trials, the presiding officer acted more like a prosecutor than an impartial judge. Ottoman rules of procedure also barred defense counsel access to pretrial investigatory files and from accompanying their clients to pretrial interrogations. On May 6, 1919, at the third session of the main trial, defense counsel challenged the court's repeated references to the indictment as proven fact, but the court rejected the objection. Throughout the trials, the court heard no witnesses, and the verdict rested entirely on documents and testimony never subject to cross-examination. Heck expressed disapproval that the defendants in the Yozgat court were tried on the basis of "anonymous court material."

Probably the most serious problem affecting the probative value of the 1919-20 military court proceedings is the loss of all their documentation. What is known of the sworn testimony and depositions is limited to that related secondhand in selected supplements of the official gazette of the Ottoman government, Takvim-i Vekayi, and press reports. What is not known is the accuracy of the transcription and whether the newspapers reprinted all or only part of texts entered as evidence.

According to Dadrian, "before being introduced as accusatory exhibits, each and every official document was authenticated by the competent staff personnel of the Interior Ministry who thereafter affixed on the top part of the document: ‘it conforms to the original.'" However, few historians would take period officials at their word without verification. The historical weight of the Nuremberg trials, for example, rests upon the sheer mass of original documentation. The historical significance of the Nuremberg verdicts would be undercut had the record of the trials been lost or not subject to outside review.

In the absence of complete original documents, historians examining the Armenian question have relied only on selected excerpts and quotations. For example, Dadrian related how the deposition of General Vehib Pasha, commander of the Turkish Third Army, described Behaeddin Şakir, one of the top Committee on Union and Progress leaders, as the man who "procured and engaged in the command zone of the Third Army, the butchers of human beings … He organized gallows birds as well as gendarmes and policemen with blood on their hand and blood in their eyes." Parts of this deposition were included in the indictment of the main trial and in the verdict of the Harput trial, but an indictment is not proof of guilt. The context of the quoted remarks has been lost. While the entire text of the deposition was allegedly read into the record of the Trabizond trial on March 29, 1919, the proceedings of this trial are not preserved in any source; only the verdict is reprinted in the official gazette.

Contemporary Turkish authors dismiss the military tribunals of 1919-20 as tools of Allied retribution. At the time, the victorious Allies considered them a travesty of justice. The trials, British high commissioner S.A.G. Calthorpe wrote to London, are "proving to be a farce and injurious to our own prestige and to that of the Turkish government." In the view of Commissioner John de Robeck, the tribunal was such a failure "that its findings cannot be held of any account at all." When the British government considered holding trials of alleged Ottoman war criminals in Malta, it declined to use any evidence developed by the 1919-20 Ottoman tribunals.

The Role of the Teşkilat-i Mahsusa

Several of the courts-martial held in 1919-20 made references to the destructive role of a unit called Teşkilat-i Mahsusa (Special Organization). Many proponents of the Armenian cause accept this accusation. Dadrian described the members of this unit as the main instrument used by the Committee on Union and Progress to carry out its plan to exterminate the Armenians. "Their mission was to deploy in remote areas of Turkey's interior and to ambush and destroy convoys of Armenian deportees," he wrote. The Special Organization's "principal duty was the execution of the Armenian genocide."

The Special Organization, which developed between 1903 and 1907, only adopted its name in 1913. Under the direction of Enver Pasha and the command of many talented officers, the Special Organization functioned like a special forces outfit. Philip Stoddard, the author of the only full scholarly study of the group, called it "a significant unionist vehicle for dealing with both Arab separatism and Western imperialism." At its peak, it enrolled about 30,000 men. During World War I, the Ottoman command used it for special military operations in the Caucasus, Egypt, and Mesopotamia. In 1915, for example, Special Organization units seized key oases along the Ottoman line of advance against the Suez Canal. The regime also used the Special Organization to suppress "subversion" and "possible collaboration" with the external enemy. However, according to Stoddard, this activity targeted primarily indigenous nationalists in Syria and Lebanon. The Special Organization, he maintained, played no role in the Armenian deportations.

Yet, the main tribunal's indictment accused the Special Organization of carrying out "criminal operations and activities" against the Armenians. According to Dadrian:

The Ittihadist leaders redeployed the brigand units for use on the home front internally, namely against the Armenians. Through a comprehensive sweep of the major cities, towns, and villages, containing large clusters of Armenian populations, the Special Organization units, with their commanding officers more or less intact, set to work to carry out Ittihad's blueprint of annihilation.

Turkish as well as German civilian and military sources, Dadrian maintained, confirm this information, including the employment of convicts in Special Organization death squads. But Dadrian's references do not always prove his claims. While the Ottoman government released convicts during World War I in order to increase its manpower pool for military service, there is no evidence beyond the indictment of the main trial for the assertion that the Special Organization, with large numbers of convicts enrolled in its ranks, took the lead role in the massacres. Nor was the presence of convicts abnormal. Use of convicts for military duty in wartime had precedent including use by U.S. and British armies. During World War I, U.S. courts released almost 8,000 men convicted of serious offenses on condition of their induction into military service.

Many of the allegations linking the Special Organization to massacres are based not directly on documents but rather on the sometimes questionable assumptions of those reading them. Dadrian has been among the most prominent scholars making assertions for which the original sources do not allow. He described a link between the Special Organization and the Armenian massacres, but Stange, the German officer who wrote the document in question, never actually mentioned the Special Organization but instead referred to "scum." Nor is there any indication that Stange had any role in the Special Organization, as Dadrian asserted. In view of the tension between Ottoman and German secret services, it would be an unlikely assignment. More likely was that the German Foreign Ministry files were accurate when they described Stange as commanding a detachment of 2,000-3,000 mostly Georgian irregulars who had volunteered to fight the Russians. Another German officer related that the Stange detachment included Armenians, surely a curious fact in the case of a unit said to have been part of an apparatus for the implementation of the Armenian genocide. The question of who carried out the killings of the Armenian deportees is difficult to resolve conclusively. While it may be politically expedient to blame the Special Organization, more likely, the perpetrators were Kurdish tribesmen and corrupt policemen out for booty.

Dadrian has taken similar liberties with a Turkish source that deals with the leading Special Organization official, Eşref Kuşçubasi. At the outbreak of World War I, Eşref was director of Special Organization operations in Arabia, the Sinai, and North Africa. Captured while on a mission to Yemen in early 1917, the British military sent him to Malta where he remained until 1920. British officers interrogated Eşref, but he denied any involvement with the Armenian massacres. He died in 1964 at the age of 91. Dadrian has argued that Eşref admitted participating in the massacres in an interview with the Turkish author Cemal Kutay. Closer inspection, though, reveals Eşref made no such admission. The assertion was instead constructed by selective ellipses and inaccurate paraphrasing. Likewise, despite claims to the contrary, while the indictment of the 1919 court-martial linked the Special Organization to the Armenian massacres, neither the trial's proceedings nor its verdict support the claim. Rather, defendants described the Special Organization's role in covert operations behind Russian lines. Gwynne Dyer, one of the few Western scholars to have done research in the Ottoman military archives, has characterized as "gossip" the assertion that the Special Organization was complicit in the Armenian massacres. The archive of the Turkish General Staff is said to contain ciphered telegrams to the Special Organization, but these documents have not been subject to scholarly inquiry. Until new documents emerge, a link between the Special Organization and the Armenian massacres is nothing but uncorroborated assertion.

The Memoirs of Naim Bey

The third pillar upon which the charge of Armenian genocide rests is Aram Andonian's Memoirs of Naim Bey. Aram Andonian was an Armenian, employed as a military censor at the time of mobilization in 1914. After his April 1915 arrest and deportation from Istanbul, he made his way to Aleppo where he obtained a permit for temporary residence. After the British liberation of the city in October 1918, Andonian collected the testimonies of Armenian men, women, and children who had survived the deportations. As he relates the story, he also made contact with a Turkish official named Naim Bey, who had been the chief secretary of the deportations committee of Aleppo. Naim Bey handed over to Andonian his memoirs, which contained a large number of official documents, telegrams, and decrees, which, he stated, had passed through his hands during his term of office. Andonian translated these memoirs into Armenian. After some delay, they were published in Armenian, French, and English editions.

The documents reproduced in Naim Bey's memoirs are the most damning evidence put forward to support the claim of genocide. Particularly incriminating are the telegrams of the wartime interior minister. If authentic, they provide proof that Talât Pasha gave explicit orders to kill all Turkish Armenians—men, women, and children. One telegram dated September 16, 1915, notes that the Committee on Union and Progress had decided to destroy completely all the Armenians living in Turkey. Those who oppose this order and decision cannot remain on the official staff of the empire. An end must be put to their existence, however criminal the measure taken may be, and no regard must be paid to either age or sex nor to conscientious scruples.

The utter ruthlessness of Talât Pasha is a recurring theme in The Memoirs. Such a demonization, though, represents an important change from the way many Armenians regarded Talât before 1915. On December 20, 1913, for example, British embassy official Louis Mallet reported the Armenians had confidence in Talât Pasha, "but fear that they may not always have to deal with a minister of the interior as well disposed as the present occupant of that post." Similarly, the German missionary Liparit described Talât as a man "who over the last six years has acquired the reputation of a sincere adherent of Turkish-Armenian friendship." Even the American head of the international Armenian relief effort in Istanbul recalled that Talât Pasha always "gave prompt attention to my requests, frequently greeting me as I called upon him in his office with the introductory remark: ‘We are partners; what can I do for you today?'" Talât Pasha may have turned into a vicious fiend, but the opinions of his contemporaries do not support this characterization.

There are many doubts as to the authenticity of the documents reproduced in Naim Bey's memoirs. Several Armenian scholars suggest that a German court authenticated five of the Talât Pasha telegrams during the 1921 trial of Soghomon Tehlirian, who assassinated Talât Pasha in Berlin on March 15, 1921. However the stenographic record of the trial, published in 1921, shows that defense counsel von Gordon withdrew his motion to introduce the five telegrams into evidence before their authenticity could be verified.

Two Turkish authors, Şinasi Orel and Süreyya Yuca, who undertook a detailed examination of the authenticity of the documents in the Andonian volume, suggest that the Armenians may have "purposely destroyed the ‘originals,' in order to avoid the chance that one day the spuriousness of the ‘documents' would be revealed." Orel and Yuca argue that discrepancies between authentic Turkish documents and those reproduced in the Naim-Andonian book suggest the latter to be "crude forgeries." In addition, the two authors could find no reference to Naim Bey in the official registers and cast doubt on his very existence.

When The Memoirs were published in 1920, Armenian activists described its author as an honest individual driven to make amends for his misdeeds. But according to a letter composed by Andonian in 1937, Naim Bey was addicted to alcohol and gambling, and the documents he provided were bought for money. To have "unveiled the truth about him," Andonian wrote, "would have served no purpose." More likely, it would have undercut the very effectiveness of The Memoirs. Nobody would have believed the word of an alcoholic and gambler who might have manufactured the documents to obtain money.

The documents contained in The Memoirs of Naim Bey depict both the Young Turk leadership and the general Turkish public as ruthless and evil villains. These materials were to influence public opinion in the United States and Western Europe and to provide the Armenians lobbying at the Paris peace conference with ammunition to support their calls for independence. That is why the Armenian National Union, formed under the leadership of the veteran Armenian statesman Boghos Nubar Pasha, purchased the documents and entrusted Andonian with bringing them to Europe. While telegrams from the Naim-Andonian book were included in a dispatch sent to London in March 1921 and also in the dossiers of the Malta detainees, the British government never made use of these telegrams. The law officers of the crown apparently regarded the Naim-Andonian book as another of the many forgeries that were flooding Istanbul at the time.

Turkish authors are not alone in their assessment that the Naim-Andonian documents are fakes. Dutch historian Erik Zürcher, writing in 1997, argued that the Andonian materials "have been shown to be forgeries." British historian Andrew Mango speaks of "telegrams dubiously attributed to the Ottoman wartime minister of the interior, Talât Pasha." It is ironic that lobbyists and policymakers seek to base a determination of genocide upon documents most historians and scholars dismiss at worst as forgeries and at best as unverifiable and problematic.

Conclusion

The three pillars of the Armenian claim to classify World War I deaths as genocide fail to substantiate the charge that the Young Turk regime intentionally organized the massacres. Other alleged evidence for a premeditated plan of annihilation fares no better.

Whether to apply the genocide label to the events that occurred almost one hundred years ago in the Ottoman Empire may be of minor consequence to many historians, but it remains of great political relevance. Both Armenian partisans and Turkish nationalists have staked claims and made their case by simplifying a complex historical reality and by ignoring crucial evidence that might yield a more nuanced picture. Professional scholars have based their positions on previous works, often unaware that these represented a bastardized interpretation of the original sources. With the political stakes high, both sides have sought to silence opponents and stymie a full debate. In one famous example, in 1995 a French court partially upheld a civil complaint brought by an Armenian group against eminent historian Bernard Lewis because they objected to a letter he had published in Le Monde on January 1, 1994, in which he had questioned the existence of a plan of extermination on the part of the Ottoman government. Turkish leaders have applied diplomatic pressure and threats; the Armenian government has accused those who do not acknowledge that the massacres constituted genocide of being deniers who seek to appease the Turkish government. Some Turkish and Armenian historians have suggested recently that it is time to "step back from the was-it-genocide-or-not dialogue of the deaf, which only leads to mutual recrimination" and instead concentrate on empirically grounded historical research that seeks a common pool of firm knowledge. Time will tell whether it will be possible to rescue history from nationalists who have plundered history to serve their own political ends.

For example, see Kamuran Gürün, The Armenian File: The Myth of Innocence Exposed (Nicosia and London: K. Rustem and Brother and Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1985), pp. 214-5 (the Turkish edition of this book, Ermeni Dosyasi, was published by Türk Kurumu Basimevi, Ankara, 1983); Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, 3rd rev. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 356.

Turkish authors such as Gürün speak of 300,000 Armenian deaths. The estimates of most Western scholars are far higher.

Aram Andonian, comp., The Memoirs of Naim Bey: Turkish Official Documents Relating to the Deportations and Massacres of Armenians (Newtown Square, Pa.: Armenian Historical Society, 1965, reprint of London, 1920 ed).

Taner Akçam, Armenien und der Völkermord: Die Istanbuler Prozesse und die türkische Nationalbewegung (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 1996), p. 185.

Vahakn N. Dadrian, "The Documentation of the World War I Armenian Massacres in the Proceedings of the Turkish Military Tribunal," International Journal of Middle East Studies 23(1991): 554; idem, "The Turkish Military Tribunal's Prosecution of the Authors of the Armenian Genocide: Four Major Court-Martial Series," Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 11(1997): 31.

Akçam, Armenien und der Völkermord, p. 148.

Calthorpe to Foreign Office, Apr. 17, 1919, Foreign Office, 371/4173/61185, p. 279.

Dadrian, "The Turkish Military Tribunal's Prosecution," p. 45.

