This is the section of the book where Peter Balakian has a field day in bringing events up to the present, utilizing all the many new sources and developments that affirm the Armenian “Genocide,” thanks in large part to the Armenians’ hypocritical allies, the “genocide scholars.”

We begin with a quote by Terrence Des Pres: “If the Holocaust was a hoax, why not the Armenian catastrophe also? If Anne Frank’s diary was faked, who is to say that certain documents signed by Talaat Pasha weren’t forged as well?…”

No Turk says the Armenians did not suffer a catastrophe. It was a catastrophe of their own making, by firing the first shot and rebelling against their own nation, where they had prospered for many centuries. The Turks suffered no less a catastrophe; more Armenians massacred Turks than Turks massacred Armenians. If Terry wishes to find a better parallel to the Holocaust, he may wish to keep in mind the following words from the "The Jewish Times” (June 21, 1990):

"An appropriate analogy with the Jewish Holocaust might be the systematic extermination of the entire Muslim population of the independent republic of Armenia which consisted of at least 30-40 percent of the population of that republic." (2006 ADDENDUM: According to the Great Soviet Encyclopedia of 1926, Azeris constituted over 38% of the population of Armenia, in 1918. Today, Armenia is some 98% "pure.")

If the Holocaust was a hoax, why not the Turkish catastrophe also?

If Terrence Des Pres believed the Talat Pasha telegrams were not forged, it's unfortunate for his reputation that he must forever remain on record as an embarrassingly amateurish analyst.

Judith Herman

Balakian offers a description of criminal behavior from Judith Herman (“Trauma and Recovery”), in an attempt to lend weight to what Armenians like to call “The Turkish campaign of denial”: A criminal likes to “promote forgetting.” “Secrecy and silence are the perpetrator’s first line of defense.” If that fails “the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim.” Otherwise, there is an attempt to make sure “no one listens,” by, as Balakian writes, “either blatantly denying or rationalizing his crime.”

It sounds like Judith Herman has hit the nail on the head, regarding the methods of the Armenians!

Balakian insists the Turks “planned the genocide.” Peter, you have failed in presenting any legitimate proof in your entire book. Hearsay stories of suffering people aside, testimonies of Morgenthau, missionaries, Bryce and others with conflicts of interest aside… you have failed to prove the Ottoman government planned an extermination policy. What you need are solid documents like the Talat Pasha telegrams… but you must make sure such documents are real. Just like what I’m doing with your pathetic book, exposing all your misrepresentations and falsehoods, if you want to make the world believe these telegrams (for example) are genuine, then you must take the proof against their legitimacy and try to disprove them. Just giving us your by-now-extremely-questionable word cannot cut the mustard.

Going on to present phony quotes from “Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story” on pg. 374 as you have done does not prove anything. If “Talaat and Enver admitted their plans to exterminate the Armenians,” why did the British not quickly close the book on the Malta Tribunal? Morgenthau’s ghostwritten book came out in 1918, before the Malta Tribunal even started. The British could have wrapped their case up by the following year, in line with the phony Ottoman kangaroo courts… well before they had a chance to become war-weary or needed to get back their prisoners-of-war, as you attempted to make your reader believe.

In criticizing Talat Pasha’s memoirs (partly published in the New York Times Current History; I still don’t understand how anyone could get their hands on his private memoirs, but I am assuming they are true), you say “Talaat’s strategy was to scapegoat the Armenians by claiming that the Russians used the Armenians to help them invade eastern Turkey.”

In describing Judith Herman’s points above, you wrote the behavior of a criminal includes “either blatantly denying or rationalizing (the) crime.” Now, it’s bad enough for people to see you as a latter-day Cardashian, saying anything and everything regardless of the facts… but now you’re getting uncomfortably close to Judith Herman territory. There is absolutely no doubt what Talat wrote was the truth.

