By Prof. Justin McCarthy
University of Louisville
(First Presented During A Conference at YEDITEPE University, Istanbul)

Historians should love the truth.  A historian has a duty to try to write only the truth.  Before historians write they must look at all relevant sources.  They must examine their own prejudices, then do all they can to insure that those prejudices do not overwhelm the truth.  Only then should they write history.  The historians creed must be, "Consider all the sides of an issue; reject your own prejudices.  Only then can you hope to find the truth."

Do historians always follow this creed?  They do not, but good historians try.

There are ways to tell if a historian has been true to his craft.  All important sources of information must be studied:  A book on American history that does not draw upon American sources and only uses sources written in French cannot be accurate history.  All important facts must be considered:  a book on the history of the Germans and the Jews that does not mention the death of the Jews in the Holocaust cannot be true.

Uncomfortable facts, facts that disagree with one's preconceptions and prejudices must be considered, not avoided or ignored: Any book on the history of the Turks and the Armenians that does not include the history of the Turks who were killed by Armenians cannot be the truth. This is obvious.  It should be so obvious that it need not be said.  But we know it must be said, because so many have forgotten the rules of honest history.

Like historians, politicians also have a duty to truth.  If they make pronouncements on history, they assume the duties of historians.  They must look honestly at the historical record, the whole historical record. They must not accept that what they are told is true because political pressure groups tell them it is true.  They must not accept that something is true because their fathers believed it was true.  They must not accept as truth what their own prejudices tell them is true.  If politicians speak on history, if politicians pass resolutions on history, then they must follow the rules of history.  Otherwise, what the politicians proclaim will not be the truth.  It may be good politics.  It may win votes.  But it will never be the truth.

Again, this should be obvious.  If politicians believe they are historians, they must follow the rules of historians.  This is not, however, a lesson that has been learned by the parliaments that have passed resolutions on what is called the "Armenian Genocide."  The appalling historical pronouncements of politicians are easy to recognize as bad history.  When they passed their resolutions on the Armenians did the French Parliament or the European Union Parliament consider any evidence that disagreed with their prejudices?  No.  When President Jacques Chirac declared recently that all governments should accept the "Armenian Genocide" did he make a detailed study of all the sources, including what the Ottomans recorded? No.  Did those who attempted to pass "genocide resolutions" in the American Congress acknowledge that millions of Turks died in the same conflict?  No.  In the counterfeit history of these self-proclaimed historians the only dead were Armenians.

It can be argued that members of the French Parliament or the European Union government could never follow the rules of historians.  They have no time for detailed research on historical issues.  They have little or no training in the study of history.  To them I offer this unsolicited advice: if you cannot do the work necessary to find the truth, say nothing.

I will admit that as a historian I am angered by those who refuse to study the whole issue, but speak freely from their own prejudices or for their own political advantage.  I am also angered by the hypocrisy of those who falsely proclaim that they are indeed studying all sides of the Armenian Question, when in fact they are doing no such thing.

Historical knowledge depends on debate.  No matter how hard we try to see all sides of an issue, each of us is fallible.  All historians can make mistakes.  We learn our mistakes through debate.  We listen to others who disagree with us, consider our evidence, and sometimes change our minds. Someone who will not study the evidence brought by others is not a scholar.  Someone who will not listen to the judgments of others is only pretending to be a historian.

Recently there have been meetings on the Armenian Question held in Germany and America.  The meetings in America were mainly held behind closed doors.  They were secret.  No one but the participants knows what went on in these meetings.  Some few meetings have allowed the public to listen, but have never included speakers who have doubted the existence of the "Armenian Genocide."  Nevertheless, these meetings have been widely publicized, because there have been both Turks and Armenians at these meetings.  The Armenian nationalists say, "You see, Turkish scholars agree with us."

Who are these Turks?  They are those who have passed a test before they are allowed into the club.  Before they can be a part of the gatherings, the Turks must agree that there was an Armenian genocide.  The Armenian nationalists will not meet, or even speak, with anyone who disagrees with them.  So these meetings are not scholarly inquiries.  They are political gatherings of those who wish to condemn the Turks, and some of those who condemn the Turks happen to be Turks themselves.

