While last fall I was visiting in California I spent a day with Leon Surmelian, the author of "I Ask You Ladies and Gentlemen." In the course of a conversation, as we were discussing the Fedayi commanders, Leon suddenly said to me: "Dro was the greatest commander of them all; he was never defeated in battle."

Now Leon is not a military man nor is he a historian...

James G. Mandalian, DRO, The Armenian Review, June 1957

Indeed, Surmelian is no historian. He is yet another Armenian believer who has allowed the false Armenian version of events to wash all over him, if he's going to make a ridiculous statement like Dro's never having been defeated. (Dro was Armenia's war minister in the 1920 war with the Turks that led to Armenia's crushing defeat [under an administration Surmelian himself served under]; the cowardly, terroristic butcher was best in battle when facing defenseless villagers to exterminate, not real soldiers. Fables of his valor and military genius come strictly from Armenian historians.)

In his book, Surmelian's heart belongs only to Antranik; it looks like his hero-worship of Armenian mass-murdering heroes took another turn, in later years.

 [p. 64] Avedis had tried to organize the first trade union in Trebizond, and staged a demonstration on May Day by unfurling a large red flag on the Gray Hill, and then with a band of his comrades, mere schoolboys, marching into the city singing La Marseillaise and an Armenian socialistic song. The Turks thought the Armenians of the city had risen in revolt, to establish a kingdom of their own—their old bugaboo—and a mob of Laz cutthroats, dervishes, theological students, and other such patriots, armed to their teeth, gathered in the Maydan, the central plaza, to “suppress” this new rebellion of the infidels. Fortunately the town commandant happened to be a more enlightened man and knew something about May Day celebrations in Europe. When the alarmed leaders of our community appealed to him for protection, he sent troops to disperse the murderous mob, and a massacre was narrowly averted.

In the entire book, Surmelian gives overt examples of the Armenians' treacherous disloyalty (especially deriving from himself, as the best example), and the possibility of Armenian revolt is termed as an insignificant "bugaboo"? The thousands of Turks the vicious Armenians subjected to outright murder, especially in the past forty-odd "terrorist" years, was a very serious matter.

An example of losses (albeit exaggerated) comes from the diary of Aghasi, who began the 1895 Zeitun rebellion: "From the beginning until the end of the insurrection, the Turks lost 20,000 men, 13,000 of whom were soldiers, and the rest were bashi-bozuks [irregulars]. We had lost only 125 men, 60 of whom had died in battle, and 65 of whom were dastardly killed during the cease-fire." (p. 306] )

As W.W.I approached, the local residents had good reason to fear Armenian treachery... for quite unlike the innocent martyr nation the world came to know them as, when Turks were at the mercy of Armenians, rarely was mercy shown.

Note how this episode is presented: the Muslims are such an inferior sub-species, it is in their nature to massacre, in a heartbeat. If the Ottoman Muslims were so dangerous and murderous, wouldn't the time to have approached the "enlightened" commandant have been before the May Day celebration had taken place?

 

"If the Turks had attacked us, we would have defended ourselves," Uncle Leon said, while Mother got up and left the room. These political arguments in our home made her acutely unhappy.

"Defended with what?" Father shouted.

"Our party had eight hundred members in our region."

"All right, you had eight hundred heroes against how many Turks? — eight hundred thousand, with millions more behind them. Did you expect the British fleet to force the Dardanelles to come to your help—and climb maybe to the top of Mount Ararat? Or did you think the Russian Emperor would declare war on the Sultan because Avedis was waving a red flag and singing socialism?"

I did not know what socialism meant, I did not understand half of what they said. Though it seemed to me that Father was right—he was too smart to be wrong—and though George and Vertanes agreed with everything he said, and disagreed with everything Uncle Leon said, I was nevertheless heart and soul for Uncle Leon. In fact I resented my cousins...

The fact that the revolutionists might have been numerically inferior never stopped them from creating riots and massacres in years past. After centuries of harmony, the sequence for the troubles that occurred nearly always followed the same pattern: The Armenians would ACT, and the Turks would REACT. If the Armenians had not stirred trouble... if they had remained loyal, as they were up to the 19th century... none would have had to fear a "massacre." (Just as Surmelian's dad said. He was too smart to be wrong!)

Although father served as the voice of reason and was "right," Surmelian's heart and soul still belonged with his Dashnak uncle. A good revelation as to how the ordinary Ottoman-Armenian must have felt, after years of prior agitation by the missionaries and the imperialist powers.

[p. 65] I wanted to ask Father, "Then why do you call Uncle Leon, and not Brother George or Brother Vertanes, to protect you with his revolver when you go out at night?"

Father was in terror of the Turkish toughs who attacked Christian pedestrians in the streets, robbed them, beat them, and sometimes knifed them to death. The main street, from his pharmacy to our home, was fairly safe, but the dark crooked narrow side streets were not. We had to carry a lantern when we ventured into these perilous alleys on visiting our relatives. When it was Father’s turn to keep his pharmacy open until past midnight, or when he went out after supper, Uncle Leon had to accompany him as bodyguard.

