V. D. next moves on to “The historical background: the antecedent massacres as a rehearsal and prelude to the genocide,” where he explains it all began with “The Red Sultan.” Abdul Hamit “unleashed in the 1894-1896 period the historically notorious ‘Armenian massacres.’ Approximately 150,000 Armenians... fell victim to these empire-wide bloodbaths.” As with the 1915 period, the master propagandist makes no mention of the terrorist groups’ violence initiating “bloodbaths” that went both ways. Dadrian quotes William Langer as having written (The Diplomacy of Imperialism, 1935): “It was perfectly obvious that the Sultan was determined to end the ‘Armenian question’ by exterminating the Armenians,” and it would be worthwhile to dig up whether that was Langer’s conclusion, or whether he was quoting another’s opinion.

Reason for suspicion rests with the lack of logic for a deeper thinker as Langer; if Abdul Hamit had intended to “exterminate” the Armenians, it would have made as little sense for him to have stopped in 1896 as it similarly makes no sense for the Young Turks to have stopped in 1917... and as Prof. Jeremy Salt concluded after scholarly analysis, “there is nothing that links Abdulhamit to a policy of massacre." Langer’s book is also filled with contradictory statements, as on p. 157 of the book’s second edition: “Europeans in Turkey were agreed that the immediate aim of the [Armenian] agitators was to incite disorders, bring about inhuman reprisals, and so provoke the intervention of the powers." For more of Langer’s thoughts on the sultan, tune in here, and here for a further examination of the events and mortality figures: After deceptively summing up the fate of the Armenians as “wholesale annihilation” (remember, the definition of annihilation means “not a trace is left”), Dadrian tells us:

The resolve of the Turks not to allow the Armenians, the only Christian nationality then still under Ottoman rule, likewise to emancipate, substantially contributed to a Final Solution decision, the implementation of which decision significantly coincided with the ruinous disintegration of the very Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I.

The truth is, the greater the freedoms granted the Armenians, under the Tanzimat period and particularly in 1909 (when the Armenians were more than "emancipated"; what is V. D. talking about? Likewise, Greeks and Assyrians were other Christians under Ottoman rule), the more the Armenians would aim at “terrorizing the Ottoman Government, thus contributing toward lowering the prestige of that regime and working toward its complete disintegration,” as Louise Nalbandian wrote about the Hunchaks. Armenia’s first prime minister, Hovhannes Katchaznouni, concurred in whitewashed fashion:

“...[T]he struggle begun decades ago against the Turkish government brought about the deportation or extermination of the Armenian people in Turkey and the desolation of Turkish Armenia. This was the terrible fact!”

In other words, the reason for Armenian suffering during “1915” had nothing to do with Turkish oppression, and everything to do with Armenians having fired the first shot, particularly during a war where the Ottomans were fighting for their nation's life. Now, while Katchaznouni may be excused for using terms such as “extermination” (he was addressing an audience of fellow terrorist Dashnaks) look at Dadrian’s choice of words: a “Final Solution.” As we have seen with the vast number of Armenians still in what was left of the empire after war’s end, no “Final Solution” could have been implemented. (If so, “zero” Armenians would have been left.) Yet the unscrupulous propagandist feels no compunction over making such a serious charge, particularly without offering factual evidence.

“Armenians were not going to be allowed to enjoy equal rights, equality having been declared anathema to Islam by the Ottoman Muslim hierarchy.”

What can one expect from such a dishonest author? In effect, Armenians were the masters of Ottoman society, allowed to prosper as never before in their history, and by enjoying an “internal autonomy” in this extremely tolerant society. They had it much worse under Russia, and for greater perspective, Muslims and other minorities in “enlightened” European nations often fared little better than slaves. But Dadrian decided here to address the wonderful tolerance of the Ottomans:

The rare instances of Armenians having been favored for appointments in the Ottoman government, bureaucracy and Civil List, and the royal household, were but exceptions to the rule. Some of them were token appointments, others were in default appointments given the then existing paucity of competent and/or trustworthy Turkish functionaries.

Isn’t that absolutely unbelievable, the depths this “foremost authority of the Armenian Genocide” will sink to? Sure, at a time when a Catholic could barely get elected dog catcher in the United States, an Armenian would be allowed to go near the top, such as the Foreign Minister in 1912-13... and this should be considered a “token” appointment? (Or an appointment made because Turks were not good enough? If Turks were such subhuman incompetents, how could the run-by-Turks empire have lasted for some six centuries?) Even Armenian terrorists, such as Garo Pastermadjian, were allowed to serve in the Ottoman government.

Why rely on Ottoman archival accounts to write history? Because they are the sort of solid data that is the basis of all good history. The Ottomans did not write propaganda for today's media. The reports of Ottoman soldiers and officials were not political documents or public relations exercises. They were secret internal reports in which responsible men relayed what they believed to be true to their government. They might sometimes have been mistaken, but they were never liars. There is no record of deliberate deception in Ottoman documents. Compare this to the dismal history of Armenian Nationalist deceptions: fake statistics on population, fake statements attributed to Mustafa Kemal, fake telegrams of Talat Pasa, fake reports in a Blue Book, misuse of court records and, worst of all, no mention of Turks who were killed by Armenians. (Dr. Justin McCarthy at the Turkish Grand National Assembly, March 24, 2005)

To obviate unnecessary arguments about questionable authenticity and “victor’s justice,” the discussion thus far has been deliberately kept free from any and all references to the court-martial proceedings of the Turkish Military Tribunal prosecuting the authors of the Armenian genocide in the 1919-1920 Armistice years. Despite the valiant efforts of the Young Turk party leaders to remove and destroy all incriminating evidence in this regard, inevitably an exiguous number of documents randomly survived these cleansing operations.

Thank you, Vahakn Dadrian, for spelling out why the bread and butter of Dadrian’s genocide thesis, the 1919-20 kangaroo courts, are next to worthless. Although the fact that he dismisses the reasons of “questionable authenticity and ‘victor’s justice’” as “unnecessary” serves as a further testament to the man’s lack of honesty. If these do not constitute solid reasons as to why we should think twice before considering them, the British themselves would not have rejected their findings for their own Malta Tribunal process. He winds up the above with another convenient assertion, that the Young Turk party leaders tried to “remove and destroy all incriminating evidence,” without presenting the proof. Indeed, between the sparse time when the Armistice was signed and the British occupied the defeated nation (immediately appointing an Armenian in charge of the archives), the Ottoman leaders who were attempting to make a getaway were scrounging through thousands of documents, shredding the ones implicating them. (They must have made a beeline to the handy-dandy “genocide” section.)

Before being introduced as exhibits in the trials, each one of them was authenticated by competent Interior Ministry officials who appended the notation “it conforms to the original” to them.

