Dadrian writes: "Deniers are wont to withhold evidence; deniers are wont to destroy evidence. Therefore, a scholar of the Armenian Genocide has to be by necessity not only a scholar but also a detective."

A very successful tactic of the Armenians is to use the label "denier" to deny the validity of those who speak the truth, capitalizing on Holocaust-speak, attempting to portray those who say otherwise as neo-Nazi zealots. This is an effective way to stifle academic debate, the last thing those such as Vahakn Dadrian are interested in. The fact of the matter is, if there are deniers afoot, Vahakn Dadrian is one such denier... he denies the Armenian “Genocide” did not happen. Certainly he qualifies for what constitutes a denier; as he instructs us; he is wont to withhold evidence; and he is wont to destroy evidence. And if a "scholar of the Armenian Genocide has to be by necessity not only a scholar but also a detective," at least Prosecutor Dadrian has fulfilled the abilities of a detective... since he has searched under every rock for many years, supported by salary and generous grants, attempting to detect ONLY the hoped-for evidence to prove his case, and closing his eyes to the facts that turn his case on its ear. He should think twice before he labels himself a "scholar"... but only a man of honor would feel such shame.

Dadrian continues:

"Therefore, let me briefly outline the specific elements of denial, because, before a crime of such magnitude as the Armenian Genocide can be documented, you have to confront and overcome the specific elements of the denial.

The Turks — past and present — deny that the Armenians were subjected to massacres, but rather they were subjected to deportation. Number two, the point is made that not all Armenians of the Ottoman Empire but only a segment of the Armenian population, specifically in the war zones in the eastern provinces, were subjected to deportation. Number three, the Armenians provoked the authorities to take drastic, draconian measures that ended in tragedy, but that the provocation came from the Armenian side."

Let us correct the putative professor by reminding him of the meaning of the word "deportation": it means banishment outside a country’s borders. Since the Armenians were moved to areas that were part of the country, the correct word to use would be "resettlement" or "relocation." "Deportation" sounds less benign... that is why it’s the favorite word of the genocide fanciers. If those like Dadrian held the truth as priority, he would pay attention to such details.

And let’s clarify his first point: truth-seekers (and not just "Turks") do NOT deny Armenians were massacred. What is at issue is whether the Armenians were subjected to systematic extermination. The aforementioned Professor Yapp, in his critique of Dadrian’s lack of ethics, put it succinctly:

"It's probably unnecessary to remind readers that the contrary view maintained by Turkish historians and by many other historians of the modern Middle East is that although massacres of the Ottoman Armenians undoubtedly took place, the available evidence suggests that those chiefly responsible were local Kurdish tribes and brigands and that there was some connivance even participation by local Ottoman officials, but that the central Ottoman government did not order or plan the 1915 massacres..."

As for Dadrian’s second and third points he tries to present as untrue, that only Armenians of the eastern provinces were subjected to the relocation policy and that the Armenians provoked such measures... by this stage, both contentions are supported by voluminous evidence that has nothing to do with "Turkish propaganda." Of course, regarding the second, Armenians in the central region of the nation were also uprooted for displacement. However, the rebellious Armenian network stretched far and wide; it wasn’t only the Armenians of the east. Armenians in the west also gave support to the invading Allies in Gallipoli, by poisoning food supplies of the Turkish army and revealing strategic information to the British. It’s a wonder why all of the Armenians were not subjected to be resettled, and it is a fact that some 200,000 Armenians of the west were exempt. What kind of a genocide policy is that? Did Hitler exempt the Jews of Berlin?

"In August 1914...the leaders of the Turkish-Armenian section of the Dashnagtzoutune did not carry out their promise of loyalty to the Turkish cause... and a call was sent for Armenian volunteers to fight the Turks on the Caucasus front."

 K.S. Papazian, Patriotism Perverted (pg. 37)

  Since he tells us three days before war broke out mobilization of the nation’s men took place, let’s remind the prosecutor that five days after Russia declared war on the Ottoman Empire (November 7, 1914), the slavishly pro-Armenian New York Times featured the article: “ARMENIANS FIGHTING TURKS
Besieging Van—Others operating in Turkish Army's Rear”... reporting on the first of several Armenian revolts in Van.