It's amazing Father was evidently never a victim of a mugging, after years of such operation. As if a second man (the "bodyguard") would be of much use if a small gang were of the mind to cause mischief. Yes, lawless criminals is a problem peculiar to every country, and the gangs in this part of the world were surely not exclusively Turkish. The Turkish ones most certainly did not ask their victims if they were Christian before attacking them. The truth is, everyone suffered from toughs of all stripes, particularly in regions of the empire where Ottoman control was weak. (This type of account would be rare in an area where control was strong, as in Istanbul.) Yet note again how the author gives the impression of anti-Christian persecution. .

[p. 66] We continued our vacation, and then suddenly there was a war in Europe. The Great Christian Powers were fighting among themselves. And Turkey, backed by Germany, saw her chance of settling old scores with Russia and her allies—our friends.

Was that the reason? The bankrupt, war-weary Ottoman Empire suddenly decided this would be a good opportunity to take on the combined might of Russia, England and France? Or did the reason have more to do with how these nations were trying to take the empire apart, reducing the empire to little more than a European colony.... so that the Ottomans knew if the Entente Powers were to win against Germany, nothing would stand in the way of the empire's dissolution? Even with this backdrop, the Ottomans dragged their feet, and would have entered as easily on the side of the Allies as with Germany, if not for circumstances that real historians know all too well.

These "Great Christian Powers" were some "friends" of the Armenians, by the way. Even if they behaved like real friends, if your nation goes to war, then these friends would need to stop being regarded as friends. Yet, the Ottoman-Armenians decided to betray their nation, by choice or coercion, and became "belligerents de facto."

As if to signal the approach of our doom there was a total eclipse of the sun at this time. Old women in the village shook their heads and said gravely: “It’s an ill omen. May God protect us."

An allusion to the oncoming "genocide." However, if there were such an omen, it affected all Ottoman peoples. The Muslims who suffered in far greater numbers did not count, and still don't count... including the over half-million who died as a direct result of savage Armenian treatment, along with some Russian help.

We found the city a veritable war camp in September, with ships in the harbor unloading troops and supplies, and Turkish soldiers, trained by German officers, marching off to war goose-stepping.

Let's keep in mind the book's release was in 1945, when terms like "goose-stepping" had a particularly chilling effect. The description brings us a step closer to "genocide."

Men and materials were being rushed to Erzurum, the great fortress breasting the Russian Caucasus.

There was a general mobilization. Vertanes, wearing the uniform of a Turkish lieutenant, came to bid us good-bye. He, too, was going to Erzurum. He let me play with his sword. I practiced drawing the long heavy blade out of its scabbard. If he was worried, he tried not to show it. He knew he looked well in his uniform. The ends of his black mustache were waxed and twisted up like Enver Pasha’s. He was in the medical corps. He asked Nevart to play the piano for him once more, and when she finished her number, he clapped his hands and cried, “Bis! Bis! Repetez!” with his customary enthusiasm. He acted as if he had done nothing all his life but attend concerts.

Uncle Leon, being a widow’s sole support, was allowed to pay an exemption tax of forty gold pounds—half of which he had to borrow from Father.

“Before long they will take me too,” Father said gloomily. “It’s going to be from seven to seventy.” The schools opened as usual, but Trebizond was not the same city any more.

Why would father have thought the mobilization would grow to be so all-encompassing? In his wisdom, he must have recognized what a desperate situation this was for his country. Far from the Ottoman Empire's opportunistically choosing to go to war, as son Surmelian informed us, the Ottoman Empire would face three of the greatest superpowers of the period. Indeed, all the fighting the Ottomans were engaged in during W.W.I was of a "defensive" nature (save for Enver's ill-fated attack leading to Sarikamish, at the outset).

Given this desperate life-or-death struggle, where every man was needed to hold off such superior forces from multiple fronts, the Armenian soldiers were of great need. This would be the worst time to initiate an "extermination" program, even if the Ottoman Turks were of the mind to do so. The securing of the borders would have needed to come first, otherwise there would be no land left to "Turkify" anything, particularly with the treaties the Allies had agreed upon secretly, to divvy up Ottoman real estate. This is only common sense. And Leon Surmelian has indirectly borne witness to this fact, through his father, who was always right.

According to Realities Behind the Relocation, 3,400 Armenians were sent away from Surmelian's area of residence, Trebizond. (p. 131); Vahakn Dadrian states in his chapter of "America and the Armenian Genocide of 1915" that 8-10,000 lived in the city by the same name, and 55,000-60,000 in the province (p. 69), the "wholesale liquidation... all but completed" by mid-to-late August 1915 (p. 88), a good chunk of which ("nor was it minimal," p. 82) via "drowning operations."