Akçam, Armenien und der Völkermord, p. 204. For the entire indictment, see pp. 192-207.

Dadrian, "World War I Armenian Massacres," p. 558.

The verdict is reproduced in Akçam, Armenien und der Völkermord, pp. 353-64.

U.S. National Archives, RG 59, 867.00/868 (M 353, roll 7, fr. 448).

Akçam, Armenien und der Völkermord, pp. 114-9.

Yilmaz Altug, trans., The Turkish Code of Criminal Procedure (London: Sweet and Maxwell, 1962), art. 232.

Vahakn N. Dadrian, "Genocide as a Problem of National and International Law: The World War I Case and Its Contemporary Legal Ramifications," Yale Journal of Law, 14 (1989): 297, n. 286.

Taner Akçam, ed., "The Proceedings of the Turkish Military Tribunal as Published in Takvim-i Vekayi," part 1, 3rd sess., pp. 24, 27. This mimeographed edition of the trial proceedings represents a German translation used by Taner Akçam and deposited by him at the Armenian Research Center of the University of Michigan-Dearborn.

Heck to State Department, Feb. 7, 1919, U.S. National Archives, RG 59, 867.00/81 (M 820, roll 536, fr. 440).

Vahakn N. Dadrian, The Key Elements in the Turkish Denial of the Armenian Genocide: A Case Study of Distortion and Falsification (Cambridge, Mass.: Zoryan Institute, 1999), p. 27.

Quoted in Vahakn N. Dadrian, "The Armenian Genocide and the Pitfalls of a ‘Balanced' Analysis: A Response to Ronald Grigor Suny," Armenian Forum, Summer 1998, p. 89; Akçam, Armenien und der Völkermord, p. 204.

For the text of the indictment, see Akçam, Armenien und der Völkermord, pp. 192-207; for the verdict of the Harput trial, see Haigaz K. Kazarian, "The Genocide of Kharpert's Armenians: A Turkish Judicial Document and Cipher Telegrams Pertaining to Kharpert," Armenian Review, Spring 1966, pp. 18-9.

See, for example, Gürün, The Armenian File, p. 232.

Calthorpe to Foreign Secretary, Aug. 1, 1919, Foreign Office, 371/4174/118377.

De Robeck to London, Sept. 21, 1919, Foreign Office, 371/4174/136069.

Vahakn N. Dadrian, The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia and to the Caucasus (Providence: Berghahn, 1995), pp. 236-7.

Ibid., p. 237; Vahakn N. Dadrian, "The Role of the Special Organization in the Armenian Genocide during the First World War," in Panikos Panati, ed., Minorities in Wartime: National and Racial Groupings in Europe, North America, and Australia during the Two World Wars (Oxford: Berg, 1993), p. 51.

Philip H. Stoddard, "The Ottoman Government and the Arabs, 1911 to 1918: A Study of the Teskilat-i Mahsusa," unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1963, pp. 1-2, 52-8.

Dadrian, "The Role of the Special Organization," p. 56.

Second Report of the Provost Marshal to the Secretary of War on the Operations of the Selective Service System to December 20, 1918 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1919), p. 149.

Stange to the German military mission, Istanbul, Aug. 23, 1915, Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes, Botschaft Konstantinopel/170 (Fiche 7254); Johannes Lepsius, ed., Deutschland und Armenien, 1914-1918: Sammlung diplomatischer Aktenstücke (Potsdam: Tempelverlag, 1919), pp. 138-42. A reprint of this collection was published by Donat und Temmen, Bremen, in 1986.

Vahakn N. Dadrian, "Documentation of the Armenian Genocide in German and Austrian Sources," in Israel W. Charny, ed., The Widening Circle of Genocide: A Critical Bibliographical Review, vol. 3 (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1994), p. 110.

Walter Nicolai, The German Secret Service, George Renwick, trans. (London: Stanley Paul, 1924), p. 138; Hans Werner Neulen, Adler und Halbmond: Das deutsch-türkische Bündnis 1914-1918 (Frankfurt/Main: Ullstein, 1994), pp. 166-7; Ulrich Trumpener, "Suez, Baku, Gallipoli: The Military Dimensions of the German-Ottoman Coalition," in Keith Neilson and Ray Prete, eds., Coalition Warfare: An Uneasy Accord (Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1983), p. 40.

Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes, Weltkrieg, no. 11d, vol. 9 (R 21016), p. 31; Felix Guse, Die Kaukasusfront im Weltkrieg: Bis zum Frieden von Brest (Leipzig: Koehler und Amelang, 1940), p. 38; Edward J. Erikson, Ordered to Die: A History of the Ottoman Army in the First World War (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2001), pp. 54-5. On the role of the Georgian volunteers see, William E. D. Allen and Paul Muratoff, Caucasian Battlefields: A History of the Wars on the Turco-Caucasian Border, 1828-1921 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953), pp. 274-5.

Paul Leverkuehn, Posten auf ewiger Wache: Aus dem abenteuerlichen Leben des Max von Scheubner-Richter (Essen: Essener Verlagsanstalt, 1938), p. 33.

See, for example, Henry H. Riggs, Days of Tragedy in Armenia: Personal Experiences in Harpot, 1915-1917 (Ann Arbor: Gomidas Institute, 1997), pp. 127-8.

Philip H. Stoddard in the prologue to Eşref Kuşçubasi, The Turkish Battle of Khaybar, Philip H. Stoddard and H. Basri Danisman, trans. and eds. (Istanbul: Arba Yayinlari, 1999), pp. 21-32.

Vahakn N. Dadrian, "Ottoman Archives and Denial of the Armenian Genocide," in Richard G. Hovannisian, ed., The Armenian Genocide: History, Politics, Ethics (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992), pp. 300-1.

Cemal Kutay, Birinci Dünya Harbinde Teşkilat-i Mahsusa Ve Hayber'de Türk Cengi (Istanbul: Tarih Yayinlari, 1962), pp. 18, 36, 78.

Akçam, "The Proceedings of the Turkish Military Tribunal," part 1, especially 5th and 6th session of the main trial.

Gwynne Dyer, "Letter to the Editor," Middle Eastern Studies, 9 (1973): 379.

Edward J. Erickson, "The Turkish Official Military Histories of the First World War: A Bibliographical Essay," Middle Eastern Studies, 39 (2003): 198, n. 7.

Şinasi Orel and Süreyya Yuca, The Talât Pasha "Telegrams": Historical Fact or Armenian Fiction (Nicosia, Cyprus: K. Rustem, 1986), pp. 2-4.

Andonian, The Memoirs of Naim Bey, p. 64.

Louis Mallet to Foreign Office, Foreign Office, 371/1773/58131.

Report of December 1914, Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes, Botschaft Konstantinopel /168 (Fiche 7243).

Louise Jenison Peet, No Less Honor: The Biography of William Wheelock Peet (Chattanooga: E.A. Andrews, 1939), p. 170.

Gerard Chaliand and Yves Ternon, The Armenians: From Genocide to Resistance, Tony Berrett, trans. (London: Zed Press, 1983), p. 93; Mary Mangigian Tarzian, The Armenian Minority Problem, 1914-1934: A Nation's Struggle for Security (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992), p. 65; Jean-Marie Carzou, Un génocide exemplaire: Arménie 1915 (Paris: Falmmanion, 1975), p. 248.

Tessa Hofmann, ed., Der Völkermord an den Armeniern: Der Prozess Talaat Pasha (Berlin: Gesellschaft für bedrohte Völker, 1985, reprint of Berlin, 1921 ed.), p. 69.

Orel and Yuca, The Talât Pasha "Telegrams," p. 23.

Ibid., p. 145.

Aram Andonian to Mary Terzian, in Comité de Défense de la Cause Arménienne, Justicier du Génocide Arménien: Le Procès de Tehlirian (Paris: Editions Diasporas, 1981). Translation in Orel and Yuca, The Talât Pasha "Telegrams," p. 9.

Andonian, The Memoirs of Naim Bey, p. 225.

Embassy to Foreign Office (Mar. 1921), Foreign Office, 371/6500/E3557, pp. 2, 6-8.

Erik Jan Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History (London: I.B. Tauris, 1997), p. 121.

Andrew Mango, "Turks and Kurds," Middle Eastern Studies, 30 (1994): 985.

Yves Ternon, "Freedom and Responsibility of the Historian: The ‘Lewis Affair,'" in Richard G. Hovannisian, ed., Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1999), pp. 243-6.

Selim Deringil, "In Search of a Way Forward: A Response to Ronald Grigor Suny," Armenian Forum, Summer 1998, pp. 69-71; Ronald Grigor Suny, "Reply to My Critics," Armenian Forum, Summer 1998, p. 136.

Cansin, I don’t understand why you copypast materials, when you can only point to its link.

Because, people usually feel lazy to click on the link. Cansın 8 October 2005

Don't you think that someone that is too lazy to click on a link is also probably too lazy to read what you past? Fadix 02:02, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Coming to Lewy.

I will just clarify things here. Lewy also do the same with the destruction of the American Indians, he even does the same with the Gypsies. While his book about the Gypsies is groundbreaking, it is more because of the materials he provides than his analysis, which is bogus at times. We can question Finkelstein, but a relevant thing he has written can be found in a paragraph in an article, in which he refers to Lewys book. “Lewy's argument goes like this: Gypsies were ruthlessly slaughtered by the Einsatzgruppen like the Jews, but only because they were suspected of spying; Gypsies were deported to Auschwitz like the Jews, but only "to get rid of them, not to kill them;" Gypsies were gassed at Chelmno like the Jews, but only because they had contracted typhus; most of the few remaining Gypsies were sterilized like the Jews, not however to prevent their propagation but only to "prevent contamination of 'German blood.'" It's not hard to imagine the public and scholarly reaction if one replaced Gypsies with Jews in Lewy's book.” Lewy is an adherent of the Uniqueness Theory of the Holocaust, and his minimization of other crimes doesn’t stop with the one of the Armenians. He starts with the premises, that the Armenian cases can not be as premeditated as the Holocaust and build on his arguments with that thesis. Even thought, he was a survivor of the Holocaust, this doesn’t justify nonsense and the discreditation of any other instances of genocides.

The text above is loaded of mistakes that could have been avoided if he really knew of what he was talking about. In fact, he shows his ignorance of the topic starting with this ridiculous and clearly erroneous statement:

“Most of those who maintain that Armenian deaths were premeditated and so constitute genocide base their argument on three pillars: the actions of Turkish military courts of 1919-20, which convicted officials of the Young Turk government of organizing massacres of Armenians, the role of the so-called "Special Organization" accused of carrying out the massacres, and the Memoirs of Naim Bey which contain alleged telegrams of Interior Minister Talât Pasha conveying the orders for the destruction of the Armenians. Yet when these events and the sources describing them are subjected to careful examination, they provide at most a shaky foundation from which to claim, let alone conclude, that the deaths of Armenians were premeditated.”

This above claim is simply untrue; he builds on by selectively choosing what he can answer to support his theses. The memoirs of Naim Bey, were not included in any of the major works published in the last years, unless the analysis of Orel treatment of the subject, and its answers (Yves Ternon and Dadrian, while Lewy present the work question the Andonians,. and doesn’t include its answers). Lewy completely ignore in his article, the documentation from German and Austrian records, when various of the major recent publications about the topic, not only use it, but even nearly entirely based on them. He also completely ignore, the works covering America and the Armenian genocide, based on American archives. In fact, the works based on the special organization and the Military court, were mostly technical works published in Journals(see for example Dadrian). Of course, Yves Ternon is among those that use them, in a more simplified way, but mostly works are based on memoirs, missionaries and archives to “prove” genocide.

Besides, Lewy critic of the Martial court doesn’t make any sense, the reference he cites about how military courts were run, shows the complete opposite of what he does affirm. The military court while brutally choose who to interview, and they are forced to testify, on the other hand(which Lewy entirely skip), all alleged witnesses testification are dismissed without corroborative evidences. Full reports were even rejected, Saib even managed to be excused, even though he had two colleagues testifying against him on court, and providing various evidences of his criminal activities.

I won’t even, cover his point about the special organization.

Lewy could probably have a section, dedicated to the position of Uniqueness of the Holocaust, since most non-Turkish historians that minimize the Armenian genocide adhere to the theory of Uniqueness of the Holocaust. But even then, Bauer, even though maintaining the Uniqueness theory, doesn’t minimize the Armenian genocide the way Lewy does, but again, that is because Bauer was the director of the Holocaust and Genocide Studies review, and is also a specialist of comparative genocide studies unlike Lewy who seems for the last years to obsessively minimize other genocides and attacking their evidences, in a way that when using his standards, any evidences used to write history could be discredited. Because, there exist no evidences that can not be discredited, all studies trying to measure the efficiencies of medications can be criticized, and any studies in science, one can now imagine evidences used in domains that are not “pure” science. And all war crime deniers (with ill intention or not), uses this simple reality. Fadix 01:39, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Fadix an excellent response to these Lewy allegations. I have thought similarly of this piece but have not gotten around to writing a detailed critique. I'm glad to have these sort of issues brought forth because in fact it allows for a detailed response which highlights the nature of the sources for the Genocide allegations, the historical truth of such allegations and the clear justifcation(s) for the charge of Genocide. I believe it also highlights and substantiates my call for such presentation (discussing the breadth and nature of the direct observations and evidence of Genocide)within this Misplaced Pages Genocide article itself.

Briefly concerning the Lewy article/allegations: Your point: "he builds on by selectively choosing what he can answer to support his theses" is the first thing that came to my mind upon reading what he wrote. He misrpesents what are used as the primary sources and arguments for the Genocide and instead comments selectively on 3 very specific points - misrepresenting/exaggerating the relevance on them. Though I believe the (so-called) Naim-Andonain documents to have a great likelyhood of being authentic (and I think Dadrian believes likewise) - such a determination is beyond my ability to know for sure - what i do know is that they do not at all figure into the primary sourcing for any scholarly analysis of Genocide allegation - at best they are periferly referred to - and most commonly are quoted in more popular presentations - not in scholarly works.

I do agree that we need to understand the post war tribunals in their proper context - and obviously there are a number of issues associated with them - but fundementally the verdicts and evidence is sound and factually unassailable. Folks should be aware that much of the evidence for these tribunals was (previously) complied by a special investigative commision empowered by the Ottoman Parliment which had extordinary authority to gather and pecure facts that the CUP and their minions/collabortors had made utmost effort to destroy and keep secret. The commision suceeded admirably given these circumstances and I believe that the factualness of what they uncovered is indisputable - much as the evidence gathered for the Nuremburg Tribunals was - which BTW the standards for evidence and its presentation are acknowledged to have been based on the earlier Ottoman Tribunals. And regardless it is false for Lewy to claim that these allegations are based soley on such findings as their are so many corraborative accounts that he has ignored (see my long exposition about this previously...)