The Armenians followed the Hunchak/Dashnak program to a tee, attacking the moment their country was engaged in war, and in a struggle with their country’s mortal enemy, among other world superpowers. The Armenians capitalized on mainly Russian-financed arms (to the tune of 242,900 rubles as the intial payment... “Where is going to come the weaponry?” indeed! And what of the wealthy Armenians themselves, armed to the teeth with their Mausers, and other sophisticated weaponry?) stored in every corner of the empire. Why, even Dadrian’s adored Ambassador Morgenthau wrote (in his execrable "Ambassador Morgenthau's Story"):

"...In the early part of 1915, therefore, every Turkish city contained thousands of Armenians who had been trained as soldiers and who were supplied with rifles, pistols, and other weapons of defense. The operations at Van once more disclosed that these men could use their weapons to good advantage..."

Armenia’s first Prime Minister, Hovhannes Katchaznouni, was in a better position to know the truth as he recorded in his 1923 manifesto:

"...When Turkey had not yet entered the war...Armenian volunteer groups began to be organized with great zeal and pomp in Trans Caucasia. In spite of the decision taken a few weeks before at the General Committee in Erzurum, the Dashnagtzoutune actively helped the organization of the aforementioned groups, and especially arming them, against Turkey. In the Fall of 1914, Armenian volunteer groups were formed and fought against the Turks..."

ADDENDUM, 12-07: Armenian possession of arms went well before the pre-WWI phase; Dadrian's fellow "Tweedledum," Richard Hovannisian, asserted "that the Armenians possessed weapons was not astounding: they nad carried arms for decades to defend their homes and fields from depredation." (Armenia on the Road to Independence, 1967, p.53)

Yet, Dadrian capitalizes on the poor old men, women and children bunk left at the mercy of the massacring Turkish barbarian story. Little does he mention many of the conscripted Armenians traitorously deserted or otherwise sabotaged the efforts of their desperate nation’s army. Nowhere do we hear word of the 200,000 Armenian fighters (who all originated from the Ottoman Empire, at one point or another) Boghos Nubar bragged about in his 1919 Times of London letter. These were some of the Armenians who ruthlessly had their way with the Turkish/Muslim old men, women and children who were left behind, when all Turkish men were mobilized into the army, in a desperate life and death struggle against world superpowers, on multiple fronts.

What kind of a man is Vahakn Dadrian? How could he not know any of these facts, all from pro-Armenian sources with no "Turkish propaganda" in sight? Why would he still bald-facedly lie in front of a Harvard audience, and why was this Harvard audience so ignorant they didn’t pelt this conscience-stricken "scholar" with eggs?

1892 Dashnak Charter, Method #5:
"To use every means to arm the people."

 The master deceiver moves on to prove his beloved genocide with "compelling evidence":

What are the specific elements of compelling evidence? There are four of them. Number one: The evidence has to be reliable. By this I mean that the source has to be more or less unimpeachable. For instance, to illustrate the point: American Consul Leslie Davis from Kharpert is graphically describing the atrocities in Kharpert province; he had taken a Turk to be a guide to him, and it was this Moslem Turk who showed all the spots, all the sites of atrocities while providing graphic details. To me, this is reliable. I would be skeptical if his guide and informant were an Armenian. But here is authentic Turkish evidence supplied to an American consul. That I consider adequately reliable.

I don’t pretend to be a scholar, nor can I claim the advantage Mr. Dadrian has had for years, immersing himself in this topic, digging up every detail to throw a smokescreen of doubt upon the unwary, supported by huge grants of money. What do I know about Leslie Davis? Only what I’ve read in Armenian sources. On the TAT site’s Leslie Davis page, I learned ... assuming what is said in the Armenian site was true... that Davis had an Armenian assistant, just like Morgenthau. I don’t think any of the U.S. consuls were objective men. They were religious and racist bigots, possibly under the influence of Big Boss Henry Morgenthau to make the Turk look as hideous as possible.

