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The following is an Armenian "FAQ"
that I have encountered in a number of Armenian web sites. I was intrigued,
because normally Armenian web sites totally ignore irrefutable historical
facts that completely turn the Armenian
"proof" for genocide on its ear (such as the process of the Malta
Tribunal, what amounted to a post war "Nuremberg Trial" for war
crimes). However, this FAQ boldly addressed many of the viewpoints from the
Turkish side, which really makes it an IAQ ("Infrequently Asked
Questions"), all the more reason to examine them. My own comments follow,
in yellow.
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"Useful
Answers to Frequent Questions on the Armenian Genocide" |
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The
following document (save items in {curly brackets}) comprises pages 27-31 of the booklet
What Every Armenian Should Know, which was written by Dr. Dennis R. Papazian
and published by the Armenian Research Center in 1991. The booklet is still available for
purchase from the Armenian Research Center for $5, postage included.
If you want to reply to falsehoods on the Armenian Genocide, you can find the answers
below. Use them to construct your own letters. Save this booklet for reference.
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1. Forget the Armenian Genocide. Why should we be concerned with something that happened
75 years ago and 8,000 miles away?
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Professor Dennis Papazian
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Genocide
is a crime against humanity, and there is no statue of limitations on genocide -- not even
one 75 years old.
The fact that a major crime against humanity takes place 8,000 miles away from the United
States makes it no less a crime. Was Hitler justified in killing Jews because he was 5,000
miles away? Should American troops not defend Saudi Arabia because Saddam Hussein is 9,000
miles away?
It was the old Ottoman Empire that committed the crime, but present-day Turkey becomes an
accomplice after the fact by its expensive campaign of denial, denial not only for itself
but for the old Ottoman Empire. This principle of becoming an accomplice by the cover-up
of a crime is part of the rule of law.
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By all means, Genocide is
a crime against humanity. It is, in fact, the most deplorable of crimes... all the more
reason why it would be the responsible and ethical thing to do to get one's facts straight
before claiming there was a genocide.... as far as Genocide is defined by the U.N.
convention on genocide. Nobody is arguing there was great suffering and massacres of
Armenians. Unfortunately, Dr. Papazian probably doesn't utter a peep about the suffering
and massacres (at the hands of Armenians) of Turks and other Muslims. (I didn't order his
booklet, but something tells me he would prefer to overlook the murders committed by
Armenians, who acted much more in the spirit of genocide when they had the upper hand.)
Ah. So I see present-day
Turkey is merely an "accomplice" in this alleged crime; the Ottoman Empire
pulled the trigger, and today's Turkey is driving the getaway car. Does anyone know of an
incidental, small-fry accomplice who has been the target of such a colossal campaign of
defamation, hate and even assassination? (Armenian terrorists murdered many present-day,
innocent Turkish diplomats and their family members in the 1970s and 80s, along with
others who happened to be in the way.)
Denial is the right of a
party accused of a crime who knows they did not commit the crime. Because someone is
accused does not make that someone automatically guilty. I don't know what the Turkish
government spends to defend the truth in its "expensive campaign of denial,"
assuming the financially-troubled Turkish government has so much money burning a hole in
its pocket to spend in such a manner. (I am aware the Turks spend considerable
dollars as grants to American universities, which doesn't guarantee them anything. They also pay big fees to individuals
in lobbying circles to try and counter the exceptionally powerful Armenian and Greek
lobbies.) I don't even know where these expenditures go... are there full-scale ads, TV
programs and movies being produced to defend the Turkish viewpoint? (Especially against
all the ads, TV programs and movies presenting the Armenian viewpoint?) The only rebuttals
I'm aware of are mainly made by ordinary Turks, whenever there is another unfair charge
against the Turks, in the unending stream of charges. Are there actual figures to
prove this "expensive campaign," or is Dr. Papazian playing fast and loose with
the facts? If anybody is spending money on this issue, it's definitely the
Armenians. Armenians Act; Turks React.
"The
Armenian American community is just like Enron! They have poured millions of dollars
into trying to buy American politicians." — Samuel Weems
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2. What have Americans to do with
the Armenian Genocide?
America was the first country to recognize the Armenian Genocide and continued to
recognize it until misguided officials sought favor with the Republic of Turkey by
joining in an ugly, and quite unnecessary, distortion of history.
The Armenian Genocide was witnessed by hundreds of American missionaries in the
Ottoman Empire who worked among the Armenians and have testified to their
destruction by the Ottoman government.
The Genocide was also witnessed by American consular officials, stationed in the
areas inhabited by the Armenians, who reported it to the American ambassador in
Istanbul.
The American Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Henry Morgenthau, Sr., confronted the
Young Turk leaders, and then he telegraphed the American Secretary of State calling
the Turkish action an attempt at "racial extermination."
The American Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan, wired U.S. Ambassador
Morgenthau to continue the strongest possible protest to the Ottoman government on
behalf of the Armenians.
The Armenian Genocide was well-reported in the American press, and the U.S. Senate
held hearing which affirmed its reality.
President Woodrow Wilson agreed to draw the boundaries of a free Armenia and sent a
message to Congress asking for permission to establish a U.S. mandate over the new
state.
[I ask this] "Not only because
it [the mandate] embodied my own convictions and feeling with regard to Armenia and
its people, but also, and more particularly, because it seemed to me to be the voice
of the American people expressing their deep sympathies. At their hearts, this great
and generous people [the Americans] have made the case of Armenia their own. The
American people raised millions of dollars to aid the victims of the Genocide. Our
older citizens will remember aid to the "starving Armenians."
President Herbert Hoover wrote in his Memoirs:
Probably Armenian was known to the
American school child in 1919 only a little less than England ... of the staunch
Christians who were massacred periodically by the Mohammedian (sic) Turk, and the
Sunday School collections of over fifty years for alleviating their miseries. . . .
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Whew!
The evidence that
Armenians rely on is truly appalling. No wonder the British, who wanted to wipe
Turkey off the face of the earth after World War I... and after a desperate attempt
to justify their wartime propaganda of Turkish brutality against Armenians, acquitted
every single Ottoman official they locked up for two and a half years. The kind of
hard "evidence" Dr. Papazian offers is what they likely examined, and
fortunately the British had a high enough regard for the Law to find every single
official among one hundred and forty four accused... innocent. Innocent, not only of
a state-sponsored systematic extermination, but of ANY war crime.
It's despicable for
current thinkers to rely on the testimony of missionaries. Missionaries failed to
convert Turks; their resulting axe to grind combined with their already built-in
bias against Muslims led to their documented fired-up charges in blind sympathy with
the Armenians, their fellow Christians who were more open to conversion to
Catholicism and Protestantism. (The amazing religious tolerance of the Ottoman
Empire makes the Muslim-Christian issue irrelevant to the tragic events that
transpired. If anybody is going to be dogmatic and zealous about the religious
issue, it's going to be your ordinary missionary!) The testimony of these
completely discredited missionaries simply is not admissible in this
"courtroom."
U.S. Admiral Kirkland¹s opinion on American missionaries was
published in the New York Herald on August 18, 1895:
"Rear-Admiral Kirkland, commanding the European station, whenever he speaks
upon the subject, is empathic in his condemnation of the missionaries in Turkey. He
says that he has found that one of the most prominent Sunday-school teachers in
Syria spent three years in the Penitentiary at Pittsburgh, Pa., and that, taken
altogether, they are a bad lot. The cause of all the trouble, Admiral Kirkland
asserts, is that, relying upon the protection of the American government, the
missionaries defy local laws, and do not merit the dispatch of a warship at every
appeal made by the missionaries, most of which appeals are not true."
"The Genocide was also witnessed by American consular
officials." Who were Ambassador Morgenthau's assistants? ARMENIANS!
It was precisely
the false reports of missionaries and Armenians that pulled the wool over the eyes
of Ambassador Morgenthau, who needed little persuasion to conclude Turks were
beasts, since he thought little of the Turks to begin with. (It was so easy to be
racist against the Turks when everything that was reported about the Turks was
negative. Gee. Sounds like I'm describing exactly what is going on today.)