Yet as Guenter Lewy succinctly and inarguably told us, “ few historians would take period officials at their word without verification." Remember, these were corrupt courts, set up for reasons of retribution from a dishonest successor government, and also because a gun was placed at their heads by the Allies. (As Dadrian himself instructed.) If a Nazi puppet court officer from Vichy France wrote “it conforms to the original,” who would accept this sort of validation at face value?

It is no accident that that the two foremost genocides of this century were consummated in the vortex of two global wars. Official German and Austrian documents clearly indicate that in broad outlines and in sketchy form there was a pre-war scheme to liquidate once and for all the Ottoman Armenian population at the first propitious moment.

One can’t compare a powerful Nazi Germany at the outset of WWII, with the luxury and means to act as an aggressor, with the bankrupt “Sick Man” fighting a desperate war of defense against superpowers bent on the nation’s extinction. If the Ottomans were of the mind to exterminate the Armenians, the welfare and existence of their nation would have demanded that they wait, and make use of their great national Armenian resource first. As victors, there would be time to get genocidal later. As losers, there would be no nation left, and the extermination of the Armenians would serve as a moot point. (As history has borne out, the Ottoman nation ultimately suffered an extinction, and if it weren't for one man, there may not have been a Turkey today.) Moreover, insofar as those documents from bigoted and/or ignorant Germans and Austrians opining on hearsay, “broad outlines and... sketchy form” can never serve as concrete evidence. We also possessed not long ago in “broad outlines and in sketchy form” the fact that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Here’s Dadrian’s own broad outline in regards to how his genocide got implemented:

1. Within 24 hours after signing on August 2, 1914 the secret Turko-German political and military alliance, the Turkish High Command ordered General Mobilization, as a result of which practically all able-bodied Armenian males in the 20-45 age categories were conscripted in the Turkish army. After having been used for a while as labor battalion soldiers, most of them were executed by Turkish officers and fellow soldiers.

Our "scholar" is making it sound as though Armenians were targeted exclusively for conscription when all Ottoman men were conscripted. These Armenians were trained and equipped as all Ottoman soldiers; every man was needed in the desperate fighting to come. As Dadrian well knows, Armenian soldiers were put to use in the fighting at the beginning phase of the war, as in Sarikamish. That is when the evidence of Armenian treachery kept getting reinforced; while some Armenians fought dutifully, there were too many who deserted, or sabotaged their side’s efforts. At this point the Armenian soldiers were disarmed, and placed in labor battalions. (In actuality, the decision to disarm Armenian soldiers had been made shortly before the war began in November 1914, but took several months to implement.) Note Dadrian is hoping to get away with the notion that they were placed in these labor battalions from the get-go. And while some Armenian soldiers were massacred (Dadrian is aware that in probably the most major example taking place in Sivas, Vehip Pasha tried and executed some of the perpetrators, actions disproving a government-sponsored extermination policy; Jemal Pasha also convicted and hanged two officers for a massacre near Urfa), there is no evidence to signify “most” were executed. Dadrian keeps confirming his missing morality when he makes such inflammatory statements without legitimate back-up.

2. About the same time, the War Ministry in close cooperation with the supreme directorate of the Young Turk party, the so-called Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), restructured and refurbished the notorious Special Organization, the Teshkilati Mahsusa, as the main instrument of the planned mass murder. Thousands of bloodthirsty criminals were released from the main prisons of the Empire over extended periods of time. After a week’s training on the campgrounds of the War Ministry, they were deployed in the interior of Turkey for massacre duty. In the words of a Turkish military intelligence officer at the time on duty in the Ottoman General Headquarters, “they perpetrated the greatest crimes against the Armenians.”2

The Special Organization (S. O.) is Vahakn Dadrian’s invented “Gestapo Fall Guy.” The S. O. was a military special operations unit, “dealing with both Arab separatism and Western imperialism” (Philip Stoddard), and they had plenty to worry about on their hands than to pay attention to killing Armenians. The great manpower shortage was the reason why convicts were recruited, so that secondary duties as guarding Armenians would not be performed by the professional soldiers, desperately needed at multiple fronts. Making use of convict manpower is historically not an uncommon practice for many nations. (Remember “The Dirty Dozen”? The idea was inspired by convict usage by the USA during WWII.) These convicts were used as gendarmes, but not for the sensitive duties required by the S.O.; this unit played no role in the relocations. Dadrian’s footnote is Ahmet Refik, [Two Committees, Two Massacres. 1994, p. 27), where the “Turkish military intelligence officer” (Elsewhere, Dadrian gave Refik the job of “deportation official”) is unscrupulously made into an “inside genocide man” as much as possible, so that we won’t question the selective quote provided by Dadrian, the one about, “they perpetrated the greatest crimes against the Armenians.”

Yet the translation in Dadrian’s “The Armenian Genocide: an interpretation” (America and the Armenian genocide of 1915, p. 93) was as follows: "These felons who were released from the prisons committed the greatest crimes during the Armenian horrors."

Let’s go to Dadrian’s essay against Guenter Lewy that appeared in Jihad Watch, where Dadrian wrote that Refik “singled out the brigands, the 'chettes' of the Special Organization who, he said 'committed the greatest crimes,' (en buyuk cinayetteri) during that genocide.” Now the blame falls on the “chettes,” which are partisan, criminal gangs. (Or, as Moss and Gilliam wrote in 1923’s “The Turkish Myth”: “roving bands about as lawless as the mobs in parts of the American South, and about as out-of-hand politically as the banditti who infest parts of Italy and Spain.” When there were massacres, it was these lawless, renegade forces that committed them.)

While essentially offering the same meaning, the translations offered are so different, one's trust in Dadrian to relay further information becomes more eroded. Only a reading of Altinay's book will determine whether he was laying blame on the convicts or the "chettes." Regardless of whether V. D. is making things up, we know he is leaving things out. Refik Altinay witnessed the most despicable crimes of mass murder perpetrated by Armenians (that would be the second committee and massacres that forms his book’s title), and "...fresh corpses lying about in the streets and deep in the wells covered with blood not yet dried were those of the poor Turks killed by Armenians” was just one of the things he wrote in this very book, regarding the invisible victims of this equation.



From Karabekir's book, "Armenian Cruelties"; Ahmet Refik must be the man in the middle of the two others identified by arrows (added by Holdwater), likely "Dr. Weiss (German)," and "Doctor Stein (Austrian)." They are observing wells filled with Muslim bodies, recording (during April-May 1918) the devastation left behind by the retreating Armenians.