How does Dadrian know a Turk guided Leslie Davis? I’d assume that information would have only come from Leslie Davis himself, but Leslie Davis was not an impartial man. (My information as to whom accompanied Mr. Davis comes from Armenian sources; one stated he was alone, and another stated he was with a doctor and a photographer.) And what if a Turk guided Leslie Davis? I believe Leslie Davis came upon corpses, and it’s likely they could have been Armenian corpses. All of the Ottoman Empire was a graveyard. There were Armenian corpses, and there were Turkish/Muslim corpses, from the over one-half million the Armenians slaughtered, with a little help from the Russians. (In districts the Turks were in control, thousands of Turks were dying daily of starvation... according to Henry Morgenthau.) How do we make the connection that these Armenian corpses were products of a government sponsored, systematically conducted genocide?

Leslie Davis

Especially from Leslie B. Davis, who also wrote of finding what he counted to be 10,000 bodies of Armenians lying in a lake, the same magical 10,000 number given by others, a missionary woman in particular.... and who dumbly or propagandistically thought “only around 8,000 Armenians survived the massacre of 1915. " Yes, according to Mr. Davis, only 8,000 Armenians survived, if he used the word "massacre" as not one particular incident but somewhat synonymous to the not-yet-invented word "genocide."

ADDENDUM, 12-07: A more detailed look on Davis and the corpses may be read here.

Continuing with Dadrian’s "compelling evidence":

The second element in my definition of compelling evidence is what I call "explicitness." Was it deportation? Or was it the destruction of the deportee population? My research suggests categorically that the deportation was a cover to enact the intended goal of deportation, which was the destruction of the deportee population.

To answer Prosecutor Dadrian’s first question, no, it wasn’t "deportation"; we just covered that. More importantly, if the relocation was a front to destroy the "deportee population," why did so many survive? Arnold Toynbee figured 500,000 were up and running in 1916’s "Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire," and Morgenthau revealed in his private diary (not his book, of course) the same number "at Zor were fairly well satisfied; that they have already settled down to business and are earning their livings." (Morgenthau would later be quoted by Vahan Cardashian, in a March 3, 1916 letter to Lord Bryce, as stating that the "genocide" process was over by then, that the government's attitude was "passive" toward the Armenians, and that good numbers of them could be found in nearly all the internal cities of the empire. [The Armenian Review, Winter 1957, p. 107]). Even Peter Balakian today admits one million Armenians survived (up from Leslie Davis’ 8,000), from a pre-war population provided by neutral sources ranging from 1 million to 1.6 million. Those Turks must have been really incompetent to have let so many survive, if their aim was “the destruction of the deportee population.”

Preceding his fourth element of "verifiability," Dadrian informs us:

The third element in my definition of compelling evidence is "incontestability." I think incontestability applies largely to official documents, and I will briefly explain to you German, Austrian, official Turkish documents which attach extraordinary significance to the evidence in terms of incontestability.

The reader can turn to my thoughts on the validity of German and Austrian sources in The Germans.  Let’s keep in mind Dadrian’s favorite Germans were mainly men who were in the position of Ambassador Morgenthau: diplomats and consuls, all relying on hearsay and their own private Christian prejudices. (Although one doesn’t have to be Christian to be prejudiced against Turks, as Henry Morgenthau provides sad proof.)

To strengthen his case, Dadrian excludes from his body of evidence Armenian survivor accounts and documents emanating from the archives of the enemies of the Ottoman Empire, the British, French, and Russian. (Let’s not forget the Americans; the Americans were not officially at war with the Ottomans, but for all intents and purposes, were the "enemy" as well. For example, Henry Morgenthau, as a supposed "neutral," freely provided strategic information to the British.)

I guess that means Dadrian can feel free to use the "evidence" of the German, Johannes Lepsius. Since Lepsius was German, I suppose his testimony must have been incontestable. Really, what is the difference between a Lepsius, and propagandists like Morgenthau or Toynbee? It might be argued Lepsius breathed even more hateful fire than the latter two gentlemen.

 Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.
Groucho Marx

 Why are these documents mostly invalid? Even Dadrian provides a clue:

"When Turkey at the end of October 1918 laid prostrate and asked for a suspension of hostilities, the victorious allies — France, Britain, and Italy — stipulated, among others, a condition to postwar Turkish authorities... They said, ‘Unless you prosecute and punish the authors of Armenian deportations and massacres, the conditions of the impending peace will be very severe and harsh.’ In part, to accommodate the victorious allies, successive postwar Turkish governments established court martials in Istanbul, Turkey."