There is nothing strange in this.  I need not tell you that there are Turks whose ideology drives their historical judgment or that there are Turks who honestly disagree with the large majority of other Turkish scholars.  It is a good thing to have disagreement, because wisdom comes out of debate.  That is the problem with these meetings--they are not debates.

I have recently read many e-mails and letters that condemn the Turks who meet with the Armenians.  Other Turks condemn them for in some way betraying their country.  This is not right.  No scholar should ever be attacked because he says what is unpopular.  Freedom is the basis of all good scholarship, and that includes the freedom to be wrong.  Attacking those who disagree with you is the way of the Armenian nationalists who bomb professor's houses, kill diplomats, threaten scholars, and take advantage of unjust French laws to sue professors who dare to speak out.

I hope this is never the way of the Turks.  I go into bookstores in Istanbul and Ankara and see books in Turkish, written by Turkish citizens. These books state that the Turks did commit genocide.  I read Turkish newspapers that include interviews with men whose words sound as if they were been written by Armenian nationalists.  Sometimes I laugh at their arguments. 

Sometimes they anger me.  But I know that it is a good thing that they are able to speak.  It shows that Turkey is mature enough, confident enough, to accept disagreement.

So are these scholars not to be criticized?  Yes, I do rebuke them–not for disagreeing with me, not for being wrong, surely not for betraying Turkey.  I accuse them of betraying scholarship.  I condemn their closed meetings.  I accuse all those who only speak to their friends, then pretend they are holding dialogues.  I rebuke anyone who refuses to listen to disagreement.

I ask only one question of those, whether Turks or Armenians, who hold their secret meetings.  I ask only one question of those, whether Turks or Armenians, who will only talk with their ideological friends.  I ask only one question of those, whether Turks or Armenians, who refuse all scholarly debate.  What are you afraid of?

I renew the call for honest debate.  Those who believe in their cause should be willing to defend it with their words.  They must be willing to argue, not just to preach to those who agree with them.

To the parliamentarians and the historians I offer one more piece of advice:  Forget the politics and ask the real historical questions.  No study of the history of the Armenians and the Turks can be undertaken unless one central question is asked:  Whatever they believe the Turks did, whether genocide or self-defense, why would the Turks do it?

One of the main problems with the Armenian nationalist explanation has always been the question of why the Turks would attack the Armenians. The Turks and other Muslims were a large majority in a Muslim Empire. They had lived with the Armenians for centuries, and allowed the Armenians to keep their customs and religion.  Yet, if one believes the Armenian nationalists, the Turks suddenly decided to attack the Armenians.  Worse, the Turks suddenly decided to destroy all the Armenians in a planned genocide.  The Armenian nationalists have invented many supposed reasons for the imaginary Turkish plan: The Turks supposedly planned to steal Armenian property.  They supposedly desired to link the Turks of Anatolia with the Turks of Central Asia and Armenians stood in the way.  Or the Ottomans needed Armenian land to house the Turkish refugees from the Balkan Wars.  More emotional reasons have also been invented:  The Turks allegedly desired to kill the Armenians out of jealousy, because the Turks felt the Armenians were superior.  Or the Turks purportedly acted out of what was called "religious hatred."

Did the Turks wish to seize the property of the Armenians?  If so, it would indeed by odd that the Turks fought against Armenians in Eastern Anatolia, where the Armenians were relatively poor, and did not touch the property of rich Armenians in Istanbul, Edirne, and Izmir.  Of course, we can never prove that in their hearts Turks did not covet Armenian property.  We can ask, however, who had stolen whose property?  Who was the thief ?  Who was the victim?  When World War I began Armenians were living in seized Turkish property in Erivan, Karabag, and Kars.  Turks had not stolen Armenian property; Armenians had stolen Turkish property.

During World War I, when the Russians invaded Eastern Anatolia, it was the Armenians who once again first stole the property of Turks and Kurds. Only after 100 years of losing their homes and farms did the Muslims of Anatolia finally take their revenge and seize Armenian property.