3. Between this period and the initiation of the deportations and massacres in April 1915, the provincial Armenian population had been subjected to a constant barrage of provocative acts involving rape, plunder and murder. As attested to by German consuls on duty in the interior of Turkey, segments of the Armenian population as early as November 1914 had been challenged to resist, and even to retaliate to provide pretexts to the Turks for leveling against the Armenians in general pre-planned charges of rebellion... German Ambassador Wangenheim... transmitted to Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg a report of Captain Dr. Paul Schwarz, his consul at Erzurum. Detailing the provocations of the brigands... the consul spoke of the acute alarm of “the Armenian population of Erzurum, especially the rural population.”3 ...(referring) to these provocations as “harbingers of new massacres” ... Another consul, Scheubner-Richter... likewise reported to Berlin on “the excesses and severe harassment” of the targeted Armenians by the Turkish authorities, but especially by the Special Organization cadres, the so-called chetes.4 Major General Otto von Lossow... declared, “Wherever possible, the Armenians are being aroused, provoked in the hope of thereby securing a pretext for new assaults on them” ...5 (In the footnotes, the first report is dated December 1914, no date is provided for the second, and the third is August 5, 1918.)

The reality is that the Armenians were prepared with secret caches of arms and ammunition stored throughout the empire, ready to strike as soon as their nation was at their weakest, as the Hunchak charter spelled out. (“The most opportune time to institute the general rebellion for carrying out the immediate objectives was when Turkey was engaged in war.” Nalbandian, 1963) Days after war broke out, Armenians stirred trouble in Van (see New York Times link below) and soon eruptions would break out throughout many areas of the empire (consult pp. 196-200 of Gurun’s “The Armenian File,” 1985, for a sampling of internal Ottoman telegram communications, reporting upon many different villages; here’s a few for the Van area, and one for Sivas; as Dadrian instructed above, reports prepared for internal use would be looked upon “thusly as incontestable”), helped by the $13 million (in today’s money) that the Armenians received from Russia (“for the initial cost of arming and preparing the Turkish Armenians and to start riots within the country during the war,” as the Dashnak military minister put it during February 1915). Now what are these Christian-sympathizing German consuls reporting far from the spot, and mainly from the comfort of their offices, having derived their information from their Armenian assistants and who knows where else? The first one is telling us that the poor, innocent Armenians were “challenged to resist, and even to retaliate to provide pretexts to the Turks.” Is that really what was happening, or were the Armenians firing the planned first shot, as usual... as even The New York Times reported?

The third one's contention is especially ludicrous, and he (von Luslow) appears to be the only non-consul of the bunch (he should have known better, as the on-the-spot honest German officer pointed to above, and another will below). Assuming von Luslow was reporting on conditions in eastern Anatolia (Armenian propaganda tells us there were practically no other Armenians left in the rest of the empire, so for that and common sense reasons, it’s reasonable to assume as such), Armenians were in charge of good parts of this territory in 1918, committing the most devilish acts of mass murder, as their Russian allies recorded. So who was going to arouse the Armenians? The Armenians needed no help in being “aroused.”

Assuming Dadrian translated these passages responsibly, it is lamentable what this “foremost authority on the Armenian genocide” is doing. Thanks to the words of a few ignorant bigots, not in keeping with the historical reality, we are asked to believe crimes committed by Armenians were a “set-up” by the Turks!

(Not incidentally, Dadrian’s third footnote “5,” from 1918, and most likely the second and undated footnote “4” are irrelevant, as his notion pertained strictly to “Between this period [Aug. 1914] and the initiation of the deportations and massacres in April 1915.” Also not incidentally, every genocide-cheering Armenian has it tattooed on his or her forehead that the “genocide” began on April 24, 1915. Yet the “deportations and massacres” did not take place on April 24; the resettlement order was decided on in May 27, and implemented days later. The first sign of a relocation decision took place on May 2nd, as signs of Armenian treachery became too plentiful to ignore.)

"[T]he Armenians felt excessive pleasure at having killed such unfortunate people." — Raphael de Nogales

The third phase affected the multitudes of emaciated survivors of the exhausting and debilitating treks of deportation. In the deserts of Mesopotamia, in Ras-ul-Ain, Deir Zor and Shedadi in particular some 150,000 such survivors were slaughtered by Chechen and Kurdish tribes in the summer of 1916 on the order of Turkish authorities who were unpleasantly surprised by such a relatively high survival rate.

What is giving this “scholarly” goof the idea that these “Chechen and Kurdish tribes” were beholden to orders of the authorities? Some Kurdish tribes also revolted during these war years, and their unmanageability is a historically well-known phenomenon. I also wonder why Dadrian decided to give Chechens prominence, when they were far fewer in number than the Kurds, and the other groups of the, at times fanatically Muslim, Circassians and Arabs. (The credit for these four groups as the killers has been often given by Armenian survivors. Footnote 40 in Lewy’s “Resettlement” chapter — coming up — cites a French work by Raymond Kévorkian [“The Extermination of Ottoman-Armenian Deportees in the Concentration Camps of Syria-Mesopotamia”] and another by Kapikian [“Yeghernabadoum”].) The fact of the matter is, there is no evidence that the Kurds and the others were coerced or incited to act against Armenians. It was simply business as usual for the criminals in these tribes, where human life was deemed as cheap. (But that won’t stop Mr. Dadrian from making an unethically unsubstantiated statement such as “on the order of Turkish authorities.”

Vahakn Dadrian did not like it when he was accused of sexual harassment. The charge was true, and he lost his tenured position as a university professor. But Dadrian still was not happy, and fought against the repercussions of his misdeed. Now imagine making such a charge on no evidence. Further imagine that the charge involves the worst crime of murder. That is what this unscrupulous man is indulging in.

He is actually telling us 150,000 Armenians were “slaughtered.” Where did he get this number from? What happened to the Armenians after they were resettled is an episode that is tackled by reliance on tainted sources. Even solid scholar Guenter Lewy, in his Herculean efforts to be fair (one reason likely being to lessen the odds for the brave scholar to be branded as “pro-Turk”; no matter what he did, he was going to be accused of such by the out-of-control genocide smearers), relied almost entirely on these tainted sources (Armenians, missionaries and consuls) for the “Resettlement” chapter of his book, The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide. What we can be certain of is that many resettled Armenians went through a horrible experience. What we can’t be certain of is that those who were deliberately killed were done away with on the orders of the Ottoman government. The best evidence is that the perpetrators were most often lawless “chettes,” or gangs.