And I agreee with your disdain for his speculative, self serving, and against the evidence conclusions regadring the Special Organization. It is true - it is here he falls down the hardest and is most exposed for possessing a specific agenda (which I agree as we can see is perserving this myth that the Holocaust is somewhow the one and only event of its kind it history...sure it is "unique" and was most horrible - but the exact same can and should be said concerning the Armenian Genocide ...yes - enough "unuque events such as these and perhaps we have some distinct patterns which emerge that are worthy of comparative attemtion...) anyway..the formation and activities of the Special ORganization and its central role in the enactment of the Genocide have been detailed by a number of sources - including German and most importantly based on the memopirs of Special Organization members themselves! Yes indeed (some of) these bloodthirsty killers brag about how many Armenians they killed and in what cruel and merciless ways. Oh yes - this cannot be ignored - nor can the reports fromm the Commander of the ottoman Third Army early in the war - who denounced the activities of the Special Organization - even blamed them for Muslim deaths (later attributed to Armenian "gangs" by Shakir...who BTW is directly accussed/implicated in such) and also similar reports form Ottoman regional officials - including a trial and sentence of death of Shakir by one regional Ottoman official for such barbaric activites of the SO and Shakir. Enough said for now I think (BTW - all of this needs to go into the article - these denials must be stopped by a clear presentation of fact and sourcing in the articel itself!) --THOTH 19:25, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Interesting Info. About Lewy

He "left his native Germany in 1939 at the age of fifteen, emigrating to Palestine and then to the US. A political scientist, he has taught at Columbia University, Smith College, and became Professor Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He is the author of Religion and Revolution, America in Vietnam, The Cause That Failed, and The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies".

(http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_22-8-2004_pg3_8).

I also found out that he "has received numerous distinctions and fellowships from organizations and institutions, including the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Rockefeller Foundation".

(http://www.ushmm.org/research/center/publications/occasional/2002-06/paper.pdf). (Page 95 of the document).

The three American organizations and institutions, which have "granted numerous distinctions and fellowships" to Guenter Lewy, have strong relations with Turkey. The proofs are in the following:

· The American Council of Learned Societies-Turkey relations

(See http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/ARIT/FellowshipPrograms.htm).

· The National Endowment for the Humanities-Turkey relations:

1. (http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/ARIT/FellowshipPrograms.htm).

2. (http://www.cuinfo.cornell.edu/Student/GRFN/GRFN.php?mode=record&code=A1034).

3. (http://cesww.fas.harvard.edu/calarc/calarc_grant27.html)

· The Rockefeller Foundation-Turkey relations:

1. (http://www.marlamallett.com/powell.htm).

2. (http://www.hri.org/news/turkey/trkpr/1999/99-08-04.trkpr.html) (No. 19 of the Contents).

3. (http://www.absolutearts.com/artsnews/2003/05/02/30988.html).

4. (http://muse.jhu.edu/cgi-bin/access.cgi?uri=/journals/pedagogy/v002/2.3palmer.html&session=9083560).

It is noteworthy that the same Rockefeller Foundation contributed $30,000 on Oct. 6, 1915, to the fund which was raised to aid the Armenians driven from their homes by the Turkish Government. (http://www.cilicia.com/armo10c-nyt19151007b.html).

So, it is aware of the facts of the Armenian Genocide, but is supporting now the Genocide deniers!!

Ara Sarkis Ashjian

M.Sc. in Civil Engineering, Lecturer

Armenian History and Cause Researcher

And in his answer to this message, dated Mon, 12 Sep 2005 12:02:16 EDT, Prof. Gregory H. Stanton, the First Vice President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars said :

Dear Mr. Ashjian,

I read the article by Guenter Lewy to which you kindly referred me. I am appalled. It is such a blatant denial article that I am amazed that the Middle East Quarterly published it. But the organization that sponsors the journal has a very questionable professional reputation itself, so perhaps I should not be surprised.

As you know, the evidence for the Armenian genocide does not just rest upon the three sources Guenter Lewy attempts to discredit. (He doesn't even do a good job of discrediting those sources.) It also rests on literally thousands of eye-witness testimonies, eyewitness reports by diplomats and missionaries, and a mountain of other data. Lewy's article is directly contrary to the official opinion of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, passed by unanimous resolution, declaring that the Armenian massacres were genocide, and that attempts to deny that fact have no basis in sound scholarship.

I must leave it to specialists to reply to Lewy, though I see little point in doing so. (The technique of deniers is to bog down scholars in petty debates, so real scholars won't have time to do their research.) You may be interested in an article I wrote called "Twelve Ways To Deny A Genocide." I show how these tactics have been used to deny the genocide in Darfur. They are also used by Lewy and others who deny the fact of the Armenian genocide.

Sincerely,

Greg Stanton

Prof. Gregory H. Stanton

First Vice President

International Association of Genocide Scholars

Telephone:

Cell:

E-mail: IAGSVP@aol.com

Website: www.isg-iags.org

That's a very interesting e-mail, thank you for sharing it with us. My one bone of contention with the deniers is that the one organisation that really has the academic standing to judge the Armenian massacres, comes down heavily to say that they were genocide. Professor Stanton is true to point out the parallels with Darfur - the guilty parties will always try and deflect criticism, but they tellingly always use the same techniques. It's as if they're reading it out of a handbook. John Smith's 22:18, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Vahakn Dadrian responds to Guenther Lewy

October 18, 2005

In the Fall 2005 issue of Middle East Quarterly, Professor Guenther Lewy of the University of Massachusetts examines the mass murders of Armenians in Turkey before, during and after World War I and concludes: "The three pillars of the Armenian claim to classify World War I deaths as genocide fail to substantiate the charge that the Young Turk regime intentionally organized the massacres. Other alleged evidence for a premeditated plan of annihilation fares no better."

Dr. Vahakn N. Dadrian, the world's leading authority on the Turkish genocide of the Armenians and author of The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus, has drafted this comprehensive reply, and kindly given us the privilege and honor of posting it exclusively here at Jihad Watch:

By its very nature historiography can neither be expected to be complete in every respect, nor be free from any number of other shortcomings. This truism is even more pertinent to the study of such a subject matter as the Armenian genocide the historical reality of which for one reason or another is presently being degraded to the level of dubiousness. The principal vehicles used hereby are the publications of a rather small group of authors purporting to be detached and disinterested investigators. Upon closer scrutiny, however, these very same authors reveal themselves as committed partisans boldly pushing certain denialist agendas that are subtly and skillfully woven into texture of their discourses. Hence the denial is attempted indirectly rather than directly; the historical reality of the World War I Armenian genocide is called into question by casting doubt on the appropriateness of the use of the label “genocide.” When by recourse to a variety of techniques he is decrying as unwarranted the use of such a label with respect to the Armenian case, Professor Lewy is thereby providing a measure of confirmation in this respect. In the process he also is betraying his very limited familiarity with the subject. His article is replete with factual errors, misinterpretations that are accented by some outright falsehoods. On top of all this, he further betrays lack of an adequate level of knowledge of Turkish, not to speak of extinct Ottoman Turkish, on both of which he is significantly relying as primary source medium. One is prompted to wonder as to the origin and nature of the outside help he may have received.

What follows firstly is -- given exigent space limitations -– some samples only of the type of errors mentioned above:

The Yozgat trial series were not conducted in Yozgat but in Istanbul; Kemal was Kaymakam of Bogazliyan county only but not of Yozgat district of which he subsequently became an interim mutassarif by way of transfer and promotion; Cemal Pasha was not the governor of Aleppo, but the commander-in-chief of Ottoman’s IVth Army deployed in Lebanon and Syria (all these on p. 2); Dr. Liparit Nasariantz was not a German missionary (p. 5) but an Armenian political activist who later became a member of the Armenian National Council, an émigré political outfit. Moreover, Lewy’s claim that “there is no indication that German colonel Stange had any role in the Special Organization” is flatly contradicted by several authentic sources. Foremost among these is Dr. Ernst Kwiatkowski, Austria-Hungaria’s Consul at Trabzon, the port city where the Special Organization had its center for logistics. In one of his several reports to Vienna he revealed that “convicts were also enrolled” in Stange’s detachment which actually was the 8th Regiment of the 10th Army corps of the Ottoman III Army operating in the eastern province of Turkey. Even more compelling is the disclosure of a Turkish officer who not only participated in Stange’s military operations, but kept a record of them in his notebook. According to him “Stange was in charge of the Special Organization Regiment that was named ‘Teshkilati Mahsusa Alayi’ ” and that it encompassed the notorious killer bands of two noted chieftains, Topal Osman and Deli Halit, who played a paramount role in the implementation phases of the Armenian genocide. That regiment consisted of eleven battalions (tabur) and was thereafter called the Lazistan Detachment (Lazistan Mufrezesi). Unable to strictly control the secret and covert operations of these contingents of this Detachment, Stange at the end blasted them in his “secret” report to his German superiors in which he expressed his contempt of these “chettes” by calling them “scums.”

According to professor Lewy, the Armenian claim of genocide is predicated upon the “the pillars,” namely, (1) the Turkish Courts- Martial of 1919-20, (2) the role of the Special Organization (Teshkilati Mahsusa), and (3) the memoirs of Naim Bey (p. 6). This highly inaccurate description again is reflective of his seemingly limited familiarity with the literature involved. Notwithstanding, they call for scrutiny to “set the record straight.” Of these, the one involving a lengthy discussion, based on his claim that they are “forgeries,” covers the Naim-Andonian documents. That claim is mainly, if not exclusively, based upon a book produced by two Turkish authors who, following an extensive examination, maintained that the documents are forgeries. Even though at the end of his discussion he finds it expedient to hedge somewhat by allowing that these documents are “at best unverifiable and problematic,” the bulk of Lewy’s arguments with emphasis focus, however, on the forgery angle. Yet, as far as it is known, the two non-Turkish scholars cited by him for support of his claim did not themselves conduct any comparable research, including Zürcher who was content to state that the documents “have been shown to be forgeries.” But on the other end of the spectrum, a German author having very recently uncovered a number of authentic Ottoman documents from the Interior Ministry Section of Turkish state archives, established that these documents

confirm to some degree the contents of two other telegrams ascribed to Talaat in Andonian’s book. Thus the dating of telegrams nos. 840 and 860 as January 1916 appears to be correct… Sinasi Orel and Süreyya Yüce who have agued that Andonian forged his material, did not consider the source under scrutiny here. Thus their thesis is to be put into question and further research is necessary. Equally significant in this regard is the fact that Lewy is either unaware or he chose to ignore completely the existence of a very extensive analysis of the validity of these documents which I undertook and which in its entirety was published in the peer reviewed official journal of the Middle East Studies Association of North America. In the light of all this, Lewy’s standards of research are cast in stark relief, especially with respect to his conclusion that “most historians and scholars dismiss ‘these documents’” (p. 5). When dismissing another “pillar” mentioned above, he criticizes the Ottoman criminal justice system as having subverted the basic principles of such justice. Evidently he is unaware of the fact that the Ottoman Penal Code and the Ottoman Code of Criminal Procedure were compendiums essentially modeled after their French counterparts. The entire system is inquisitorial. The judges take the lead in getting the facts in the pre-trial investigative stage as well as in the subsequent actual trial, whereas in the Anglo-Saxon common-law system, called adversarial, lawyers develop the facts thereby consigning the judges to a neutral role. Accordingly, the pre-trial investigation and the preparation of prosecution are conducted in privacy, namely, in secrecy. Defense counsels are denied access to the resulting files and the right to accompany the accused in these pre-trial examinations. Even though in the law of evidence the principle of the “intimate,” i.e., “a deep seated conviction” was adopted in the Ottoman Code of Criminal Procedure whereby the judge freely accords credence to the best of his conscience, for proof of guilt, however, he depends on concrete evidence, as well as defense’s counter-arguments. The composite ingredients of such evidence involve confession, witness testimony, the writings and records of officials, evidence secured through discovery, judicial notice, searches and seizures, and expert testimony (Articles 232 and 233). In all the trial series by and large those conditions obtained, especially with respect to massive testimony provided by dozens of Turkish and Muslim witnesses. Furthermore, contrary to Lewy’s declaration that its text, along with the text of other proceedings, is “not preserved in any source” (p. 3), the fact is that the text of General Vehib’s deposition was not only read into the record in its entirety at the second sitting of the Trabzon trial series (March 19, 1919), but that entire text was published also in several newspapers of the period. Lewy further complains that the indictment “is not proof of guilt” (p. 3), whereas in the present case it legally served as a major source of evidence-in-chief, unlike in the case of all the other subsidiary indictments. Articles 130, 214 and especially 222, section, 1 and 2, of the Ottoman Criminal Code of Procedures spell out this function of the indictment. The forty two pieces of authenticated documents attached to the key indictment comprised twelve cipher telegrams, three memos, two “communications,” ten signed (and three unsigned) statements obtained by the prosecution in the course of pre-trial interrogations, three depositions, two letters, and “several” other documents relative to the role of the “Special Organization.”

Lewy’s references to three Western High Commissioners, serving in Istanbul following its occupation by the victorious Allies in 1919, as supporting material for his thesis are such as to beg the question. It may be true for example, that U.S. High Commissioner Lewis Heck was critical of some of the procedural aspects of the trials in question. But it is also true that on several occasions he unequivocally recognized and denounced “the great crime” as when he declared, “The great majority of the Turkish officials in the interior either actively participated in, or at least condoned the massacres of the Armenians.” On another occasion he reinforced his view by stating that “…the vast majority of the Turkish race heartily approved” of these massacres. As to the other two, in this case, British High Commissioners, viz., Vice Admiral Sir S.A. Gough Calthorpe and Admiral Sir J. de Robeck, their disapproval and derogation of these trials was, as I have in detail explained elsewhere, primarily derived from their belief that in prosecuting the authors of the massacres the Military Tribunal was lax and inept, and hence the trials were “a farce” and “a failure,” to the detriment of the Armenians, the victims. Nor was Malta, a mere temporary detention center, in any way intended to serve as a venue for any kind of “trials” (p. 3).

Apparently determined to by all means discredit and invalidate the findings of this Tribunal, Lewy proceeds to dispute the method of authenticating the official documents used in the trials -- in complete disregard of the fact that almost all of these officials of the Interior Ministry in charge of verifying these documents were holdovers of the defunct and banished Young Turk Ittihadist Party, i.e., the CUP. In other words the residual partisans of the organization, whose top leaders were being prosecuted for a capital crime, are being accused of assisting the prosecution by way of accommodative dishonesty-because, as Lewy puts it, they are “period officials” (p. 3). What is the definition of the term “stretching an argument”?