Map #1
The desire to join with Central Asian Turks was indeed a mad dream of some Ottoman leaders, particularly Enver Pasa.  It never was considered seriously, except perhaps for Azerbaijan. In any case, how would the Armenians have stood in the way of such a plan?  The path to Central Asia, had the Ottomans been mad enough to take it, was through Iran, not Armenia.  It only takes one look at a map to prove this.  A Turkish army advancing north through Armenia to reach Central Asia would have had to pass over the highest point of the Caucasus Mountains, then over desert and steppe, and finally around the Aral Sea to the South.  Not even Enver Pasa would have tried that.  Even Cengiz Han took the coast road.  Would the other Armenians, those who lived in Ottoman Anatolia, have stood in the way of Ottoman conquest to the East?  They would only have been a problem if they took up arms to prevent the advance.  They did indeed take up arms against the Ottomans, but the Armenian revolt had nothing to do with Central Asia.

The theory that the Ottomans planned to take Armenian lands for Balkan War refugees has an evident problem.  The refugees were all housed before the beginning of World War I and they were almost all housed in Thrace and Western Anatolia, not in Eastern Anatolia

Did the Turks hate the Armenians and try to kill them because they felt the Armenians were superior?  There is of course no evidence of this in any Ottoman document or speech, but the evidence I prefer is what is evident to anyone who has lived with Turks.  I have known many Turks over the past 35 years.  Most of those Turks felt that all men were equal.  No Turk ever felt that Turks were inferior to anyone.  I very much doubt if the Ottoman Turks felt any different.

As for "religious hatred," history shows this to be a laughable lie.  Is one to believe that the Muslims, having accepted the Armenians for 700 years, would decide to violate the principles of Islam and no longer accept the Christian right to exist?  Is one to forget that the history of the Ottomans was one of exemplary tolerance, much better than the record of Christian states?  No, the Muslims of the East did indeed begin to hate and fear Armenians, but that was a result of Armenian and Russian actions.

In the final analysis, the arguments of the Armenian nationalists come down to one assertion--the Turks were crazy.  After 700 years of coexistence the Turks suddenly began to hate the Armenians and resolved to kill them.  No other explanation can satisfy the Armenian nationalist desire to blame the Turks.  All the explanations that are given for the supposed genocide depend on the Turks acting completely irrationally.

I have heard it argued that this explanation makes sense.  After all, the Germans acted irrationally when they killed the Jews.  The differences are worth considering.  The Nazis called upon a long tradition of hatred of the Jews.  The history of Europe had been filled with attacks on Jews. There was also a long German tradition of evil literature written against the Jews.  Hitler and his followers thus called upon a long tradition of hatred.  They used prejudice against Jews as a tool to aid their rise to power.

Was anything similar ever seen in the Ottoman Empire?  Before the beginning of Armenian revolts had there been attacks on Armenians like the German attacks on Jews?  No.  Was there a long tradition of Ottoman popular writings against Armenians?  No.  Did any Turkish political parties base their campaigns on animosity to Armenians?  No.  In fact, even while Armenian nationalists were rebelling against the Ottomans other Armenians were welcomed into the Ottoman Government.  Armenians rose to high positions in the Ottoman State.  European-style racial hatred was foreign to the Ottoman Empire.  The sort of prejudice that resulted in the deaths of the German Jews was virtually unknown in the Ottoman Empire. Any claim that "racial hatred" led to aggression against Armenians is pure fantasy.

It is better to look for rational reasons for the conflict that developed between Turks and Armenians.  The real reason the Turks fought the Armenians is easily explained and completely rational.  The Turks were defending themselves.

This brings the next question:  Who started the conflict between the Armenians and the Turks?  Who was the attacker?  Who was defending himself?

Other historians and I usually avoid those questions.  When I have spoken and written on the history of the Turks and Armenians I have described it as a sad chapter in the history of humanity.  I have even said that who was at fault was not the real issue.  I have said that the real issue is the suffering of humanity, whether Turks or Armenians.  That is still the most important consideration. 