The proof lies even in Armenian sources, as with the following Dashnak committee order: "As soon as the Russians have crossed the borders and the Ottoman armies have started to retreat, you should revolt everywhere. The Ottoman armies thus will be placed between two fires. On the other hand, the Armenians in the Ottoman army should desert their units with their weapons and unite with the Russians"

Since Mr. Balakian provided the silly opinions of Terrence Des Pres, it is only fitting I should call upon the testimony of another with a similar “middle name”: Philippe de Zara (“Mustapha Kemal, Dictateur,” Paris, 1936).

“…How can anyone deny that, in the opinion of the Turks, according to the law of all the states, the conduct of the Armenians, facilitating during the war the task of the adversary, can be recognized as anything but a crime of high treason?. . . The committees, divided among themselves for internal issues, were often in agreement to facilitate the advance of Russian armies: they were attempting to obstruct the retreat of Turkish troops, to stop the convoys of provisions, to form bands of francs-tireurs. Mass desertions took place in the Eastern provinces: Armenians thus formed many troops officered by Russian officers… The culpability of Armenians leaves no doubt.”

Balakian: A secretary of state under Herbert Hoover helped align his nation’s policy by drawing closer to Turkey on the basis that Turkey is not doing anything to undermine American interests. James Barton suddenly became “pro-Turkish” by trying to “keep the Turks looking west and away from the communist threat.”

These people were thinking of the big picture, and of America’s welfare. Perhaps Armenian-Americans don’t understand this, but if they are living in America, the welfare of their nation must generally supersede the interests of any other nation. Who could argue it was important to have a tough nation like Turkey to keep the Soviets in check? Europe slept more soundly, knowing that “big brother” Turkey was there to powerfully counter the Soviets, in case of an invasion. Would Peter Balakian prefer Turkey to have joined the Soviet Union, just as Armenia willingly did?

Rear Admiral Colby Chester Would you buy a used car from this man?

Then it’s time to denigrate Rear Admiral Colby Chester, as so many pro-Armenians similarly attempted to defame when he was one of the few voices to write an objective article not based on the typical propaganda. Chester had a business concern in the Ottoman Empire, forming a valuable bridge between America and a nation that would prove herself to be among America’s most stalwart allies in years to come… and the Armenian “attacks the credibility of his victim” (in one of Judith Herman’s points to describe criminal behavior), by trying to find a connection between capitalism and dishonesty. The reader can examine the admiral’s words and determine his credibility. Admiral Chester and his son were one of the very few Westerners who learned the real story behind the Turks, and their business interests have nothing to do with their desire to honestly convey what they perceived as the truth.

The same reason has been used to try and discredit Admiral Bristol, as well. However, think about it. If Chester had already set up shop (the greasy Cardashian worked for this shop before the war, Balakian attested earlier), how desperate would the admiral have needed to be to sell the world on how great the Turks were? Few businesspeople out to make or save a buck will question the origins of the goods. China, for example, is a repressive society, despite the image of modernization we have been fed. How many of us refuse to buy goods from China? All we look at is the dollar tag.

Balakian tells us, “By 1922 Chester, hoping to see his promised oil rights come to fruition (wrote his propagandistic article in the New York Times Current History).”

I don’t know where Chester’s “promised oil rights” were, and I don’t know if Peter Balakian knows either, since no source has been provided. Assuming Chester had promised oil rights, what I do know is that they could no longer be in Turkey, since Turkey had all of her oil fields taken away at the end of the war. Therefore, there would have been no reason for Adm. Chester to have written his article, except to present the truth, and nothing but the truth.

Balakian presents the following excerpt from Chester’s article in order to prove how ridiculous were his claims: “The Armenians were moved from the inhospitable regions where they were not welcome and could not actually prosper, to the most delightful and fertile part of Syria….where the climate is as benign as in Florida and California, whither New York millionaires journey every year for health and recreation. All this was done at great expense of money and effort, and the general outside report was that all, or at least many, had been murdered.”

(Chester continued: “In due course of time the deportees, entirely unmassacred and fat and prosperous, returned [if they wished so to do], and an English prisoner of war who was in one of the vacated towns after it had been repopulated told me that he found it filled with these astonishing living ghosts.”)

Compared to the propagandistic horror stories Balakian has presented, this version certainly sounds unbelievable. However, it’s not enough to say, “this can’t be true.” In order to make his case, Peter Balakian has to prove it’s not true.

