"The aims of the revolutionary committees are to stir up general discontent and to get the Turkish government and people to react with violence, thus attracting the attention of the foreign powers to the imagined sufferings of the Armenian people, and getting them to act to correct the situation."

Graves, the British Consul in Erzurum, reporting to the British Ambassador in Istanbul, on  January 28, 1895. British Blue Book, Nr. 6 (1894), pp. 222-223

 "Armenian-origin intellectuals and journalists have become viciously intolerant of non-Armenian-origin colleagues who do not accept their biases and who venture to question Armenian statistics or try to examine ... historical records according to recognized standards of objectivity and respect for methodology."

Paul Henze, “The Roots of Armenian Violence: How Far Back Do They Extend?,"1984

 Dr. Russell goes on to embarrass himself further by telling us:

De Bellaigue's curious usage, "Anatolian Armenians," makes it seem as though they were from elsewhere. The Turks were. Armenians are the natives.

See, this is what happens when an obsessed partisan leaves himself open to serious charges of scholarly inadequacy. The Armenian author of Promartyrs de la Civilization (1964, p. 27), Ruppen Courian wrote: "The Armenians are the former inhabitants of today's Switzerland" There are theories that the Armenians are cousins of the Albanians... The thing is, we don’t know the genuine history of Armenians, because pretty much only Armenians write their own history, and we know what a tendency they have to “exaggerate.”

Were the Armenians the natives of Anatolia, the cradle of civilization? The Armenians have been around for roughly 2,500 years... let’s say (adding another half-century), conservatively, since 1,000 B.C.

First, there were the Hatti (3000-2000B.C.), who co-existed with the people of Troy (3000-2500) and Troy II (2500-2200) (and Troy III-V [2200-1800B.C.]) these folks mainly concentrated on northwestern Anatolia. Then there were Indo-European migrations, covering the part of “Armenian territory,” over the Caucasus into Anatolia. The Nesi people settled in Central Anatolia, the Pala in Paphlygonia, and the Luwians in Southern Anatolia. The new arrivals gradually formed first the Old Hittite Kingdom (1660-1460 B.C.), and then the Great Hittite Kingdom(1460-1190 B.C.).

These are all pre-Armenian, PRE-1,000 B.C. Then there were The Urartu Kingdom (860-580 B.C.) and The Phrygians (750-300 B.C.), focusing in southeastern and eastern Anatolia. Were there any Armenians in sight? I don’t know. All I know is the Armenians were NOT “the natives” of Anatolia, as Dr. Russell wrongly informs us.

There were other Anatolian peoples around this time, such ones from Lydia, Caria and Lycia... all preceding the arrival of the Romans (30 B.C. - 595 A.D.). So since both Turks and Armenians came from “elsewhere,” one thing is for certain: The Turks were the first people to dwell in all of Anatolia. (The Hittites, Phrygians and Greeks lived in only part of the peninsula.)

 “Young men were drafted into slave labor battalions and worked to death or killed. The rest were assembled at collection points for deportation. In Van there was some warning: Armenians resisted till the Russians came.”

NO, Dr. Russell. Young Armenian men were drafted into the army the way young men are drafted into any army. It was only when the Turks realized the Armenians were deserting in droves to the enemy with their weapons, or were behaving treacherously as in the case of firing blanks, the Turks had to play it safe by disarming them. Since they were stuck in the army, what would you have had them do... play cards and go for a dip in the pool? Naturally, they had to serve some function, and thus the “labor battalions.” No picnic, but better than going to the front and risk getting shot or maimed.

Now we don’t know what happened to all of these “slaves” (aren’t all soldiers “slaves”?), but it is irresponsible for Dr, Russell to blindly follow the propaganda line and tell us they were “worked to death or killed.” Was he there? No. Neither were you or I. That is why we need that annoying little matter known as “proof.” Granted, some of these Armenian soldiers were mistreated and murdered. Curiously, though, there were times the perpetrators were tried and punished, some to the point of execution DURING the war. What kind of a genocide allows your own men to be punished for carrying on with intentional extermination work? Is there even one example of Hitler’s punishing an SS man for hurting a Jew?

Armenians in Van did NOT resist “till the Russians came.” The treacherous Van Armenians rebelled (the major uprising took place in April 13, an event which must have played a major part in the April 24 Ottoman decision to move this treacherous community elsewhere; there were uprisings in Van before, the first only days after war broke out) and held the province and/or city until the enemy arrived. In doing so with their sophisticated weaponry (while the few Turkish men not sent to the front mostly had rusty old rifles that broke down after firing a few shots), they had a field day in committing atrocities against the innocent Turkish/Muslim women and children. It is unbelievable that anyone who looks into this chapter even a little bit can still be so willing to perpetuate an outright lie as this one... now, in the 21st century.

“Everywhere else, from Izmit to Erzurum, the genocide was total. In towns far from any border, death marches ("deportations") were the means of murder; on the Black Sea coast, it was drowning. Nearer Russia and escape, people were burned in barns. In 1918 Turkey invaded Russian Armenia and Iran to finish the holocaust. In the east, Azeris began to massacre Armenians in Artsakh (Karabagh).”