 

 

World War I
The events of World War I cannot be understood without first looking at the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913.  Those wars gave revolutionaries a reason to believe that their methods would be successful.  Nationalist rebel bands killed the Turks of the Balkans and drove them from their homes.  Invading armies finished the job of murder and exile.  Muslims, most of them Turks, had been a slight majority in Ottoman Europe in 1912. By the end of the Balkan Wars they were a distinct minority.  27% of the Muslims of the Ottoman Balkans had died.  What remained were Bulgarian, Greek, Montenegrin, and Serbian states that had rid themselves of their Muslim populations.  Lands that had Muslim majorities now had Christian majorities.  This was exactly what the Armenian revolutionaries would have to do on a greater scale, and it had worked in the Balkans.

Both sides learned the lessons of the Balkan Wars.  The Turks knew what would happen to them if revolutionaries succeeded.  The intentions of the Armenian rebels were the same as the intentions of those who had forced the Turks from the Balkans.  They wished to rid Eastern Anatolia of its Muslim majority, so that it could become "Armenia."  To do so they would use the same tactics that had been effective in the Balkans.

Even before the first world war began, Armenian guerilla bands had begun to organize in the Russian Empire.  These included Armenians from both Russia and the Ottoman Empire.  Approximately 8,000 Ottomans went to Kagizman to train and organize.  6,000 went from Anatolia to Igdir, more to other training camps.  They returned to fight the Turks and to aid the Russian war effort.  Large caches of guns, ammunition, supplies, and even uniforms had been hidden in depots in Anatolia, ready for use.

These were not small units of guerillas.  They were not a few men committing random acts of terrorism.  There were indeed innumerable such individual acts, but the main Armenian attack came from well-armed and trained rebel bands.  They may have numbered as many as 100,000 men.  In Sivas Vilâyeti alone Ottoman officials estimated 30,000 Armenian partisans.

The mythology of Armenian history holds that peaceful Armenians were attacked without provocation by Turks.  The reality was far different. To understand the situation, one should attempt to visualize the situation on the Ottoman-Russian border in Spring of 1915.  The Ottoman Army on the Russian Front was in ruins.  Enver Pasa had tried to defeat the Russians with a bold but ill-conceived attack at Sarikamis.  He had failed badly.3/4 of his army had been lost.  All that stood between the Ottoman heartland and Russian invaders were the remnant of the Ottoman Army in the East.  Some of these were very good troops.  The gendarmerie divisions, made up of gendarmes from the East who knew the territory well, were particularly effective.  But the Ottoman forces were few.  The Russians were more numerous and better equipped.  The only chance the Ottoman
forces had was to hold their defensive positions.  Every man was needed at the front.

However, thousands of men could not advance to the front.  They were needed to fight behind the lines.  Indeed, some of the best soldiers were withdrawn from the front and sent to fight internal enemies, Armenian rebels.  The Russian Front was in danger.  Ultimately it collapsed. Ultimately the Russians invaded and conquered Eastern Anatolia, bringing with them triumphant Armenian rebels.

The Russian invasion of Anatolia in 1915 was spearheaded by units made up of Armenians from both Ottoman Anatolia and Russia.  Armenians served as scouts for the Russian Army.  Most important, bands of Armenians hampered transportation and cut military communications throughout the Ottoman East.

The internal threat from Armenian guerillas, Armenian "chette" bands, was a serious threat to the existence of the Ottoman Empire and a real threat to the lives of the Muslims of Anatolia.

Before any Armenians were deported, before any Armenian nationalist politician was hung, before any Armenian died at the hands of an Ottoman soldier, even before war was officially declared, Armenian nationalists had begun to organize their rebellion.  The actions of the Armenian rebels were not simply rebellion.  Ottoman Armenians acted as agents of the Russian Army.  They made war on their own country, the Ottoman Empire, and fought on the side of its main enemy, the Russian Empire.  As they freely admitted at the time, they were traitors who had enlisted with their country's worst enemy.

In order to see the effect of the Armenian Rebellion, one need only look at the map.  Only the main centers of rebellion are shown.  Armenian bands were actually traveling throughout Eastern Anatolia, hindering transportation, cutting communications lines, and attacking isolated Muslim villages.  Only the regions of major activity by large bodies of men can be shown on the map.