IMAGINE! Here is a defeated country being threatened with the most severe conditions unless they point the finger at some nogoodniks. There was almost no due process with these courts, the main purpose for which was political retribution. As "An Unjust Trial" states, "With almost no presentation of evidence, the courts found nearly every defendant guilty as charged."

Or, as Professor Yapp wrote: "The 1919 courts martial, however cannot be taken entirely at face value because they were conducted by a government which was anxious to pin any blame on the CUP leaders..."

Who in their right minds would conclude the findings of these courts to be mostly valid? Those who do so must also argue courts in Vichy France under Nazi occupation were no less legal.

And the irony is, despite the convictions (of which a good few were executed), and despite the efforts of the puppet Ottoman Turks to toady to the British, representatives of this figurehead government went on to sign the Sèvres Treaty... conditions so “severe and harsh” (making the Versailles Treaty, with unfair stipulations laying the stage for Hitler’s rise, look like a picnic), they spelled the death sentence for the centuries-old empire.

As an example of the validity of these documents, constituting the life blood of Dadrian’s body of genocidal evidence, Dadrian provides an example of dispatches between two military officers:

The military commander of Bogazliyan, a district in Ankara province, sends a cipher telegram to his superior in Ankara, Colonel Recayi. He says, "Today we dispatched so many Armenians to their destination."

Colonel Recayi, pretending not to understand, wires back saying, "What do you mean, 'dispatched to their destination?'" The answer comes within an hour: "They were killed off" (Katledildiler).

This is the first I’m hearing of this episode, and all we have is the surface explanation of Mr. Dadrian, a man who rejoices in surface explanations and hates to dig deep...as a real scholar would. However, the one thing that caught my eye was Dadrian’s "editorial comment" regarding the superior commander’s reply: "pretending not to understand."

Why would Colonel Recayi pretend not to understand? If both officers were following extermination orders, as is Dadrian’s thesis, what were these soldiers doing? Playing games?

Why would the colonel “pretend”?

Do we know how these Armenians were killed off? Were they killed by attacks on their caravan by bandits or Kurds, or were they killed “My Lai” style, by renegade Turkish troops? Dadrian attempts to fit the evidence to the crime by daring to inform us what was going on in Colonel Recayi’s mind... “pretending not to understand.”

 

 MORE ON THE KANGAROO COURTS

An ideologue takes evidence wherever he can find it, and may invent the evidence he cannot find. He does not look too closely at the evidence, perhaps because he is afraid of what he will find. As an example, the ideologues contend that the trials of Ottoman leaders after World War I prove that the Turks were guilty of genocide. They do not mention that the so-called trials reached their verdicts when the British controlled Istanbul. They do not mention that the courts were in the hands of the Quisling Damad Ferid Pasha government, which had a long record of lying about its enemies, the Committee of Union and Progress. They do not mention that Damad Ferid would do anything to please the British and keep his job. They do not mention that the British, more honest than their lackeys, admitted that they could not find evidence of any "genocide."

They do not mention that the defendants were not represented by their own lawyers. They do not mention that crimes against Armenians were only a small part of a long list of so-called crimes, everything the judges could invent. The ideologues do not mention that the courts should best be compared to those convened by Josef Stalin. The ideologues do not mention this evidence.

Justin McCarthy, March 24, 2005, in a speech before the Turkish Grand National Assembly.

 Another senator, Resid Akif, claims to have seen a “secret” CUP order to kill the Armenians, along with Talat Pasha’s official order to relocate. He also says he came across these documents “one day in (his) office” as a member “of the first postwar Ottoman government.” Akif is giving this testimony on November 21, 1918.

So... how many hours ago did the war end, anyway? When could he have possibly come across this secret order — yesterday, or the day before? What prevented him from taking such GENUINE PROOF from his nearby office and presenting it as evidence?

Was Resid Akif, despite Dadrian’s attempts to make him sound like such a statesman of integrity, one of the many government members willing to say anything and everything to save his own neck?

This is the kind of nagging question that’s called “looking beneath the surface”... which is what any real scholar would do. Why didn’t Dadrian ask himself, now wait a minute. How come this man (with the “most remarkable revelation”) who has been a member of the postwar government for the shortest time manage to provide the hard goods he came across so very recently?

