Dr. Vahakn Dadrian responds to Guenther Lewy

[Joseph]

Furthermore, it is inaccurate to say that “the Ottoman government released convicts…in order to increase its manpower pool for military service” (p. 4). Available evidence points to a different direction. The most striking testimony contradicting this assertion is provided by Colonel Behic Erkin, the chief of the department for procurement of supplies (Ikmal Subesi) in the Ottoman War Office. In his testimony before the Ottoman Parliament during the war he declared: “The majority of the convicts is not being sent directly to the frontlines but rather to the Special Organization thereby [affording them a chance] to render patriotic services.” [20] As to his argument that there is no evidence that these Special Organization brigands “took the lead role in the massacres” (p. 4), here is a documented evidence ascertained by the Turkish Military Tribunal -- beyond the confines of the Indictment. Harput (Mamuretul Aziz) Verdict “In his capacity as a member of the Central Committee of Ittihad party (CUP), and as Chief of the Special Organization, Dr. Chakir personally oversaw the release of the convicts from the prisons of the empire’s capital, and of Trabzon and the Erzurum provinces. The criminals were subsequently organized into brigand units during the Armenian deportations. These “chettes” then proceeded to engage in killing operations under his leadership” (Takvimi Vekayi, [thereafter T.V.] no.3771, p. 1). A similar condemnation with respect to the murderous role of the same organization is recorded in the Responsible Secretaries Verdict (T. V. no.3772, p. 3).

Even the top leaders of the S.O. did reluctantly admit during their trials the fact of the engagement of those ex-convicts and their cohorts in the operations of “Armenian deportations.” What is so remarkable about this development is that these admissions were made following the abrupt production by the prosecution of documents mostly cipher telegrams, bearing their signatures. The surprised and startled defendants, who until this uniformly [21] and persistently had been denying the involvement of the S.O. in these deportations, reversed themselves and confessed. These defendants also revealed in the course of these trials, and for the first time that the S.O. had two divisions and missions for the purpose of combating external but also internal enemies (T.V. no.3549, pp. 59-60). At the next, i.e., the fifth sitting, S.O. leader Yusuf Riza finally conceded that indeed there were two S.O.s, the second of which was involved, he said, in Armenian “deportations” (tehcir) (T.V. no.3553, p. 88). Of all these S.O. leaders, Atif Kamcil was the one who was most aghast when being forced to face the set of these surprise cipher telegrams. As a result, in two different sittings, the 5th (p. 86) and the 6th (T.V. 3557, p. 103), especially in the latter, he went so far as to admit that he sought and obstained the help of CUP’s Secretary General for the enlistment of CUP’s provincial party cells in the engagement of S.O. cadres and operations. Atif, after indicating that the terms chette (brigand) and “volunteer” (gönüllü) were more often than not coterminous and hence interchangeable, further admitted that Talaat’s Interior Ministry was involved not only in recruiting and deploying the S.O. convict-brigands, but assisted in the enactment of the law allowing their release from the prisons. (T.V. 3557, p. 104).

Three noted Turkish specialists of the S.O. explicitly declare that the Central Committee of CUP served as both the brain and the actively involved organizer of the S.O. [22] Moreover another student of CUP concluded that the S.O. was the creation of CUP’s Central Committee and that while Interior Ministry Talaat chose the operational commanders of the S.O. units, the Central Committee itself specified its modus operandi. [23] Reference may also be made to the biographer of Talaat who referred to the latter’s penchant for illegal undertakings by way of “nurturing and exploring CUP’s secret designs though the creation of a separate organization.” [24]