However way he tries to do that (and he won’t, because he can’t; that’s why he must do the next best thing… try to destroy Admiral Chester’s character, Armenian-style), I can take individual excerpts and see if I can back them up. The part about “great expense of money and effort” was true. The bankrupt Turks apportioned 265 million kurush for the relocation program. Some corrupt locals taking advantage of these resources aside, why would the Turks have spent so much money and resources while desperately fighting for the nation’s life, against mighty world powers on multiple fronts? If the idea was to exterminate the Armenians. why not do so on the spot or nearby, after collecting the villagers, in the same manner the Armenians did when they massacred 500,000-600,000 Turks/Muslims? (Ara Sarafian had issues with the amount in question, from Kamuran Gurun’s The Myth of Innocence, and I investigated further in “An Armenian Tangles with an Armenian.”)

For example: "Armenians boasted of having raised an army of one hundred and fifty thousand men to fight a civil war, and that they burned at least a hundred Muslim villages and exterminated their population." (G. Hamelin,  Les Armees Francaises au Levant, February 2, 1919, Vol. 1, p. 122) [2006 ADDENDUM: I might have had a good reason to point to that source, but it seems to be in error, as the source appears to be Prof. John Dewey, and his 1928 article.] The Turks needn't have bothered with the expensive relocation. So as not to upset nearby Muslim citizens, the killers could have moved the Armenian villagers only slightly away, and executed them on the spot, with a burial detail not far behind. Similar to what the Armenians did (except they killed on the spot, and didn't bother with digging graves).

As far as whether Armenians could have actually become “fat and prosperous,” allow me to present an excerpt from Balakian’s hero, Ambassador Morgenthau himself! A September 1915 diary entry revealed:

"Zenop Bezjian, Vekil of Armenian Protestants, called. Schmavonian introduced him; he was his schoolmate. He told me a great deal about conditions [in the interior). I was surprised to hear him report that Armenians at Zor were fairly well satisfied; that they have already settled down to business and are earning their livings…”

(The “one half million” displaced was the same figure used by Arnold Toynbee in his propagandistic April 1916 work, “The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire,” when Toynbee referred to Armenians still alive. What a funny way to run a genocide, huh? (2006 ADDENDUM: See also Consul J. B. Jackson's Feb. 1916 figure of 486,000, "according to best information." According to Vahakn Dadrian, "in 1916... the genocide had all but run its course.")

One of Judith Herman’s characteristics for criminal behavior: “Secrecy and silence are the perpetrator’s first line of defense.” Balakian no doubt came across the above passage written in Morgenthau’s own words, yet he preferred to keep quiet about it. Nowhere in his book is there mention of this other side of the coin.

This is not to say many Armenians did not suffer and some did not die. However, we can ascertain conditions were not horrible for all of the Armenians who were relocated. Nobody is saying Armenians were having a picnic…. but Turks were not having a picnic either, with thousands dying daily of starvation, for those who prefer "Ambassador Morgenthau's Story" as a source.

 

Peter Balakian found the following passage defending the Turkish view “crude and obscene”:

(Regarding Armenian survivors’ testimony): “Carefully coached by their Armenian nationalist interviewers, these aged Armenians relate tales of horror which supposedly took place 66 years ago in such detail as to astonish the imagination, considering that most of them are already aged eighty or more. Subjected to years of Armenian nationalist propaganda as well as the coaching of their interviewers, there is little doubt that their statements are of no use whatever for historical research.”

I’d have to say that makes for a lot of common sense. What is so “crude and obscene” about the truth? (Oh… I forgot. It’s Peter Balakian.)

Bernard Lewis

Balakian then objects Bernard Lewis went with the familiar Armenian figures in 1962, but then his attitude about the Armenians’ fate became “hostile.” Since Peter Balakian is anything but a true historian, he needs to follow Bernard Lewis' example as to what makes a true historian. In 1962, when only one version of the story was omnipresent in America, Lewis had no reason to believe it wasn’t true. However, as the real facts of the situation became apparent, Lewis did his duty as a historian: he “revised” his facts. (2006 ADDENDUM: Dadrian tells us what turned Lewis around was Gurun's "The Armenian File.") :Bernard Lewis was not married to a cause; his only interest is historical truth. If the truth does not agree with what Peter Balakian desperately prefers for us to believe, that is not being “hostile”; that is being “honest.”