ADDENDUM, 12-07: Guenter Lewy on Akif (The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide, p. 89):

Unfortunately, the existence of this circular order depends upon Resit Akif Pasha's word, which must be considered suspect. His speech was part of the elaborate propaganda campaign waged by the postwar Turkish governments that sought to heap all blame for the Armenian massacres upon the CUP leadership and thus forestall the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire. This political purpose becomes clear in the remarks immediately following his mention of the secret circular order. Resit Akif here castigates the central committee of the CUP as a "vile and tyrannical body" that was more influential than the official government. This committee "alone is the cause of the immense catastrophes befalling this innocent state and nation, [and] emerges as the singular cause of the slaughter" (my emphasis),129 Resit Akif never produced the circular order implicating the CUP leaders in the massacre of the Armenian convoys. The mere allegation that such an order was issued can hardly be considered "legal evidence," as Dadrian has claimed. (Holdwater: Footnote 129 details the "official transcript of the Ottoman Senate." Note how Dadrian left out the parts that would have allowed readers to cast doubt on Akif's integrity, using only the parts, as usual, that served Dadrian's agenda.)

Then there was testimony by Trabzon deputy and lawyer Hafiz Mehmed on December 11, 1918, attesting to the drowning of Armenians.

Well, there was drowning of Armenians. Nobody’s saying crimes were not committed against the Armenians. What Mehmed testified was probably true.

However, if he saw these “personally ... with my own eyes in the port city of Ordu,” and assuming Ordu is in the province of Trabzon... and if he was the deputy of Trabzon (that is, the official government representative).... is he saying people involved with the government committed these drownings, which would give better credence to claims of government-sponsored genocide? Since he sounds like he was surprised to see these drownings, and we are to assume Mr. Mehmed had no knowledge of government-issued orders, why didn’t he put a stop to it?

That doesn’t add up, does it? If Mr. Mehmed, as province deputy, had knowledge of possible orders, then he would be guilty of the sort of massacres the postwar government was looking to hang folks of the past administration with. The last thing he’d want to do, then, would be to “confess.” Or was he yet another of these postwar puppet Turks eager to participate in the massacre witchhunt?

These questions must be asked, because THIS WAS NOT A LEGITIMATE GOVERNMENT.

Only a Vahakn Dadrian can give credence to the babblings of men in charge of an enemy-occupied government, soon willing to sell out their entire nation to the enemy.

 

Prime Minister Said Halim Pasha. Assassinated by two Nemesis Armenians in Rome, a month or so after his Oct. 31 return from Malta, on Dec. 6.

   Said Halim Pasha is quoted as having said: "The Turkish government, my cabinet, we gave orders for deportation only, but the order for deportation was transformed into operations of killing which we never agreed upon." Dadrian adds: “...the order of deportation was transformed into an order of killing by dubious organizations, and (Said Halim) mentioned the Special Organization, Teskilati Mahsusa.”

(I wonder if that’s the best evidence implicating the “bad boy” of the Armenian “Genocide,” what was then the counterpart for the Turkish secret service.)

Said Halim was the grand vizier (the counterpart for "prime minister") of the CUP government. I don't know where this quotation is from... another source tells us he was tried by the postwar puppet administration from April 27 or 28-June 26 1919 (this was the main trial where the other CUP leaders were tried in absentia), and some sort of judgment was rendered on July 5 (Enver, Talat and Cemal got death; presumably, Said Halim Pasha got a lengthy prison sentence, like the rest.) So perhaps this quote was from this trial. Said Halim Pasha was scooped away by the British for their own trial, the Malta Tribunal... the one where the British could find no evidence, and thus the British very likely saved the Grand Vizier's life. (For a brief time after his release; he was assassinated by two Armenians in Rome soon after.)

But if Said Halim Pasha said the government gave orders for deportation only (and you can bet the Turkish word he used was probably "tehcir," which doesn't mean "deportation." Dadrian is unscrupulously behind many of these translations), but then forces acted on their own to commit crimes, how in the world does that prove genocide?