Oh, I see. Thanks
to the writings of the extremely objective American Press and the thoughts of
the equally objective U.S. senators, we can now rest assured that there was indeed
an Armenian "Genocide."
I've got to hand it
to the Armenians. Their strategy has been diabolically clever. Let's see,
now...
"The West so
strongly identifies with the Christianity issue, why don't we Armenians act
against the Turks, causing them to react... and then we'll get our missionary
friends to convince the West that these rotten Muslims are slaughtering us poor,
innocent Christians. Luckily, our Armenian friends in the American consulate
completely have the already biased Ambassador Morgenthau's ear, and anything he says
is going to pyramid into the perceived truth. American Secretary of State William
Jennings Bryan will believe what Morgenthau will have to say, President Woodrow
Wilson — who is a preacher's son — will believe what William Jennings
Bryan will have to say, and everyone else... from U.S. senators to the entire U.S.
media will finally buy into the story, followed by the American people themselves.
After all, racist American immigration policy has prevented Turks from settling
within the United States, and nobody is going to speak for the Turks. And no
"Christian" American is going to care to find out whether what they have
been hearing is the actual truth. After all, everyone knows about the horrors
inflicted upon Christians by the "Terrible Turk."
Hey,
we can make whatever outrageous claims we want, because we completely have the
Americans' ear. We'll certainly be able to get around fifty million dollars from
American churches and charitable organizations, along with fifty million dollars as a loan
from the U.S. government (at 5% interest, which we will renege on, later;
it's not like they're going to miss such a paltry sum, since we will easily get
close to two billion dollars in aid from our American Christian friends, once
Armenia becomes independent again in around seventy years*), to help our newly
formed dictatorship that rose from the ashes of World War I, upon land we got once
we systematically murdered the Muslims who used to live in those lands for many
centuries. Then we'll betray
our friends in the West by joining the Bolshevik Revolution!
(Another
example: British Naval Commander Harry Lake stated that the Armenians betrayed Great
Britain by joining the Bolshevik Revolution and this was "an act of
treachery" after the Armenians had begged hundreds of thousands of dollars of
military aid from his country.)
Regarding President
Herbert Hoover's quote... his subjective mind had already been made up regarding how
evil those "Mohammedian" (sic) Turks were, and the quote speaks for
itself. What interests me is the President's revelation of how well-known the
Armenian cause had become in America, and his supporting statement of all the money
Armenians had hoodwinked out of their religious brethren so far away. As
President Hoover learned more about the Armenians, he had something to say that wasn't
very flattering, however.
(*A recent
example: U.S. aid to Armenia for fiscal year 2003 will be $90 million....thankfully,
down from 2002's $103
million.)
3. All these Americans who reported
the Armenian Genocide were biased against us. They were not telling the truth.
There was no reason for the Americans to lie. America was a neutral power during the
time of the Armenian Genocide. In fact America never did go to war against Turkey
but kept up diplomatic relations so that it could intervene on behalf of the
Armenians.
Anyway, who are the Turks to accuse the Americans of lying?
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People who are
"not telling the truth" could do so because they fervently believe they
are telling the truth... not because they consciously desire to "lie." For
example, Ambassador Morgenthau must have believed in the villainy of the Turks not
only because his trusted Armenian aides were telling him fabricated stories (he
trusted his Armenian secretary enough to help write his own letters and/or
memoirs!), and not only because the biased U.S. Consuls were filling his ear with
wild tales fabricated by their own trusted Armenian aides and the zealous
missionaries, but because Ambassador Morgenthau already had a pre-existing negative
disposition toward the Turks. The Turkish stereotype of being cruel and inhuman is
so strong, an alternate meaning of the word "Turk" in English dictionaries
means "cruel and inhuman." This is why any Westerner's account of the
so-called "genocide" was suspect; not because they were necessarily liars (although
a number of the missionaries
were flat out lying, since religious fervor has a way of distorting minds), but
because the second-hand accounts they had been hearing were so readily believable,
based on their strong prejudices. This prejudice is exactly what the Armenians were
counting on (and still are counting on), in pulling the wool over the eyes of
Westerners.
By the same token,
Western accounts that fly totally in the face of the Armenian "Genocide"
are comparatively much more reliable. Why? Because almost all Westerners have grown
up with a negative impression of Turkey and the Turks. Since the Crusades, the Turks
have been regarded as the enemy (and not without reason; when the Ottoman Empire was
at the height of its powers, Western Europe cringed in fear of the Empire's westward
expansion; did you know the croissant was invented by the Austrians — and not the
French — as a way to put the bite into the Turkish crescent, during one of the
times the Turks were at the gates of Vienna?). It would take a mighty strong and
honorable Westerner to shake off his or her deeply-rooted biases against Turks and
Muslims; therefore, Westerners who argue against the "Genocide,"
especially around the time of World War I, would have absolutely no reason to not
tell the truth.
Take
for example the case of Americans Captain
Emory Niles and Mr. Arthur Sutherland. The only reason why they were sent
to eastern Anatolia was because of American sympathy for the Armenians. To their
surprise, the people they discovered to be suffering were not the Armenians, but the
Turks! In "Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims,
1821-1922 ," Professor McCarthy writes, "...Despite their prejudices,
they reported evils perpetrated by Armenians."
"Anyway,
who are the Turks to accuse the Americans of lying?"
Translation: the
Turks are less than human, and have no right to defend themselves against false
accusations. Thank you, Dr. Papazian, for holding back your racial hatred and your
regard for the Turks as less than human, so that you could make your points in a
scholarly and objective fashion.
4. Why not leave historical questions to the historians?
Why should the issue of the Armenian Genocide be fought out in Congress?
The Turks have adopted the line of "leave Armenian history to the
historians" because they are losing their propaganda battle. The issue of the
Armenian Genocide is not a question of historical truth, that has been settled; it
is rather an issue of morality and the acceptance of the truth.
History is too important to leave to historians. By leaving the Armenian injustice
of World War I uncorrected, the stage was set for the Holocaust of World War II. The
abandonment of the Armenians was not lost on Hitler. Hitler said before sending his
troops into Poland, "Go, go kill without mercy. Who today remembers the
extermination of the Armenians."
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Well, thank goodness we have this
Armenian scholar to teach us about "morality and the acceptance of the
truth." "History is too
important to leave to historians." Hmmmmmm. ("Historical questions should be left to
historians": Armenian Patriarch Mesrob II, 2001.)
I wonder what the way could have been
to "correct" the "Armenian injustice of World War I"?
Let's see... at the end of World War I, the Armenians did try to get the Americans
to give them three-quarters
of a billion dollars and to send 70,000 American troops to secure the area of
their "ancient homeland." Would that have done the trick?
Regarding this
"propaganda battle"... I don't know whether I would term the totally open
field the Armenians have enjoyed for the longest time to tell their lies and
distortions as a "battle." I would call that a "propaganda
slaughter."
The main reason why the Turks have
been keeping quiet on the issue after the end of World War I is because Ataturk
realized love and brotherhood is the true course for humanity, espousing Peace at
home and in the world. What good would it have done to teach Turks to hate the
Armenians who betrayed their country and murdered so many of their fellow Turks?
(Love and peace is a Christian
message as well, a message Armenians have not done a very good job of
following.) As a result, there was no propaganda from the Turks. The only propaganda
has come from Armenians, Greeks, and other Turcophobes.
When Armenians took
up arms on the genocide issue again (right after the Turks intervened in Cyprus, as
they were legally entitled to do, once Greece threatened "enosis" or union
with the Greek mainland; if the Turks hadn't stepped in, no Turkish Cypriot would be
alive today. Of course, this episode is recognized in the West as a ruthless Turkish
invasion; score another point for the powerful propagandists), murdering hundreds of
Turkish diplomats and others around the world, the Turks finally had to speak up.
Once again, Armenian action, Turkish reaction. Let's not forget,
however, that this "propaganda" playing field is far... far... from even.