But we know Dadrian was blowing his usual hot air from the writings of missionary Ernest C. Partridge, who wrote: "the Armenians who had lived in this territory and all the way up to the Black Sea (Trebizond), who had survived began to trek back," in "Mary Louise Graffam," Armenian Affairs, (Winter 1949-1950). If there were a true policy of "wholesale liquidation," none could have survived.

 [p. 70-72] On our way home German army trucks loaded with Turkish soldiers roared down the main street. The war had brought the first automobiles to Trebizond, and the Turks believed they were driven by shaitans, devils, but I knew better. Automobiles were like electricity, products of modern civilization, of European science.

As we passed by the French school, now converted to a Turkish military hospital, we saw a group of German army nurses, young women with pink cheeks and determined chins. They had red crosses on their white caps and arm bands. This strange Alliance of the Christian cross with the Turkish crescent disturbed and puzzled me. "Have the Germans become Mohammedans?" I asked Aunt Azniv.

"No, my dear, I don’t think so. But they might as well be," she added indignantly.

Quite the contrary, the Germans often allowed their "Christianity" to supersede their alliance with the Ottomans. One reason why race-and-religiously prejudiced Germans (like the aforementioned consul, Rossler), similarly hoodwinked by missionaries and Armenians, provided testimony for the Armenians' genocide. (An example of this attitude: The Germans treated the Turks with high contempt, and more than one told me how glad he was to meet another white man in this “native” country. "Turkey in Travail")

Note how the Turks are painted as village idiots, and even a nine-year-old Armenian boy betters them, by knowing what's up with those cars.

The next day we went to school as usual. Many boys exhibited pieces of Russian shrapnel, and asked big prices for them. I got one by trading for it a Nestlé chocolate premium, a pocket mirror with the picture of a pretty girl on the back of it, and two rare stamps. That lovely piece of jagged steel was now my prized possession. It symbolized the might of Christian Russia.

We were so restless and distracted in the classroom that even Mr. Ohanian had to rap for order and attention. Well, sooner or later the Russians would be in Trebizond. The Turks weren’t going to stop them. Why, one of those Cossacks could cut down fifty Turks!

Two months later the Russian fleet bombarded Trebizond again, and this time it seemed they would really land troops and occupy the city. The new bombardment lasted five hours. Buildings were crashing down all around us. it was a terrifying, yet glorious experience. But the Russian warships steamed away at nightfall, and from the balcony of a neighbor’s house, in the shell-proof basement of which we had taken shelter; we watched them disappear.

The next day both Turks and Christians fled to villages. We moved to Zefanoz, where my grandmother had an estate. It was a cold, rainy day in February. On reaching the village we found both of Grandmother’s houses requisitioned by a prominent Turkish official, Remzi Sami Bey. His uniformed orderlies had taken the keys from the caretaker and were busy cleaning the buildings. His wife and children were expected to arrive momentarily.

We stood in the rain, shelterless. It was revolting. But what could we do? To oppose a government requisition was a crime punishable by death. We wondered whether his wife belonged to the old bigoted or the new “enlightened” class of Turkish women.

Happily she turned out to be of the latter. She was unveiled, which meant she was emancipated and civilized. She and her two sons, riding on horseback, were accompanied by a few soldiers. Pale, slender, chic, she was extremely attractive. She told us that she was born and educated in Constantinople. We relaxed.

Her name was Selma Hanum. She apologized in exquisite Turkish phrases for the inconvenience she had caused us, and she said she did not know the houses had been requisitioned without their owner’s knowledge and consent. She was sorry. However, because of her husband’s official position, which necessitated many important conferences in their home with high German and Turkish officers, they had to live in this village, which was close enough to the city, yet out of the reach of the Russian guns. Perhaps we could rent to her the large house? Rent? We could hardly believe our eats. She was a real lady. With mutual thanks and compliments an agreement was reached.

She talked with us freely and without covering her face, for we had no menfolk with us. Father had to remain in the city to keep his pharmacy open, as required by law, and Uncle Leon was to join us in the village a few weeks later. She expressed the wish, patting my head, that Onnik and I would play with her two sons, Mahmut Bey and Shukri Bey. As their father was a bey, they were beys too, and she called them by their titles. Both were fair, good-looking boys, in European clothes. We had never played with Turkish children before, but now we shook hands and talked like friends.

Selma Hanum paid us a ceremonious visit, which we duly returned. After this exchange of diplomatic courtesies, we became good neighbors, and Onnik and I played with Shukri Bey and Mahmut Bey. Their mother would watch us approvingly. Mr. Ohanian was also in the village, and she engaged him as Turkish tutor for her sons. I was very happy because he was a poor man and had a family to support. We had no idea Turks could be so nice. Selma Hanum won us over completely. In a few weeks the winter was over. The crocus bloomed..

It is to the author's credit to relate this example of the one Turk who was "so nice." I found this statement to be a sad commentary: "We had never played with Turkish children before." Because of segregation? Because of feelings of superiority?

[p. 73-74] I awoke one morning with the gay riot of sparrows under the eaves of our roof. Onnik threw a pillow at me. I threw it back at him, and we chased each other on all fours, growling and barking like dogs.