Dr. Russell is going berserk. He has even implicated the Azeris in his mythical genocide, when it was the Armenians who declared war on Azerbaijan in 1919 (after getting their butts kicked with their 1918 declaration of war on Georgia.) Those Karabakh Azeris were defending themselves from the bloodthirsty Armenians, and a reading of true history will tell us who was perpetrating genocide upon whom. Even Richard Hovannisian in his “The Republic of Armenia” admitted the Armenian “atrocities” against Azeris in p. 181 of his book.

 It is a stretch to conclude the “deportations" (which Dr. Russell offers as a euphemism for “death marches”; actually, “deportation" is the slanderous code word for “resettlement.” Banishing outside a country’s borders is what “deportation” means, something one would hope a scholar on language would know) were an intentional method to knock off the Armenians. Both Toynbee (in 1916) and Morgenthau (1915) are on record telling us 500,000 relocated Armenians were alive before the policy came to an end in 1916. The ones who died did so from the same reasons the Turks died en masse: starvation, and disease. In 1977, the French newspaper Le Figaro came up with a figure of “15,000 Armenians dead from shootings, sickness and deprivation on the march." As far as the “drowning” method, even some Armenians dispute that claim. (although some Armenians were drowned by fanatical Turks who took matters into their own hands.)

“But war crimes trials at Constantinople stopped when Mustafa Kemal ejected the Allies.”

How could a “scholar” ... especially one who is part of the faculty of HARVARD UNIVERSITY... be so, so wrong with just about every claim? Did Dr. Russell investigate the British archives of WWI’s “Nuremberg,” the Malta Tribunal? This war crime trial took over two years, with every Ottoman document on hand in occupied Istanbul. Once even the far corners of the United States archives proved a wash, the British decided to end the affair... after retaining the accused Turks as “hostages” (their word) for British POWs Ataturk captured, in retaliation. Every Turk was freed (before the Allies were “ejected”) because even the British, with their mountains of hysterical wartime propaganda evidence, could find NO REAL EVIDENCE.

“(Ataturk) declared the Ottoman leaders heroes: there had been no Armenian genocide; there had never been any Armenians.”

Actually, Ataturk was not a fan of the Ottoman leaders who drove their country to near-suicide; his near-contempt for Enver Pasha is well known, for example. And has Dr. Russell read any of Ataturk’s speeches? Ataturk acknowledged the massacres (although of course he wouldn’t have used the word “genocide,” as the word wasn’t invented yet; even if it had been invented, since there is no proof of a systematic extermination plan, of course he would have said there was no Armenian genocide; just like any rational person would arrive at the same conclusion, once the objective and genuine facts are observed)... and where did Ataturk say exactly that there were no Armenians?

Since the Armenians brought their disaster upon themselves by firing the first shot and following their fanatical leaders, plenty left. Some out of fear of repercussions (even though Ataturk generously allowed their return with the signing of the Treaty of Gumru... a generosity the “friends” of the Armenians, the Russians, did not offer), and many enticed with the possibility of greener pastures, as a sympathetic United States of America (among other nations) welcomed them with open arms. Many of the relocated Armenians decided to stay in their new Arab homes, in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq. Therefore, if the Armenians were no longer where they once were in large numbers within Turkey, why shouldn’t the towns be given Turkish names (another complaint of Dr. Russell’s; probably there were Turkish names to begin with, and the professor is appalled the informal Armenian names used by the Armenians are now nowhere in sight.) Is not New Amsterdam called New York today?

What about the more than 400 geographical names in modern Armenia that were renamed from Turkic to Armenian?

And the Turks have done a phenomenal job in preserving old Armenian churches for the most part... another beef of the professor’s. Imagine, some of these buildings stood for centuries! How many mosques have survived in Armenia? (He complains of a Cross-stone of the tenth century near the monastery of Narek, which he had photographed that was later “destroyed by the police” after his visit.)

 “Turkey uses the struggle for self-determination in Karabagh as a pretext for blockading the Armenian Republic. Tens of thousands have died as a result, and hundreds of thousands more are emigrating. This is a continuation of the genocide.”

What can one say? The man is completely shameless, and exists on another plane of reality. “The struggle for self-determination in Karabagh”? Is that what he calls Armenia’s sneak, cowardly surprise attack in 1992, massacring over 800 civilians in their sleep, and chasing away nearly a million Azeris from their homes, stealing land that does not belong to them? If “tens of thousands have died as a result, and hundreds of thousands more are emigrating,” WHOSE FAULT IS THAT? Once again, the Armenians have to deal with the strategies of their greedy, fanatical leaders. They fire the first shot, as always, and when things go awry... they always look for someone else to blame.

Hovhannes Katchaznouni, First Prime Minister of the Independent Armenian Republic, The Manifesto of Hovhannes Katchaznouni,1923, Page 8.