So Dr. Papazian is correct; the Turks entered this propaganda battlefield from way
behind and they have certainly been losing in a big way. This loss has nothing to do
with the issue of truth... the American Indians were also gigantic losers in their
"propaganda battle," for the longest time.
Oh, there is that Hitler quote again.
Sometimes I wonder if it wasn't for Adolf Hitler, would the Armenians have ANY
"proof" to support their claims for genocide? You can visit the section on this web site that goes into
this quote business in depth. What intrigues me here is that Dr. Papazian is
straightforward in revealing the reason why Hitler made that quote, assuming he
actually made it. The quote's powerful value for the Armenians is in proving the
connection between the Armenian "Genocide" and the horrific Holocaust.
However, the alleged quote was directed toward the Poles, not the Jews. "The
Final Solution" did not come into play until some three years later.
Another point regarding the Turks'
"losing the propaganda battle," the professor need bear in mind: after the
Armenians have had a tremendous monopoly on the battlefield with no one to oppose
their views for the longest time, the Turks have only begun to fight. The battle
will be an extended one, as the Turks have many roadblocks ahead of them... undoing
people's deeply-ingrained belief systems and anti-Turkish prejudice will not be easy
to overcome. (C. F. Dixon-Johnson reminds us of an Eastern proverb a few paragraphs below: Give a lie twenty-four hours start, and it will take a
hundred years to overtake it .) But I believe in the truth, and the truth shall
prevail. As far as the usage of the word "propaganda," make no mistake:
the Armenians mostly offer propaganda; the Turks mostly offer the truth.
5. Why should America acknowledge the Armenian Genocide now?
America is the moral leader of the world. We must set the record straight, to
rehabilitate America's innocence, extricate the U.S. from an ugly distortion of
history, and to restore America's respectability in the eyes of our European allies
who, accepting the truth, are amazed at Americas hypocrisy.
No principled Turk should be offended by the truth. After all, a large number of
Armenian survivors of the Genocide owe their lives to devout Turks. To be a
patriotic Turk does not require hating Armenians or distorting history.
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I'm not saying there aren't Turks who
hate Armenians. I am saying I have yet to meet one. Turks are raised to look upon
Armenians as their brothers. The two peoples share too much over the course of many
centuries for this not to be so. This is a terrible, terrible claim Dr. Papazian is
making, and one that is not (surprise!) rooted in the truth in any way.
What the Turks hate are not
Armenians, but the total lack of integrity their extremists generally have in saying
whatever suits their purposes... when it comes to slandering Turks. This has nothing
to do with hating Armenians. If the Turks hated Armenians, the Armenians who are happily living in Turkey
would get out of Turkey, but fast. Meanwhile, how many Turks or Muslims are living
in Armenia? Probably enough to count on one hand, figuratively speaking.
The Armenians on the other hand...
and I'm generalizing here; I've certainly met beautiful Armenian people who have
warmth and love in their hearts... are taught poems as children to hate Turks.
Hating Turks is taught in their churches. It's almost like the Armenian identity
isn't complete without hating Turks. I remember when in college I passed by the open
door of the Armenian club (there wasn't any Turkish club at the college, because
there were hardly any Turks), and I overheard one of the students say if a Turk
happened to be anywhere around, he would tear the Turk to pieces. This fellow is not
the exception to the rule... he is the rule. It is very, very sad.
Armenians would do well to listen to
Dr. Robert John, a historian of Armenian descent whose findings (at least at one
time) revealed the Hitler quote to be a forgery: “Hate hurts the hater
and hated. We (Armenians) are still living in the haze of distortions and actual
horrors which occurred so long ago.... The time has come to stop psychologically
damaging ourselves... with a continual conditioning of hate, neither should spurious
guilt be visited upon others. These negative preoccupations and obsessions are
obstructing our evolution.”
I don't understand
what Dr. Papazian is referring to in his first paragraph, about rehabilitating
"America's innocence," and extricating "the U.S. from an ugly
distortion of history." Is he trying to suggest the U.S. has been misled by
Turkey in some way?
I don't have to be
an American to see America as a "moral leader" in many situations... but
to love one's country or tribe does not supersede the truth, even in America's case.
Certainly the Ottoman Empire has committed wrongs, especially as a superpower during
periods of its existence... and America, as a superpower, is not off the hook,
either. There have been times when America has not been so "innocent."
Around the time of the Armenian "Genocide," for example, American troops
committed atrocities against the Philippine people. In a more recent example, the
American military's handling of the "Highway of Death" (or the
"Turkey Shoot") during the Gulf War violated the Geneva Convention. I'm
not trying to knock America here, just reminding the reader that it's the rare
country with no blood on her hands. Something to keep in mind, before a nation
rushes in with moral judgment on another. For example, French politicians buckled
under to their huge Armenian-French community by giving their opinion that the
"Genocide" indeed occurred. I wonder how much debate went on in that
Parliamentary room to come up with a similar resolution, regarding French
action in Algeria, where hundreds of thousands of Algerians were reportedly killed?
6. There is more than one side to
every story.
Truth is not divisible by two. Is there another side about Hitler who gassed Jews,
about Stalin who starved Ukrainians, or about Pol Pt (sic) and the Khmer Rouge who
massacred Cambodians? Of course not. Genocide is so blatant an evil that it has no
other side to the story.
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True. However, it
would help to first prove the Armenian "Genocide." And in order to do so,
you cannot ignore indisputable facts presented by the other side.
7. It is your word against ours.
The Turks themselves have confessed in earlier times. Prime Minister Damat Ferid
Pasha placed the blame squarely on the Young Turk Party. Mustafa Kemal Pasha {Ataturk}
said {in a 1926 interview with a Swiss reporter that} the Young Turks "should
be made to account for the lives of millions of our Christian subjects who were
ruthlessly driven en masse from their homes and massacred. . . ."
After the war, the Turks held courts-martial to prosecute and convict the
perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide. Several were sentenced to death.
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I must confess, out
of all the papers I have read by Turks supporting the Turkish viewpoint, I have
never come across an "It is your word against ours" kind of explanation.
Not to say such an explanation has never been offered, but I would be surprised at
the reason for such a justification... when there is such a wealth of documented
facts that support the Turkish viewpoint. In other words, one needn't take the
Turkish word for it (and one wouldn't, anyway... since Turks are already viewed as
the guilty party on this issue by the West, thanks to Armenians and their supporters
providing their concocted version, unopposed, for about a century). All that matters
are the facts.
I have tried to
avoid putting up articles written by Turks at this web site, preferring to
concentrate on Western sources... realizing people who seek the truth would be
distrustful of a Turk's claims, concluding a Turk would not be very objective.
However, since Turks are on the defensive regarding the matter of the Armenian
"Genocide," I notice Turkish scholars and writers are a lot more
meticulous about backing up their sources.
Armenians have been
spoiled, knowing that whatever charge they hurl can usually be accepted at face
value, since their audience already has a built-in bias against the
"barbaric" Muslim Turks. This is why their facts and figures usually don't
add up.
I've only run into
these quotes from Turks of the period recently, and from Armenian web sites. Here is
the quote, in fact, of "Grand Vezir Damad Ferid Pasha" (perhaps a more
accurate title than "Prime Minister") from an Armenian web site:
(He described the treatment
of the Armenians as...)
"A crime that drew the revulsion of the entire humankind."
Assuming this is
the quote Dr. Papazian is referring to, I have only to ask... where is this quote
from?
(Let's not forget
Damad Ferid Pasha led the post war Allied-occupied Ottoman government that was
anxious to make the previous administration look as despicable as possible. This was
a beaten, puppet government that signed a treaty spelling the end of the Turkish
nation; the Turkish people overthrew them, while kicking out enemy occupiers.)