“Stop that racket !“ Mother cried. “You can take an example from Shukri and Mahmut. See how gentlemanly, how well behaved they are.”

We had to agree that they were. We were pretty wild and rough compared to them. They wore long pants, too, though they were not older than we.

“Onnik! Zaven !“ Shukri and Mahmut called us from the lawn, standing under the windows of our bedroom. “Sabahunuz hayir olsun! May your morning be felicitous !“

“Sabahunuz hayir olsun!” we returned, leaning out the window.

Mother smiled. They were so glad to see us. It seemed they couldn’t get along without us.

"Come on down, and let’s play tip-cat," Shukri begged. He sent a small stick flying through the air with a blow of his bat. "See how I have improved !"

"You certainly have," we agreed. ~We had taught them the game. We were their only playmates in the village; they did not associate with other boys, not even Turks.

(...)

I had planted some beans under an acacia tree, and dashed over to see if they had sprouted. Clawing the earth back, I felt them with the tip of my finger. They were firm. They had taken root!

"My beans are growing !" I shouted excitedly, and grabbing Mahmut whirled around with him. He was happy too.

"We have sunk another English battleship," he said. "Father got the news last night."

"Our soldiers in the Dardanelles are eating English chocolate," his brother Shukri added, laughing.

But what was good news for them, was bad news for us. I became glum. Mahmut sang “Illeri! Illeri!” and marched across the lawn. He was always playing soldier, like me. But while I aspired to be another Napoleon, his idol was Enver Pasha. He maintained that Enver Pasha was greater than Napoleon and would clean up Russia, England, and France. I was careful not to betray my feelings too much, and did not argue with him.

After breakfast we played tip-cat with them, and then watched the Turkish recruits drilling on our lawn. Remzi Sami Bey had transformed part of our lawn into a drill ground. The Christian soldiers were not given arms any more and were herded in labor battalions.

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How mysterious. The Armenian soldiers were given arms to begin with, which is odd if the idea had been to exterminate the Armenians all along. Now why would you suppose the decision was made to take these arms away? (Hint: "At the front the Armenians used blank cartridges and deserted in droves.")

At least Surmelian treats the "labor battalion hell" issue fairly, by acknowledging the other side of the coin... a great rarity in Armenian propaganda (although he couldn't resist adding another example of his own superiority, compared with the dim-witted Turks):

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[pp. 74-5] For them life in the Turkish Army was hell. But even the Moslems suffered. I felt sorry for these recruits. They were such a miserable, submissive lot, just resigned to their kismet. They never joked or laughed. Some of them were barefooted. They lived on bean soup and brown bread, but the soup was like dishwater, and lucky was the man who fished out a bean. They were starving. This group was almost ready to go to the front; they had finally learned which side was left, and which side right. The sergeants had an awful time teaching them that. I knew the commands much better than they.

While we were watching them drill, and the air was filled with the hoarse shouts of the sergeants, the telephone rang. Telephones were strictly for high official use, and Remzi Sami Bey had installed one in the large house. This particular call was for Shukri and Mahmut, and came from another village. They ran to answer it, and then told us proudly that they had just talked to the sons of the governor-general, who was coming to spend a week with them. Their fathers were close personal friends.

The guests arrived in the afternoon, on horseback, with a few orderlies. I disliked them intensely the minute I met them. The three sons had mean faces, and were loud and spoiled. Shukri and Mahmut included us in all their plans for the week, but their guests could barely hide their contempt for us. We were nothing but giaour dogs in their eyes. We were afraid to antagonize them; otherwise we would have preferred not to have anything to do with them. The youngest, about my age, was the meanest. We played marbles and knucklebones, and he flew into a rage when he lost. In the running game, “taking prisoner,” I purposely let him catch me a few times, though I could run faster than he. When I caught him, he insisted he had not crossed my boundary. We had an argument. I was willing to let him have his way, since his father was governor-general and our lives were in his hands. I wanted to be diplomatic, since we were living in dangerous times, but I lost my patience.

"Giaour dog, you can’t talk to me like that !" he shouted in my face. "You don’t have many more days to live anyhow. We will cut your throats. We will massacre all of you. We will not leave a single Armenian alive I" He moved his hand across his throat and showed me how they would butcher us.

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Let's bear one thing in mind with this anecdote: we're dealing with children. Children have a tendency to be cruel, and these spoiled, mean Turkish kids sure sound like they were trouble.

Consider their governor dad was getting all the lowdown on Armenian treachery, that Surmelian himself provided a representation of, in his nine-year-old state. (ADDENDUM, 8-07: For example, an Oct. 1914 telegram the governor wrote, featured in the "Trabzon Facts" box below, and its original is here.) Imagine the headaches the armed Armenian rebels were causing the beleaguered Ottoman army, from behind-the-lines. The dinner table conversation in their household must not have held the traitorous Armenians in the highest esteem. Of course these kids would have been influenced, and would have treated poor little Leon with contempt. Among humans, this would be the normal REACTION to treacherous ACTION.