At first glance, some of the regions of rebellion seem to be oddly chosen. Why Sivas?  It seems an unlikely place for a rebellion.  Only 13% of the population of Sivas Vilâyeti was Armenian.  Sivas was far from the front, far from possible Russian support.  But look at the roads.  In order to reach the battle with the Russians, troops and supplies had to pass through Sivas.  Retreating soldiers also were forced to pass through Sivas.  Sivas was also the hub for the telegraph system that extended to the battle zone.  The city and province of Sivas were transportation and communication bottlenecks.  Any disruption in Sivas was a blow against the Ottoman war effort.

The regions of Armenian rebellion in Cilicia and Urfa were also in regions with great strategic importance.  Because the Taurus tunnels had not been completed, war materials and soldiers for the theater of war in Iraq had to be trans-shipped in Cilicia, then travel on through the Urfa Region.The British seriously considered attacking in Cilicia rather than Gallipoli (and would have been far more successful if they had.)

Armenian forces in Van and in the Russian border areas also had a potential strategic effect. The Russians had moved into Western Iran. They threatened Ottoman positions in the East and ultimately intended to attack into Iraq and join with the British.  (No one expected that the Ottomans would defeat the British in Iraq.)  In order to check the Russian advance, the Ottomans should have moved East.  There were only two possible roads from Anatolia into Iran--the routes through Bayezit in the North or through Van in the South.  Is it only coincidence that these two were major centers of Armenian rebellion?

Until someone is able to research Russian army orders to Armenian units, we will not know how much of the Armenian rebellion was well planned to aid the Russians.  It seems unlikely that such strategic points were chosen at random.  The important point, however, is not why they were chosen but the grave danger they presented to the Ottoman forces.  The Ottomans needed to put down the revolt.  They needed to do so because Armenian forces were slaughtering Muslims, but they also needed to do so
for military reasons.  The Armenian rebels were enemy forces that were contributing to Ottoman defeat.

The main Armenian contribution to the Russians was the fact that their rebellion occupied so many Ottoman soldiers and gravely hindered the Ottoman war effort.  But from the standpoint of humanity, the worst effect of the Armenian rebellion was the mortality of the innocent Muslim civilians killed by the Armenian rebels and, it should not be forgotten, the mortality of the innocent Armenian civilians who were killed in revenge.  It was Armenian rebels who began the killing.  By far the greatest number of dead were Muslims.

Why did the Ottomans deport the Armenians?  They did it to remove a civilian population that would surely aid and comfort the enemy, as had been proven.  Perhaps most of the Armenians would not have acted against the Ottomans, but how could anyone know who would and who would not aid the Russians, the British, and the French?  I believe that, in the heat of war and in their desire to defend their Empire and its people, the Ottomans went too far and deported many who were no threat.  But it should
never be forgotten that the Ottomans had good reason to act as they did. Nor should it be forgotten that it was the Armenians and Russians who first forced Muslims from their homes. One fact cannot be doubted.  During World War I, as for 100 years before,
it was not the Turks who first attacked the Armenians.  It was the Armenians who first attacked the Turks.

Azerbaijan and Armenia
At the end of World War I, it was the turn of the Turks of Azerbaijan to be attacked.  Allied with Bolsheviks in Baku, Armenian nationalist forced nearly half of the Turkish population of Baku to flee the city.  Between 8 and 10,000 Muslims, almost all Turks, were killed in Baku alone.  The Armenian guerilla leader Andranik destroyed villages in Nahçivan and Southern Azerbaijan, forcing more than 60,000 Turkish refugees to flee.

420 villages were destroyed.  Hundreds of villages were ruined and many thousand more Turks were killed in Kars Province.  Two-thirds of the Turks of Erivan Province disappeared.  Turks took revenge in Baku and elsewhere, but it was Turks who most suffered mortality and exile.

The Turks of the provinces of Erivan, Kars, and Azerbaijan had been completely under the control of the Russians.  Almost all unarmed, they had neither the ability nor the desire for war.  It was Armenians who initiated the conflicts.  It was not the Turks who attacked the Armenians. It was Armenians who attacked the Turks.