I don't know much
about the Ataturk quote at this point; the same Armenian web site claims it appeared
in the August 1, 1926 of The Los Angeles Examiner...
which gives the quote legitimacy. However, because I'm aware many outrageous and
fabricated things were printed in the U.S. Press regarding the Armenian
"Genocide," I have trouble accepting anything at face value, unless there
is believable substantiation. Did Ataturk really say this? If he said it, were his
words translated correctly? After all, Ataturk surely knew better than to believe
"millions" of "Christians" were massacred... there weren't that
many millions of Armenians in the empire to begin with. I am curious to learn
more. (A Turkish professor refers to this episode as an Armenian falsification; he has conducted research to discover
whether the Swiss reporter existed, and he could find nothing in the records of
Switzerland to verify his existence.)
In the meantime, evidently
there has already been an established pattern of "scurrilous works in which
Ottoman officials were falsely quoted as ordering hideous deeds." (Most of
the Turkish quotes in this Armenian web site pointed to an Armenian source. A few I
recognized as from the pages of Ambassador Morgenthau's ghostwritten book, Ambassador
Morgenthau's Story... but the "quotations" of that book were meant as
"re-enactments," and not the actual words spoken. To present statements in
quotation marks when they weren't the actual words spoken, by the way, is an
unacceptably dishonest practice — particularly in a historical work.)
Dr. Papazian is referring to the
trials held by the puppet Turkish government during the Allied occupation of
Istanbul, where any and every crime was confessed to. No fair-minded person would
give credence to the findings of a kangaroo court.
What is much more convincing is that
DURING the war, the Ottoman administration tried Turkish soldiers who had committed
crimes against the Armenians during the relocations, and actually executed a number of them.
(Twenty in 1915. Not to mention the sixty-two who were executed by the post-World
War I Ottoman kangaroo courts, along with over thirteen-hundred individuals punished
in other ways; while the findings of these courts were not valid, because people
were trying to save their political necks during the Allied occupation, it still
says a lot that the government would even attempt to try its guilty. Did Armenia try
its murderers at any time? Quite the contrary, the "Jew-Hunter" Dro was celebrated by
Armenia's patriarch and president in 2000.) What kind of a genocidal government
would give orders to annihilate a segment of the population and then seriously
punish the people in charge of carrying out the orders?
|
...The
Turk never deigns to explain his own case
while "the pro-Armenians always manage to hold the field, appalling the public by
incessant reiteration and exaggeration as to the number of victims, and apparently
valuing to its full extent the wisdom of the old Eastern proverb give a lie
twenty-four hours start, and it will take a hundred years to overtake it".
(British writer, C.F. Dixon-Johnson, in his 1916 book, The Armenians) |
8. Why do Armenians get all the sympathy,
Turks died too. Perhaps some three million Turks died during the period of the alleged
genocide against the Armenians.
It is doubtful that three million Turks died in World War I. Turkish propagandists usually
use the more correct, but still deceptive, expression "three million Muslims."
Yes, three million Muslims probably did die in WW I, but so did twenty million Christians.
The Turks died, unfortunately, because their own government led them into World War I
against the European Allies. Many Turkish Muslims also died fighting Arab Muslims, who
were seeking their freedom from Ottoman oppression, and Indian Muslims who where with the
British Middle East army in Mesopotamia. All this Muslim blood, then, is on the head of
the Ottoman Turkish government and not on the victimized and helpless Armenians.
There were only around three million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, most of them old
men, women, and children, and they can hardly be blamed for the death of three million
"Turks or Muslims."
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Ah, but you see, Dr. Papazian, the
Armenians were far from "victimized and helpless"... they led an armed revolt against their own
nation. How very shameful of you to perpetuate this false Myth of Innocence when the
treachery of the Armenians is an indisputable fact. American General Harbord (not exactly
a "pro-Turk" kind of guy) reported that “where Armenians advanced and
retreated with the Russians, their cruelties unquestionably rivaled the Turks in their
inhumanity.” (American Military Mission to Armenia, June 1920.) A British colonel
reported that the Armenians “massacred between 300,000 and 400,000 Kurdish Muslims in
the Van and Bitlis districts.” (12.9.1919, 184.021/265:
Report by Colonel Wooley, U.S. Archives. The sources for these two quotes are from
Sam Weems' well-documented book, ARMENIA) Don't forget to read Armenian leader Boghos Nubar Pasha's open claims in that telling
1919 letter to The Times of London, if you still believe the Armenians were so
"victimized and helpless."
I wonder how Dr. Papazian spells "Lack
of Credibility"? (I'm aware he knows the meaning of "Misplaced
Credulity"...)
Three million Armenians
in the Ottoman Empire? Try again. (Three million was the worldwide Armenian
population, just before the war.) Take a look at the census
page. Professor Richard Hovannisian goes beyond the non-Armenian census-consensus, but
even he (in Vol. 1, pg. 2 of his "The Republic of Armenia") says the number of
Armenians was two million. Perhaps Dr. Papazian knows better, since Prof Hovannisian
offers no proof for his figure. (In 1967, Hovannisian was more objective, with a median of
1.75 million.)
Three million mostly made
up of women, children and old men? (Poor, poor, innocent Armenians.) What happened to the
rest of the men? I guess Dr. Papazian is suggesting many of the younger men went off to
join the Russian army and volunteered to fight in other capacities (205,000 Armenian
fighters, by Boghos Nubar Pasha's count; Turkish professor Yusuf Halacoglu claims
"pertinent documents" [letters from Armenians are provided as examples] — in
his "Realities on the Armenian Immigration, 1915" [TTK Publications, Ankara,
2001] — demonstrate 50,000 Ottoman Armenian soldiers deserted to join the Russians, and
many thousands of "Armenian soldiers went to America to be trained in the US Army to
fight against the Turkish Army.") That still wouldn't account for the remaining huge
gap of not-so-old-men, so your guess is as good as mine. (What it sounds like, I think, is
that the Turks were supposed to have rounded up all the Armenian men, and killed them off.
If so many Armenian younger men died, how could the worldwide Armenian population...
almost all of whom trace their roots to the Ottoman Empire... have mushroomed to seven
million [an Armenian site claims ten million] in the next 85-90 years? After it took them
thousands of years to reach a worldwide population of three million, BEFORE
they all got "exterminated," through the "Genocide.")
Is it really deceptive to
use the word "Muslim" when describing the casualties of the Ottoman Empire? (I
hope Professor Papazian isn't suggesting the usual figure of 2.5 million to 3 million
Turkish Muslim dead includes the lives of Muslims who were fighting against the Ottoman
Empire. Well... of course he is. And, as usual, without any proof whatsoever.) What is a
Turk, anyway? Over the period of seven centuries, in an empire that encompassed three
continents, bloodlines became wildly mixed. This is why you get blond, blue-eyed Turks, as
well as the dark-skinned Turks, along with Turks who look a little
"Chinese." Perhaps this is why many Armenians enjoy perceiving Turks as
less-than-human, since Turks are not as "racially pure" as Armenians. (Yes, yes,
that was a cheap shot. However... the Armenians did rush into Hitler's arms during World
War II, buying into the racial purity jazz — consequently having a hand in wiping out
the Jews. Only when the war started going against Hitler did they have second thoughts.
Loyalty and Armenians... like Oil and Water.)
Additionally, since a
good bulk of the Armenians' victims were the Kurds (300,000 to 400,000 alone in the two
districts mentioned a few paragraphs above)... since Ottoman Kurds had the
misfortune to be living among the Ottoman Armenians who embarked on their campaigns of
ethnic cleansing to make way for a "New Armenia" (and this supports the
often-mentioned claim that many of the massacres committed against the Armenians were by
the Kurds, in retaliation)... using a more inclusive term like "Muslim" (rather
than "Turk") is certainly more correct. If Dr. Papazian was honorable, he would
be more careful before using unfair words like "deceptive."
On the other hand, does
it become deceptive to use the word "Turk" when describing the non-Turkish
Muslims who suffered at the hands of the Armenians? The word "Turk" signifies
nationhood as well as race. A Kurd who lives in Turkey is as much a Turk as a Kurd who
lives in America [and has become a citizen] is an American. All those Armenians living in
France who have obtained French citizenship... are they also not French? (Well. Perhaps
that was an unfair example. The "Armenian-ness" of the Armenians usually
supersedes their loyalty to the nation they happen to be living in.)