Now let's add the factor that these were kids, and mean-spirited ones at that. (Sons of the governor! Imagine the superiority complex.) It's natural to assume, in creepy little kid-speak, that WE WILL KILL YOU would be a natural outcome of the miserable situation.

Yet author Surmelian actually takes this outburst as "extermination" evidence!

As if the governor... even if he were made aware of secret extermination orders, assuming they were a reality... would pass on such sensitive information to his little kids! (And his "loud," big-mouthed kids, at that.)

I ask you, ladies and gentlemen, is that not mind-boggling?

But here's where Surmelian enters "unforgivable" territory:

After the spoiled brats make such an ugly comment, little Leon Surmelian turns to his good friends, Shukri and Mahmut ... and they respond with an embarrassed silence. Entirely in keeping with their "gentlemanly" character, especially in the face of the other vicious boys.

How does Surmelian interpret this silence?

He indicates to the reader that it's obvious Shukri and Mahmut have also been made aware of these extermination orders!

Yes, these little boys... seemingly devoid of prejudice, as children naturally would be before their parents or other influences corrupt them.... these little boys who played such warm, loving games with little Leon, are made out to be — in my opinion — worst monsters than the governor's creepy kids, for knowing that their Armenian friend's life would soon be kaput.

This is the nature of the evil Turks, then... according to Leon Surmelian.

 

 

FUN TRABZON ("Trebizond") FACTS

Let's take a look at other perspectives regarding Surmelian's residence!

Anti-Armenian treatment in Trabzon, circa 1880:

The British Consul in Trabzon, Alfred Bliotti, affirmed that the administration of the eastern provinces was indeed oppressive; this, however, was not directed specifically at Armenians, but, rather, was a general maladministration. He further stated that Muslims were more oppressed by this administration, for the non-Muslims could voice their complaints through the Consuls, whereas there was nobody the Muslims could complain to. Moreover, the Consuls did not see the necessity of speaking up against the treatment of Muslims.

So it wasn't just the Armenians who were "persecuted"!

Trabzon was the headquarters of the Dashnak Party

According to Louise Nalbandian, Trabzon was chosen as the center of the terrorist Dashnak party in 1890. Most leaders resided in Tiflis.

Armenian Rebels Within the Trabzon Province

The Governor of Trabzon, Jemal Azmi Bey, in a message he sent to the Ministry of the Interior on 8 October 1914, stated that "A band of 800 people comprising the Ottoman and Russian Armenians in Russia, has been armed by the Russians, and sent to the vicinity of Artvin. We have been informed that they will spread out between Artvin and Ardanuch, that their number will be increased to 7,000, and that they will be used to disturb security within the Ottoman country."

This report comes roughly a month before war began. Perhaps the Armenian resistance in Trabzon was not as inconsequential as Surmelian indicated. (Could this have been the governor with the two demon kids? Jemal Azmi Bey would be murdered soon after the war by an Armenian "Nemesis" assassin.) (ADDENDUM, 8-07: The original document.)

An Ottoman "Deportation" Order:

On 4 July 1915 (21 June 1331), the Ministry of the Interior sent a message to the provinces of Trabzon, Sivas, Diyarbekir and Elaziz, and to the sanjak of Janik: "It is ordered that the Armenians and their families whom the Government considers dangerous be removed, and that the merchants and artisans who are harmless be retained but that they be required to move out of their towns within the province."

So the official order from Talat Pasha regarding the Armenians of Trabzon was that not all the Armenians of Trabzon were to be subjected for relocation, the opposite of Surmelian's claims. Then again, Surmelian has written that his "Every Armenian without a single exception is subject to this decree" was already in effect, June 24 to July 1... meaning that there were no longer any Armenians left in the entire province (save for the too old and sick) by July 4, since Surmelian's version affected "every Armenian in the province of Trebizond." (ADDENDUM, 8-07: Other details of this document.)

(The above information is from K. Gurun's "The Armenian File.")

 [p. 85-87] We did not want the Turks to gather the crops planted by Armenian peasants. Then we broke into the orchard of Mother’s aunt. Her sour cherries were ripe, and we devoured fistfuls of them. She appeared in the doorway of her cottage, a severe old dame dressed in black.

“Hey! You good-for-nothing rascals! Get out of my orchard!” she cried. “I was keeping those cherries to make jam.”

“Jam?” We burst out laughing.

“Do you want the Turks to come and eat them?” I asked her, swinging merrily on top of a tree.

She realized that this was not an ordinary cherry season, that in a few days we would be on our way to Mesopotamia, and she need not worry any more about serving her guests the sour-cherry sherbet of which she was so proud. And, shrugging her shoulders, she went in.

On the afternoon of that same hectic day Mother received a note from Father. Unlike the other families we did not make any preparations as we did not know what Father wanted us to do. His note was laconic and gave us no hope of a possible exemption. He asked us to take only a few blankets with us and return to the city, to Aunt Shoghagat’s house.

