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REVISITING THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
By Guenter Lewy
Middle East Quarterly
Fall 2005
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.[1]
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.[2] 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[3] 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.[4]
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.[5]
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.[6] 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 BoÄ~_azliyan 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[ed] executions as necessary concessions to entente rather
than as punishment justly meted out to criminals."[7]
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."[8] 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
[Committee on Union and Progress]."[9] 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."[10] 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.[11]
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 [the trials] are made from motives of personal
vengeance or at the instigation of the Entente authorities, especially
the British."[12] 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 AtatĂĽrk, 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.[13]
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.[14] 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.[15]
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.[16] 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."[17]
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: â~@~Xit conforms to the original.'"[18]
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 Ĺ~^akir,
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 â~@¦ He organized gallows birds as well as
gendarmes and policemen with blood on their hand and blood in their
eyes."[19] Parts of this deposition were included in the indictment
of the main trial and in the verdict of the Harput trial,[20]
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.[21] 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."[22] 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."[23] 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 TeĹ~_kilat-i Mahsusa
Several of the courts-martial held in 1919-20 made references to
the destructive role of a unit called TeĹ~_kilat-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,"[24] he wrote. The Special Organization's
"principal duty was the execution of the Armenian genocide."[25]
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.[26]
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 [Unionist] 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. [27]
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.[28]
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."[29] Nor is there
any indication that Stange had any role in the Special Organization,
as Dadrian asserted.[30] In view of the tension between Ottoman and
German secret services, it would be an unlikely assignment.[31] 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.[32]
Another German officer related that the Stange detachment included
Armenians,[33] 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.[34]
Dadrian has taken similar liberties with a Turkish source that
deals with the leading Special Organization official, EĹ~_ref
KuĹ~_çubasi. At the outbreak of World War I, EĹ~_ref 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 EĹ~_ref, but he denied any
involvement with the Armenian massacres. He died in 1964 at the age
of 91.[35] Dadrian has argued that EĹ~_ref admitted participating in
the massacres in an interview with the Turkish author Cemal Kutay.[36]
Closer inspection, though, reveals EĹ~_ref made no such admission. The
assertion was instead constructed by selective ellipses and inaccurate
paraphrasing.[37] 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.[38]
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.[39] The archive of the Turkish General Staff is
said to contain ciphered telegrams to the Special Organization,[40]
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.[41]
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 Armeniansâ~@~Tmen, 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 [the
Armenians'] existence, however criminal the measure taken may be,
and no regard must be paid to either age or sex nor to conscientious
scruples.[42]
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."[43]
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."[44] 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: â~@~XWe are partners; what can I do for you today?'"[45]
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.[46] 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.[47]
Two Turkish authors, Ĺ~^inasi Orel and SĂĽreyya 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 â~@~Xoriginals,' in order to avoid the chance that one
day the spuriousness of the â~@~Xdocuments' would be revealed."[48]
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."[49] 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."[50] 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.[51] 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[52] 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 ZĂĽrcher,
writing in 1997, argued that the Andonian materials "have been shown to
be forgeries."[53] British historian Andrew Mango speaks of "telegrams
dubiously attributed to the Ottoman wartime minister of the interior,
Talât Pasha."[54] 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.[55] 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.[56] Time will tell whether it will be possible to
rescue history from nationalists who have plundered history to serve
their own political ends.
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).
NOTES
[1] For example, see Kamuran GĂĽrĂĽn, 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 TĂĽrk Kurumu Basimevi,
Ankara, 1983); Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, 3rd
rev. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 356. [2]
Turkish authors such as GĂĽrĂĽn speak of 300,000 Armenian deaths. The
estimates of most Western scholars are far higher. [3] 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). [4]
Taner Akçam, Armenien und der Völkermord: Die Istanbuler Prozesse
und die tĂĽrkische Nationalbewegung (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition,
1996), p. 185. [5] 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. [6] Akçam,
Armenien und der Völkermord, p. 148. [7] Calthorpe to Foreign Office,
Apr. 17, 1919, Foreign Office, 371/4173/61185, p. 279. [8] Dadrian,
"The Turkish Military Tribunal's Prosecution," p. 45. [9] Akçam,
Armenien und der Völkermord, p. 204. For the entire indictment,
see pp. 192-207. [10] Dadrian, "World War I Armenian Massacres,"
p. 558. [11] The verdict is reproduced in Akçam, Armenien und
der Völkermord, pp. 353-64. [12] U.S. National Archives, RG 59,
867.00/868 (M 353, roll 7, fr. 448). [13] Akçam, Armenien und der
Völkermord, pp. 114-9. [14] Yilmaz Altug, trans., The Turkish Code
of Criminal Procedure (London: Sweet and Maxwell, 1962), art. 232.