I believe the figure of
Armenian dead hovers around the 600,000 mark... I trust Professor Justin McCarthy's
meticulous and objective research,
for one. There are other sources that come close to this figure, some from folks not all
that friendly to the Turks. (The Armenians themselves claimed this figure of 600,000 dead,
after the war's end.) It's also generally agreed two and a half million
"Muslims" died, mostly from famine, disease and the general deplorable wartime
conditions. (Exactly like the bulk of the 600,000 Armenians died... NOT all from
massacres.) How many of the 2 1/2 million "Muslim" dead died directly at the
hands of massacring Armenians? If we take the more conservative figure of the murdered
Kurds above (that is, 300,000), and if we figure there were at least a few "ethnic
Turks" who were butchered... what would be your estimate? A figure that I've seen
tossed about is around 600,000. I'd say that sounds
believable. This means if 600,000 Turks/Muslims were killed directly by Armenians, and
600,000 Armenians died from all causes combined... then more Turks were killed by
Armenians than Armenians were killed by Turks. Just like some Armenians love to brag.
9. The Armenians were killed in a civil war, or an ethnic
feud; it was not genocide.
When the armed government of 25 million people turns on and exterminates an unarmed minority of
three million old men, women, and children, it is hardly an "intercommunal
struggle", "an ethnic feud", or "civil war"; it is nothing more
or less than genocide.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So now this total number
of "unarmed minority of three million old men, women, and children" has found
itself actually exterminated.
(Yawn.)
By the way...
The Ottoman census had
the pre-war Turkish-Kurdish Muslim population at a little over 13 million, nearly half the
25 million number Dr. Papazian is claiming here.
10. Why pick on Turkey? Turkey is a
"model modern Moslem country."
Since when do model countries deny their citizens human rights and religious freedom?
Turkey's thinly veiled military dictatorship with its long history of human rights abuses,
its repression of the legitimate aspiration of the Kurds for cultural autonomy, its
historic antagonism towards the Arabs, and its invasion of Cyprus, hardly make Turkey a
"model modern Moslem country."
If the Turks are disliked and feared by most Europeans, the Kurds, the Arabs, the Greeks,
and the Armenians, perhaps there is some reason. The Turks ought to throw off their
atavistic ghazi mentality, modernize their feudal agrarian economy, and outgrow their
penchant for military government and abuse of human rights.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm beginning to
visualize Dr. Papazian's veins sticking out from his temples, with all this unrelenting
fury.
It is true, the Turks are disliked by most
Europeans (I don't know about "feared"; perhaps back in the 15th Century), and a
lot of it has to do with Europe's being a Christian
club, along with swallowing the snow job of anti-Turkish diatribe for many years,
engineered significantly by the Turk-hating Armenians. (And Greeks, the Europeans' main
darlings.) As a result, Turkey has been an easy whipping boy for all kinds of ill-doings.
Under such an atmosphere, human rights reports become especially believable for people who
have been subjected to anti-Turkish messages. The Turks have made considerable changes in
the area of human rights in the last few years, although they probably still have a long
way to go before equaling the spotless record of civility that serves as.... ohhhh,
say.... Armenia's example.
I'd say the Arabs don't like the Turks either,
mostly for Turkey's having allied herself with the West. The Kurds are a whole different
topic, and it's getting tiresome to address all the mindless charges being hurled here.
Let's just say the late President Turgut Ozal
was (half) Kurdish. It would
be difficult to become the top leader if one is of a minority that is repressed. It
has become a cliché to claim Kurds are repressed, but they certainly are allowed to speak
their own language (although Turkish is the language of the country; just like English is
the language of America, even though there are many Spanish speakers), and have their own
newspapers and radio stations in Turkey. Again... if anything can make Turkey look like
the oppressive bad guy, who cares about the truth.
Does
anybody care to remember why Cyprus was "invaded"? Didn't it have
something to do with a thug supported by the Greek junta overthrowing Archbishop Makarios,
and pledging "enosis," or "union" with the Greek motherland?
Weren't Turkish Cypriots getting massacred right and left in the years previous? Didn't
Turkey, Greece and Britain previously arrange for a legal agreement permitting the two
Mediterranean countries to step in when the lives of their variety of the Cypriots became
endangered? Did not the Athens Court of Appeals (which is... in GREECE) declare in 1979
that the Turkish intervention in Cyprus was legal?
Gee, if Turkey is
NOT a "model modern Moslem country," then what Moslem country is? Well, since
the criteria Dr. Papazian offers is that a nation must not deny their citizens human
rights and religious freedom (and he would be correct)... and since he asserts these
freedoms are nonexistent in a "military dictatorship" such as Turkey (I guess he
has spoken to many Turks to have concluded this... wait a minute. Is he actually claiming
there is no "religious freedom"? Oh, boy) ... then I guess he is advocating we
turn to another country to look upon as a model for Turkey to emulate. A country where
these freedoms can be found in abundance. A country such as... Armenia.
A
(November or early December) 2002
story in The Miami Herald written by Linda Brockman, reports on how a
recent U.S. arrival, 27-year-old Bagrat Mochkarovsky, and fellow Jews (of whom only thirty
or so were left in the entire country at the time) were treated in his native
Armenia.
Mochkarovsky met
his wife, Oksana, in his native country where she also suffered religious persecution.
"Now I am free from terrible things," said Oksana, 34, who is hoping to get her
work permit in 120 days. "Here, nobody beats me or tries to kill me. I'm free, and I
don't worry for my children." ...In Armenia, Mochkarovsky was not free to practice
the Jewish religion. Now he's making up for it. "Even if you were seen just walking
with other Jews, someone would throw a stone."
----------
"Of all the nations upon
the earth, among which the Jews have been scattered, no nation, perhaps, has treated them
with so much kindness, and distinction even, as the Armenian." (Rev. William Clark, "Armenian History,"
New Englander and Yale review, 22:84, July 1863)
-----------
At the turn of the 20th
Century, over fifty percent of Yerevan, Armenia's capital, was Muslim. It wasn't long
before the Muslims, like the Jews, became victims of Armenian ethnic cleansing. Talk about
your human rights and religious freedom.
11. We have opened the Turkish archives.
The Turkish archives do not prove there was an Armenian Genocide.
The Turkish archives covering the period of the Armenian Genocide are not opened to the
public. They are only open to Turkish scholars and persons friendly to Turkey.
The Turkish archives have been closed so long that scholars have no idea of what is being
purged. Furthermore, the work of the Genocide was done under the aegis of the Committee of
Union and Progress, a shadow government similar to the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union, and in particular by its Special Organization (Teskilat-i Mahsusa) under the notorious Dr. Behaettin Shakir who was sentenced to death
in absentia by a Turkish court-martial following World War I. Will their records be
opened?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, probably during Dr.
Papazian's visit to Turkey where he discovered firsthand that Turks have no human rights
and enjoy no religious freedom, he also visited the Turkish archives. The librarian took
one look at his face, concluded he wasn't friendly to Turkey, and suggested he get lost.
Thank you for your
valuable opinions, Dr. Papazian, but it would be nice if you can back up your statements
with actual facts. "The Turkish archives have been closed so long that scholars have
no idea of what is being purged." How does Dr. Papazian know this? Of course, he
doesn't know this.
Two
American professors give a clear picture of the state of the archives in this article.
Regarding
"the notorious Dr. Behaettin Shakir" ("notorious"? Dr. Bahaddin
Şakir, a professor at the Imperial University of Medicine who joined the Young Turks
— a teacher who [according to student Ali Rıza Altogan] was very good at giving
lessons and performing autopsies, and who was murdered by two Armenian "Nemesis"
assassins in 1922 Berlin — has never been connected with either the relocation of the
Armenians or any massacres of Armenians, if the annoying little matter of coming up with real
evidence makes any difference.