Here are the numbers from this chapter, for the heck of it. Ras-ul-Ain, an apparent transit camp on the way to Zor that generally wound up being a kind of permanent residence, had 20,000 Armenians in Feb. 1916 (Consul Jesse Jackson), reduced to almost nothing by June of 1917. (Source: German missionary Bruno Eckart, one of Lepsius’ most “zealous and trusted co-workers”; Eckart felt the reason for the killings was greed.) Lewy agrees the cause for death of these Ras-ul-Ain-detained Armenians was murder. Meskene, another transit camp, had 55,000 dead by July’s end, 1916 (Consul Rossler). Rakka, a town by the Euphrates, and surroundings had 10,000 Armenians in Feb. 1916 (Consul Jesse Jackson), 6,000 in April 1917 (Swiss missionary Künzler) and 1,000 by December 1917 (“Friend of Lepsius” Consul Rossler; 2,500 were taken to Urfa in Dec. 1916 and another large group to do Urfa road work in the summer of 1917.) Der-el-Zor’s most authoritative figure appears to be 40,000 in March 1916 (Consul Rossler); larger figures might have been referring to the entire district and not the city. The original governor, Ali Suat Bey, treated the Armenians conscientiously, but things got worse when replaced by Zeki Bey in April 1916. Obeying the stipulation that Armenians were not to exceed 10% of the Muslim population, Zeki expulsed thousands with dire results. 15,000 were left by the end of August 1916 (Consul Rossler). The ending location in this chapter is Damascus, but this one doesn’t count, since Armenians were treated fairly by Jemal Pasha. It appears only 20,000 of 132,000 in southern Syria died (Maud Mandel review of Kévorkian’s book, The Armenian Forum, Autumn 1998).

It’s hardly scientific and excludes the other areas Dadrian mentioned (but also includes areas not mentioned), in addition to representing total figures (Dadrian limited his 150,000 only to the "summer of 1916"; when did his remainder of 1.5 million-1.2 million minus 150,000 die?), yet let’s add it up: 20,000 dead in Ras-ul-Ain, 55,000 in Meskene, let’s say 5,000 dead in Rakka, and 25,000 dead in Zor. This serves as the most generous estimate, assuming the difference between the numbers “before” and “after” meant all the Armenians were killed. (Of course, that was not the case; groups were sometimes moved out elsewhere, and no one can say with certainty what became of them.) Result: 105,000, a difference of 45,000 with Dadrian’s figure. (If we include the Damascus mortality, the difference is reduced to 25,000.) Let’s keep in mind Lewy’s figures were provided 100% by Armenian sympathizers. Additionally, let’s not forget most victims had died of famine and disease, and Dadrian was being his usual mean, dishonest self by telling us they had all been “slaughtered.”

What we can also be certain of is that the majority of resettled Armenians survived. If extermination was the plan, figuratively speaking, there is not a single Armenian under Ottoman control who would have been left alive. If “Turkish authorities... were unpleasantly surprised by such a relatively high survival rate” — that is, if they suddenly realized they had erred in their evil extermination plan — why would the “genocide” have “all but run its course” in 1916?

(ADDENDUM, 9-07: Please bear in mind that Dadrian's timetable for the "completion of the main part" of his genocide points to January-February of 1916.)

The ending paragraph of Lewy’s “Zor” section bears repeating:

A German officer, Ludwig Schraudenbach, who passed through Der-el-Zor in early 1917, reports hearing of horrible atrocities committed on the orders of Zeki Bey. Children were said to have been tied between wooden boards and set on fire. Schraudenbach’s account makes it clear that he heard of but did not see any of these outrages. Dadrian leaves out this important qualification and refers to these allegations as fact. (The original Schraudenbach source is provided, along with Dadrian’s: “German Responsibility in the Armenian Genocide...”, p. 195, n. 179)

Aside from serving as yet another corroboration of Dadrian’s fraudulent nature, what’s revealing about the above passage is that Armenian propaganda was so prevalent in German circles, even the military men could not help but be influenced by what they had heard. That went across the board for all Germans and Austrians. You’d think if Germany was so interested in protecting the reputation of their Ottoman allies, the overwhelming view would have been that the Turks were innocent. This was not the case, as we can see from this revealing example, helping us to better understand as to why Germans and Austrians were quick to believe pro-Armenian claims.

If the idea was for the “liquidation” to be seen through until the bitter end, Talat Pasha certainly would not have issued his order on August 29, 1915, instructing that there would be no further relocations. (“...[A]side from those who have already been transferred and relocated, no additional Armenians are to be removed.”) And he certainly would not have kept re-issuing the same order, since the locals kept disobeying. For example, in March 16, 1916, the order to the governors was: “Owing to administrative and military considerations it has been determined that from this time forward the transfer of Armenians will cease. It is ordered that from this time forward no Armenians, other than those already relocated, will be transferred for any reason.” Still disobeyed, Talat was forced to reissue a similar order on Oct. 24, 1916: “As the transfer of Armenians is revoked, it is no longer appropriate to dispatch convoys of Armenians who are to be transferred and relocated. Therefore, if investigations have determined that there are dangerous individuals who should be transferred, we are to be promptly notified of their names and total number.” As Guenter Lewy wrote in his The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide, where the foregoing has been referenced (pp. 205-207), :[T]he deportations for all practical purposes had finally come to an end, and there was even talk of an amnesty that would allow the deportees to return to their homes. (Source: Embassy minute, December 11, 1917, PA, Botsch. K/174 [fiche 7270])

ADDENDUM, July 2007:

Lewy's source for the Aug. 29, 1915 telegram is Orel and Yuca's The Talat Pasha 'Telegrams': Historical Fact or Armenian Fiction?, 1986, p. 129. This is the book that examines the Andonian forgeries. I have since looked at Armenians in Ottoman Documents (1915-1920), Directorate of Ottoman Archives, 1995, listing telegrams in chronological order, and there is no such telegram for August 29. There is one, however, for October 27, 1915, with the heading of "Halting the Deportation of Armenians." Its description: "Ciphered telegram from the Ministry of the Interior to various provinces and governors of sanjaks, regarding that Armenians, other than those who have been gathered in order to be sent to specific locations and who have set out on the road, not be sent." It's signed by Talat Pasha (BOA, DH. SFR, nr. 57/135).

ADDENDUM, September 2007:

I've gotten the picture that the English summaries in "Armenians in Ottoman Documents" are unreliable, they sometimes alter the meaning because they are not exact and are not full-text. The information from the Orel-Yuca book is as such:

Authentic Document No. LII
Ciphered telegram from the Ministry of the Interior to the Governors of the provinces of Hudavendigar [Bursa], Ankara, Konya, Adana, Aleppo, Sivas, Mamuretilaziz [Elazig], Diyarbakir and Erzurum; and to the Governors of the sanjaks of Izmit, Maraş, Urfa, Zor, Kütahya, Karesi [Balikesir], Nigde, Karahisansahib [Afyon], and Kayseri:

The only goal which the Government hopes to attain by the removal of the Armenians from their places of residence, and their transfer to specified areas, is the prevention of their activities against the Government, and to put them in a position where they will be unable to pursue their dreams of establishing an Armenian Government. As this decision is not intended to destroy innocent people, it is the absolute wish of the Government that every measure to ensure the security and protection of the convoys during the relocation process be taken. Further, that the individuals being transferred are to be adequately fed from the Immigrants’ Appropriation. In addition, it is the wish of the Government that, aside from those who have already been transferred and relocated, no additional Armenians are to be removed. As has been previously announced, the families of soldiers, artisans in the necessary proportion, and the Protestant and Catholic Armenians, are not to be transferred.