Dadrian quotes Halim as saying that these official orders were "transformed" into killing. Dadrian then editorializes by telling us Halim "mentioned" the Special Organization. So the implication is that Halim placed blame on the Special Organization. But perhaps Halim mentioned the Special Organization in another context, and Dadrian tried to tie it in with his genocide... as Dadrian is known for making assertions having nothing to do with the original sources. Only the original quote will tell the tale. Unfortunately, the context of the quoted remarks has been lost. Dadrian is probably basing his conclusions on what was printed in the official gazette, where quotations could have been incomplete, out-of-context, or even distorted, given that the puppet Ottoman administration was not always on the level.

But even if Said Halim Pasha said these things exactly as Dadrian would have us believe (and the only incriminating thing the pasha had to offer was his "mention" of the Special Organization; otherwise, he claimed flat out that the government never "agreed" upon any killing operations), was the pasha reporting the truth, or was he making a concession...  desperately trying to appease the British so that they would treat the Turks kindly at the upcoming peace conference?

Ibrahim, wartime minister of justice, is quoted as having been pressured by Enver Pasha “to release from the prisons of the Ottoman Empire” to serve as guardians of the Armenian caravans, which Vahakn “Mr. Scholar” Dadrian helpfully shorthands for us as “massacre duty against the Armenians.”

Dr. Gwynne Dyer, letter, Middle Eastern Studies 9 (1973): 379

 Definitely the Ottomans need to be held accountable for assigning criminals to guard the defenseless Armenians in the caravans... some of whom took terrible advantage of the Armenians. But here’s where Dadrian once again deviates from good scholarship.

"...The domestic situation was deplorable: all over Turkey thousands of the populace were daily dying of starvation; practically all able-bodied men had been taken into the army, so that only a few were left to till the fields..." is what Henry Morganthau offered in his ghostwritten book, Ambassador Morgenthau's Story.

Enver Pasha had committed an incredible military blunder (at Sarikamish) by launching a counter-attack against the Russians in bitter winter ... at the beginning of the war... that caused the loss of 65,000-90,000 Turkish soldiers, with barely a shot having been fired. They had been converted to “snow statues.”

The east was therefore wide open to the Russians at the gate. The manpower shortage was more than critical. The enemy needed to be fought in multiple fronts at the west and south, as well.

Add to this chaos the Armenians’ well-timed treachery, posing as a significant military threat from behind-the-lines. The Armenians needed to be moved out of the way. The bankrupt Ottomans were not prepared for this colossal task in the midst of their life-and-death struggle... but if the Armenians hadn’t revolted (and fired the first shot), there would have been no “deportation.”

The Ottomans needed manpower to implement this relocation program. All men were desperately needed at the fronts.

Therefore, was the call to unleash these prison lowlifes a diabolical act, or an act of necessity?

(Let's also bear in mind the following, as Prof. Guenter Lewy wrote: "Use of convicts for military duty in wartime had precedent including use by U.S. and British armies. During World War I, U.S. courts released almost 8,000 men convicted of serious offenses on condition of their induction into military service." See link below.)

There are accounts that many gendarmes died, trying to protect the Armenians from bandit attacks (the district attorney of the Tehlirian trial provided one such example, above). How could even one gendarme have died in such a manner, if his government’s policy was to exterminate the Armenians? How many SS men died, trying to protect Jews from other SS men?

And why would the bankrupt nation have gone through the vast expense of the relocations.... the equivalent of today’s millions of dollars... if the idea was to kill the Armenians? Does that make any sense, especially regarding a government that had so little money in its treasury? There were much cheaper ways to exterminate... as the Armenians proved, by killing Turks in or near the spot of their villages.

The holes in Armenian “Genocide” theory are plentiful. Yet, Mr. Dadrian is actually invited to Harvard University and treated seriously.

It’s mind-boggling.

The Armenians from Hopa to Erzurum to Hinis to Van were not the only Armenians who did not serve. The 10s of thousands of Armenians of Sivas who formed chette bands did not serve. The rebels in Zeytun and elsewhere in Cilicia did not serve. The Armenians who fled to the Greek islands or to Egypt or Cyprus did not serve. More precisely, many of these Armenian young men did serve, but they served in the armies of the Ottomans' enemies. They did not protect their homeland, they attacked it.

Justin McCarthy, March 24, 2005, in a speech before the Turkish Grand National Assembly.