Balakian then similarly attacks Norman Itzkowitz and Stanford & Ezel Kural Shaw, whose house was bombed by Armenian extremists in 1977. A passage is presented from the Shaws’ 1970 book, presented for ridicule. They depict the regulations governing the Armenians’ safety:

Specific instructions were issued for the army to protect the Armenians against nomadic attacks and to provide them with sufficient food and other supplies to meet their needs during the march and after they were settled… The Armenians were to be protected and cared for until they returned to their homes after the war. A supplementary law established a special commission to record the revenues being held in trust until their return. Muslims wishing to occupy abandoned buildings could do so only as renters, with the revenues paid to the trust funds, and with the understanding that they would have to leave when the original owners returned. The deportees and their possessions were to be guarded by the army while in transit as well as in Iraq and Syria, and the government would provide for their return once the crisis was over.

If Balakian were a true historian, he would have studied the many orders detailing these safeguards… and every one of the ones presented in the passage was based on fact. Can Balakian tell us why these orders were issued? Was it for the benefit of future historians, a means to cover criminals’ tracks?

These orders prove the government’s heart was in its right place. The Ottomans were simply not capable of following through. It was a desperate time for the bankrupt nation, and when engaged in the colossal task of transporting hundreds of thousands of people … things were bound to go wrong. The Ottomans were not known for their efficiency; up to 90,000 of their soldiers became “snow statues without firing a shot,” in Enver’s disastrous campaign against Russia. General Liman von Sanders, as witness for the defense in the trial of Tehlirian, testified as follows:

"...The economic situation was so dismal that not only many Armenians, but thousands of Turkish soldiers as well died of the lack of food supplies, disease, and other consequences of poor organization in the Turkish government. In my division alone, after the battle of Gallipoli, thousands died of malnutrition."

Get this: these were Turkish SOLDIERS dying as a result of maladministration; the soldiers, the only hope the nation had to counter decimation by heartless enemies. Add to this chaos the inevitable opportunists and criminals, and corrupt local officials… that was a recipe for disaster.

Did the Ottoman government bear a responsibility for not adequately taking care of the Armenians? Most definitely. However, this was a desperate situation; Russia, who had tormented the Sick Man for the last couple of centuries, was at the gates. Manpower and resources were diverted around many fronts, Gallipoli in the east, and Mesopotamia in the south. The treacherous Armenians chose this time to rebel. What would any nation have done?

Did the Ottoman government also bear a responsibility for not adequately taking care of the Muslims being massacred by the Armenians, a number that obscenely reached over half a million? Most definitely.

Next, we move on to the Heath Lowry affair. It was a certainty for Balakian to bring up this episode, as he was behind one major drive (if not THE drive) to attempt to discredit the Princeton historian, in true Armenian fashion. (“The perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim.” A characteristic of criminal behavior.)

You can read more in this site’s Heath Lowry page. A Princeton newspaper account mentions the following Balakian assertion:

Though no Ottoman historians have yet signed Balakian's petition, he says that's because the historians fear reprisal from Turkey, and because "a group of so-called Ottoman historians are simply lifelong recipients of Turkish government funds. Some of them, like Mr. Lowry, are just not reliable historians."

It is ugly. It’s ugly how Balakian’s scruples may better be defined as pooper-scruples. How in the world can he possibly claim “Ottoman historians are simply lifelong recipients of Turkish government funds”? Who, for example? And where is the proof? (2006 ADDENDUM: Here is the "proof," courtesy of smear tactician, Israel Charny.):

And what of those who are not part of the group allegedly getting paid off… they “fear reprisal from Turkey.” Exactly how would that reprisal occur? Would the historians have their finger and toenails pulled out? Would horseshoes be nailed on their feet? Has Peter Balakian lost himself in Armenian fairy tale land? (No. He is just exploiting the well-entrenched image of Turkish barbarism his ilk has been so successful in perpetuating, within the West.)