[15] 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.
[16] 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.
[17] Heck to State Department, Feb. 7, 1919, U.S. National Archives,
RG 59, 867.00/81 (M 820, roll 536, fr. 440). [18] 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. [19] Quoted in Vahakn N. Dadrian,
"The Armenian Genocide and the Pitfalls of a â~@~XBalanced' Analysis:
A Response to Ronald Grigor Suny," Armenian Forum, Summer 1998, p. 89;
Akçam, Armenien und der Völkermord, p. 204. [20] 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. [21] See, for example, GĂĽrĂĽn, The Armenian File, p. 232.
[22] Calthorpe to Foreign Secretary, Aug. 1, 1919, Foreign Office,
371/4174/118377. [23] De Robeck to London, Sept. 21, 1919, Foreign
Office, 371/4174/136069. [24] 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. [25] 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. [26] 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. [27] Dadrian,
"The Role of the Special Organization," p. 56. [28] 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. [29] 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 AktenstĂĽcke (Potsdam: Tempelverlag, 1919),
pp. 138-42. A reprint of this collection was published by Donat und
Temmen, Bremen, in 1986. [30] 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. [31]
Walter Nicolai, The German Secret Service, George Renwick, trans.
(London: Stanley Paul, 1924), p. 138; Hans Werner Neulen, Adler und
Halbmond: Das deutsch-tĂĽrkische BĂĽndnis 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. [32]
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. [33] Paul Leverkuehn, Posten auf ewiger
Wache: Aus dem abenteuerlichen Leben des Max von Scheubner-Richter
(Essen: Essener Verlagsanstalt, 1938), p. 33. [34] 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.
[35] Philip H. Stoddard in the prologue to EĹ~_ref KuĹ~_çubasi, The
Turkish Battle of Khaybar, Philip H. Stoddard and H. Basri Danisman,
trans. and eds. (Istanbul: Arba Yayinlari, 1999), pp. 21-32. [36]
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. [37] Cemal Kutay, Birinci DĂĽnya Harbinde TeĹ~_kilat-i
Mahsusa Ve Hayber'de TĂĽrk Cengi (Istanbul: Tarih Yayinlari, 1962),
pp. 18, 36, 78. [38] Akçam, "The Proceedings of the Turkish Military
Tribunal," part 1, especially 5th and 6th session of the main trial.
[39] Gwynne Dyer, "Letter to the Editor," Middle Eastern Studies,
9 (1973): 379. [40] Edward J. Erickson, "The Turkish Official
Military Histories of the First World War: A Bibliographical Essay,"
Middle Eastern Studies, 39 (2003): 198, n. 7. [41] Ĺ~^inasi Orel
and Süreyya Yuca, The Talât Pasha "Telegrams": Historical Fact or
Armenian Fiction (Nicosia, Cyprus: K. Rustem, 1986), pp. 2-4. [42]
Andonian, The Memoirs of Naim Bey, p. 64. [43] Louis Mallet to Foreign
Office, Foreign Office, 371/1773/58131. [44] Report of December 1914,
Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes, Botschaft Konstantinopel
/168 (Fiche 7243). [45] Louise Jenison Peet, No Less Honor:
The Biography of William Wheelock Peet (Chattanooga: E.A. Andrews,
1939), p. 170. [46] 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. [47] 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. [48] Orel and Yuca, The Talât Pasha "Telegrams," p. 23.
[49] Ibid., p. 145. [50] 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. [51] Andonian,
The Memoirs of Naim Bey, p. 225. [52] Embassy to Foreign Office
(Mar. 1921), Foreign Office, 371/6500/E3557, pp. 2, 6-8. [53] Erik
Jan ZĂĽrcher, Turkey: A Modern History (London: I.B. Tauris, 1997),
p. 121. [54] Andrew Mango, "Turks and Kurds," Middle Eastern Studies,
30 (1994): 985. [55] Yves Ternon, "Freedom and Responsibility of the
Historian: The â~@~XLewis Affair,'" in Richard G. Hovannisian, ed.,
Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide (Detroit:
Wayne State University Press, 1999), pp. 243-6. [56] 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.