 

Vahakn Dadrian has an orgasmic fit:

And therefore they persuaded their colleagues to release from the prisons of the Ottoman empire the most bloodthirsty criminals. For this class of criminals some authors used the word kanli katil. What did they do? They sent to every prison teams consisting of three members: a member of the department of war, a member of the interior department, and, most significant, the third member was a physician, whose job it was to select the most savage-looking criminals for merciless behavior in massacre. So they went from prison to prison, these teams, and selected convicts from the various prisons of the Ottoman Empire.

Brother!

Perhaps Dadrian got his idea from 1968's "Tepepa ... Viva la revolución" (BLOOD AND GUNS), with Orson Welles as a corrupt Mexican official

Do you know why a physician would be necessary to select the most savage-looking criminals? Is that part of a doctor’s training, to be able to tune in how savage a person is, just from his or her appearance? Would these doctors have been able to single out handsome serial killer Ted Bundy as among the most potentially violent?

Where does Dadrian come up with his little flights of fancy?

What Dadrian has suggested here is so embarrassingly ridiculous, let’s examine in more detail.

Employing Lombroso's "Criminal Man" theories, the doctor professes to identify crooks from "cheekbones... earlobes... teeth." The prisoner asks, "What about the rear end"? CLICK HERE or on the picture to listen!

We know he doesn’t have the evidence for what he claims... if there was any such document outlining genocide policy, that would be exactly the kind of smoking gun the pro-Armenians have been dizzily looking for these many years. For lack of evidence, Dadrian offers his opinion. What does he base this opinion on? Is he just imagining things? Or did he find an account from one of the puppet postwar Ottoman officials? If he found one such kangaroo court opinion from a desperate Turk who was far away from the action, how could Dadrian dare to present this as a full-blown, factual policy? A real scientist would need to come up with a good several, reliable accounts before coming with such a conclusion.

Moreover, let’s examine the absurdity of the idea of recruiting these sociopathic psychopaths to conduct this supposed policy of exterminating all the Armenians subjected to the march.

Are all thieves dishonorable? Isn’t it possible you or I could wind up in prison for reasons beyond our control, even though we know ourselves to be good people? That is, would everyone from the prison be an automatic candidate to savagely and sadistically kill?

Lee Marvin

Do you remember the movie, THE DIRTY DOZEN? Yes, it was fiction... although I believe there were true episodes of WWII missions where prisoners were recruited, which inspired the idea for the movie. The idea behind the film was that the most ornery, savage, uncontrollable criminals were rounded up by Lee Marvin, and shaped up into a fighting force. Yes, there was a crazy or two in their midst (Telly Savalas, in one of his greatest roles, in particular)... but, ultimately, these anti-social misfits were transformed into a more-or-less functional band, some becoming proud and patriotic.

Yes, it was fiction. But are you telling me the human beings in a prison would be incapable of acting in such a manner? Are you going to tell me every one is going to be a Hannibal Lecter, eager to rape and kill the poor Armenians they have been assigned to guard?

The manpower shortage was so critical, I recall an example where an Armenian caravan was guarded by only two gendarmes. If these men came from the prisons and were so wild and amoral, and there was no "Lee Marvin" to hold them in check... what would have prevented them from saying, To hell with this! I'm going home...

(Sounds like that's what might have happened in the real-life counterpart to the film, where American convicts were dropped into occupied France. They sat out the war in Spain!)

Of course, there must have been evil men among these gendarmes, if they happened to be criminals. But to make the conclusion that they would have all been natural killers (the pickpockets? The embezzlers? The grifters?) demonstrates how warped the mind of a Vahakn Dadrian can be. What a giant leap to presume all the Armenians who were part of the caravans were subjected for extermination, when we’ve seen propagandists like Toynbee and Morgenthau on record, saying the majority have survived. When we have accounts from even those such as Peter Balakian’s BLACK DOG OF FATE, reporting how two Armenians from the same march would run into each other halfway across the world years later, in Saks Department Store in New York City.

If we are to believe Vahakn Dadrian’s theory of how the criminals among the gendarmes... the gendarmes, a good number of whom lost their lives trying to protect the Armenians from bandit attacks.... were all part of a gigantic killing machine, even Leslie Davis’ silly conclusion of only 8,000 Armenians having survived would sound like an exaggeration.