Lewy rightly deplores “the loss of all their documentation” (p. 3). The fact, however, that this loss remarkably coincides with the seizure of Istanbul by the Kemalist forces in 1922 when the huge archive of the Turkish Military Tribunal vanished without a trace, raises an abiding question:

Did the documents disappear by themselves, or having been collared and despoiled by interested parties, mainly the new masters of Turkey, they met the fate of a “loss”? His discussion of the Special Organization is no less marked by a plethora of errors and questionable assertions. They were briefly touched on in notes 1 and 2. Unfortunately, Lewy’s sources and data are wanting in some critical respects. The Turkish Military Tribunal through documents attached to the main indictment on four occasions, noted on pp. 4 and 5, of that indictment, reveals the close and very intimate links between the Special Organization and the top leaders of the Ittihad party, CUP, who are characterized as the organization’s central authority. On pp. 6 and 7, there are specific details about the wide-spread massacres the brigands of that organization have committed against the Armenians; on pp. 5, 6, and 7, there are further details as to how these perpetrators were released from the empire’s prisons and deployed in the provinces for massacre duty. Still on pp. 5 and 7, there are six specifications as to how two army commanders and the military governor of the Ottoman Capital, Istanbul, combined their resources to streamline these lethal operations of the Special Organization with the help of Dr. B. Chakir, one of the chief architects of the wartime genocide. These disclosures independently and decades later are largely corroborated by the two most competent Turkish authors and authorities on the subject.

Lewy’s bold contention that “there is no evidence beyond the indictment of the main trial that the Special Organization, with large number of convicts enrolled in its ranks, took the lead role in the massacres,” (p. 4) is flatly contradicted by first-hand Turkish evidence. A prominent editor and close associate of Atatürk in his memoirs reveals that when he at the start of World War I applied for reserve-officer training under a special program initiated by Dr. Nazim, another architect of the Armenian genocide, the latter ended up shocking the young volunteer when revealing that the task did involve commanding para-military units which consisted of ex-convicts, the so-called ”chettes.” Indeed Jevad, the military commander of the Ottoman capital, in the course of the second sitting of the Cabinet Ministers trial (May 4, 1919) testified that Dr. Nazim was in charge of recruiting volunteers (gönüllüs) for operations that were “non-military.” (askerlik haricinde) (T.V. 3543, p. 27). The young applicant wrote that he was repulsed by the idea of such an “army of massacrers” (Katiller Ordusu). In a subsequent article in his newspaper, he went so far as to suggest that the massacres against the Armenians could well be characterized as “genocide,” using exactly this composite Latin-Greek term. Another reserve officer with duties in the Department II, Intelligence, Ottoman General Headquarters, at the start of World War I, and subsequently with duties as deportation official, in a book published in the wake of that war with great compassion lamented the nightmare of the Armenian genocide. In doing so, he singled out the brigands, the “chettes” of the Special Organization who, he said “committed the greatest crimes,” (en buyuk cinayetteri) during that genocide. Still another Turkish publicist and author of several volumes, referring to the same “chettes” of the Special Organization, testified that these criminal bands “directly pursued the goal of extermination” by attacking and destroying countless Armenian deportation convoys. In another book he stated that these deportations “…meant the extermination of the Armenian minority in Turkey.”

Furthermore, it is inaccurate to say that “the Ottoman government released convicts…in order to increase its manpower pool for military service” (p. 4). Available evidence points to a different direction. The most striking testimony contradicting this assertion is provided by Colonel Behic Erkin, the chief of the department for procurement of supplies (Ikmal Subesi) in the Ottoman War Office. In his testimony before the Ottoman Parliament during the war he declared: “The majority of the convicts is not being sent directly to the frontlines but rather to the Special Organization thereby to render patriotic services.” As to his argument that there is no evidence that these Special Organization brigands “took the lead role in the massacres” (p. 4), here is a documented evidence ascertained by the Turkish Military Tribunal -- beyond the confines of the Indictment. Harput (Mamuretul Aziz) Verdict “In his capacity as a member of the Central Committee of Ittihad party (CUP), and as Chief of the Special Organization, Dr. Chakir personally oversaw the release of the convicts from the prisons of the empire’s capital, and of Trabzon and the Erzurum provinces. The criminals were subsequently organized into brigand units during the Armenian deportations. These “chettes” then proceeded to engage in killing operations under his leadership” (Takvimi Vekayi, no.3771, p. 1). A similar condemnation with respect to the murderous role of the same organization is recorded in the Responsible Secretaries Verdict (T. V. no.3772, p. 3).

Even the top leaders of the S.O. did reluctantly admit during their trials the fact of the engagement of those ex-convicts and their cohorts in the operations of “Armenian deportations.” What is so remarkable about this development is that these admissions were made following the abrupt production by the prosecution of documents mostly cipher telegrams, bearing their signatures. The surprised and startled defendants, who until this uniformly and persistently had been denying the involvement of the S.O. in these deportations, reversed themselves and confessed. These defendants also revealed in the course of these trials, and for the first time that the S.O. had two divisions and missions for the purpose of combating external but also internal enemies (T.V. no.3549, pp. 59-60). At the next, i.e., the fifth sitting, S.O. leader Yusuf Riza finally conceded that indeed there were two S.O.s, the second of which was involved, he said, in Armenian “deportations” (tehcir) (T.V. no.3553, p. 88). Of all these S.O. leaders, Atif Kamcil was the one who was most aghast when being forced to face the set of these surprise cipher telegrams. As a result, in two different sittings, the 5th (p. 86) and the 6th (T.V. 3557, p. 103), especially in the latter, he went so far as to admit that he sought and obstained the help of CUP’s Secretary General for the enlistment of CUP’s provincial party cells in the engagement of S.O. cadres and operations. Atif, after indicating that the terms chette (brigand) and “volunteer” (gönüllü) were more often than not coterminous and hence interchangeable, further admitted that Talaat’s Interior Ministry was involved not only in recruiting and deploying the S.O. convict-brigands, but assisted in the enactment of the law allowing their release from the prisons. (T.V. 3557, p. 104).

Three noted Turkish specialists of the S.O. explicitly declare that the Central Committee of CUP served as both the brain and the actively involved organizer of the S.O. Moreover another student of CUP concluded that the S.O. was the creation of CUP’s Central Committee and that while Interior Ministry Talaat chose the operational commanders of the S.O. units, the Central Committee itself specified its modus operandi. Reference may also be made to the biographer of Talaat who referred to the latter’s penchant for illegal undertakings by way of “nurturing and exploring CUP’s secret designs though the creation of a separate organization.”

Lewy evidently failed to understand all these sinister and criminal missions of the S.O., all recorded in Ottoman and modern Turkish, because of the failure to understand the underlying and hence more consequential mission motivating the top leaders of the S.O. The nature of that mission was exposed by a Turkish author investigating it. He wrote “The Special Organization and trustworthy Ittihadists (i.e., CUP), pursued the goal of radically solving (temelden cözülmesi) the Armenian question…they organized and carried out the deportations on a large scale and systematically. Dr. B. Chakir championed this policy at the councils of the CUP’s Central Committee.” In fact the same reference to radical, i.e., “final solution” is found in Interior Minister Talaat’s petition to the Ottoman wartime Cabinet when he went through the formalities of seeking authorization for the deportation of the Armenians. The critical import of this formula of radical solution is evinced by the fact that in practically all Turkish works, including that of Y. H. Bayur, the dean of Turkish historians, citing this document, the passage referring to this formula is carefully excised-except in one. Perhaps the most devastating rebuttal of this assertion that the S.O.’s main mission was “covert operations behind Russian lines” (p. 4), which Lewy makes by relying on two American authors, is offered by two most authoritative sources. One of them Arif Cemil (Denker), an insider who singularly chronicled the minute details of these operations on the Caucasus front, stated that “the activities relative to reconnaissance and brigandage (istihbarat ve cetecilik) imputed to S.O. were a cover for the pursuit of such “lofty ideals as the Islamic Union and Turkism.” An almost identical statement is presented by Esref Kuscubasi, whom Lewy identifies as “the leading Special Organization official” (p. 4). Speaking of “the basic objective” (temel gayesi) of the S.O., he disdainfully dismisses “the belief and the supposition that the S.O.’s mission consisted in securing unadulterated information, reconnaissance, and in triggering uprisings and incidents in enemy countries….” He goes on to say that objective in reality consists in “enabling Islam, which we embody as the essence of our moral order, to become an effective force in our foreign policy.” When elaborating on the threat, which these S.O. leaders claim the non-Muslim minorities of the Empire, especially the Greeks on the Aegean coastline, were purportedly posing, this S.O. chief proceeds to offer the following confirmation of the existence of a secret decision to eliminate these minorities. The S.O., operating outside the sphere of the government but through the agencies of the War Ministry and the CUP’s Cental Committee, primarily became concerned, as a result of a series of secret meetings at the War ministry, about the goal of liquidating (tasfiyesi) the non-Turkish masses of populations which were located in strategic areas and were under foreign and negative influences.

In categorically declaring that this very same S.O. chieftain, Esref Kuscubasi, was in no way involved in the Armenian massacres and, as he puts it, “closer inspection reveals Esref made no such admission” regarding involvement (p. 4), Lewy, inadvertently perhaps, is exposing the stark possibility of his lack any knowledge of Turkish. If so, was he abused or misled by interlopers or any other kind of outside help? The fact is that “closer inspection,” on the contrary, reveals exactly that and then through Esref’s own words as recorded by his biographer, Cemal Kutay, and subsequently verified in writing by him, Kuscubasi. Indeed, in vehemently reacting to wartime Grand-Vizier Said Halim’s assassination by an Armenian avenger in Rome 1921, Kuscubasi voluntarily inculpated himself while exculpating the Grand Vizier. The latter had emphatically denounced “The Armenian massacres” twice in his testimony before the Fifth Committee of the Ottoman Chamber of Deputies investigating the wartime Armenian “deportations and massacres,” and in the same vein had decried the sinister role of the Interior Minister Talaat. The admission by Kuscubasi in question reads:

The assassination of this martyr as a guilty party is a crime and an injustice without example. I categorically reject this accusation in my capacity as a person who performed secret duties in the events that transpired in this respect. Moreover, he also confirms that the S.O. performed tasks that went beyond “intelligence gathering” and involved the resort to secret operations that served to effectively deal with those non-Turkish elements who were suspect in terms of their fidelity and attachments to the central authorities. “It is certain that these truly secret operations were kept secret even from Cabinet Ministers. They were operations that the regular organs of the government and even security organs could absolutely not handle.” In the same vein he castigated these targeted victim populations as “separatist microbes.”

In the light of all this, Lewy’s apologia that not the Special Organization but “more likely the perpetrators were Kurdish tribesmen and corrupt policemen out for booty” (p. 5), speaks volumes about the level of seriousness with which he evidently has approached this gruesome event in modern history that two prominent eyewitnesses in so many words denounced as genocide. U.S. American Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, on duty in Turkey during the genocide, for example, called it “The Murder of a Nation,” and the German-Jewish Zionist leader, Richard Lichtheim, who throughout the stages of that genocide was also on duty in Turkey. He compared “this act of liquidation” of “a people, the majority of whom were peaceful and diligent peasants,” with “the first phase of Hitler’s campaign of extermination against the Jews…. Organized by Interior Minister Talaat, it was the result of a deliberate, cold-blooded policy of mass murder, claiming over one million victims.”

Notes

1. Altay Yigit. Dogu Karadeniz Muharebeleri (The Battles in Eastern Black Sea Regions). v.1, Trabzon: Istikbal Publishing House, 1950, pp. 80-85. For the brigand activities of the Special Organization see the analysis of the late dean of Turkish political scientists and his reference to the brigands, i.e., “chettes”and “the convicts” (hapishanede bulunan mahkümlar). Tarik Zafer Tunaya, Türkiyede Siyasal Partiler v.III, Ittihat ve Terakki (Political Parties in Turkey. Union and Progress) Istanbul: Hürriyet, 1989, pp. 285-6.

2. Austrian State Archives (HHStA), PAI 942, Krieg 21a Türkei . Zl.79/ pol, November 8, 1914; 83/ pol, December 12, 1914; PA21, XL 272, no.56, February 2, 1915. For more details on the activities Stange’s Detachment see Wolfdieter Bihl, Die Kaukasus- Politik der Mittelmächte. Part I. Vienna: 4 Bohlaus, 1975, p. 351, n-24.

3. German Foreign Ministry Archives, Botschaft Konstantinopel (thereafter Vo’kon) 170, J. no.3841, August 23, 1915.

4. The following list is but expository in this regard. Richard G. Hovannisian, The Armenian Holocaust (A Bibliography Relating to Deportations, Massacres, and Dispersion of the Armenian People. (1915-1923) Cambridge: HeritagePress, 1980; Vahakn N. Dadrian, Documentation of the Armenian Genocide in Turkish Sources in Genocide; A Critical Bibliographic Review, v.2, Israel Charny ed., London: Mansell, 1991, pp. 86-138; ibid., Documentation of the Armenian Genocide in German and Austrian Sources in The Widening Circle of Genocide. Genocide: A critical Bibliographic Review, vol.3, Israel Charny, ed., 1994, pp. 77-125. And most recently the massive compendium of official documents assembled in the national archives of Imperial Germany (During World War I), then the political and military ally of the Ottoman Empire, whose civilian and military representatives, deployed in wartime Turkey, besieged Berlin with an unending stream of official reports on the ongoing Armenian genocide. DerVolkermond an den Armeniern 1915/16. (Dokumente aus dem politischen Archiv des deutschen Auswartigen Amts), Wolfgang Gust, ed. Hamburg: zu Klampen, 2005, pp. 675.

5. Hilmar Kaiser, “The Baghdad Railway and the Armenian genocide, 1915-1916.” In Remembrance and Denial. The Case of the Armenian Genocide, Richard G. Hovannisian, ed. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1999, p. 108, n. 78.

6. Vahakn N. Dadrian, “The Naim- Andonian Documents on the World War I Destruction of Ottoman Armenians: The Anatomy of a Genocide, “International Journal of Middle East Studies” v.18, no.3 (August 1986): 311-360.

7. In the Yozgat trial series, of the twelve witnesses five were Turks, including a parliamentarian, one lieut-governor, three colonels and one customs inspector. In those of Trabzon, of the thirty eight, twenty nine were Turks including one ex-governor-general, one Appellate Court judge, one judicial inspector, one police chief, one customs inspector, three MD’s, three colonels, one major, two captains, and two lieutenants. In addition, there were introduced as evidence two lengthy depositions from two army commanders. Moreover, some dozen other Turkish witnesses testified in the Harput trial series (Takvimi Vekayi no.3771, pp. 1-2), Bayburt (T.V. 3618, pp. 6-7), and Responsible Secretaries (T.V. no.3772. pp. 1-2).

8. These publications were Vakit, March 31, 1919; Le Courrier de Turquie, April 1 and 2, 1919 issues (this was the official organ of the patriotic Turkish Association for the Defense of the Fatherland (Müdafai Vatan). The same text is available also in Hayat Tarih Mecmuasi, v.11, no.3, (November 1981): 53.

9. George Young, Corps de Droit Ottoman, v. VII. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905, pp. 248, 259, 260, 261, 262.

10. See Vahakn N. Dadrian “The Specifics of the Documents Lodged with the Key Indictment” in The Armenian Genocide in Official Turkish Records. Collected Essays by Vahakn N. Dadrian, in Journal of Political and Military Sociology (Special edition), v.22, no.1 (Summer 1994):165-171.