Because the Armenians are desperate to find counterparts for Heinrich Himmler is not
enough to classify a person as "notorious"), we already covered the findings of
the post war kangaroo court, and the illegitimacy of the imposed sentences.
(By the way, Dr.
Şakir was fond of Armenians. The family dentist was an Armenian, and the doctor had
paid for the education and helped raise two Armenian orphans he had brought over from
Anatolia. One of them grew up to be a musician with the Philharmonic Orchestra of
Istanbul. When the Armenian terrorists snuffed out Dr. Bahattin Şakir's life [at the
time the older of his boys was barely 10 years old] sons Alp and Celasin were deprived of
a father.)
What Dr. Papazian is
suggesting is that the archives of a nation can be rendered irrelevant if the caretakers
shred the incriminating evidence. No argument there. However, if it's as easy as all that,
why are the archives in Armenia closed? Seems to me like it would be so easy for the
damning documents to be "purged," just so Armenia can open up its archives in
order to look like they're not hiding anything. (I think the reason in Armenia's case is
that if they purge all their damning documents, they wouldn't be left with much of an
archive.) Moreover, let us not forget that when the Allies occupied Istanbul, all the
documents were available to mainly Armenian researchers for at least the nearly two and
one half years that the Ottoman officials were imprisoned in Malta. It's common sense to
conclude that if anything wasn't purged by that time in the Turkish Archives, there would
be no reason to purge anything now.
Very few have opposed the continued propaganda against the Turks. The
lies that were told during wartime have had half a century and more to incubate. Now
they are the accepted wisdom. Everyone thinks they know what the Turks did. In fact,
what they know is what the British Propaganda Ministry and the missionary
propagandists wanted them to believe.— Professor Justin McCarthy
|
12. American Admiral Mark Bristol's testimony proves there was no Genocide.
Admiral Bristol proves that Morgenthau was lying.
Ambassador Morgenthau, who informed the world about the Armenian Genocide, was there
when it happened. Admiral Mark Bristol, who became U.S. High Commissioner in Turkey
after World War I, did not even arrive in Turkey until 1920. Since Bristol was not
in Turkey during the Genocide, and the Armenians had already been killed, he had to
ask the Turks what happened. Bristol could only talk to the executioners of the
Armenians, the Turks. The Turks are hardly creditable witnesses to their own crime.
Bristol, a stern military man, liked the military junta ruling the post-World War I
Turkey, and he eagerly talked about the "bad qualities" of the Armenians
and Greeks. Do "bad qualities" justify a genocide? If so, that might put
even the Turks and Americans at risk.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wrong again, Dr. Papazian. The only
place Ambassador Morgenthau was during the war years was the confines of his own
consulate, and the environs of Istanbul; he relied on his Armenian aides and U.S. consuls (many of whom were
influenced by the missionaries, and their own Morgenthau-like anti-Turkish racism)
to tell him what happened, and it's so well known by now how much Armenians have a
tendency to ... ehhhh..... "exaggerate."
Admiral Bristol actually arrived in
Turkey in 1919, but... of course.... even this is past the time of the actual
"1915" killings. (There was still a lot of mayhem going on in 1919 and
after, particularly by the Armenians, however; an American officer accompanied Dro,
for example, and witnessed these crimes first hand.) So what does Bristol do to get
to the bottom of the matter? He asks Turks, "Excuse me, did you try to
exterminate the Armenians?" When the Turks say no, that was good enough for
Admiral Bristol.
Dr. Papazian. Please give your
readers at least a little credit for intelligence.
How does one legitimately conduct an
investigation after the purported crime has been committed? As an example, Niles
andSutherland,
who also arrived in Turkey in 1919(totally favoring the Armenian
version of events, at first), reported:
"...The Armenians are accused
of having committed murder, rape arson and horrible atrocities of every description
upon the Musulman population. At first we were most incredulous of these stories,
but we finally came to believe them, since the testimony was absolutely unanimous
and was corroborated by material evidence. For instance, the only quarters left at
all intact in the cities of Bitlis and Van are the Armenian quarters, as was
evidenced by churches and inscriptions on the houses, while the Musulman quarters
were completely destroyed. Villages said to have been Armenian were still standing
whereas Musulman villages were completely destroyed"
When one studies
the massacring nature of the Armenians before the war (here is a late 19th-Century report by a Russian general)
and directly after the war
(that is, during Bristol's time), it's not difficult to put two and two
together. The nature and tactics of a people suddenly are not going to change, in an
isolated period of the few years between 1914-1916. And it's not like the massacring nature of the Ottoman
Armenians was completely unknown during the war, either. Ergo, any nation would relocate a
treacherous citizenry during the heat of a desperate struggle, and a
government-sponsored plan to exterminate the citizenry cannot become the lazily
automatic conclusion for the truth-seeker. (Unless there is genuine evidence. And
there is none.)
Admiral Bristol was
a man of high integrity and a great American. Prof. Heath W. Lowry, in his article
entitled "American Observers in Anatolia CA. 1920: The Bristol Papers"
states as follows:
"Morgenthau was a confirmed 'Turcophobe' whose hatred for the Turks was matched
only by his unabashed support for the Christian minorities under Ottoman rule. To
anyone sharing Morgenthau's prejudices (including the minorities themselves),
Bristol's evenhanded objectivity could only be interpreted as 'pro-Turkish'…Bristol's
insistence on the equality of Christian and Moslem alike, marked a drastic change
from Morgenthau's championing of the Christian element. It is this fact which
accounts for his being incorrectly labeled as 'pro-Turkish' and
'anti-minority'."
Peter Michael
Buzanski is the author of a full-length study on Bristol’s tenure in Turkey,
entitled: "Admiral Mark L. Bristol and Turkish-American Relations,
1919-1922". He presents an analysis of Bristol devoid of rhetoric and argues
convincingly that Bristol should not be judged from the "standpoint of the
American Committee for Armenian Independence".
By the way, Dr.
Papazian, regarding your ending sentence... please quit picking on the Americans.
13. The only reason that the Turks
aren't allowed into the European Community is their Islamic religion.
What concerns the Europeans is not the religion of the Turks, but rather their
values. Judeo-Christian culture, which characterizes the Western world, is dedicated
to developing a moral society. Democracy and faith in the beneficent value of truth
is the current manifestation of this aspiration. If the Turks were to thirst after
justice and righteousness, values to which we in the West aspire, they would most
certainly be welcomed in any society.
The first sign of this new morality would appropriately be for the present-day Turks
to acknowledge the Ottoman genocide of the Armenians.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So let's see now...
Dr. Papazian first denies religion has anything to with the Europeans' rejection of
the Turks. He then turns around and says it is the Turks' lack of Judeo-Christian
values that is at the root of the Turks' problem. Since Turkey is predominantly
Moslem, and therefore is incapable of developing a moral society... could that have
anything at all to do with religion, after all?
There are many ways
of determining morality, and it's unwise to classify one set of believers over
another as being moral. In the last few centuries, which "culture" has
been lopsidedly more responsible for the catastrophic death and destruction caused
by wars?
We all owe a debt of gratitude to Dr.
Papazian for teaching us how people can best prove their morality... the
acknowledgement of genocide. Of course, first genocide must be proven before anyone
should honestly acknowledge the false Armenian "Genocide." In the
meantime, maybe the professor can explain why such a just and righteous people as
the Armenians can't admit they gave the Turks/Muslims so much as a scratch (except
in cases of "self-defense"), when they were clearly involved in a campaign
of systematic extermination?
14. No one to date has been able to come up with
creditable documentation of Hitler's alleged statement about the Armenians. Hitler
never made the statement.
The Hitler statement, which the Turks have questioned, was authenticated by Dr. K.B.
Bardakjian, at Harvard in 1985 from secret notes taken by German Admiral Wilhelm
Canaris during Hitler's speech. {See K.B. Bardakjian, Hitler and the Armenian
Genocide (Cambridge, MA: Zoryan Institute, 1985).}
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Whoa! An Armenian source. Well, that
must prove it.