It is ordered, to begin without delay,legal prosecution against those who attack the convoys, and those who engage in robberies, and who commit rape, succumbing to bestial feelings. Officials and gendarmes who have participated in these acts are to be severely punished. All such officials are to be immediately discharged, and turned over to the military courts. Their names are to be sent to us at once. Henceforth, the provinces or sanjaks will be held responsible for any such incidents which occur [within their boundaries].

16 August 1331 [29 August 1915].
Minister of the Interior.[54]

Holdwater: In other words, the first time Talat Pasha halted the relocations does indeed occur on August 29, 1915, and aside from the two other times Prof. Lewy told us the order was repeated, apparently, Talat Pasha sent this order a fourth time, with the October 27, 1915 communication. (Thanks to Erman.)

ADDENDUM, December 2007:

A new (2007) book by the name of "Turkish-Armenian Conflict Documents," edited by H. Ozdemir and Y. Sarinay, reveals what I have taken to be meticulous and trustworthy translations of Ottoman documents. Further clarifications to our discussion:

1) The August 29, 1915 telegram above is indeed the same, albeit translated differently, but with no differences in meaning. (Save for this one's saying Armenians who were slated to be relocated will still be in line for relocation, and indeed there were relocations that went on after this date.) As a side note (and this is important, as it can be confusing), there was a second (and actually a third, to Bursa) telegram dated August 29 as well, this one addressed only to the Governorate of Ankara; it regards Talat Pasha's regret that Armenians have not been sufficiently protected, and he comes down hard on those who have broken the law, requiring all officials involved to be held responsible "from now on," and criticizing "the obvious incompetence of the officials in charge" as well as the "audacity on the part of the gendarme and the local people who acted on their bestial instincts to rape and rob the Armenians." In this telegram, Talat says the relocation should never be left in the hands of fanatics, and that the Armenians must be protected. The part that comes closest to suggesting a halt is: "At the places where such a protection could not be provided, the transfer of Armenians should be postponed."

2) The October 27, 1915 telegram was not addressed to all corners of the empire, but to the Governorates of Bursa, Ankara, Aleppo and Adana provinces, and the sanjaks of Maras, Alyan, Eskisehir, Kutahya, Izmit and Nigde. In totality, Talat wrote: "No more Armenians shall be sent, other than those who came from certain provinces or other places to be transferred to the designated areas, or those who have already set off."

3) The March 15, 1915 (here it is dated one day earlier than what we were offered above) telegram by Talat, addressed to all, reads in totality: "It is hereby communicated through this circular letter that due to the administrative and military necessities, it has been decided to stop, henceforth, the sending of the Armenians other than those [who] already had been sent, no more Armenians shall be relocated for any reason and on any grounds." (Two follow-up telegrams were sent to Aleppo on March 27 and 30, as the ones in Aleppo were not getting with the program.)

It will be interesting to analyze how Dadrian decided to “prove” his claim, that this supposed “Final Solution” was intended to be followed until the bitter end:

In the case of Istanbul, for example, then the capital of the Empire, by November 1915 already 30,000 Armenians had been surreptitiously, and by a system of quotas, removed, according to a confidential report to Berlin by German Ambassador Metternich.9 As to Smyrna, only the forceful intervention of German General Liman Von Sanders, the regional military commander, stopped the completion of the deportation of that major mercantile harbor city’s Armenian population. That intervention was triggered by the dispatch of Smyrna’s first Armenian deportee convoy as ordered by the province’s Turkish governor-general Rahmi.10

That was his best shot. What do you think? Did he prove the “intent” to “annihilate”?

If Dadrian is telling us Istanbul Armenians were subjected to the resettlement program in as en masse a way as he is indicating (did Metternich have an inside track with the Ottoman government in order to derive that 30,000 figure? Or is that what his Armenian assistants whispered?), the Armenian Patriarch himself disagreed:

The Armenians of Istanbul, and the Armenians in the sanjak of Kutahya and the province of Aydin had not been required to emigrate. The Armenians who at the present time are in the sanjak of Izmit and in Bursa, Kastamonu, Ankara, and Konya, are those who had emigrated from these areas, and who have returned. There are many Armenians in the sanjak of Kaiseri, and in Sivas, Kharput, Diyarbekir, and especially in Cicilia and in Istanbul, who have returned, but who are unable to go to their villages. The rest of the Armenians of Erzurum and Bitlis are in Cilicia.

The Armenian Patrirch, elaborating after the late 1918 decree permitting Armenians to return; British Archives, F.O. 371/6556/E.2730/800/44

There are various estimates of the pre-war Armenian population of Istanbul (70,000-160,000), but the general consensus is that they were largely untouched. As Lewy instructs us in his book (p. 204), some have excused this exception to the large number of foreign diplomats and merchants in the capital (e.g., Hovannisian, “The Armenian Genocide in Perspective”), and Lepsius gave the credit for saving these Armenians to Germany. 30,000 is a significant percentage of the population, and a real scholar does not latch onto it as a fact because one source gave an opinion. As we all know, Vahakn Dadrian is not a real scholar, and he lives to dig up Turk-defamatory dirt... of which there is no shortage. If 100 people are saying one thing, and one person says the reverse, Dadrian will present the latter view as the fact, as long as it fulfills Dadrian’s “patriotic duty” to curse at Turks.

Vahakn N. Dadrian.

Dadrian’s contention that Liman von Sanders saved Izmir’s Armenians from resettlement is even more cockeyed. The 1921 Berlin trial testimony of the German general himself reveals the number of Armenians he saved was 600, only 3-5% of Izmir’s Armenian population. And this took place in November 1916, well after the “genocide” had “all but run its course”! (And this was after the third of Talat’s repetitive orders, on Oct. 24, to cease further relocations; the potential to go beyond these 600 in later months would have been next-to-nil.) Evidently, only 300 Armenians had been booted out previously, and the credit for saving the Izmir Armenians does not go to Liman von Sanders, but to Izmir’s vali, Rahmi Bey; known for being a moderate and opposed to the relocations. He promised von Sanders there would be no further relocations, and Rahmi Bey kept that promise. To demonstrate what a potentially biased man the German ambassador Metternich was (the one who came up with the 30,000 figure for relocated Istanbul Armenians), Metternich wrote to Berlin (Dec. 18, 1915) that Turkish promises to undertake no new relocations was “worthless.” (More.)