11. U.S. National Archives, For the first report of January 9, 1919 see R.G. 256, 867.4016/2, pp. 2 and 3; for the second quotation report to Washington see R.G. 256, 867.00/59, p. 3, January 20, 1919.

12. Vahakn N. Dadrian, “The Armenian Genocide: an interpretation” in America and the Armenian Genocide of 1915. Jay Winter ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. 54-56.

13. Dadrian, The Specifics of the Documents , pp.156-57, 161-62.

14. Galip Vardar, Ittihad ve Terakki Icinde Dönenler (The Inside Story of Ittihard ve Terakki party) Istanbul: Inkilâp, 1960, pp. 313-24. The basis of this disclosure is an exchange between an S.O leader and Dr. B. Chakir in which the latter is indicating that he is in charge of the Armenian deportations and is inviting that the leader to join and benefit from the attendant spoilage and booty. Samit N. Tansu is the editor, who also edited the memoirs of the other author, Hüsameddin Ertürk, Iki Devrin Perde Arkasi (Behind the Curtain Relative to two Eras) Istanbul: Hilmi, 1957, on p. 146 Interior Minister and party boss Talaat is identified as the instigator of Chakir’s approach to the S.O. leader mentioned above. On p. 217 once, and on pp. 325 and 327, four times he refers to “Armenian deportations and massacres” as a twin phenomenon, and identifies a captain, belonging to the S.O., as the savior of a principal genocide suspect who with the latter’s help escaped from the prison before he could be court-martialed by the Military Tribunal.

15. Falih Rifki Atay, Zeytindagi (The Olive Mountain) Istanbul: Ayyildiz, 1981, p. 36.

16. Ibid., “Pazar Konusmasi” (Sunday Talk) in Dünya December 17, 1967.

17. Ahmet Refik Altinay, Iki Komite, Iki Kital (Two Committees, Two Massacres) H. Koyukan, ed., Ankara, 1994, p. 27.

18. Ahmed Emin (Yalman), Yakin Tarihte Gördüklerim ve Gecirdiklerim (The Things I Saw and Experienced in Recent History) v.1 (1888-1918), Istanbul: Yenilik 1970, pp. 331-2.

19. IVID. Turkey in the World War New Haven: Yale University Press, 1930, pp. 217-220.

20. Meclisi Âyan Zabit Ceridesi (Transcripts of the proceedings of the Senate) v.1, 3d Period, 15th sitting, December 12, 1916, p. 187, right column. For details of this role of Colonel Behic especially his active involvement in seeking legislative approval for the release of convicts through several cipher telegrams, see T.V. 3543, especially pp. 28-29 for the one marked “secret” and dated December 25, 1914.

21. Turkish political scientist Tunaya explains how these defendants while in prison agreed among themselves to “unanimously” (oybirligi) deny any relationship between the S.O. and their political party, the CUP, and deny also any role of the party in the creation of the same S.O. Turkiyede Siyasal Partiler , p. 281. Author Yalman who shared prison life with these leaders, in his memoirs describes how they would gather in the large room of the prison for their “Cabinet Council” meetings to discuss, with the help of another inmate, Osman Interior Ministry’s Legal Counselor, defense strategy and common grounds Yakin Tarihte . pp. 339-41.

22. Ertürk, Iki Devrin , pp. 297-98, 306; Vardar, Ittihad ve Terakki . pp. 244-46, 274.

23. Mustafa Ragip Esatli; Ittihad ve Terakki Tarihinde Esrar Perdesi (The Curtain of Mistery in I. ve T.’s History) Istanbul: Hürriyet, 1975, p. 258.

24. Tevfik Çavdar, Talat Pasa, Ankara; Dost, pp. 190, 210.

25. Dogan Avcioglu, Milli Kurtulus Tarihi. 1838 den 1995e (The History of National Liberation. From 1838 to 1995) v.3, Istanbul: Istanbul publications, 1974, p. 1135. It should be noted that an identical revelation with details about Chakir’s trip to Istanbul from Erzurum is made by an insider. Chakir is laying down and pressing for its acceptance his respective plan during a special meeting with the members of CUP’s Central Committee. Arif Cemil, Ici Dünya Savasinda Teskilâti Mahsusa (The Special Organization in World War I) Istanbul: Arba 1997, pp. 233, especially 245-46. On pp. 73-4, the author likewise reveal’s Talaat’s order to release convicts from Trabzon.

26. Muammer Demirel, Birinci Dünya Harbinde Erzurum ve Cevresinde Ermeni Hareketleri (1914-1918) Ankara: General Staff Publication, 1996, p. 53. In converting to modern Turkish, the author substituted and thereby slightly modified the original Ottoman term “Külliyen izalesi” when using the words “solving in some essential way” (“esasli bir sekilde cözümlenmesi”).

27. One of them, Gwynne Dyer, relied mainly on the work of Philip Stoddard to be commented upon in the next paragraph. Notwithstanding, Dyer repeatedly acknowledged the fact of the Armenian genocide in the following two articles, namely, (1) “Turkish ‘Falsifiers’ and Armenian Deceivers’: Historiography and the Armenian Massacres,” Middle Eastern Studies v.12, no.1 (January 1996). On p. 100 he speaks of “a policy of extermination” in 1915 by “the Ottoman Government;” on p. 107, he even refers to the “final solution” inflicted upon the Armenians. In an earlier piece, he likewise is emphatic about the historical reality of it by arguing that “the Armenian deportations were…. Official Turkish Government policy… used as the cover for a semi-official and ruthlessly applied policy of extermination.” Middle Eastern Studies v.3, (October 1973): p. 379. As to Stoddard, The Ottoman Government and the Arabs, 1911 to 1918: A preliminary Study of the Teskilati Mahsusa Ann Arbor, Michigan: University Microfilms, 1963, University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, there too the story is incomplete. Indeed, even though he never explicitly acknowledges the perpetration of massacres against the Armenians. Stoddard, nevertheless, acknowledges the “disdainful…activities…of ‘groups of brigands’ ” In the same vein, he refers to the seditiousness of “certain ethnic groups,” to their “separatist movements that eventually came under the purview of the Tieskilâti Mahsusa,” i.e., the Special Organization (p. 50), which was established “in part to ride herd on all separatist and nationalist groups” p. 6). On p. 157, he admits that the S.O. role consisted “in carrying out the decisions of CUP …,” and on p. 54 he identifies some of its top leaders as having been centrally involved, such as Drs. Chakir Nazim, and CUP’s Secretary General Midhat Sükrü. Even Erik Zürcher, cited by Lewy (p. 5), had, as noted earlier, to rely upon someone else’s work rather than produce his own research results when he wrote that Andonian materials “have been shown to be forgeries.” In the same work however, he wrote that “an inner circle within CUP under the direction of Talât the extermination of the Armenians relocation as a cloak.” Turkey A Modern History, London: Tauris, 1994, p. 121.

28. Cemil, Ici Dünya , p. 11

29. Quoted in Celâl Bayar, Bende Yazdim (I Too Have Written), v.5, Istanbul, Baha, p. 1573.

30. Ittihad- Terakki’nin Sorgulanmasi ve Yargilanmasi (The Interrogation and Trial of CUP). Istanbul: Temel publ. No.98. pp. 82, 84; the verification by Kuscubasi in writing of the accuracy of the material, produced by Bayar, is on p. 1572, in note no.1.

31. Cemal Kutay, Birinci Dünya Harbinde Teskilât-I Mahsusa (The Special Organization in World War I) Istanbul, 1962, n.p., p. 78.

32. Ibid. pp. 18, 44. His criticism that I resorted to “inaccurate paraphrasing” and “selective ellipses” (p. 4) are, I am afraid, just unsubstantiated, hollow declarations revealing once more his lack of knowledge of Turkish.

33. Henry Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story, NY: Doubleday, p. 301.

34. Richard Lichtheim, Rückkehr, Lebenserinnenungen aus der Frühzeit des deutschen Zionismus, Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlays- Anstalt, 1970, pp. 287, 341. In an effort to further question the genocidal quality of the mass murder of the Armenians, Lewy invokes the “Nuremberg trials” and the massive documentation involved. But a whole host of Holocaust scholars, thoroughly familiar with those trials, went out of their way to recognize the Armenian genocide in an effort to contest its denial. The most recent example of it is the proclamation of the 127 Holocaust scholars who declared that “The Armenian Genocide is an Incontestable Historical Fact.” Among the signers was Nobel Laureate Elvie Wiesel, as such prominent Holocaust scholars as Yehuda Bauer, Israel Charny, Steven Katz, Irving Greenberg, Irving Horowitz, Zev Garber, and Richard Rubinstein the proclamation appeared in the June 9, 2000 issue of the New York Times. Equally important, the chief assistant to U.S. Justice Robert Jackson at Nuremberg was Robert Kempner, a German Jew. He was the one who discovered in German Foreign Ministry files the original copy No.10 of the notorious Wannsee Protocol that encapsulated the Final Solution. On numerous occasions especially in a law journal article, he emphatically asserted the fact of the Armenian genocide. He stated, among others, “For the first time in legal history, it was recognized that other countries could legitimately combat… genocide without committing unauthorized intervention in the internal affairs of another country.” He was referring to the public declaration on May 24, 1915 of the three Allies, Great Britain, France, and Russia, that “These new crimes of Turkey against the Armenians constitute crimes against humanity for which Turkish officials will be held responsible for these massacres.” Specifically he was referring to “1.4 million Christian Armenians who by order of the Turkish government were subjected to the first genocide of this century.” “Der Völkermord an den Armeniern” in Recht und Polotik, v.3 (1980): 167, 168. Kempner, upon arrival in America, became professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Two other Holocaust scholars reacted even more pungently to the denials mounted against the recognition of the Armenian genocide. Noted author Deborah Lipstadt wrote: “Denial of genocide whether that of the Turks against the Armenians or the Nazis against the Jews is not an act of historical reinterpretation. Rather, the deniers saw confusion by appearing to be engaged in a genuine scholarly effort….The deniers aim at convincing third parties that there is ‘another side of the story….” Lipstadt letter to Congressman Chris Smith, Chairman of the Subcommittee on International Relations, House of Representatives. 106th Congress, 2nd session, September 2, 2000. Under consideration was HR 398, a Resolution Commemorating the Armenian Genocide. Conceivably these intercessions by so many Holocaust scholars on behalf of the victims of the Armenian genocide have, in addition to a pathos for truth, elements of identification and projection. That sentiment was cogently and concisely articulated by Holocaust scholar Katherine Bischoping when she wrote: “The future of Holocaust denial may be foreshadowed by the persistent denial of the Armenian genocide.” “Method and Meaning in holocaust-knowledge Surveys.” Holocaust and Genocide Studies v.12, n.3 (Winter 1998): 463.

--Maral79 13:15, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

User:Fadix/Armenian_Genocide

I have been starting with the footnoting process. Footnote 9(for now, the number will change, since the first part is still not footnoted), report the burning. Eitan Belkind was a a Nili member, who infiltrated the Ottoman army as an official. He was assigned to the headquarters of Camal Pasha. He claims to have witnessed the burning of 5000 Armenians, quoted in Yair Auron, The Banality of Indifference: Zionism and the Armenian Genocide. New Brunswick, N.J., 2000, pp. 181, 183. Lt. Hasan Maruf, of the Ottoman army, who discribes how a population of a village were taken all together, and then burned. See, British Foreign Office 371/2781/264888, Appendice B., p. 6). Commander of the Third Army, Vehib's 12 pages affidavit, which was dated December 5, 1918, presented in the Trabzon trial series (March 29, 1919)included in the Key Indictment(published in Takvimi Vekayi, No. 3540, May 5, 1919), report such a mass burning of the population of an entire vilage near Mus. I also will be adding the reference to Dadrian and to Ye'or, also Obstacles to Peace by S. S. McClure; Houghton Mifflin Company, 1917. pp. 400-401.

Bitlis, Moush, and Sassoun: The shortest method for disposing of the women and children concentrated in tile various camps was to burn them. Fire was set to large wooden sheds in Alidjan, Megrakon, Khaskegh, and other Armenian villages, and these absolutely helpless women and children were roasted to death. Many went mad and threw their children away; some knelt down and prayed amid the flames in which their bodies were burning; others shrieked and cried for help which came from nowhere. And the executioners, who seem to have been unmoved by this unparalleled savagery, grasped infants by one leg and hurled them into the fire, calling out to tile burning mothers: "Here are your lions." Turkish prisoners who had apparently witnessed some of these scenes were horrified and maddened at remembering the sight. They told the Russians that the stench of the burning human flesh permeated the air for many days after.

Museli, now perhaps, you could understand why I think he should be in the footnote, because, of all others, I don't see why him should be on the main article, when he is more of a reference. Fadix 19:35, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Armenian Holocaust Denial article?