Why should "secret notes"
be needed? Shouldn't the proof be in the speech itself? The exact date of when the
speech was given is known. Admiral Hermann Boehm took down the most complete
account of Hitler's speech, running twelve pages in translation, as introduced by
German defense lawyers at Nuremberg.
This quote first appeared in the November 24, 1945 issue of the Times of London, basing its
attribution to Hitler to an address given by him on August 22, 1939. Officers of the
Nuremberg Tribunal located the speeches’ original minutes, as an attempt was made
to insert the quote into the proceedings; these were admitted as evidence, and
nowhere was there mention of Armenians.
15. How do the Armenians expect the American people
to feel sorry for them when they support terrorism?
The assassinations, which only began in 1973, were stopped in 1983 by Armenian
public opinion. Armenians do not need terrorists, because people of good will,
having studied the Armenian case, now have greater understanding and sympathy.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This ridiculous assertion speaks for
itself. (By the way, Armenian terrorism went beyond 1983; three separate incidents
in France of September 1986 alone resulted in eight dead and some170 wounded... the
poor people victimized being among those who most enjoy kissing Armenian butt,
besides Americans) Armenian public opinion never condemned the murderous nature of
their assassins. Quite the contrary, even today the Armenian community treats
these terrorists as heroes...
as demonstrated in the recent trial of Mourad Topalian. The reason why the attacks
stopped is because "Armenian" was becoming synonymous with the word
"Terrorist," and that kind of negative influence can put a damper on
"The Cause." (That is, "Con Job.")
16. Only 600,000 Armenians died in
the Ottoman Empire during World War I, not 1.5 million, and they were killing Turks
during that time.
The Turks play with numbers in a grotesque way. They argue that only 600,000
Armenians were killed not 1.5 million. Would this change the basic truth that a
genocidal massacre occurred in 1915? Almost the entire Armenian population of Turkey
was wiped out by its own government, the Turkish government. Does it really make the
Turks better if they succeeded in killing only 600,000 Armenians and not 1.5
million? In any case, is was genocide.
The Turks insist that Armenians were also killing Turks. It is true that scores of Armenians
fought back successfully. But how can you compare self-defense with murder? The
Armenians were killed by their own government, the Turkish government; they
sometimes fought back to protect themselves.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hold on a sec. Didn't Dr. Papazian
proclaim in his answer to Question 9 that the unarmed minority of three million old
men, women, and children were exterminated? Now it's down to 1.5 million. It's a
good thing he frowns upon the grotesquery of playing with numbers.
If these three million Armenians were
unarmed, how exactly did they fight back? How do these scores of old men, women, and
children "fight back successfully"? Even if they possessed a few guns
(which they couldn't have, because they were "unarmed"), that would be
pretty tough for old men, women and children to fight back successfully against the
savage and experienced Ottoman forces.
The fact of the matter is,
large caches of (mainly Russian-supplied) guns, ammunition, supplies, and even
uniforms had been hidden in depots in Anatolia, ready for use... against their own government and
countrymen. (Even Ambassador Morgenthau said so, in his ghost-written
"Ambassador Morgenthau's Story.")
Whether the figure
of killed Armenians was 600,000 or 1.5 million, what counts is that genocide was the
reason all these Armenians died. Okay, then... how is it possible that none of these
people died from famine, disease and other wartime factors like the rest of their
fellow Ottomans? Common sense dictates at least some of them should have died in
this manner.
Armenians
themselves contend one million survived, although this number is likely higher. All
one need do is turn to "neutral" (Western, and therefore pro-Armenian,
anyway) counts of the pre-war Ottoman-Armenian population, from the period... and
AVOID Armenian counts. By subtracting the one million survivors from the number who
existed prior to the war, the truth-seeker will then be able to determine the real
figure of Armenian dead from all causes combined, and not just massacres. See the census page... and then see the egg on Dr.
Papazian's face.
Since conditions were desperate, why
did the Ottoman Turks bother with the relocating business? That is, they could have
used the fortune they spent (Sam Weems' ARMENIA, Page 59: 261 million kurush) on
more pressing matters, since money isn't that easy to come by when you're on your
last legs... and The Sick Man of Europe was near death, by this time. Why didn't the
Ottoman Turks simply slaughter the Armenians where they found them? After all,
that's exactly the method the Armenians used, when they systematically exterminated
Turks/Muslims.
Dr. Papazian,
please stand in the corner! You've been bad.
17. The Turks had to deport the
Armenians from the eastern war front where they were helping the Russians who
promised them a homeland.
Armenians all over Anatolia, not just on the eastern war front, were wiped out. The
cities of Yozgard, Sivas, Ceasrea, Hajin, Marash, and Adana -- just to name a few --
are hardly in the east. One needs but to look at a map of Turkey to see this. Turks
depend on American ignorance of geography to make such foolish claims.
Russia under the Tsars never offered the Armenians or any other subject peoples
their freedom. The last tsar, Nicholas II, would not even share power with his own
Russian people, which helped prompt the Russian revolution during World War I.
{Russia even forbade Armenian refugees, who had managed to flee the Genocide, from
returning to their lands, which the Russian armies had overran during the war.}
Prince Lobanov-Rostovsky, foreign minister of Russia in 1895, summed it all up by
saying, "Yes, Russia wants Armenia, but without the Armenians."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'd say it takes a lot more than
looking at a map to prove the Armenians in the listed cities were "wiped
out." At any rate, I included a map you can click on to see for yourself... it's from an
Armenian web site, detailing the areas of "harm," and because it offers
false statements like "concentration camps" (there were no Auschwitzes or
Dachaus; let's make that clear; I'm aware of "tent villages" (as those set
up by the Near East Relief) that
might have been the closest thing to a concentration camp, but these didn't have
barbed wires on them, and the Armenians could come and go as they pleased), I'm sure
it's as .... ehhh.... "exaggerated" as possible. Nevertheless, even if we
accept this map at face value, and especially if we look at comparative maps (above,
on the same page) outlining where the Armenians resided... it looks pretty
much like the eastern-to-central part of the country to me.
Don't forget, the
Armenians' treachery was not limited to solely the East; the invasion of Gallipoli
relied on reports from Armenian spies, and Armenians did their best to sabotage the
Turks from behind, in more limited ways than their rebellious brothers in the
East... such as poisoning food supplies of the Turkish troops. Why weren't the
Armenians of the West deported? What kind of a "genocide" IS this, anyway?
"The move towards a
rapprochement with Turkey after the Balkan Wars turned out to be highly
unpopular in Russian bourgeois-landlord circles, which were now coming out in
favor of a final division of the Ottoman Empire. With this object in view, an
entire system of measures was Turkey. It contemplated the formation of an
autonomous Armenia under Russian protection as the most powerful means of
exerting pressure"
I. V. Bestuzhev's article entitled
"Russian Foreign Policy, February-June 1914", which appeared in
"1914: The coming of the First World War," edited by Walter Laqueur
and George Mosse
More than 15,000 Anatolian Armenians went to the
Russian South Caucasus for training when the Armenian rebellion began in late
1914. Telegraph lines were cut; roads through strategic mountain passes
were seized; hundreds of Ottoman officials were attacked,
particularly recruiting officers, throughout the east; outlying villages were
assaulted. In the service of the Tsarist armies, they seized the city of Van
in March 1915 from a weak Ottoman garrison and proceeded to kill 60,000 Turks.
When these thousands of
armed Armenians spearheaded a massive Russian invasion of eastern Anatolia,
they faithfully fulfilled the promise given to Tsar Nicholas II by the
President of the Armenian national Bureau on November 5, 1914 in Tbilisi:
" From all countries Armenians are hurrying to enter the ranks of the
glorious Russian army, with their blood to serve the victory of the Russian
arms."
