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AKCAM SAYS TURKISH ARCHIVES SHOW GENOCIDE PLANNING BY CENTRAL GOVERNMENT
By Alin K. Gregorian
http://www.mirrorspectator.com/2012/10/22/akcam-says-turkish-archives-show-genocide-planning-by-central-government/
October 22, 2012 9:13 am
Mirror-Spectator Staff
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - A capacity audience gathered to hear Prof. Taner
Akcam speak about his most recent book, The Young Turks' Crime against
Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman
Empire, at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.
Akcam is the only scholar of Turkish descent who chairs an Armenian
studies department and one of only a handful of Armenian Genocide
scholars researching in the Turkish archives. He has mined the
archives extensively, with his latest book significantly contributing
to the field.
"At the risk of sounding immodest, this is a first in many ways," Akcam
said of the book, noting that he is presenting new theses to explain
the Genocide. He said there are two issues: what happened and why
did it happen. "As to why," he said, "We still have a long way to go."
The latest book is based on more than 600 documents from the Ottoman
archives. There are two contradictory views, he explained.
Armenians who suggest that the Ottoman archives cannot be trusted
because they were fabricated by those in power, either during Ottoman
or Turkish Republic rule, and Turks who deny the Genocide and suggest
that only Ottoman and Turkish sources can be trusted while any Armenian
or Western material on the Genocide is suspect.
With this new work, Akcam said he hopes to prove that "Ottoman
material shows us the same information as the German, American and
British archives. It is different material on the same perspective."
"Talaat [Pasha] used his home as a private post office. He could send
telegrams from his home," he said, including many directly spelling out
the genocidal policies. In fact, he noted that in a 1982 interview only
published in 2010, Talaat's widow revealed that the interior minister
used the more secure home telegraph line to order the deportation of
the Armenians.
Similarly, Akcam said that there is information about the ethnic
cleansings of the Greeks, village by village.
Akcam said there was a direct correlation between reform movements
in the Ottoman era and the start of mass killings; the first waves
of the Genocide started in 1894, while the reform government came
into power in 1895. The government sent out representatives to assess
the population and wherever those representatives went, Akcam said,
killings took place.
He offered some historical context, explaining that the period
immediately preceding the main wave of the Genocide occurred at the
end of the Balkan wars of 1912-1913, during which the Ottoman Empire
had lost more than 80 percent of its European territories and more
than 70 percent of its European population.
In return, hundreds of thousands of Muslims migrated to the Ottoman
lands from Europe and were relocated in the Christian-majority Anatolia
region, home of the Armenians.
Beginning in 1913, he said, the non-Muslim population of Anatolia
was referred to as "tumors" that needed to be removed, and therefore
the government embarked upon a "radical restructuring of Anatolia's
demographic character."
In other words, the Christians, including the Armenians, Greeks and
Assyrians, were removed and the non-Turkish Muslims were relocated
and dispersed among the Turkish Muslims to take their place.
Akcam said the removal policy was first tried out on the Greek
minority. The Ottoman government came to an agreement, albeit illegal
by the standards of international law, with Romania, Bulgaria and
Greece and enacted a population exchange in 1913.
The Committee for Union and Progress (CUP), he said, which was in
charge, would draw up plans for such removals and exterminations
nationally but would later present them as the spontaneous actions
of local populations throughout the empire.
The demographic policy was then used on the Armenians, with the plan to
reduce the Armenian population to a "governable number." That number,
he said, was deemed to be "5 to 10 percent" of the general population
and no more than that. If they formed a bigger share, the Ottoman
authorities suggested, they would be less easily governable.
Thus, the officials conducted demographic surveys to find out the
percentage of Armenians in various locales in Anatolia. For example,
in the Kayseri Province, 49,947 Armenians were registered. Most were
deported to Aleppo, Damascus and Mosul and the population was reduced
to 5 percent. In the Eastern Provinces, the policy was "not a single
Armenian was allowed to remain there." The Armenians were deported to
Der Zor and by the beginning of 1916, a second wave of the Genocide
started, during which an additional 200,000 Armenians were killed
in the Syrian provinces in order to maintain the numbers below 10
percent. The authorities, he said, never expected as many to survive
the forced marches in the desert.
In a letter from Talaat to Cemal Pasha on October 7, 1916, he specified
the need to rid Cilicia of Armenians, as they, he stressed, were
so attached to the land and considered it a central part of their
heritage.
The Young Turks' Crime against Humanity was published in April. Akcam,
born in Ardahan, is the holder of the Robert Aram, Marianne Kaloosdian
and Stephen and Marion Mugar Chair in Armenian Genocide Studies at
Clark University, Worcester.
Akcam used papers from the Interior Ministry, including various
branches of its General Directorate and the Cypher Office. The
role of the latter, he said, was "very important." The office was
established in 1913, with the "pure purpose of [encrypted] telegraphic
communication between the central office and the provinces."
The authorities encrypted the information, and believing they had
developed a foolproof method, freely discussed their plans within
the documents.
Other documents found by Akcam included a telegram from the Education
Ministry to the Interior Ministry on June 26, 1915, regarding the
fate of Armenian children - soon to be orphaned - who would need
assimilation.
These documents are still intact, Akcam said, and anyone interested
can freely access them.