I wondered, why hasn't the idea of making a separate Armenian Holocaust denial article been cultivated, if not even mentioned so far, instead or ruining this article with flame and edit wars? EpiVictor 10:21, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Actually, things seems to be under control. As for the idea, I have apready presented the idea of an article, about what is termed "Armenian genocide denial." It is in my list of projects. Regards. Fadix 19:22, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes indeed - I have very much been thinking along these lines of late. --THOTH 20:39, 12 October 2005 (UTC)

My working version

I've made many changes, which does not really remove informations. User:Fadix/Armenian_Genocide I need input, and also participations on that version. Thoth, present your propositions. And I have also started the footnoting process, taking that direction, I won't be surprised that near 100 footnotes. :( But I have no choices, since the subject at hand, every bit of stuff should be sourced. Fadix 22:37, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Haven't had a chance to look at it - but will - perhaps sometime this weekend or depending on how extensive early next week (we are doing a wine/fall farm tour this weekend). However, you know how I feel about the current article and the direction you are taking it. IMO it is nearly hopeless to reform and although I admire the effort and attempt at extreme NPOV you are taking - and understand why you are doing so - in the end I do not feel that it will result in an article that is worthwhile or properly explanative - and after all this is an encyclopedia - thus in the end I believe your efforts will result in failure - both for the reason that information and knowledge will be witheld, the ability for the reader to achieve a perspective and understanding of the events, their causes and implications will be largely lost (and current article already does not convey IMO) and because the terrorists will keep comming back and doing all they know how to do regardless. Anyway that is my opinion. I do want to help and I am continually impressed with your ability to come up with sources - particularly in regards to refutation of cheap counter-claims. So carry on I guess as it seems that nobody really cares to make the effort to change the article as it needs to be done nor have any really ancouraged me to take the effort that it might require to do so - and as it will take a tremendous amount of effort IMO - I'm reluctant to do so with my limited time - particularly if it will ony lead to a dead end. I have been thinking quite a bit of late however on this idea of a Turkish denial of the Armenian Genocide article that would - of course - begin with denials and cover-ups undertyaken by the CUP at the time of the perpetuation of the acts and the reasons for the success of these denials in the various environments/time periods. I think ultimatly - done right - this article could be much more informative concerning the Genocide then the current Armenian Genocide article here - you gallant efforts on its behalf non-withstanding (and I do really mean that in the best of ways even if we have a philosphical difference in our basic approach here. --THOTH 14:54, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

The position of the Turkish Government

The third paragraph of this section (similarities with the Holocaust) needs to be re-written for the following reasons: 1)Although my mother tongue is not English, I think I can assert with considerable confidence that the word "agitate", as used in the first sentence of the paragraph, is hardly the right verb. Ottoman Armenians resorted to violence and terrorism, they secretly armed themselves, used these arms against their Turkish neighbours and the state, joined forces with Turkey's enemies during the First WW. There are thousands of Ottoman, Armenian as well as foreign documents on this subject. Therefore, it is clearly inappropriate and insufficient to use a weak verb such as "agitate" to describe or define these extremely serious acts. 2)As to the second sentence of the paragraph ("Genocide scholars answer..."), only the small number of German revisionists claim that Jews were allying with the Soviet enemy. Even if this is true, did Jews ever resort to violence and terrorism in Germany, did they form armed bands and attack German military units, towns, or villages, kill and destroy? Did they help the enemy by facilitating its war effort through sabotage, spying, scouting etc. Therefore, in my view, the Genocide scholars' argument can not be viewed as an objectively meaningful and useful contribution and as such,it should not be included in your article. -- — Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.131.90.226 (talk • contribs) 00:00, October 15, 2005 (UTC)

We are trying to write an encyclopedic article, which means, that what you or I believe should not influence the way the article is written. The only way of influencing is to present an OFFICIAL and NOT, your version. The term terrorism, is a modern one, there is no clear such term used in the Hagues prior to World War I. Furthermore, the claims of Armenians having killed, I believe is outined clearly on that section, presenting the theses of the leading Turkish government figure right now, Halacoglu, and his figure of over 500,000 Turks being killed, and only 10 thousand Armenians being killed on the other side. What do you expect, that we take all the space treating the article to present your position? We can certainly not do that. I will here, not take the time to tell you, how your claim of Armenian sources, and Western sources is just not true, it is really not relevant and out of line.But, just to tell you that, revisionists of the Holocaust, claims that the Zionist movement allied with the Bolshevics, to bring Bolshevism in Germany and destroy it. Revisionists also claim, that the concentration camps were always destinated as prisons, because the NAZI considered the Jews and untrustful. And oh, the fire, I forgot that too. You can't imagine all the stories, and everything the Jews were accused of. Besides, your regurgitation is classified on stage 5 of genocide, under GenocideWatch 8 stages. Also, what you think of genocide scholars is your personal point of view and is irrelevant also. Fadix 03:06, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Fadix, what do you mean by this: "...The term terrorism, is a modern one, there is no clear such term used in the Hagues prior to World War I...". Then, what about the term "genocide" ? It didn't exist also before 1943, right ;) ? Cansın 16 October 2005

Thought you got me there? Have you not? :) Terrorism is a vague term to be used, in a society, where citizenship did not exist. The term terrorism, could not really be applied for attacks from subjects of an empire, when such notion didn't even existed, while concepts of right of self-determination existed, which would justify and support a revolution(this started from the French revolution). The problem of the uses of the term, is not more of a date problem, but rather the purpouses of the uses of such a term. While the term "terror" could be used, terrorism also depend on such things as systems etc. You can use terror, but to call it terrorism, is another issue. The term genocide, doesn't care of citizenship, "subject," etc., it just takes a policy that would destroy a groupe of people. Besides, just to remind you that the person that coined the term genocide, presented the Armenian cases as part of the definition of the term genocide, when he published "Genocide"(the English translation of the French work). Fadix 03:05, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Fadix, The term 'Genocide' was coined in 1944 by Raphael Lemkin, and it is liberally used in this article for the events that took place in 1915. By the same token, you may agree or disagree whether the perpetuators were "terrorists" but we have to submit that terorrism existed even if we did not call it by this name. This is similar to the case of Pithagoras' theorem : it held true even before Pithagoras discovered it. Muesli 06:18, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Terrorism is dependent of a states structure also. In fact, Raphael Lemkin himself worked in the application of "state terrorism" before he came up with the term Genocide. Genocide is plainly the destruction of a population, regardless of the state structure in which it happened. Also, when Lemkin coined the term, he did reffer to the massacre of Armenians. Also, the term terrorism is in itself also problematic in the present. Now imagine, when the concept of citizenship did not exist. Two countries making war, is not terrorism, someone blowing himself off is one. If Armenians were to revolt, they were subjects and not citizen, secondly, this would be justified by the French revolution, which also influenced Hagues concept of right to self-determination. In the same line, the Young-Turks who reverted the Sultans government were not terrorists. Also, the term terrorism, I don't think is even used by Turkish scholars, who prefer to use the terms "revolutionaries" and "terror groups." Fadix 18:48, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Putting an end to it

Maral has posted the answer to Lewy, like I already told Cansin, I will tell this to Maral, and anyone that want to do copy-past job. The talk-page is not there for that purpouses, long materials existing elsewhere, there link should be provided, they should not be copied here, it is increasing the size of the talk pages, and makes the talk page harder to follow. The next time it happens, I will revert it back and replace it with the link to the material. Fadix 17:47, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

I completely disagree Fadix. We are facing a most henious and sustained revisionist campaign aimed at denying the Armenian Genocide and it is being undertaken right here within this article and on the talk pages that are intended to form the basis of dicussion to guide editing of the article. The Dadrian rebuttle is very pertinent information that refutes a (seemingly on the surface scholarly or at least referenced...) denialist position that has recently been entered into the discussion and as the original article makes some rather extravagant claims regarding the truth and as it calls into suspicion support for the Genocide contention and as it is filled with a number of major flaws these dubious points must be countered and shown to be what they are - a biased and manipulated presentation of dubious value. Dadrian does this well - at least in part - as he only lightly touches on the great deal of overwhelming coraborated eyewitness evidence for these crimes as well as additional documentation regarding debates and decisions withion the CUP prior to the Genocide which serve as additional coroboration and which were not presented in the post war trials (or even acknowledged by the author of the original peice). Anyway I think the introduction (into these discussion pages) of this text by Dadrian is fully justified and it is a must read and it certainly refutes the shameful denialist claims by the author of the original peice who posseses a clearly biased agenda and has presented a very selective and manipulative presentation of the facts at hand that begs for proper refutation. --THOTH 03:11, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Thoth, that was a friendly warning for everyone copypasting long articles, when the articles are in the web. In future, only links should be posted, copypasting is increasing the sizes of the talk pages considerably, and since I have to at least maintain a month of material posted there befpre archiving, it makes the talk page bigger than it should be. Fadix 05:33, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

A.Garnet deletion

Garnet, who was previously E.A., is continuisly reverting the reference to Ecevit etc., in the Turkish government section, which is unacceptable, this is not the first time he does such things, he in the past entirly deleted a section in the article, and to not start a conflict, I accepted. Garnet is not following the wiki way of doing things here, more particularly when articles which are controversial are concerned. Turkeys accusation of genocide against other nations is considered by some an official Turkish government policy as reaction against the accusations of genocide(Armenian genocide). While that list did not include other cases, where Turkey has accused other nations(among some, Belgium, France etc.) of genocide, that was only because there is another working version which will include those. Also, I would add that, appologizing and retracting from Ecevit part is no reason to delete that section of the article, if you have references to him apologizing, feel free to present them here and add that in the article.

I will again like to remind you that deleting what you do not like is not Wiki. You do agree that that section is true, and you do not report any POV from it, you claim that a prime ministers words or presidents words, or ministers words do not fit in the government section, I disagree, and since that section was added there before you reverted it, you must discuss it in the talk page and request others comment before deleting, unless the portion deleted is your add-on.

And finally, I would add that I will not revert, neither ask anyone to revert your deletion, as usual, I will try to bring that on the talk page, as I did in our previous conflicts, which were the majority of times caused again by your deletions. Fadix 03:14, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Also, I would at least ask Garnet, what has become of the "Armenian genocide" in both Turkey and Ottoman articles? In both articles, as expected, they have been deleted. Fadix 03:18, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Ecevits comments were not representative of the Turkish government back then, nor are they now. Neither are the statements by Mehmet Elkatmis. The matter is simple, the section is entitled "The Position of the Turkish government" and you want to include statements which are not the position of the government and therefore entirely irrelevant. Do not try and smear my name on these pages, especially since you have been blocked for incivility already. As i have done before, i will point people towards this page, if you are unhappy with the Turkey and Ottoman Empire articles, then no one is stopping you editing them. --A.Garnet 16:44, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

For the interest of others, the blocking that Garnet is claiming has been reversed not after being applied and the Administrator who blocked me has admitted that the reasons of the blockage were not really good. One wonder what is the reason of bringing that up here.(I am also glad to see that Garnet has followed the arbitration cases) Comming to the position of the government, I REPEAT, what a prime minister, a president or a minister declares IS relevant in a section about a government, more so when Ecevit government and the government that followed are those that founded the Institute of Armenian study, which prime function is to deny the Armenian genocide, and when those two governments are those that have lunched the accusation tactic, which is basically accusing any countries recognizing the genocide, as prepetrators of genocides. The accusation against Israel was not restricted to Ecevit, perhaps Garnet should follow what happened when the Israeli education minister that wanted to include the Armenian genocide in school courses about the Holocaust, and how the minister was forced to quit his job. The tactic of accusing other nations of genocide as "self-defense" is a known phenomenen(see for example Japanese accusations against the Chinese as reaction to the Nanking massacres) Also, you seem to be interested so much at Turkeys article, reverting everything that you have problem with, but yet, you had nothing to say about the deletion of the Armenian genocide, the same for the Ottoman article, I won't go fight there against nationalists, and you know that already so why bringing that up as if I will be interested to go and edit an article that I am not interested in contributing to? Fadix 20:47, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

I think I have to agree with A.Garnet on the point that the references to comments by Ecevit and Elkatmis are out of place because the comments were clearly not intended by those individuals to be representative of the Turkish government's position. The references also seem to tip over into representation of a point of view (viz: the point of view that the Turkish government's position is hypocritical). That the Turkish government has made certain statements is a fact. That the stance of the government may be hypocritical is an opinion. We may represents significant opinions, of course, but when we do so we should state clearly that this is what we're doing and we should attribute those opinions accurately. If they're our personal opinions only, and cannot be attributed to a significant source, then they should not be in the article. --Tony Sidaway 17:46, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Out of justice, I don't see any mention in that text, which states that the Turkish government is hypocritical, if someone assume this from the text, it will be due to an information in the text and not because I say it so. The fact that the Turkish government answers to genocide accusations, by accusing those that recognise it, to be perpetrators of genocide, is part of the Turkish government policy. The Justice minister even suggested of suing those countries, if you think that the Justice minister, prisents, prime minister etc. are disconnected to the government, I ask you then what is the government? It is true that the Turkish government has the National Assembly, which is the result of the Kemalistic minitaristic regime, but still, if we take this path, this phenomen of accusing other nations is even more important there. I will also add, that I do agree that the way it was presented was not the best thing to do, but I believe that modification and placing it more in the context was what should have been done, agreeing this way with Garnet, you are giving him arguments, to delete things which he does not like, and this comming from the person that believes that Greek crimes outside of the city of Smyrna should be included in parallel to the Turkish crimes in the city of the Smyrna, and this in the article about Smyrna, the same guy also that had no problem with the deletion of the Armenian genocide reference from the Ottoman and Turkey article. I will also remind you, that it was also him that deleted an entire section to replace it with this section. Fadix 20:47, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

If the ex-Prime Minister's comments may be misunderstood in their current format, then they should be re-formated. But that doesn't mean that they should be ignored. If Turkish politicians are being hypocritical, then that is a fact also. Perhaps what would be better is the section was renamed "Position of the Turkish government and attitudes of Turkish politicians" - or something along those lines. Also if someone can find out if those two gentlemen have commented upon the Armenian massacres themselves and how they did so. Because if they deny the severity of the tragedy, then they at least can be held to be hypocritical. John Smith's 19:32, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't think renaming is necessary, I do believe key ministers comments are important, because without them, there is no real indicators of government position. Fadix 21:16, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Have a look at for official government policy towards Israel or USA. Policies are constructed using a wide range of governmental institutions and organisations, not from off the hook remarks by Prime Ministers or Ministers. --A.Garnet 22:06, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, if the prime minister of Canada was to make such a remark about something, as the FIRST minister, i'd believe there would be a place, in governments reaction in a section about such a particular subject. Wasn't you(my memory can fool me there) that was claiming that a country did not recognize the genocide because the ministers did not take position, even though the deputies have voted? Justice ministers or prime ministers words do have a place, they are the leading figures in a government. What about Turkeys "recognition" of the Algerian 'genocide,' or Belgium genocide, or Armenians having perpetrated genocide against the Turks, there is even monuments in the Eastern Turkey about it, or about Xojali 'genocide,' American genocide against Iraqis(example, Faluja), I even heard such things as recognition of Canadian genocide and American genocides against the natives etc. One mistake from a minister can be called an error, but when there are various people accused of genocide and even threats to sue such countries, I'd call this a generalized position. Also, you present me the foreign ministry website, this is a diplomatic website, which could even claim good relation with Armenia, or other countries which Turkey has problems with. Fadix 22:25, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

No i did not claim that, for some reason you completely mis-read what i said. I said the article should highlight that Canadas ministers did not take a position on the genocide just as the article had already done with Switzerland - NOT that this meant Canada did not recognise a genocide.