Lewy evidently failed to understand all these sinister and criminal missions of the S.O., all recorded in Ottoman and modern Turkish, because of the failure to understand the underlying and hence more consequential mission motivating the top leaders of the S.O. The nature of that mission was exposed by a Turkish author investigating it. He wrote “The Special Organization and trustworthy Ittihadists (i.e., CUP), pursued the goal of radically solving (temelden cözülmesi) the Armenian question…they [in fact] organized and carried out the deportations on a large scale and systematically. Dr. B. Chakir championed this policy at the councils of the CUP’s Central Committee.” [25] In fact the same reference to radical, i.e., “final solution” is found in Interior Minister Talaat’s petition to the Ottoman wartime Cabinet when he went through the formalities of seeking authorization for the deportation of the Armenians. The critical import of this formula of radical solution is evinced by the fact that in practically all Turkish works, including that of Y. H. Bayur, the dean of Turkish historians, citing this document, the passage referring to this formula is carefully excised-except in one. [26] Perhaps the most devastating rebuttal of this assertion that the S.O.’s main mission was “covert operations behind Russian lines” (p. 4), which Lewy makes by relying on two American authors, [27] is offered by two most authoritative sources. One of them Arif Cemil (Denker), an insider who singularly chronicled the minute details of these operations on the Caucasus front, stated that “the activities relative to reconnaissance and brigandage (istihbarat ve cetecilik) imputed to S.O. were a cover for the pursuit of such “lofty ideals as the Islamic Union and Turkism.” An almost identical statement is presented by Esref Kuscubasi, whom Lewy identifies as “the leading Special Organization official” (p. 4). Speaking of “the basic objective” (temel gayesi) of the S.O., he disdainfully dismisses “the belief and the supposition that the S.O.’s mission consisted in securing unadulterated information, reconnaissance, and in triggering uprisings and incidents in enemy countries….” He goes on to say that objective in reality consists in “enabling Islam, which we embody as the essence of our moral order, to become an effective force in our foreign policy.” [28] When elaborating on the threat, which these S.O. leaders claim the non-Muslim minorities of the Empire, especially the Greeks on the Aegean coastline, were purportedly posing, this S.O. chief proceeds to offer the following confirmation of the existence of a secret decision to eliminate these minorities.
The S.O., operating outside the sphere of the government but through the agencies of the War Ministry and the CUP’s Cental Committee, primarily became concerned, as a result of a series of secret meetings at the War ministry, about the goal of liquidating (tasfiyesi) the non-Turkish masses of populations which were located in strategic areas and were under foreign and negative influences. [29]

In categorically declaring that this very same S.O. chieftain, Esref Kuscubasi, was in no way involved in the Armenian massacres and, as he puts it, “closer inspection reveals Esref made no such admission” regarding involvement (p. 4), Lewy, inadvertently perhaps, is exposing the stark possibility of his lack any knowledge of Turkish. If so, was he abused or misled by interlopers or any other kind of outside help? The fact is that “closer inspection,” on the contrary, reveals exactly that and then through Esref’s own words as recorded by his biographer, Cemal Kutay, and subsequently verified in writing by him, Kuscubasi. Indeed, in vehemently reacting to wartime Grand-Vizier Said Halim’s assassination by an Armenian avenger in Rome 1921, Kuscubasi voluntarily inculpated himself while exculpating the Grand Vizier. The latter had emphatically denounced “The Armenian massacres” twice in his testimony before the Fifth Committee of the Ottoman Chamber of Deputies investigating the wartime Armenian “deportations and massacres,” and in the same vein had decried the sinister role of the Interior Minister Talaat. [30] The admission by Kuscubasi in question reads:

The assassination of this martyr as a guilty party is a crime and an injustice without example. I categorically reject this accusation in my capacity as a person who performed secret duties in the events [i.e., the Armenian deportations and massacres] that transpired in this respect. [31]
Moreover, he also confirms that the S.O. performed tasks that went beyond “intelligence gathering” and involved the resort to secret operations that served to effectively deal with those non-Turkish elements who were suspect in terms of their fidelity and attachments to the central authorities. “It is certain that these truly secret operations were kept secret even from Cabinet Ministers. They were operations that the regular organs of the government and even security organs could absolutely not handle.” In the same vein he castigated these targeted victim populations as “separatist microbes.” [32]

In the light of all this, Lewy’s apologia that not the Special Organization but “more likely the perpetrators were Kurdish tribesmen and corrupt policemen out for booty” (p. 5), speaks volumes about the level of seriousness with which he evidently has approached this gruesome event in modern history that two prominent eyewitnesses in so many words denounced as genocide. U.S. American Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, on duty in Turkey during the genocide, for example, called it “The Murder of a Nation,” [33] and the German-Jewish Zionist leader, Richard Lichtheim, who throughout the stages of that genocide was also on duty in Turkey. He compared “this act of liquidation” of “a people, the majority of whom were peaceful and diligent peasants,” with “the first phase of Hitler’s campaign of extermination against the Jews…. Organized by Interior Minister Talaat, it was the result of a deliberate, cold-blooded policy of mass murder, claiming over one million victims.” [34]

continued...