We looked like a group of forlorn refugees as we left Zefanoz. We did not lock the door of our house, knowing the futility of doing so. Turkish peasants, sensing the rich booty in store for them, had already gathered like vultures around the village. Since we were forbidden to sell anything and had to travel to Mesopotamia on foot our possessions were of no earthly use to us anyhow. We were not so naive as to believe the government would keep them under seal, in spite of Remzi Sami Bey’s assurances.

What I regretted most leaving behind me was my potted pink carnation. I watered it for the last time and hid it on the roof. I would have asked Shukri and Mahmut to water and take care of it during my absence, and also to be kind to my beans, but their door and windows were closed again. All departures make one not only sad, but forgiving. I wanted to shake their hands and say good-bye, but they did not come out of their house.

On our way back to Trebizond we met a Turkish family, obviously going to a village for their summer vacation. The women rode astride on donkeys holding their little ones in their laps, while the men jogged along the dusty road, big checkered handkerchiefs tied around their perspiring necks. We were curious to know how the rank and file of the Turks, families like this one, took the deportation order. The women were veiled and we could not see their expressions, but the men seemed to tell us with their sad eyes: “Why should such things happen? Isn’t there room enough for all of us to live in peace? You have done us no harm, and we wish you no harm. Allah be with you.”

The city was dead. Practically all the stores were closed, the streets deserted. Now and then a Turk passed by, grave and silent. We almost wept when we saw the shutters of our pharmacy drawn too, in broad daylight. That was something we had never seen before. Poor Father! What was he thinking of, what was he doing, now that they had taken his pharmacy away from him?

Aunt Shoghagat, Father’s sister, older than Aunt Azniv, lived in a Turkish ward. We went down a very narrow street that descended like a winding stairway to the beach, a ghostly lane impervious to the sun, cool as caverns and smelling of the refuse of the sea. Life in this Turkish street was so very different, so somber and mysterious, with latticed windows and exhortations from the Koran carved over the façade of an old public fountain. Here we saw a few women fill their brass ewers, different in shape from those Christians used. They had longer and narrower necks. These women were shrouded and bundled in the mystery of the East, and only their fingertips tinged with henna were uncovered. As they walked before us clitter-clattering in their clogs we could not tell whether they were toothless old hags or beautiful girls and brides.

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To Surmelian's credit, we get an idea the Turkish "rank and file" were not filled with hatred for their Armenian neighbors. Quite the opposite impression from what Prosecutor Vahakn Dadrian would have us believe, when he stated, " There was massive, popular participation in the atrocities."

In later years, Surmelian joins the Armenian military

 [p. 218-220] He could not read and write Armenian, and conducted all his correspondence in Russian. I was willing to forgive him that; he was brought up in Russia, educated in Russian schools, and being a trained soldier, a technician, our people needed him. What disturbed me was his complete lack of national consciousness. The map in his office was not of Armenia, but of the Crimea, where General Wrangel was still holding out against the Bolsheviks. Time and again I saw him standing before that map, lost in deep meditation. He had marked with a blue string the positions of the White and Red troops on the Crimean front, and seemed to be totally indifferent to the position of the Turkish and Armenian troops. His mind obviously was in the Crimea with General Wrangel. We needed a great soldier as our Chief-of-Staff, but there was nothing great about this man.

The Minister of War was a peasant leader from Sassoun, and as such "one of ours." On the morning I first reported for duty, I took his hat and raincoat as soon as he came in and reverently hung them from a rack in his office. I noticed that his battered hat was minus its lining, and his raincoat was a shabby one, which predisposed me further in his favor. At noon I brought him his borsch and black bread, exactly the same amount and quality as received by the humblest private; I hoped he would not eat his lunch and leave it to me, but he always ate it. However, he did not impress me as the right person to occupy such a responsible position. Our republic was not fighting Kurdish guerrillas but a regular war of international importance against crack Turkish divisions commanded by a first-rate general. He did not seem to have anything to do, and neither, for that matter, was the Chief-of-Staff particularly busy. I could not understand it. I thought they should be in their offices at least ten hours a day, giving orders, making urgent telephone calls, dispatching important messages, but because of their strange inactivity I myself had very little to do.

I would look at their faces to find out how things were going for us at the front. The Minister of War had a poker face and it was impossible to know what he was thinking, and he hardly ever spoke. The most silent man I had ever met. His face betrayed no emotion of any kind. And there were absolutely no signs of worry or emotional strain on the handsome face of the Chief-of-Staff.