Thanks: H.E. Altay
Cengizer
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Czar Nicholas called upon the Armenians
living in Turkey to unite with the ones living in Russia. Upon this invitation an
article published in the Church’s mouthpiece, ‘Ararat’, bearing the signature
of the Armenian Patriarch Kevork V, suggested to the Armenians to unite with their
kinsmen in Russia. The article was distributed to the entire world, and plenty of
Ottoman Armenians took the invitation to their hearts.
From Eric Feigl's THE MYTH OF TERROR:
"...The rebellion of the
Armenians had been fostered, organized, financed, and supplied with arms and
munitions by the Russians. Leaders of the Armenian revolutionary organization
DASHNAGTZOUTIUN have since admitted to have been seduced by Russia with promises of
independence and a New Armenia."
Here
is what another Papazian has to
say about Armenian treachery.
The irony of the Armenians' choosing
to go to bed with Tsarist Russia, the mortal enemy of the Ottoman Empire, is that
once Russia got what it wanted from the Armenians, Russia then turned her back on
the Armenians. It's troubling that Dr. Papazian attempts to "prove" the
Armenians would have never helped the Russians by giving examples of how the
Russians would double-cross the Armenians AFTER receiving the Armenians' full
cooperation.
Dr. Papazian's nose must have grown
to the length of a tree by the time this last question in the Armenian FAQ rolled
around, since the Armenians' treacherously allying themselves with the most
dangerous enemy of their country is such a clear-cut matter of historical record;
how mind-boggling that anyone would have the audacity to deny it.
What Dr. Papazian
should be asking is: if it
was so obvious not to get mixed up with an ally who couldn't be trusted... all the
way back to the days of Peter the
Great... (indeed, the Russians have been a fair-weather friend to the Armenians,
to say the least; they mass-murdered the Armenians living in the Caucasus area, shut
down Armenian schools in 1885, confiscated church property worth 100 million francs
[despite the fact that right to property ownership was granted to the Gregorian
Church in 1836], arrested wealthy Armenian businessmen and intellectuals in the
Caucasus area and then seized their property... to cite only a few instances of
Russian oppression against the Armenians) WHY did the Armenians allow themselves to
get so mixed up with an untrustworthy ally? If they made such an unintelligent
decision, why can't they be honorable enough to take the responsibility of the
consequences? Face it... had the Armenians remained the loyal citizens of the Empire
(that the Ottomans long credited them as being), this discussion would not even be
taking place.
Unless the murderer is a psychopath,
every murder must have a motive. In the case of the Armenian "Genocide,"
there simply was no motive. Since the Ottomans regarded the Armenians as being
among their most loyal citizens, they would have had to be out of their minds
to suddenly decide to systematically eliminate them.
(An excerpt giving
an idea of Armenian treatment at the hands of the Russians has been added to this
page's bottom.)
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This is a very long page, and I didn't want to add even
more by providing further sources to my counter-claims; however, spend more time on
this site, and you'll find lots of back-up by impartial Western and even Armenian
sources.
ADDENDUM, April 2006:
I just fixed an error on this page. Reader,
this was one of the earliest TAT pages, and there have been wonderful discoveries
during the interim's genocidal learning curve. I hope you will examine what the other
pages have to say to further corroborate the falsehoods rebutted here.
At the time of this addendum, PBS-TV is about
to air a propaganda genocide show, and Dr. Papazian was reported to have written a
letter to Harut Sassounian, an activist Armenian newspaper publisher. PBS also
produced a 25-minute panel discussion, which few PBS affiliates will air because PBS
told them PBS accepts the genocide but the affiliates can do with the panel discussion
what they will. (This way, PBS thought they would be "fair" and live up to
the standards of their own "editorial integrity.") Papazian saw this
discussion (many Armenians were allowed to view the show before air time, but the same
privilege has not been extended to the contra-genocide camp) and felt sick of what he
has determined to be the falsehoods of Justin McCarthy and a Turkish professor. Their
arguments were no doubt in line with the arguments of the TAT site. So it's not enough
to simply state one's opponents are lying. One must prove how they are lying. And one
cannot do so by pointing to sources that are tainted. One must present sources without
conflicts-of-interest. (A taste of this PBS episode may be gathered here.)
On Mar. 18, 2006, Dr. Papazian wrote the following to the
"Armenians" Yahoo group: "As an old friend said, 'be right 51% of the
time and you will succeed.' I rather think we should be right 95% of the time..."
At least Dr. Papazian is ambitious. But he
has a long way to go before he is 51% correct, let alone 95%.
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Related links:
Some Armenian Viewpoints
I'm not done with Professor Papazian
yet. He offered a marvelous rebuttal on his university's web site, to a Turk's
position. It was only fitting to butt heads with him again, and to give a...
Rebuttal to a Rebuttal
(I wonder why
foolish authors such as William Styron
lent their names to a petition against Professor Heath Lowry, having had a problem
with Dr. Lowry's alleged partiality, and these authors did not or do not have a
problem with professors like Dr. Papazian, who clearly has problems with being
objective and honest. Oh, I was just kidding... I'm not wondering about that at all.
I fully know the sad answer.)
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An addendum, regarding Armenian treatment under
the Russians, an issue brought up with the last question, above:
Supporting the view of Sir Charles Eliot, who wrote
in his book Turkey in Europe (London, E. Arnold, 1900, under the pseudonym of
"Odysseus"): (until the years succeeding the Turkish-Russian War of 1877-78) "the
Turks and Armenians got on excellently together... The Russians restricted the Armenian
Church, schools and language; the Turks on the contrary were perfectly tolerant and
liberal as to all such matters. They did not care how the Armenians prayed, taught and
talked... The Armenians were thorough Orientals and appreciated Turkish ideas and
habits... (They) were quite content to live among the Turks.... The balance of wealth
certainly remained with the Christians. The Turks treated them with good-humoured
confidence..."
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Russia in fact was only using the Armenians for its own ends. It had
no real intention of establishing Armenian independence, either within its own dominions
or in Ottoman territory. Almost as soon as the Russians took over the Caucasus, they
adopted a policy of Russifying the Armenians as well as establishing their own control
over the Armenian Gregorian church in their territory. By virtue of the Polijenia Law of
1836, the powers and duties of the Catholicos of Etchmiadzin were restricted, while his
appointment was to be made by the Czar. In 1882 all Armenian newspapers and schools in the
Russian Empire were closed, and in l903 the state took direct control of all the financial
resources of the Armenian Church as well as Armenian establishments and schools. At the
same time Russian Foreign Minister Lobanov Rostowsky adopted his famous goal of "An
Armenia without Armenians", a slogan which has been deliberately attributed to the
Ottoman administration by some Armenian propagandists and writers in recent years.
Whatever the reason, Russian oppression of the Armenians was severe. The Armenian
historian Vartanian relates in his History of the Armenian Movement that "Ottoman
Armenia was completely free in its traditions, religion, culture and language in
comparison to Russian Armenia under the Czars." Edgar Granville writes, "The
Ottoman Empire was the Armenians' only shelter against Russian oppression."
That Russian intentions were to use the Armenians to annex Eastern
Anatolia and not to create an independent Armenia is shown by what happened during World
War I. In the secret agreements made among the Entente powers to divide the Ottoman
Empire, the territory which the Russians had promised to the Armenians as an autonomous or
independent territory was summarily divided between Russia and France without any mention
of the Armenians, while the Czar replied to the protests of the Catholicos of Etchmiadzin
only that "Russia has no Armenian problem." The Armenian writer Borian thus
concludes:
"Czarist Russia at no time wanted to assure Armenian autonomy: For this reason one
must consider the Armenians who were working for Armenian autonomy as no more than agents
of the Czar to attach Eastern Anatolia to Russia."
The Russians thus have deceived the Armenians for years; and as a
result the Armenians have been left with nothing more than an empty dream.
That is why, as Sartre said in speaking of genocide on the occasion of the Russell
Tribunal on the Vietnam War, that one must study the facts objectively in order to prove
if this intention exists, even in an implicit manner. (Prof. Mumtaz Sosyal, The Orly
Trial, 19 February - 2 March 1985)
From "Armenian Claims and
Historical Facts"
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