http://www.meforum.org/article/748
--Boundary_(ID_EZTIRE5I0g1j1DXJ1WufCA)--
By Guenter Lewy
Middle East Quarterly
Fall 2005
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.[1]
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.[2] 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[3] 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.[4]
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.[5]
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.[6] 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 BoÄ~_azliyan 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[ed] executions as necessary concessions to entente rather
than as punishment justly meted out to criminals."[7]
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."[8] 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
[Committee on Union and Progress]."[9] 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."[10] 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.[11]
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 [the trials] are made from motives of personal
vengeance or at the instigation of the Entente authorities, especially
the British."[12] 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 AtatĂĽrk, 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.[13]
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.[14] 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.[15]
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.[16] 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."[17]
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: â~@~Xit conforms to the original.'"[18]
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 Ĺ~^akir,
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 â~@¦ He organized gallows birds as well as
gendarmes and policemen with blood on their hand and blood in their
eyes."[19] Parts of this deposition were included in the indictment
of the main trial and in the verdict of the Harput trial,[20]
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.[21] 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."[22] 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."[23] 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 TeĹ~_kilat-i Mahsusa
Several of the courts-martial held in 1919-20 made references to
the destructive role of a unit called TeĹ~_kilat-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,"[24] he wrote. The Special Organization's
"principal duty was the execution of the Armenian genocide."[25]
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.[26]
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 [Unionist] 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. [27]
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.[28]
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."[29] Nor is there
any indication that Stange had any role in the Special Organization,
as Dadrian asserted.[30] In view of the tension between Ottoman and
German secret services, it would be an unlikely assignment.[31] 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.[32]
Another German officer related that the Stange detachment included
Armenians,[33] 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.[34]
Dadrian has taken similar liberties with a Turkish source that
deals with the leading Special Organization official, EĹ~_ref
KuĹ~_çubasi. At the outbreak of World War I, EĹ~_ref 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 EĹ~_ref, but he denied any
involvement with the Armenian massacres. He died in 1964 at the age
of 91.[35] Dadrian has argued that EĹ~_ref admitted participating in
the massacres in an interview with the Turkish author Cemal Kutay.[36]
Closer inspection, though, reveals EĹ~_ref made no such admission. The
assertion was instead constructed by selective ellipses and inaccurate
paraphrasing.[37] 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.[38]
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.[39] The archive of the Turkish General Staff is
said to contain ciphered telegrams to the Special Organization,[40]
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.[41]
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 Armeniansâ~@~Tmen, 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 [the
Armenians'] existence, however criminal the measure taken may be,
and no regard must be paid to either age or sex nor to conscientious
scruples.[42]
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."[43]
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."[44] 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: â~@~XWe are partners; what can I do for you today?'"[45]
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.[46] 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.[47]
Two Turkish authors, Ĺ~^inasi Orel and SĂĽreyya 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 â~@~Xoriginals,' in order to avoid the chance that one
day the spuriousness of the â~@~Xdocuments' would be revealed."[48]
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."[49] 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."[50] 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.[51] 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[52] 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 ZĂĽrcher,
writing in 1997, argued that the Andonian materials "have been shown to
be forgeries."[53] British historian Andrew Mango speaks of "telegrams
dubiously attributed to the Ottoman wartime minister of the interior,
Talât Pasha."[54] 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.[55] 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.[56] Time will tell whether it will be possible to
rescue history from nationalists who have plundered history to serve
their own political ends.
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).
NOTES
[1] For example, see Kamuran GĂĽrĂĽn, 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 TĂĽrk Kurumu Basimevi,
Ankara, 1983); Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey, 3rd
rev. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 356. [2]
Turkish authors such as GĂĽrĂĽn speak of 300,000 Armenian deaths. The
estimates of most Western scholars are far higher. [3] 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). [4]
Taner Akçam, Armenien und der Völkermord: Die Istanbuler Prozesse
und die tĂĽrkische Nationalbewegung (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition,
1996), p. 185. [5] 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. [6] Akçam,
Armenien und der Völkermord, p. 148. [7] Calthorpe to Foreign Office,
Apr. 17, 1919, Foreign Office, 371/4173/61185, p. 279. [8] Dadrian,
"The Turkish Military Tribunal's Prosecution," p. 45. [9] Akçam,
Armenien und der Völkermord, p. 204. For the entire indictment,
see pp. 192-207. [10] Dadrian, "World War I Armenian Massacres,"
p. 558. [11] The verdict is reproduced in Akçam, Armenien und
der Völkermord, pp. 353-64. [12] U.S. National Archives, RG 59,
867.00/868 (M 353, roll 7, fr. 448). [13] Akçam, Armenien und der
Völkermord, pp. 114-9. [14] Yilmaz Altug, trans., The Turkish Code
of Criminal Procedure (London: Sweet and Maxwell, 1962), art. 232.