The Commander-in-Chief, General Nazarbekian, about whom I had read so much, was a towering man with white hair, and tired, heavy-lidded eyes, wearing his uniform of a Russian general with the blue cross of St. George hanging from his neck. There was something of hoary Ararat about him, but like the Chief-of-Staff he spoke and corresponded in Russian. Every morning, before he came to his office, I would examine his large military map on the wall—at least he had a map of Armenia—and study the tragic progress of the war. I wondered, did he suffer spiritual agonies as he set the blue string on it back every day, ceding to the Turks another slice of territory consecrated by the bones of our ancestors and the blood of our peasant soldiers? That string always moved back, never forward. I could not help thinking that he discharged his duties as commander-in-chief as would any Russian general appointed to his post. He was too old, and should have retired long ago. We needed a man who would personally lead our troops at the front, encourage them, goad them to heroic effort.

I suffered one disillusionment after another. Our army, as I saw it, was incompetent or in utterly indifferent hands. We just did not have the right men, we did not have real Armenians at the head of our troops. I could not distract myself by reading, for which I had plenty of time. I would read a page or two from Turgenev’s Fathers and Children, and Shakespeare’s Othello (in Armenian translations) mechanically, without understanding what I read, and then pause and listen to the sound of the guns on the Arax.

Kars fell. The Turkish occupation of this key fortress meant the collapse of our front, but the Chief-of-Staff did not seem to be affected by the debacle at all: he came to his office promptly at ten o’clock, drank his cocoa promptly at eleven o’clock, and left promptly at three o’clock. Things continued as usual in the ministry of war; the same old indifferent expressions on the faces of generals and colonels.

It was practically a hopeless struggle from the very beginning, but I thought with the right leadership we could have kept Kars either by a successful resistance or through the intervention of Soviet Russia, which professed friendship for our people: all we had to do was to adopt a pro-Soviet policy. Politically we were a naive and inexperienced nation.

Believing that it was a Bolshevik army attacking Kars with the purpose of handing it over to Soviet Russia, our troops, whose morale left much to be desired, were unwilling to fight their Turkish “comrades.” It was the general belief among Armenians in the Kars region that the revolutionary army of Red Turkey was attacking under the red flag of socialism, for the Turkish flag is all red, with the exception of a white crescent and star in the center. For three days these Turkish comrades robbed, raped and butchered the Armenians of Kars, not even sparing those who showed their communist membership cards. Hundreds of prisoners were stripped of their clothing and sent to Erzurum to work in labor gangs, and practically every one of them died of hunger and cold. Meanwhile there was a mass movement of Turkish men, women and children to Kars to settle in the vacant homes of massacred or exiled Armenians, and thus another part of historic Armenia was completely Turkified.

The Turks had won the war, and further resistance was futile. Armenia sued for peace. The Grand National Assembly of Ankara, speaking through its "People’s Cornmissar for Foreign Affairs," demanded, and got, half of the territory of our republic, and almost all the arms, ammunition, mules and rolling stock Armenia had.

And while negotiations for a suicidal peace treaty were going on at Alexandropol, the government sent us to Nor Bayazet, to resume our agricultural studies.

 "(The Turks) demanded, and got, half of the territory of our republic."

Would that happen to be the eastern Anatolian lands the Armenians occupied, carrying out their bloodthirsty spree of ethnic cleansing, before and after the Russians withdrew? How did these centuries-old Turkish possessions suddenly become the territory of the Armenian Republic? Is it because Woodrow Wilson decreed it?

Lands of "Historic Armenia"? What we know as Armenia today only became populated with Armenians circa the 1820s, thanks to the Russian policy of "kick the Muslims out and put the Christians in." Maps of ancient Armenia did not refer to what we know today as Armenians; they were one of many tribes, known as the Haik. (Already we know from the name that "Armenia" stood for something different.) Only around a half century before the birth of Christ did reference to the "Armenians" as we know them, begin to appear. The Haik emigrated from elsewhere, most likely the Balkan region, or nearby:

"The Armenians are the former inhabitants of today's Switzerland"

Ruppen Courian, Armenian author of Promartyrs de la Civilization (1964, p. 27);

As far as the Armenians who were butchered at Kars.... who are we going to believe, a Dashnak Armenian propagandist like Leon Surmelian, or American eyewitnesses who were there at the time? Anti-Turkish Near East Relief representatives, no less, who wrote accounts as the following:

"All the Americans in Kars are well, and the Turkish Army is full of concern for us and accords us all considerations. We have been given permission to continue our activities as before. The Turkish soldiers are well disciplined and there have been no massacres." 
Edward Fox, District Commander N.E.R. Kars

Halfway down this page, detailing the proclamation of the Treaty of Alexandropol-Gumru (See under "Appendix II"), we are told the Armenian Dashnak government turned everything over "to the Supreme Commander of the Army to which office is appointed War Minister Dro." Yet Surmelian alludes to a different war minister in the second paragraph of the previous excerpted section. (For more excerpts regarding this period of Surmelian's life, see "Appendix I" of the indicated above link.)

Surmelian was expert in the art of fiction writing, to have written a book on the topic.

Two fun facts regarding the author. In the United States, Surmelian worked as a professor of English, just like Peter Balakian. He wrote at least one book on the fundamentals of good writing. Judging by his authorship of "I Ask You Ladies and Gentlemen," he was one fine writer. The man deserves much credit for his mastery over a foreign tongue, given that English was not one of his native languages.