Look, Turkey does not accuse Israel or the USA of genocide. You will find no consistent pattern within the government of either of these countries being accused of genocide, it therefore stands that those two statements from which you are constructing an argument are exceptions probably more relevant in the Foreign relations of Republic of Turkey article. --A.Garnet 22:54, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Garnet, you wanted specification for that country, to include that the ministers did not take position, in a section including official recognition. That is double standard to me. In one hand, you want that to be specified, but you on the other hand, want deleted something on pretext that it is not official Turkish government standing. But, the text itself does not say it is, it says what a Turkish prime minister says, it does not say the Turkish government 'officially' believes that. What I am saying, is that it is relevant in that particular section, because I qualify what a prime minister say as relevant. Using your logic, nothing could be on that section, because nothing is really official. I mean, Halacoglu that is now the official Turkish government figure on this, claims 56 thousand Armenians having died, while other Turkish government sources provides 200,000, and there are others using Talaat figures of 300,000, others in the government refers to McCarthy. Local authorities with the subvention of the government build monuments dedicated to Turkish genocide by Armenians, yet I don't see anything written on stone from the Turkish government diplomatically saying the Armenians perpetrated genocides, while in their own publications they do. The Institute of Armenian studies, which was founded by the Turkish government(in which even McCarthy is a contributor), accuse Armenians of such. While diplomatically Turkey has good relations with Israel, according to a series of publications about Turkish media anti-semiticism, anti-Israelism is increasing, Hitlers book few months ago was a best seller there. The Turkish government ministers shout whatever they want, but when comming to foreign affairs they shut up, so according to you, nothing, absolutly nothing can be included in that section. I mean, neither Halacoglu, neither an official version. I mean, what official version? That Armenians have commited genocide against the Turks? That over 500,000 Turks were exterminated by Armenians, and that as a result, Arabs, Kurds etc. have killed under 10,000 Armenians, and that 40,000 others perished due to war conditions? Take your pick. Fadix 23:20, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

You did not call it official government policy no, but you did say "But although Turkey claims that the Armenian massacres do not constitute genocide..." making a direct correlation between what Ecevit said and the official policy of the Turkish government. Even if you are not linking it to the government, the fact that Ecevit apologised and said he was misunderstood proves that the statement did not then or never has been part of a larger policy towards accusing Israel of genocide. --A.Garnet 23:34, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

That's your interpretation there, the text do not claim a government policy, but a prime ministers statment. Besides, I don't remember Ecevit appologizing, he retracted by claiming that he was misunderstood, this after the Israeli government seriously answered Turkey, and that even threats of recognition the Armenian genocide by Israel by some were made. The retraction could be written here, but you have yet to justify a deletion. Fadix 23:44, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

The Turkish government does not hold the view of Ecevit and therefore does not create the double standards you imply. Unless there is significant objection from other people i will remove it again tommorow, as usual you put up a roadblock for something which should be a minor issue. --A.Garnet 01:13, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Garnet, as far as I am aware, you were the one doing the move, by removing it, what you consider as a minor issue, you blowed out of proportion a reference which you don't even dispute the factuality by question its place there. But as I clarified and explained AND documented(which points, you haven't even addressed), using your logic there should be nothing on that section, because from that standard, nothing is Turkish government position, neither Halacoglu, neither the figures presented, neither anything at all. Because you don't consider justice ministers statments, ministers statments, presidents statments, prime ministers statments, etc. etc, AND etc. And here, I won't even refer to the Ataturk historical foundation, or the Institute of Armenian studies both, which are national foundation, or direct publications endorsed by the Turkish ministry of science, culture and what have you. I repeat, that Ecevit made that remark is true, that he retracted is also true. Nothing prevent you to add that information, but deleting is not the thing to do. Fadix 01:31, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

These links show that a)Ecevit or his government did not hold a policy of accusing Israel of genocide b)Elkatmis's statement was not representative of Turkish government policy on USA...meaning neither of the statements should be used to construct an argument pushing one view.

"Ecevit also issued a separate written statement that said his use of the word "genocide" had led to interpretations he did not intend" - Turkish Times

"Elkatmis does not speak for Turkey's government" - Swissinfo --A.Garnet 11:51, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

I don't see anything in those links questioning the information that you deleted. You do admit those informations to be accurate, but you want them to be deleted because you state they are not a government policy. But I also answered you that what a prime minister, justice minister etc. say, does fit in a section regarding the Turkish government, since both were statments made by rulling parties important ministers. I also developped that if we were to stick on your logic on what is official Turkish government policy, there could be nothing besides the Turkish penal code that could be there, because nothing has been voted to be an official position. I already addressed this issue to you, but you ignored it and repeated the same thing over again. I do understand what you are saying, this is not a question of lack of understanding, this is a question of agreement on whatever or not, this information which you do not question the authenticity should be there. I advance that the information that Turkey accuses other nations of genocide as reaction, answer etc., or simple behavour, in an article regarding the Armenian genocide, and in a section regarding the Turkish government, is relevant. If Paul Martin, the prime minister of Canada was to make a statment regarding the quota of fish imposed against the native somewhere on North, and what he thinks of quotas and what should be quotas, and that there was an article about Canadian natives fishing quotas, and that there was a section regarding fishing quotas, I'd believe that what the justice minister of the rulling party and the prime minister have said is relevant. And here please be consistant with yourself. If you believe that Greek crimes outside of the city of Smyrna should be mentioned in an article about Smyrna, be consistant with yourself, and recognize that it is relevant to include in a Turkish government section in the Armenian genocide article, that what a prime minister says, or a justice minister says IS relevant. And I will also add that I do not wish to continue this debate over a refference that you don't even question the accuracy. I will just add that, Turkey being the record holder in terms of accusing other countries of genocides, I'd believe logical that this info in some form or another, of the countries that Turkey has accused of genocide(including accusing the current republic of Armenia of such) should have a place there. While I maintain the position that it is a vualble information, you maintain that such things shows the Turkish government in bad light, I oppose to that by claiming that denying a genocide alone shows a government in bad light. Fadix 17:56, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

These statements by Turkish government officials are consitant with the pattern of deflecting and denying and need to be included in a section specifically focused on the history and methods of the Turkish Government active denial of the Armenian Genocide. Besides accusatory and deflective statements by Turkish Government officials this section should discuss the sponsoring of academic/scholarly bodies and foriegn and domestic academics specifically for the purpose of Genocide denial consistent with the Turkish Government position. It should also highlight monies doled out to such institutions and media campaings sponsored (such as this recent Time magazine DVD) as well as lobbying efforts in the U.S. and elsewhere (including the recent issue of large payoffs to certain U.S. politicians to kill Congressional resolutions. Additionally, the requirement in the Turkish school system that students must write an essay denying the Armenian Genocide for graduation, the prosecution of several Turkish school teachers who protested such and the laws over the years that have been promulgated to prosecute anyone affirming the Genocide all need mentioning. (Also worth mentioning would be the recent prosecutions of Dink and shortly of Pamuk as well as statements on the part of the justice Minister regarding the Conference on Armenians in the Ottoman Empire - which caused the conference to be delayed and moved and nearly cancelled) Another thing I find interesting is that any look at the (Turkish Government sponosored) Turkish Historical Society's web site or that even of the Ministry of Foriegn Affairs reveals what could be considered an obsession with and certainly prominance of presentations related to Genocide denial. And besides the pressure put on foriegn governments to not affirm the genocide the campaign to eliminate any references to Armenians or Armenian presence in Anatolia - including destruction of monuments and buildings, renaming towns, villages and even renaming plants and animals to eliminate any reference to Armenians are all additional denialist activities belonging in this section. Of course, in the meantime, without such a section, including pertenint information in the main article must suffice. --THOTH 22:09, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

For the first time, I totally agree with you. :) Such a section should exist, but this subject alone should have its own article, which was one of my projects. The history of what is called "denial" is very very long, it starts just after the war to present time. And you know that is my specialization on this subject, such an article will probably be two times the size of the main Armenian genocide article, and rightly so, because now, most works published about the genocide, have sections covering the denial, there are even publications just about that, and the current debates we hear in the accemia are about denial. Lectures about the topic are even separeted between the Armenian genocide, and its denial. The major conference in Israel few months ago, I heard, had what appeared to be a disproportionate place about the way the Armenian genocide is denied. There are also studies on the psychology of denial, tactics etc., the Armenian genocide is denied. Such an article will probably be my major contribution on the topic of Armenian genocide, because I specialize on that. Fadix 23:03, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

As you are aware the beginning of Turkish denial of the Armenian Genocide was in the creation of false and misleading accounts of Armenian sedition in the Spring of 1915 creating the suposed rational for "deportations" based on suposed military necesity. This rational became a cover for the severe actions taken against the Armenians - first of the East, expanding to Empire wide, where the CUP pursued a calculated plan of decimation of the Armenian nation within the Empire for the purpose of complete disenfranchisement of the Armenian people and the total elimination of Armenians from Anatolia. Perhaps there is some legitimate debate whether this policy was preconceived at its initiation - however there can be no disputing that the CUP was fully cognizant of the possibility of doing this and had discussed such a possibility as early as 1910/11 (in regards to all non-Muslim elements of the Empire). What cannot be disputed (and is not disputed among serious scholars) is that the CUP "deporation" plan and enactment quickly became a means to do just that - eliminate the Armenians from Anatolia completely. Obviously the CUP appreciated the ability to act with impunity under the cover of war (and some scholars take the position that entry into the war itself was done with this goal in mind - that the very fact of the war facilitated this attempt and that Enver's immediate attempts at the Caucuses (which included not only the taking of territory but the attempt to ethnicaly cleans the region of non-Muslims and unite Muslim elements Eastward under a common banner). Again, the Armenians were unfortunate to be in the way - and this - much more then any actual sedition or national aspirations on the part of the Armenians sealed their doom. Of course the policy and practice of denial was clearly premeditated in the manner in which secret orders were given directly to Special organization units (even using ciphers that were unreadable by the Ottoman military) and through the use of CUP party aparatus to force (sometimes reluctant) Ottoman regional authorities to coporate in the brutal/barbaric undertakings that were clearly appreciated for what they were - a sluaghter of innocents.

The denial began with the publishing and circulation (internal and external) of governmental edicts that both rationalized the "deportation" based on spurious basis and which falsely mandated that the Armenians (and their properties) be cared for with the (knowingly false) assumption that after hostilities were ended they would be allowed to return home and in the meantime would be properly cared for. Of course no intent or provisions were ever made for any of these things as has been clearly demonstrated by scholars and observed and commented on by countless sources (including Ottoman Allies and nuetral parties). Meanwhile the CUP and Ottoman government maintained the facade that they were combatting rebelion and sedition - when basically none (to any significant and/or accuratly reported degree) was occuring and that which was was clearly defensive on the part of Armenian communities who were being brutalized by Special organization "Chettes" and Kurdish bandit cheiftans sponsored and encouraged by them. Again, throughout this period the CUP took great effort to hide the aspects of this process which amounted to slughter of innocnets and publically deny it all the while congratulating themselves and boasting about their accomplishments in wiping out the Armenians (which also occured in various memoirs of CUP and Ottoman officials published after the war and in various other admissions - including those submitted as evidence in the Post War Military Tribunals. Of course, after the war the nationalists - consisting to a great degree of former CUP operatives - denied that any such thing had ever occured and began the myth of interniacine conflisct and civil war - which is a complete and utter distortion of what actually occured. The Armenian situation was folded into the Turkish nation building mythology which postulated an embattered Turkish majority in Anatolia besieged by European Imperilaist forces with designs on Ottoman/Turkish territory where the Armenians were (and still are) presented as unwitting pawns who were manipulated into turning on their Turkish masters - placing the blame - the onus of action and initiation of the hostility between the Turks and Armenians upon the Armenians - when again the reality of this is essentially the complete and utter opposite - Armenians were victims of Turkish nationalism and racism and paranoia and they commited no significant actions (in the period beginning with the onset of the CUP rise to power) that in any way could rationally be used to justify actions taken against them. However the contention of such was the key of Turkish rationalization and denial at the time - just as it is now - but there exists no evidence whatsoever to support this contention (outside of the CUP unsupported propoganda to this effect). Thus the seeds of denial were sown concurent to the actual planning for and carrying out of the Genocide itself.

It has only been through a serious of fortunate Geostrategic and political circumstance that have allowed the Turks to escape unified condemnation and acceptance of the truth of these crimes - again beginning with the political manuverings among the various Western Powers even before the war ended (where national greed and ambition drove the peace and post-war results all to the detriment of the Armenians and human rights considerations). Additionally the post war situation with the discovery of oil and opening up of former Ottoman territories to western commercial interests (and competion) and the rise of the Kemalists and their proven strength all facotred into the ease at which the atrocities - which had been headline news throughout the war - were swept under the rug - along with all accountability for the destruction of a people and culture that had essentially ceased to exist. And what followed was the strategic position of Turkey vis a vis the Soviet menace and again all incentive to push the Turks on this issue fell away. And now of course Turkey is seen as a bulwark against Islamic extremism and as and ally to Israel in the region...meanwhile the Turksih nation building myth has created a perspective on these times where most Turks cannot even concieve that they were not the victims who triumphed over all adversity - with the Armeniasn just having been another tool of their downfall that they overcame. To accept the truth of the history was/is to shake the very foundations of the Turkish nation - conceptually and in reality (as so much was based upon seizing the economic engines from the Greeks and Armenians...another hidden motivation for the actions against them in the first place). Thus we can appreciate why denial of the genocide is foireign and domestic policy #1 for the Turks and has been since the beginning. This history warrents a truthful rendition in these pages and for all to read and understand as most have no real appreciation for the interwoven dynamics that have left us in our current state of affairs with official Turkish Government denial (now ans from the time of the Genocide) and of the fanatical insistence from most Turks that no such thing ever occured. --THOTH 06:11, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Thoth, I don't get the purpouses of your answer. Fadix 23:26, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Jerusalem Armenian quarter

This info has been added, but the Armenian quarter does not exist as a consequences of the Armenian genocide, it exosted long before. Fadix 18:03, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Article about the Armenian genocide denial

Just to let know, if people are wondering, that I stopped working on the current article, since I believe that I must finish an article about the denial, which is also important for the evolution of this current article. Fadix 19:42, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Good - I hope yu have understood the meaning of my submittal above on this issue and have taken it to heart...ie the denial began during the Genocide itself - and this is a key point...--THOTH 00:48, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

The progress of the article can be watched here. User:Fadix/Armenian_genocide_denial

Armenian Genocide Takes Too Much Space

This is taken from "Turkey" article's discussion.

Above all discussion on the alleged Armenian Genocide, I think this topic is taking too much space in pre-republic history section of the article. The more obvious Jewish Genocide in Germany is not even a paragraph in the Germany article. This seems pretty biased to me.

The Germans don't dispute the Holocaust, that's why. John Smith's 12:43, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

We don't admit because it is untrue. If the ottoman army didnt protect the ermanians during their immigration, none of them would be alive. They killed many defendless turkish people in a disgusting way. we will never admit this and we dont care whatever your brain minds.

Please dont compare with germans ever.!!

That is blatantly false! The Ottoman Empire and the Young Turks killed one million Armenians, and is recognized by almost everyone BUT the Turks! There is photographic evidence, movie clips, and heads of states (including Teddy Roosevelt) that have spoken out against it. Coincidently, I just watched a program about this very topic on the History Channel tonight. Let's not forget the hundreds of thousands of dead Assyrians, too. I cannot believe that the Turks are playing the part of the victim here. Okay, after saying that I should tell everyone that I am very fond of "modern day" Turkey. I don't have a personal gripe with any one single Turk, but it saddens me that other nations have come to grips with their genocides, yet these poor people have been denied that dignity by those in charge in Turkey. --Sean WI 05:18, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

You always give the numbers. Can you tell me the reason why Turks killed armenians??. If your answer is race why turks didnt killed kurd, greeks, arabians (By the way, my race is arabic and I am turkish citizen). If your answer is religon, why they didnt kill the other people who has same religon. For example greece was totaly ottoman land. German genocide's reason was race and religon. In our liberity war which france, italy, grece, england decided to envade us together(most probably to kill us), ermanian fought together with french army against turks and killed many turks (mostly babys children totaly unprotected turks because there was a war and every turkish young boy was in army.). France army lost the war, and ermanians beg to france to be able to imigrate to france, And france accepted them. Most of ermanians who live in france are origionly from adana. They escaped to france because they were so goddame guilty. After liberity war, turkish solders went their home and found their familly killed by ermanians. That is why armanians claims are just bug noise.