[15] 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.
[16] 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.
[17] Heck to State Department, Feb. 7, 1919, U.S. National Archives,
RG 59, 867.00/81 (M 820, roll 536, fr. 440). [18] 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. [19] Quoted in Vahakn N. Dadrian,
"The Armenian Genocide and the Pitfalls of a â~@~XBalanced' Analysis:
A Response to Ronald Grigor Suny," Armenian Forum, Summer 1998, p. 89;
Akçam, Armenien und der Völkermord, p. 204. [20] 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. [21] See, for example, GĂĽrĂĽn, The Armenian File, p. 232.
[22] Calthorpe to Foreign Secretary, Aug. 1, 1919, Foreign Office,
371/4174/118377. [23] De Robeck to London, Sept. 21, 1919, Foreign
Office, 371/4174/136069. [24] 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. [25] 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. [26] 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. [27] Dadrian,
"The Role of the Special Organization," p. 56. [28] 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. [29] 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 AktenstĂĽcke (Potsdam: Tempelverlag, 1919),
pp. 138-42. A reprint of this collection was published by Donat und
Temmen, Bremen, in 1986. [30] 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. [31]
Walter Nicolai, The German Secret Service, George Renwick, trans.
(London: Stanley Paul, 1924), p. 138; Hans Werner Neulen, Adler und
Halbmond: Das deutsch-tĂĽrkische BĂĽndnis 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. [32]
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. [33] Paul Leverkuehn, Posten auf ewiger
Wache: Aus dem abenteuerlichen Leben des Max von Scheubner-Richter
(Essen: Essener Verlagsanstalt, 1938), p. 33. [34] 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.
[35] Philip H. Stoddard in the prologue to EĹ~_ref KuĹ~_çubasi, The
Turkish Battle of Khaybar, Philip H. Stoddard and H. Basri Danisman,
trans. and eds. (Istanbul: Arba Yayinlari, 1999), pp. 21-32. [36]
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. [37] Cemal Kutay, Birinci DĂĽnya Harbinde TeĹ~_kilat-i
Mahsusa Ve Hayber'de TĂĽrk Cengi (Istanbul: Tarih Yayinlari, 1962),
pp. 18, 36, 78. [38] Akçam, "The Proceedings of the Turkish Military
Tribunal," part 1, especially 5th and 6th session of the main trial.
[39] Gwynne Dyer, "Letter to the Editor," Middle Eastern Studies,
9 (1973): 379. [40] Edward J. Erickson, "The Turkish Official
Military Histories of the First World War: A Bibliographical Essay,"
Middle Eastern Studies, 39 (2003): 198, n. 7. [41] Ĺ~^inasi Orel
and Süreyya Yuca, The Talât Pasha "Telegrams": Historical Fact or
Armenian Fiction (Nicosia, Cyprus: K. Rustem, 1986), pp. 2-4. [42]
Andonian, The Memoirs of Naim Bey, p. 64. [43] Louis Mallet to Foreign
Office, Foreign Office, 371/1773/58131. [44] Report of December 1914,
Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes, Botschaft Konstantinopel
/168 (Fiche 7243). [45] Louise Jenison Peet, No Less Honor:
The Biography of William Wheelock Peet (Chattanooga: E.A. Andrews,
1939), p. 170. [46] 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. [47] 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. [48] Orel and Yuca, The Talât Pasha "Telegrams," p. 23.
[49] Ibid., p. 145. [50] 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. [51] Andonian,
The Memoirs of Naim Bey, p. 225. [52] Embassy to Foreign Office
(Mar. 1921), Foreign Office, 371/6500/E3557, pp. 2, 6-8. [53] Erik
Jan ZĂĽrcher, Turkey: A Modern History (London: I.B. Tauris, 1997),
p. 121. [54] Andrew Mango, "Turks and Kurds," Middle Eastern Studies,
30 (1994): 985. [55] Yves Ternon, "Freedom and Responsibility of the
Historian: The â~@~XLewis Affair,'" in Richard G. Hovannisian, ed.,
Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide (Detroit:
Wayne State University Press, 1999), pp. 243-6. [56] 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.
http://www.meforum.org/article/748
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