He spoke about documents from the same archives dating to March 1,
1915, in which the authorities spelled out the Genocide policy.
By Alin K. Gregorian
http://www.mirrorspectator.com/2012/10/22/akcam-says-turkish-archives-show-genocide-planning-by-central-government/
October 22, 2012 9:13 am
Mirror-Spectator Staff
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - A capacity audience gathered to hear Prof. Taner
Akcam speak about his most recent book, The Young Turks' Crime against
Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman
Empire, at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.
Akcam is the only scholar of Turkish descent who chairs an Armenian
studies department and one of only a handful of Armenian Genocide
scholars researching in the Turkish archives. He has mined the
archives extensively, with his latest book significantly contributing
to the field.
"At the risk of sounding immodest, this is a first in many ways," Akcam
said of the book, noting that he is presenting new theses to explain
the Genocide. He said there are two issues: what happened and why
did it happen. "As to why," he said, "We still have a long way to go."
The latest book is based on more than 600 documents from the Ottoman
archives. There are two contradictory views, he explained.
Armenians who suggest that the Ottoman archives cannot be trusted
because they were fabricated by those in power, either during Ottoman
or Turkish Republic rule, and Turks who deny the Genocide and suggest
that only Ottoman and Turkish sources can be trusted while any Armenian
or Western material on the Genocide is suspect.
With this new work, Akcam said he hopes to prove that "Ottoman
material shows us the same information as the German, American and
British archives. It is different material on the same perspective."
"Talaat [Pasha] used his home as a private post office. He could send
telegrams from his home," he said, including many directly spelling out
the genocidal policies. In fact, he noted that in a 1982 interview only
published in 2010, Talaat's widow revealed that the interior minister
used the more secure home telegraph line to order the deportation of
the Armenians.
Similarly, Akcam said that there is information about the ethnic
cleansings of the Greeks, village by village.
Akcam said there was a direct correlation between reform movements
in the Ottoman era and the start of mass killings; the first waves
of the Genocide started in 1894, while the reform government came
into power in 1895. The government sent out representatives to assess
the population and wherever those representatives went, Akcam said,
killings took place.
He offered some historical context, explaining that the period
immediately preceding the main wave of the Genocide occurred at the
end of the Balkan wars of 1912-1913, during which the Ottoman Empire
had lost more than 80 percent of its European territories and more
than 70 percent of its European population.
In return, hundreds of thousands of Muslims migrated to the Ottoman
lands from Europe and were relocated in the Christian-majority Anatolia
region, home of the Armenians.
Beginning in 1913, he said, the non-Muslim population of Anatolia
was referred to as "tumors" that needed to be removed, and therefore
the government embarked upon a "radical restructuring of Anatolia's
demographic character."
In other words, the Christians, including the Armenians, Greeks and
Assyrians, were removed and the non-Turkish Muslims were relocated
and dispersed among the Turkish Muslims to take their place.
Akcam said the removal policy was first tried out on the Greek
minority. The Ottoman government came to an agreement, albeit illegal
by the standards of international law, with Romania, Bulgaria and
Greece and enacted a population exchange in 1913.
The Committee for Union and Progress (CUP), he said, which was in
charge, would draw up plans for such removals and exterminations
nationally but would later present them as the spontaneous actions
of local populations throughout the empire.
The demographic policy was then used on the Armenians, with the plan to
reduce the Armenian population to a "governable number." That number,
he said, was deemed to be "5 to 10 percent" of the general population
and no more than that. If they formed a bigger share, the Ottoman
authorities suggested, they would be less easily governable.
Thus, the officials conducted demographic surveys to find out the
percentage of Armenians in various locales in Anatolia. For example,
in the Kayseri Province, 49,947 Armenians were registered. Most were
deported to Aleppo, Damascus and Mosul and the population was reduced
to 5 percent. In the Eastern Provinces, the policy was "not a single
Armenian was allowed to remain there." The Armenians were deported to
Der Zor and by the beginning of 1916, a second wave of the Genocide
started, during which an additional 200,000 Armenians were killed
in the Syrian provinces in order to maintain the numbers below 10
percent. The authorities, he said, never expected as many to survive
the forced marches in the desert.
In a letter from Talaat to Cemal Pasha on October 7, 1916, he specified
the need to rid Cilicia of Armenians, as they, he stressed, were
so attached to the land and considered it a central part of their
heritage.
The Young Turks' Crime against Humanity was published in April. Akcam,
born in Ardahan, is the holder of the Robert Aram, Marianne Kaloosdian
and Stephen and Marion Mugar Chair in Armenian Genocide Studies at
Clark University, Worcester.
Akcam used papers from the Interior Ministry, including various
branches of its General Directorate and the Cypher Office. The
role of the latter, he said, was "very important." The office was
established in 1913, with the "pure purpose of [encrypted] telegraphic
communication between the central office and the provinces."
The authorities encrypted the information, and believing they had
developed a foolproof method, freely discussed their plans within
the documents.
Other documents found by Akcam included a telegram from the Education
Ministry to the Interior Ministry on June 26, 1915, regarding the
fate of Armenian children - soon to be orphaned - who would need
assimilation.
These documents are still intact, Akcam said, and anyone interested
can freely access them.
He spoke about documents from the same archives dating to March 1,
1915, in which the authorities spelled out the Genocide policy.