This intervention proved a mere respite, however, as in 1922 the insurgent Kemalists destroyed Smyrna in a holocaust that consumed large segments of the surviving Armenian population, as well.11

Dadrian’s source: Marjorie Housepian Dobkin, “Smyrna 1922: The Destruction of a City.” Can you believe it? This is almost as bad as when Dadrian referred to an Aram Andonian forgery, to make a point. Housepian is another Dadrian-style (although she does not reach Dadrian’s utterly shameful highs; who does?) cherry-picking weasel of a non-historian. For example, she preferred the testimony of Greek firemen to the report of the eye-witnessing Austrian fire chief, laying the blame of the fire to the Armenians. Consult Dr. Lowry’s busting of the Armenian professor of English here. (And contrary to what Dadrian is puking above, Greeks and Armenians lined up in the quays to eventually be transported to Greece, frightened and miserable, but alive; Armenians were not "consumed" by the fire in large numbers.) Yes, the desperate and devastated Turkish nation of 1922 was in dire need of the great supplies of their major port city, once liberated. The Greeks and Armenians of that city, who had treacherously allied themselves with the invaders from Greece, desired these supplies not to fall into the hands of their Turkish enemy. It would only be logical for the Turks, then, in Dadrian’s “holocaust,” to send their own city up in smoke.

ADDENDUM, 3-07: If there was a "holocaust" in this part of the world at that time, the commission of the allies gave us a good idea as to where that was, in their report dated 23 May 1921: "The members of the Commission consider that, in the part of the kazas of Yalova and Gemlik occupied by the Greek army, there is a systematic plan of destruction of Turkish villages and extinction of the Moslem population. This plan is being carried out by Greek and Armenian bands, which appear to operate under Greek instructions and sometimes even with the assistance of detachments of regular troops." (Toynbee, The Western Question in Greece and Turkey, 1970, p. 284; as recorded in The Armenian File, 1985, p. 286.)

As to the argument of a civil war, the frivolity associated with it is exceeded only by the absurdity intrinsic to it. As a rule, civil war implies either a breakdown in the system of central authority, or the existence of a central government that is impotent and, therefore, dysfunctional.

As in the American Civil War, with two functional governments at odds with one another?

The resulting armed clashes between antagonistic factions are afforded because of the emerging authority vacuum. The cardinal fact with respect to wartime Turkey is, however, that the Ottoman state organization was not only fully functional but on account of it its armed forces were able to wage for four years a multi-front gigantic war against such formidable enemies as England, France and Tsarist Russia.

Looks like Dadrian inadvertently admitted that this could not have served as the time to conduct a resource-consuming “genocide,” particularly if the nation was bankrupt to begin with. Once again, it’s simple logic, as C. F. Dixon-Johnson wrote in 1916’s “The Armenians”:

“The Turks had just sustained in the Caucasus a severe defeat. They needed every available man and every round of ammunition to cheek the advancing Russians. It is therefore incredible that without receiving any provocation they should have chosen that particularly inopportune moment to employ a large force of soldiers and gendarmes with artillery to stir up a hornet’s nest in their rear. Military considerations alone make the suggestion absurd.”

An integral part of this argument of civil war is the assertion of “Armenian rebellion” for which purpose the four major Armenian uprisings, Shabin Karahisar (June 6-July 4, 1915), Musa Dagh (July 30-September 1915), Urfa (September 29-October 23, 1915), and especially that of Van in the April 20-May 17, 1915 period, are cited as proof positive. Yet, without exception these uprisings were improvised last-ditch attempts to ward off imminent deportation and destruction. Without exception they were all local, very limited, and above all, highly defensive initiatives; as such they were ultimately doomed to failure.

(Note how Dadrian has demonstrated for us how Armenians had "fired the first shot," by dating the Van rebellion as beginning before April 24, the date he described above as having "ushered in the actual first phase of the Armenian genocide.")

Of course most would have been doomed to failure. The idea of the “fifth column” Ottoman-Armenians who had stayed behind (and not crossed over to join the Russians) was to harass the Ottoman armies, and to deplete their energy. If the four cited were “major” uprisings, there were many more “minor” ones. (One example of a not-so-minor one: Zeitun. Their first WWI era revolt — they were famed for many other rebellions in previous years — broke out before war began, in Aug. 30, 1914, when they refused to be conscripted, killing many soldiers and gendarmes. ADDENDUM, 4-07: "... rebellions occurred on 23 July 1915 in Boghazlian, on 1 August 1915 in Findikchik (Marash), on 9 August 1915 in the village of Germush of Urfa, on 14 September 1915 in Antakya (Musa Mountain), on 29 September 1915 in Urfa, on 7 February 1916 in Islahiye, on 4 April 1916 in Akdaghmadeni, and on 9 April 1916 in Tossia."  Gurun, The Armenian File.) The Armenian uprising was no joke; there was a super-powered enemy in the front, and their allies in the back, cutting telegraph lines, shooting, sabotaging and engaged in all kinds of efforts to take the defenders’ attention away from the main hazardous thrust. Yet Dadrian is still going to maintain the false “self-defense” notion, when these rebellions were planned well in advance, coiled in readiness to strike... simply waiting for the right opportunity.

Take the one in Urfa; the Urfa Armenians planned their rebellion, at the urging of guerilla leader Mugerditch, for a long time. When Talat’s Aug. 1915 order to cease relocations came through, Ephraim Jernazian (as he related in his 1990 book, “Judgment unto Truth: Witnessing the Armenian Genocide,” p. 75; this Armenian author went along the lines of “self-defense” as well, of course) asked Mugerditch whether the uprising ought to be postponed now that the Armenians would not have to worry about getting booted out. Mugerditch’s partial reply: “I don’t care whether this is the wrong time or not.” (Lewy’s book, p. 201.) The resulting battle lasted sixteen days (Dadrian gave it another week in his dates above, but Lewy has written the rebels surrendered on Oct. 16), and only with the appearance of 6,000 siphoned-off Turkish troops desperately needed elsewhere. (It should be noted not all Urfa Armenians desired this rebellion, and as the missionary Künzler wrote, took revenge by pointing out hiding places to the Turks. We must not forget there were many Armenians agonizing over the risks to their usually comfortable lives, forced to go along with the madmen leading them.)

The temporary success of the Van uprising was entirely due to a very fortuitous circumstance: the timely arrival of the advance units of the Russian Caucasus army. A delay of one or two days in this movement might well have sealed the fate of the defenders.

Vahakn Dadrian is really some “bezonian,” isn’t he? (This may now well be my favorite word to describe unscrupulous Armenians. After all, the word was good enough for Shakespeare: “Great men die by vile bezonians.” Henry VI, act IV.) He’s actually making it sound as though the Russians appeared by “accident.” As the Parisian newspaper Le Temps reported in Aug. 13, 1915 about their “Seventh Ally,” the “Armenian element... so brilliantly participated in the war against Turkey." The Russians even rewarded the guerilla leader, Aram Manoukian, with governorship later. There was nothing “fortuitous” about the appearance of the Russian army; that was the coordinated plan all along. (The Van rebels were not “defenders,” by the way; they were the “attackers.”) Just as the French warship which picked up the thousands of Armenian fighters in Musa Dagh wasn’t “fortuitous.” The Armenians and the Allied forces were on the same side, and were working together. Regarding Van, the reader is advised to read the excellent 2006 book spelling everything out, with the utilization of Class-A scholarship: “The Armenian Rebellion at Van,” Justin McCarthy.