Secondly, this book was the "final straw" that flipped Vahakn Dadrian's lid and allowed for the preeminent prosecutor to devote his life to the "genocide" with such zeal. The first of the three books that drove Dadrian mad was another work of fiction, The Forty Days of Musa Dagh. As James Mandalian rightly called it in his 1957 Armenian Review article, Surmelian was no historian. How appropriate that Dadrian was so inspired by two works of pseudo history, to go on and offer the world his own brand of "history."

 

Leon Surmelian might have had a "gentle, civilized" side to him as a human being, allowing him some restraint that is atypical in the annals of "Armenian Oral History." However, he couldn't restrain himself from piling on the propagandistic poop, making it seem all the more believable, given his "fair" style. Some might say he had the right; his family did go through a terrifying experience, and at least his very decent-sounding parents seem to have been killed.

Had he a stronger code of morality, he would have seen his people had no one but themselves to blame.... like, the parents of Edward Tashji, who went through similar despair as their fellow Ottoman-Armenians, in the hellhole of the war years. But Leon Surmelian could not be expected to see where the responsibilities lay. In this book, he has revealed the attitude he had, even as a young boy. The Armenians were under the "Turkish yoke," and were entitled to perform their treachery. He openly admits, not without pride, whose side he was on during the war. He really thought the Armenians were entitled to openly applaud the enemies of his country, as he did with the Cossack officers while the Turkish soldiers were gnashing their teeth. (P. 68.) What nation on earth would tolerate such an attitude among its citiizens?

if you betray your country, there is going to be a price to pay — it's as simple as that. But Leon Surmelian felt his Armenians were exempt from this rule. He felt free to lay on thick the propagandistic principles of his cause, disguising some as actually having been experienced by his nine-year self, sometimes to the minutest detail. The perfect grounds to sucker his unwary reader.

(By the way, should you open up the Tashji link directly above, note the real Turkish word to indicate one's homeland in the second-to-last paragraph. The translation is "motherland." Sneaky Surmelian, fully aware of this word, preferred to use "fatherland," a word that brought "genocide" to mind for 1945 readers.)

We don't know how Surmelian's family members died, assuming they did. (It's possible these details were in the book, and I missed them.) The harsh conditions affecting all Ottomans — such as famine and disease — probably claimed their lives, and not outright massacre. If they were massacred, we don't know who the culprits were, as much as Surmelian prefers the finger to be pointed at the gendarmes. Regardless, contrary to Surmelian's desire to have his readers believe the Armenians were exterminated by Enver Pasha, we know for a fact the relocation policy ended in early 1916. (Corroborated by Ambassador Morgenthau himself, in a March 1916 letter by Vahan Cardashian to Lord Bryce, as shown above.) We know a million Armenians survived, according to the Armenians... of a pre-war population of some1.5 million. If the idea was extermination, the relocated Armenians would have been ripe pickings. .. exactly like the defenseless Muslim villagers were at the hands of the Armenians occupying eastern Anatolia. There could not have been 625,000 (actually, up to 644,900, including the unaccounted) postwar Armenians in the empire, just before the Sevres Treaty, according to the Armenian Patriarch.... added to the hundreds of thousands of Ottoman-Armenians who left on their own accord. (500,000 refugees in Transcaucasia alone, by Richard Hovannisian's count.)

On p. 63 of his book, Surmelian wrote that his father thought "the Europeanized Turks were far more sinister than the conservative, old-school Turks." In this fashion, since his father was always right, Surmelian might have been influenced with his strategy. Writing in his "gentle, civilized" style, he became far more sinister than the typical Armenians who wear their racism on their sleeves.

While preparing this page, I ran into an eyewitness account from the "other side" that has been a part of TAT for a while. It's from a Turk who was around the same age as Leon Surmelian, at the time. Why is this account believable? Because, as with the rest of "Turkish Oral History," the Turks preferred to — in Surmelian's words — keep "their secrets to themselves." These real eyewitnesses were content to only tell their stories to close ones, if at all, and were content to take their memories with them to their graves. In general,, they didn't go out and broadcast their horrible experiences to the world, as did Leon Surmelian and so many other Armenians, in keeping with their "genocide program." Generally, whomever recorded the few examples of Turkish Oral History did so as an afterthought, and only in response to the Armenians' Con Job. (The Armeno-Turkish dynamic at play, as usual: Action... Reaction.) In other words, these people did not go out of their way to tell their experiences; it was a "by the way" thing, when someone doing research proposed the idea. These people had no agenda, and thus would have had no reason to tell nothing but the truth. (Often corroborated by genuine eyewitness accounts of the Armenians' allies, the Russians... far more legitimate than their "Armenian" eyewitness counterparts, the bigoted missionaries and foreign consuls, who relayed their opinions through hearsay and fabrications.)

A Massacre at Van