Thank God Dr. Lowry is not a reliable historian in the sense Peter Balakian is… no, Dr, Lowry believes in maintaining an open mind, when he conducts his research.

How interesting that Ahmet Ertegun, the “Atlantic Records mogul,” provided half the funding of a Princeton University chair. That part wasn’t mentioned in the press articles (I’ve read) covering the Lowry affair. The reader was led to believe the entire donation came from the Turkish government. (It might be possible Mr. Ertegun has considerable sympathy for the Armenians… if so, this would be terribly ironic, that an Armenian “friend” supported the establishment of a Turkish chair. Could it be possible the establishment of Turkish studies has less to do with deceit than with finally shedding some much neglected light in this Western-ignored area of history?)

(That proves further the difference between a Turkish chair and all the many Armenian ones throughout America, like the one that has supported Richard Hovannisian for many years. Turkish history has no agenda, and is only interested in the facts. How much importance does Armenian history give to objective facts? Well, you get the idea from “The Burning Tigris.”)

Funny how Mr. Balakian reports the “Lowry-Princeton-Turkey story had become national news, and was covered in (the Armenian mouthpiece newspapers, among others) the New York Times and the Boston Globe.” He refers to the petition (“Taking a Stand Against the Turkish Government’s Denial of the Armenian Genocide and Scholarly Corruption in the Academy”), but makes no mention that HE was the force behind this petition. Peter Balakian can apparently be very humble.

What is really happening is that the people involved are all of the same singularly-voiced gang, and Peter Balakian wants to make you think there are many distinct voices arriving at their conclusions individually. (Not to say there aren’t those who make conclusions individually… however, as with the case of the Ottoman-era missionaries who appeared so honorable, what other conclusions are people going to reach if these similarly “honorable“ genocide scholars have banded together in a conspiratorial club?) If Mr. Balakian was largely behind the drive to smear Heath Lowry, it is patently dishonest of him to bring up the matter without revealing the depth of his own involvement.

Terrence Des Pres wrote, “What does it mean when a client state like Turkey can persuade a super power like the United States to abandon its earlier stance toward the genocide of 1915?” I’m not exactly sure if the United States has “abandoned” its stance… the powerful Armenian lobby controls too many American politicians… but should the day arrive when that truth becomes respected, let us look at what that would mean: the forsaking of a policy based on propaganda, lies and deceit, in favor of objective historical facts. In other words, it would mean “honesty.” About time, too, given all the defamatory petitions, resolutions, books, movies, newspaper reports, education curricula throughout the years, wrongly blackening the image of the Turks.

Balakian laments the fact that two of the countless genocide resolutions polluting the halls of the United States Congress throughout the years failed to pass. “It was a simple commemorative bill that had no legal ramifications,” he sobs. I have news for Peter Balakian: no resolution passed throughout the world regarding this matter has legal ramifications. They are meaningless, representing the opinions of those who have voted for them, swayed either by bigotry and/or through the plentiful bucks of the wealthy Armenian Diaspora around the world.

The author tells us “the word ‘genocide’ had become the focus of Turkish hysteria.” Let’s understand: “genocide,” the way the word is interpreted by laypeople as what the Nazis did to the Jews, and not by foolish “genocide scholars” such as Samantha Power (where practically any conflict can be called a genocide, rendering the word meaningless), connotes the worst crime against humanity. If a genocide is unproven and yet is mindlessly charged, who wouldn’t be hysterical? If Peter Balakian were accused of a deplorable crime such as being a pedophile or a rapist, when he knew damned well he is not, wouldn’t he be hysterical?

“The Turkish government was, in effect, conducting a campaign against American history.” I find it tiresomely ironic that the Armenians commit one of their many affronts, and then blame others for doing the same. The only ones involved in sneakily changing history are the Armenians. Ignorant school boards throughout the American nation have been persuaded to adopt the unproven Armenian “Genocide” into their curriculums.