The vivid and painful memories of the Abdul Hamit era massacres had prompted certain Armenian groups to stockpile at great risk and with considerable difficulty an assortment of weapons that could easily be hidden.

It was the terrorist revolutionaries’ strategy to stockpile these weapons in preparation for revolt; Abdul Hamit had nothing to do with it. Similarly, it was the activities of the terrorist revolutionaries that forced Abdul Hamit to keep his society’s peace. Why were there no massacres against Armenians earlier in the 600 year old empire? Did the Ottoman Turks suddenly decide to kill Armenians for sport? What a thoroughly dishonest attitude.

At least Dadrian has managed to answer an earlier question of his (2001 speech at Harvard): “Where is going to come the weaponry?” When one embarks on a course of grand scale dishonesty, it is not easy to maintain consistency.

"Armenians do not have the right to live in Erzurum."

First order of the Russian General Commandment during the Russian occupation of Erzurum in 1916. B.A. Boryan, Armeniya Mejdunarodnaya Diplomatiya; SSSR. Cast 11, Moscow, 1929

It is also a fact that several thousands of Armenians from all over the world, including several hundred former Ottoman subjects, rushed to the Caucasus to enroll in the ranks of the Russian Caucasus army to fight against the Turks; the majority of them were, however, Russian subjects.

If the majority of them were Russian, that does not mean a significant portion did not come directly from the Ottoman Empire. Even those who came from other countries were in the Ottoman Empire a short time before. The fact of the matter is, there was no distinction between “Russian” and “Ottoman”; the Armenians regarded themselves as “Armenians” first. (Or, as Prof. Justin McCarthy put it in p. 26 of "Death and Exile": "Armenians under Russian and Ottoman rule obviously viewed each other as brothers, no matter their citizenship.")

Let’s keep in mind the Armenian “volunteers” were numbered at 50,000 by Boghos Nubar, in addition to “the 150,000 Armenians in the Russian armies.” (Of the latter, only 75,000 may have been Russian-Armenian; thousands of Ottoman-Armenians enrolled directly in the Tsar’s armies. A Turkish historian has figured 50,000 Ottoman-Armenian soldiers joined the Russian forces, and Prof. Justin McCarthy estimates up to 100,000 Ottoman-Armenian men in all who potentially waged battle against their own nation.) Can the reader believe Dadrian the Bezonian actually limited the number of Ottoman-Armenians in the Russian army to “several hundred”?

[There were] a host of other ethnic and nationality groups and individuals who likewise indulged in such anti-Turkish hostile acts during the war, including sabotage, espionage and volunteering for service in the armed forces of Turkey’s enemies. Foremost among these were the Kurds who, like the Armenians, were engaged in pro- as well as anti-Turkish activities. On the eastern front several of the spies caught by the Turks were themselves Turks; so were a number of Greeks operating in the west of Turkey. Nor can one exempt the Jews who provided two distinct volunteer corps fighting against the Turks at two different fronts, the Dardanellels [sic] (in 1915) and Palestine (in 1918). Moreover, one of the largest wartime espionage networks, the NILI in Yaffa, Palestine, which was caught by the Turks, was run by a small Jewish group.17

Yes, everyone was in on the “let’s get a piece of the pie, since the Turks’ days are numbered” act; we can add Arabs and Assyrians to the list above, as well. Is that supposed to excuse the treachery and mass murder committed by Armenians?

It was the tolerant ways of the Turks that bred the ways for these traitors. The Turks preserved the language, religion and culture of each of these minorities, and the ones in the Balkans, while conquerors from Europe usually imposed their ways upon their subjects. South and Central America, for example, are Christian and Spanish-speaking today. There are probably no “pure” natives left in Hawaii any longer, a minority in their own land; and there is a Christian church in every corner.

"'Do you believe that any massacres would have taken place if no Armenian revolutionaries had come into the country and incited the Armenian population to rebellion?' I [Sydney Whitman, from his book, "Turkish Memories," London, 1914, p. 74] asked Mr. Graves [The British consul]. 'Certainly not,' he replied. 'I do not believe that a single Armenian would have been killed.'" This conversation took place in regards to the 1894-96 events, but the same may be said about “1915.” ADDENDUM, 12-07: What do you know! The "1915" parallel to the contention that no Armenian would have been harmed had they remained loyal comes courtesy of none other than the terrorist "Armen Garo" Pasdermadjian.

Shakespeare was quoted earlier from Henry VI, and let’s add another line from the same work: “Choose your leader or take the consequences.” The Armenians chose their leaders (albeit some were left with little other choice); their leaders led the Armenians to disaster. Yet Armenians are simply not “man” enough to take the consequences; their perpetual victim mentality forces them to blame others, even a whole near-century after events had taken place.

To further illustrate these rebellions were nurtured by Turkish tolerance, Whitman quoted an Ottoman "Israelite," while travelling in the eastern provinces, circa 1898:

"If [the Armenians] had ventured to play their revolutionary game in Russia, the Russians would not have left a man of them alive."

And ain’t that the truth..!

Whitman continues in his book (pp. 93-94), relating to the pre-1915 period (the following is taken from Esat Uras’ “The Armenians in History and the Armenian Question,” 1988, pp. 677-78, and it sounds like the following words are still the "Trebizond" Jewish-Ottoman’s, quoted above):

In Russia, the Armenians are called up for military service and are usually posted in distant parts. Their letters are censored. In Turkey, on the other hand, they have a very comfortable life, they amass wealth, and are exempt from military service. They are free to have their own schools. They teach their own national history, and instill their pupils with hatred of the Turks.

...There are missionaries everywhere, who unwittingly deceive these people. All the interpreters and assistants in the consulates are Armenians. Whatever they say, the consuls and ambassadors write down. If these consuls had been in Russia or in Germany, would they have been able to write such things? The whole point of the matter is that they are Christian consuls in a Muslim country. The Armenian revolutionists incite peaceful Armenian farmers, artisans, labourers. They point to Turkish attacks on their religion. Yet from Trabzon to Erzerum, the roads are lined with churches and monasteries. The Armenian schools and churches are a thousand times freer than in Russia.