Playing the part of the victim again, eh? Yes, Armenians came storming in targeting any Turkish baby they could find. But the Turks valiantly used their extremly well equipped and well trained army that brought Britain, France, Russia, Greece, Bulgaria, Macedonia, and the Armenians to their knees. Thus the Turks, led by the spiritual Gray Wolf, did what Germany couldn't. I love the revisionist history books written by Pan-Turanism radicals. --Sean WI 05:09, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

You are an ignorant person.In my personal famliy many people were killed in the first world war, and I am from Kahramanmaras, which is quite far (about 1000 kms) from the front with Russia and France. Who killed them? the russians? are you so ignorant? it was armenian gangs. my grandmothers and fathers from both sides were orphans because of these people. If you look at the massacres committted in anatolia, 99% of them were muslim citizens getting killed by armenian gangs, and maybe 1% armenians killed by muslims. At the end of the wars and independence, only 15 million Turks were alive, of which 90% women and children, and 6 million were refugees from other parts of the former Empire. Of course muslim lives arent worth anytin right.--Kahraman 17:54, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Should I assume the authenticity of your family story by using the numbers you throw? It is known that there was between 6 to 8 million Turks in the Ottoman Empire prior to the war. It is also agreed that about 2 million Muslim died, from which an important portion were in the Army(Muslim, which means also Arabs, Kurds, Cicassians etc.). You bring Maras into the story, that's interesting, because one side of my family were from Maras, they were also orphened, their belongings were taken over by the Turks, and the rest of the Armenian quarter after being looted was burned to the ground. If it is true that only 1 % Armenians were killed, and that 99 % of those killed by Armenians were citizens, how come that in the entire Eastern Anatolia, there isen't any Armenian recorded living there? Isen't it intriging that those that are said to have exterminated, are those that have actually commited the genocide. It must be, the first recorded event in history, that those that are said to have exterminated, are the same ones that have vanished from the entire area. Since we are talking about numbers, when one substract from the total number of Muslim killed, those that died in the army, and isolate the number of Turkish citizens, the Armenian casulties would be higher, while in the Ottoman empire there was 2 million Armenians, and that there was between 6 to 8 million Turks, over half of the total Armenian population died. Fad (ix) 18:08, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

I would like to hear an answer (if possible from Sean WI): Why Turks picked Ermenians? That is a simple very legitimate question. Was it not enough for Turks to cope with Britain, France, Russia, Greece, Bulgaria, Macedonia... Why did Turks pick Ermenians, among all those turmoil? What was their motive? The thing that makes this question more Interesting is the fact that Ermenians were used to known as "Millet-i Sadika" (type at any web search engine, you will see entries), which means Faithfull Nation, people that Ottoman considered trustworthy. And, it is catchy to answer Turks' questions that they are playing the victim. It would be more productive to give an answer, and maybe take the converstation forward, help people to understand what is what... It is OK not to answer if you don't have any. --Arici.

Your question is irrelevant. Fad (ix) 18:08, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

I think it is relevant. Why are you affraid to answer. Because answer is 'you killed the turks'. Dont mention the graves because we are still finding graves that you burned. Do you know in Turkey's education system in elementary school what they teach to kids. I am telling you the topic:

The technic of armenians to kill a baby : They throw the baby vertically and they put a blade rigth under vertically and baby fall on blade.

The funny thing : You call us evil, we call you evil.

Ottoman empire protected armenians, you killed by folk. Ottaman Empire helped you during your immigration. Folk attacked you during your immigration and unfortunately killed many of you, Folk tried to kill you not Ottoman empire (You know the goddame reason.).

Isen't it amazing that the graves are always found in the same cites where witnesses reported Armenians were killed like sheeps? When will the first haplotype or other genetic tests will be run on those said having been killed by Armenians? Vehib, the commander of the Ottoman third army, in his 12 pages affidavit submitted to the court Martial, reported the mass burning of the entire Armenian population of a village, a village, which the burned graves now are said to be Turks having been burned by Armenians. As for what they teach to kids in schools, thanks for having raised this. Now I know how much more sick the Turkish government is, and I can better understand your mental state.

The next time you start gibrishing about what you think, I will delete what you say. If you have something to bring about the content of the article, or discuss about what is in the article, go ahead, but if you are here to ejaculate your racistic rethorics and what you believe, this talk page is really not the place. Fad (ix) 03:16, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

As far as I know , the real reason of that much armenians death was scarvation and diseases. In Turkey, people belive that, Many of them admit also some things that some turks killed some armenian, I could be. but the thing we dont admit is "showing turkish people as evil".

If you feel that such articles shows Turks as evils, it is because you can't separate yourself from the perpetrators, in which cases the problem is not the authors of the articles but you. Fad (ix) 00:02, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

You got me wrong. In EU, many people dont like turkish just because of history. I know history and turkish people. And I dont feel evil. But people in EU they feel that.

The reasons why Turks killed Armenians - first Ottman Sultan Hamid in 1890s, then CUP - first in 1909 and then many more just prior to and after - but primarily during 1915/16 - are well known and understood and there is no mystery. I am sorry that the article does not properly convey these reasons - obviously it needs to be improved. However I am not currently in the mood to waste my time explaining such things to racist idiotic hyper nationalistic know-nothing Turks who invade anyplace where they see "Armenian Genocide" and start spewing their ignorant trash where Armenians are blamed for "genociding" Turks - yes everyone can properly see the truth of your claims...and I certainly will not be able to change your belief you that no Turk in history ever commited a wrong and that perhaps Armenians (woemn and children and elderly and all...) may have been horribly killed through no fault of their own - just because they were who they were - just as Jews were who they were. BTW - Greeks, Assyrians and other Christians were also killed...however there are clear reasons why Armenians were targeted when and how they were...--THOTH 00:28, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

I dont know how many times I should write armenians attacted to innocent turkish people. I dont care the rest. Some turkish evil could have come out and also killed innocent armenian people (It is written already in the article). And I know , as you said, my part is irrelevant to the article.

Vandalism -- Armenian Genocide Everywhere

For example, There is "Armenian genocide" in "Turkey's indepedent war" article???? Can you do relation between "Turkey's indepedent war" and "Armenian genocide". In Independence War, every man was at battle. Nation was at the border of to be or not to be. In that time, many countries gathered to take over the Turkey together. In that time , you also got this chance and attacked to innocent turkish people. Then this same people kicked you. In near past, you also killed Azerbaijanies. Are we putting everywhere what you did to Azerbaijanies??.. All of them hate you. Your neigbor hates you. But I am sure, you wrote wrong things also for Azerbaijanies for sure. Continue to write everywhere change history. You just try to cover your national failures...

Such generalizations are racistic. I did not kill anyone, what are you dumping every Armenians in the same boat, were have I accused you of anything? Besides, what is the relevancy of what you brought with the article? Please, either conform or refrain from posting things that have nothing to do with the article. Fad (ix) 00:05, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

You are right it was generalized. Actually it is because of my english. I am directly translating from turkish to english. I dont think in english mind. In turkish "you" also means ancestor.

This page has serious NPOV issues

Is it only me or is this page is seriously biased towards one side? The general language is all from the Armenian POV.

Not only that, but the section titled "Stances of Turkish intellectuals" only had the views of a _very_ minority part of turkish intellectuals. This was made to look like it is the majority view. I corrected that section somewhat. I will put more effort into this once I have bit more time.

Thanks for your help. But I would like to comment about few things. The reason why I gave a section for some of those intellectuals(in this cases only those that recognize the genocide), is because the very large majority of the Turkish intellectuals that have written works supporting the republics official position were either diplomats, ex-diplomats, from the military attached to the Assembly, pre-ministers or post-ministers etc, head of the Turkish historical societies(like Halacoglu) or members, which is attached to the general Assembly etc, member of the newly formed Armenian studies institutes(which has been founded and financed by the Turkish government, and has unboard diplomats etc.). And even people such as Ataov, who in practice is a political scientist is. So, I believed that they'd go on the Turkish government section, but E.A. has a fetish over that section and would delete anything he proclaimed not, "official positions writting in official documents." I had no intend there to "hide" others, in fact, I had planned to add a section covering the intellectuals that do not accept the genocide thesis, I just believed that the Turkish intellectuals who accept the thesis of genocide should have had their places, if you disagree, I'm fine with that, it isen't really a big deal.

About the 1.5 million killed by Armenians, this isen't mentioned for decades now, the only over a million lastly was the 1.1 million, which isen't in any major Turkish work and isen't mentioned at least over a decade, the most recent ones are the 500 thousand or something, from the Belge files. Note that, I actually already pointed to those figures on the section I wrote about Halacoglu, since he is the principal adherant to that figure and also that only 80 thousand Armenians died.

BTW, there is probably one thing you ignore, the minority of Turkish intellectuals that have written anything about it, who are neither attached to the Turkish government or societies, and who deny the genocide, more than often place the number of victims between 500,000 to 800,000. 300,000 to 600,000 is more the range comming from the Turkish government, more particularly, 200,000 to 600,000. The 600,000 really originate from Jemal memoires, he had to drop the 800,000 killed official figures after being slandered by his peers(even thought the figure was later reconfirmed by others, including the major Bayur work (even thought the term killed was later replaced by perished)). For an example of a Turkish scholar who has no link with the Turkish government and who denies the genocide, I can name, Ahmet Akgunduz, who places the number of victims between 600,000 to 800,000. (Migration to and from Turkey, 1783-1960: types, numbers and ethno-religious dimensions, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Vol. 24, 1998)

Even those from Turkish associations do somtimes provide higher than the range between 300,000 to 600,000. I can cite here, Demir Delen, who places the number of Armenian deaths in his article Perpetuating the Genocide Myth, to 700,000. The work was published by the Federation of Canadian Turkish Associations and available from ATAA(Assembly of Turkish American Associations).

I'm for now in a wikibrake for now, so I pass only few times here, until Christmass vaccations, which I will be using to work on this article and two others. BTW, yes this article is not OK, but that is why it has a neutral tag. Fad (ix) 16:38, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

OK, I understand now, someone changed the title of the section, Turkish Intellectuals Who Support The Theses Of Genocide to Stances of Turkish intellectuals. Which was for sure misleading. I thought you did the change. Fad (ix) 16:56, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

My my...and likewise the article on the Holocaust only represents the "Jewish View" and not that of the poor ordinary Germans who were only doing their best as they saw it to defend their nations from foriegn interests detrimental to their nation. Perhaps you should concern yourself with parity in all articles of this nature. That you and others like you find such sport in denying the facts of history when it comes to one particular article is telling. OK - sure it isn't written well - I agree - but to accuse it of being one sided because it does not contain the propoganda of the perpetrators or their apologists (as anything but what it is) - well - I think - if you are scincere - then you need to educate yourself better on this subject. --THOTH 21:01, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Silly! If you include Armenian genocide in ARmenian history you should also include Azeri Genoicde in Azeri history which is not! Azeri Genoicide is the real face of those "innocent Armenians"(!!!!).

Provide me the transcript of any Internation genocide conference which mention an Azeri genocide, any Western legal work, or any article published in a legal journal, or a war crime Journal, or yet the Holocaust and Genocide studies journal etc. And, I will be the one creating an article here in Misplaced Pages about an Azeris genocide. Regards. Fad (ix) 19:39, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Unfortunately the Azeris realized, if the Armenians could have a genocide, 'then why not us'. IIRC, after the defeat in Karabagh the Azeris commerated a memorial that honors the death of "2,500,000 Azeris exterminated" by the Armenians in the 20th century. As far as I have searched, there is no valid proof to back this information up.--MarshallBagramyan 20:59, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

hahahahaha - Azeri Genocide...get real - I supose by your thinking we should footnote the history of WWII as a chronicle of the great leader for humanity Adolph Hitler - except for some nasty Jews who have worked to besmirch his name - F'in asehole - rot in hell! --THOTH 04:18, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Oh really! So waht uou say is whar armenians say is correct but when the killers are armenians there is no genoicde but a self-protection. This shows the real racist, fascist, pro-war or to sum up Armenian faces of you. Also, if you will compare with WW2 you should compare ARmenians with Germans who try to exterminate a "people" not with Jews whp got exterminated.

As I told you, I am ready to creat such a page myself if you rovide me the transcript of any Internation genocide conference which mention an Azeri genocide, any Western legal work, or any article published in a legal journal, or a war crime Journal, or yet the Holocaust and Genocide studies journal etc. And, I will be the one creating an article here in Misplaced Pages about an Azeris genocide. Regards. Fad (ix) 19:30, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Anonymous Azeri (or whatever) poster - First of all what has occured in Nagoro Karabagh in the 1990s has nothing whatsoeverto do with the Armenian Genocide - It is a completley seperate issue that has no relevance here and should be discussed elsewhere - where it is appropriate. Secondly by making claims about this non-existant made up Azeri genocide - particularly in the discussion page of an article that deals with the very real and recognized Armenian Genocide - you are only insulting the memories of the victims and the decendents of the survivors. Besides the fact that this claim of yours is heresay and there is considerable evidence that (essentially) the single incident - where less then 200 people were killed - aprears to be attributable to Azeri internal infighting - where it became convenient to blame Armenians. And what is also clear is that Azerbaijan was the agrerssor in this war - until they startred losing of course - and now they cry and whine - after years of (well documented) terrorizing of the Armenian civilian population and after a great many documented atrocities. That Armenians might choose to establish a defensive perimeter to ensure that their people (in NK) are not again directly subject to such attacks and abuses is only understandable. It is unfortunate that so many civilians on both sides have been uprooted and have suffered - but the blame clearly lies 100% with the Azeri side who were the aggrssors from the very beginning. But to call anything that has occured in this conflict "genocide" is completely unsupportable and not close to any kind of truth and doing so an extreme insult to any group of people who have indeed experienced such. Furthmore to falsely accuse Armenians of genocide - while at the same time denying the Genocide commited against them pegs you as a hateful racist person. Shame on you. Shame on you! A great shame on you! --THOTH 03:52, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Shame on me! Why? Because I am not falling to you hateful lie and propoganda about Armenian Genocide. Am I racist? Yes, if the definiton of is to cry for the atrocities committed againist a defenceless people which is subject to 70 years of oppression by Russians and centuries of domination by Iran! By the way, by your logic in Azerbaijan conflict the agressors are Azeris while 90 years ago the agressors were Turks! In both cases, Armenians are innocent people. oh! I forgot they are the people of god, the chosen people they are always innocent. Always, the other side is to blame. Let me tell you what happened 90 years ago is same of today. Armenians are annihilating people who are leaving they say Armenian lans and if the locals defend their homeland that is called Armenian Genocide. Shame on you! SHame on the artificial Armenian history which you have made up!

Anonymous user and Thoth, sort this thing somewhere else. I will be deleting anything that has nothing to do with the article by either of you. Fad (ix) 20:55, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

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