  ...[T]he victorious Allies considered (the military tribunals of 1919-20) a travesty of justice. The trials, British high commissioner S.A.G. Calthorpe wrote to London, are "proving to be a farce and injurious to our own prestige and to that of the Turkish government." In the view of Commissioner John de Robeck, the tribunal was such a failure "that its findings cannot be held of any account at all." When the British government considered holding trials of alleged Ottoman war criminals in Malta, it declined to use any evidence developed by the 1919-20 Ottoman tribunals.

Prof. Guenther Lewy, "Revisiting the Armenian Genocide," Middle East Quarterly, Fall 2005

 

This is what Dadrian does, in typically sneaky Armenian style. He presents a surface “fact” and expects us to accept it on its own merit. Not so fast. A real scholar has to examine the facts backward, forward, and inside out.

This is why arguments for the Armenian “Genocide” have holes for Gibraltar to slip through. Pro-Armenians only want you to look at incriminating conclusions and want you to swallow it on face value. See, these people were killed... it must have been a genocide. Forget about what happened yesterday, we only need to look at what happened at the end, and in ways that have yet to be determined. (As one example, the 150,000-odd Armenians Prof. Hovannisian reported [in his 1967 book] died of famine, while accompanying the Russian retreats, are part of the Armenians who were “massacred.” So were the thousands who died similarly while accompanying the French retreats at Marash). As Prof. Yapp stated above, in his criticism of Dadrian’s faulty methodology, “What is missing is any adequate recognition of the circumstances in which these events took place; the surge of Armenian nationalism, the ambitions of Russia, the fears of the Ottomans and the panic and indiscipline of war. Dadrian is so obsessed by his theory of the long plan that he too often overlooks the elements of the contingent....”

Prosecutor Dadrian wrapped up his Harvard lecture by concluding genocide is the means to convert a heterogeneous society into a more or less homogenous society. “The slogans 'Deutschland Judenrein' (Germany free of Jews) and 'Turkey for the Turks' are emblematic of these goal-directed genocides.”

That is so offensive, I wonder how even Dadrian’s hateful, blackened heart can’t realize how wrong it is to make such an incriminating statement.. The Nazi slogan makes no bones about its racist intentions. Once the Ottoman Empire was picked apart by nationalist movements made possible by the Turks’ humanistic Millet System policies, the Turks finally awakened to nationalistic feelings themselves. The word “Turk” signifies nationhood. For what is a Turk? After centuries of co-mingling, encompassing all forms of different peoples (from the Laz to the Circassians to the Bosnians to many, many others), an ethically pure race as “Turk” is a thing of the past. Furthermore, if the Turks wished to clear out all truly non-Turkish elements, I guess the only way non-Turkish can be defined would be by religion. Then why were the Ottoman Jews not genocidally rubbed out?

The answer is, no matter what race or religion the inhabitants of Turkey belong to, if they are citizens who are allowed to thrive and prosper, they need to think of themselves as Turks foremost. Just like we in America think of ourselves as Americans first. (Certain colonists’ behavior excepted.) This is true of any nation.

In other words, America is not for Malaysians or Hondurans or New Zealanders. America is for the Americans. Would Armenian-American Vahakn Dadrian say that is akin to "Deutschland Judenrein" (Germany free of Jews)? Anyone who comes up with such a knuckleheaded conclusion would be misguided at best... and evil, at worst.

If it’s true citizens of a country need to owe allegiance to that country, and if it’s true Ottoman-Armenian citizens were allowed to grow rich, prosper and allowed to achieve the highest ranks of government and society... we can see the whole reason why there was a resettlement policy, a program that the Armenians eventually hoodwinked the world into believing was a genocide. If the centuries-long “Loyal Millet” of the Armenians continued to be loyal during the desperate, dark days of WWI, we wouldn’t be having this discussion today. (ADDENDUM, 12-07: None other than famed Dashnak terrorist Armen Garo Pasdermadjian agreed to a tee.)

 

Vahakn Dadrian was introduced in TAT's Armenian Professors page

See also:

The Key Distortions and Falsehoods in the Methods of the Zoryan Institute