ADDENDUM 7-07: Be warned the above (translated from the Turkish) is not a direct quote from the book, but a summary of ideas expressed on different pages. For example, direct quotes regarding comparison with Russia:: "...the Armenian language and the Armenian schools have always been entirely free, and in Turkey the Armenians are exempted from military service—a most distasteful profession to them—on paying a nominal sum. Moreover, the Armenians have been able, in the course of centuries, to gather into their hands the greater part of the wealth of the country.... In Russia, on the other hand, the Armenians are rigorously drafted into the army, and are generally sent to serve their time in districts far away from their homes, while their schools and their language are interfered with by a severe censorship." A missionary is quoted: "The Russians are much more intolerant—much more reactionary than the Turks.." Of the missionaries, Whitman wrote: "Still there cannot be any doubt that their teaching—not their doctrines, perhaps—and the result, probably never intended, and one it has taken a couple of generations to attain, of fostering the Armenian revolutionary movement throughout Asiatic Turkey.." Of the consuls: "Their dragomans and servants are mostly Armenians. When these Consuls walk abroad, accompanied by their armed bodyguard, it is as superior beings, as petty Ambassadors... They report the outcome of their investigations to their Ambassador at Constantinople, who thereupon proceeds to examine and cross-examine the Turkish Government at the Sublime Porte on the basis of the Consul’s communications... Imagine the great towns in England, or the United States, or France, or Germany favoured by the presence of Moslem Consuls walking abroad like Ambassadors, with extra-territorial immunities, present in every law court, and reporting every petty larceny that takes place to their Ambassador!" One more: "Now the Armenian language, creed, and schools are perfectly free in Turkey, whereas they have always been persistently interfered with in Russia. The Armenians accuse the Turk of persecuting Christians, whereas the high road from Trebizond to Erzeroum, as already stated, is dotted with Christian monasteries and churches unmolested during centuries."

These warfare losses are cryptically blended, juxtaposed and composed with the number of the victims of an organized mass murder. Indeed, the two categories are collapsed whereby victim and victimizer groups are subsumed under a single, undifferentiated category, having been leveled almost beyond differentiation, and no longer discernible as separate, if not antithetical, categories.

And therein lies Dadrian’s dilemma; try as he might, he hasn’t succeeded in offering a single shred of concrete evidence to back up his repulsive conclusions. Far from being antithetical, losses from both groups are very similar. The one difference is that the “organized mass murder” on the part of the Turks is unproven, while the “organized mass murder” on the part of the Armenians is inarguable. Their own allies eyewitnessed these wholesale atrocities, whereas atrocity reports condemning Turks are all based on hearsay and forgeries.

As one example from his “Conclusion,” Dadrian points to a Wannsee Conference style “top-secret speech party boss Talaat delivered... in August 1910 in Saloniki” which “outlined” the genocidal “lethal designs... in a rudimentary form.”

Some three months later these designs were embraced by the top leadership of the party during a series of deliberations that were secretly held outside the purview of the regular sessions of the party’s annual convention in the same city.19 Accordingly, Turkey was to be purged of its alien elements and forcibly homogenized under the motto “Turkey for the Turks.” [Vahakn N. Dadrian, Warrant for Genocide: Key Elements of Turko-Armenian Conflict (1999), pp 96-97.]

That must have been some “top secret” plan, intending to get rid of all those who were not ethnically Turkish. Dadrian himself told us a few paragraphs ago that no other Ottoman ethnicity was subjected to “genocide,” five to eight long years after 1910!

If this plan was so “top secret,” how would Dadrian have been privy to the details? He certainly was not cooperative with his footnote, leading us instead to his book. One thing is for certain, however; if this “top secret” plan offered any real evidence, in the form of the Wannsee Conference of WWII, this genocide discussion would have been long over.

The aforementioned Prof. Conroy reviewed this very Warrant for Genocide book, by the way. Ironically, in response to Conroy’s criticism of Dadrian’s failure to use Turkish archival sources, she explained: “Dadrian's excuse for not documenting Turkish policies with internal governmental sources is that the policies were secret.” Isn’t it funny the one time Dadrian consults such an alleged “internal governmental source,” it happens to be “top secret”? Apparently, this “top secret” plan did not impress Prof. Conroy one bit. Instead, she wrote that Dadrian “does not convincingly document these theories. It is thus unsatisfying as a whole. This book is more a work of journalism than solid history and is not recommended.”

Guenter Lewy on the 1910 "Top Secret" Plan

The sources reporting on these secret proceedings all rely on secondhand information, and none speak specifically of a planned destruction of the Armenian community. The British vice-consul at Monastir, Arthur B. Geary, is said to have been one of several foreign diplomats who obtained the text of Talaat's secret speech; but according to his report rendered on August 28, the relevant part of the speech mentioned nothing worse than the needed task of "Ottomanizing the Empire"5 Others claiming knowledge of the secret decisions include Galib Bey, the former director of post and telegraph in Erzurum and a participant at the congress. According to Dadrian, Galib "confided to his close friend Dikran Surabian, a Catholic Armenian and official interpreter at the French Consulate in Erzurum, that these plans 'made one's hair stand at end'... As the main source for this information Dadrian cites the memoirs of Jean Naslian, the bishop of Trebizond.6 However, even pro-Armenian authors such as James H. Tashjian and Yves Ternon acknowledge that Bishop Naslian's work has serious errors.7 Moreover, the chain of transmission for the damaging information is rather lengthy-- Galib confiding to Surabian, who presumably told Bishop Naslian. Dadrian is aware of the "limitations and problems" of such sources,8 and most readers will regard this as an understatement.

Ternon, referring to the allegation that the Saloniki congress accepted the idea of the Armenian genocide, writes: "This assumption is not based on any solid proof."9 The British historian Andrew Mango uses even stronger language: "I know of no evidence to support the assertion that in several secret conferences of the 'Committee of Union and Progress,' held in Salonica from 1910 onward, the elimination of all Armenians was adopted as a central object of Young Turk policy."10

"The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide," 2005, p. 44.

5. Great Britain, Foreign Office, British Documents on the Origin of the War 1898-1914, p. 208.
6. Jean Naslian, Les mémoires des Mgr. Jean Naslian, évêque de Trébizonde, p. 10 (n. 6), 148, 412, quoted in Vahakn Dadrian, "The Secret Young-Turk Ittihadist Conference and the Decision for the World War I Genocide of the Armenians," Journal of Political and Military Sociology 22 (1994): 194 (n. 14).
7. James H. Tashjian, "On a 'Statement Condemning the Armenian Genocide of 1915-18 Attributed in Error to Mustafa Kemal, Later 'The Ataturk,'" Armenian Review 35 (1982): 228, 232-33; Ternon, The Armenians, p. 289 (n. 24).
8. Dadrian, "The Secret Young-Turk Ittihadist Conference," p. 179.
9. Ternon, The Armenians, p. 134.
10. Andrew Mango, "Understanding Turkey," Middle Eastern Studies 18 (1982): 212.