The Armenian Reporter International
April 22, 2006

The Armenian Massacres in the Ottoman Empire: A Disputed Genocide
Review by Marc Aram Mamigonian
Director of Programs and Publications
National Association for Armenian Studies and Research
Belmont, MA

Guenter Lewy, the author of The Armenian Massacres in the Ottoman
Empire: A Disputed Genocide (Univ. of Utah Press), was born in Germany
in 1923, from which he emigrated in the late 1930s to Palestine and then
to the United States. He has taught as a political scientist at Columbia
University, Smith College, and the University of Massachusetts at
Amherst, from which he retired in 1985. He is known for his revisionist
writings on the Roma (i.e., Gypsies) and the Native Americans, both of
which concluded that these groups suffered greatly but were not victims
of genocide.

I may as well add that like Lewy, I am not a scholar of the Armenian
Genocide, of Armenian history, or of Ottoman history, and I, like Lewy,
lack the language competency or training as a historian to even pretend
to be. I am, however, well read in the historiography in English, on
"both sides of the issue," as they say, and possess a functioning
critical mind.

Lewy's best-known book is probably America in Vietnam (1978), a
revisionist take on that particular dark chapter in U.S. history that
put the best possible face on America's intentions and actions. The
book is notable for its attempt to discred John Kerry and his
involvement with the "Winter Soldier Investigation" in Detroit in 1971
which publicized alleged American war crimes and atrocities in Vietnam.

According to reporter Tom Bowman of the Baltimore Sun, writing on
February 14, 2004:

In his book, America in Vietnam, author Guenter Lewy noted a subsequent
inquiry by the Naval Investigative Service that found that many of the
veterans who spoke in Detroit refused to be interviewed even when
offered immunity, and some who reported the most grisly atrocities were
fake witnesses who had used the names of real veterans.

In an interview, Lewy termed the Winter Soldier project "completely
unreliable and untrustworthy" and doubts that Vietnam War atrocities
were officially condoned or as widespread as the Detroit testimony
indicated.

Lewy said he does not recall if he saw a copy of the naval investigative
report or was briefed on its contents. "I'm quite confident the
information is authentic," he said.

Naval Criminal Investigative Service public affairs specialist Paul
O'Donnell told the Chicago Tribune on February 22, 2004, that he "could
not confirm the existence" of the report. As those who followed the
Kerry campaign for the U.S. Presidency and those who follow denial of
the Armenian Genocide both know all too well, however, sometimes merely
casting doubt is all that is needed.

In his preface to The Armenian Massacres, while taking shots (mostly
borrowed from an article by Gwynne Dyer, "Turkish 'Falsifiers' and
Armenian 'Deceivers,'" written some thirty years ago [Middle Eastern
Studies, January 1976]) at both Armenian and Turkish historiography on
the Genocide, Lewy - the possessor of "Olympian fair-mindedness," as
fellow denier Norman Stone of Bilkent University in Ankara terms it on
the dust jacket - states: "Unlike most of those who have written on the
subject of the Armenian massacres and who are partisans of one side or
the other, I have no special ax to grind" (x), thus positioning himself
as being above the alleged partisanship that, as Lewy would have it,
leaves an irremovable taint on both Turks and Armenians who work as
scholars on the subject.

A different way of saying this would be that Lewy, a political scientist
who has written books about the Vietnam War, communism in America, the
pacifist movement in America, and the Holocaust, whose work has
demonstrated a total lack of involvement with or training in the issues
surrounding the Armenian Genocide, and who does not possess the language
skills to undertake substantially new work in the area, is in fact the
ideal person to address this history in a definitive fashion.

Lewy states, puzzlingly, that "even a person who knows Turkish and can
read it in the old script most likely would not be able to write a
definitive history of these occurrences" and "Indeed, a requirement that
only persons fluent in the Turkish language be considered competent to
write on this topic would disqualify most Armenians, who also do not
know Turkish" (x, xi). I shall let pass without comment the non
sequitur of the latter statement ("most Armenians" don't write books),
and Lewy is in fact criticizing himself. But I think it safe to say
that the subtext here is even though Lewy does not know Armenian or
Turkish he still feels himself qualified to render judgment on the
historiography because he is looking at things "objectively."

It is noteworthy that Lewy does not acknowledge who assisted him with
Turkish materials -as a scholar might normally do in such an instance-
at the conclusion of his preface. He simply thanks "those who have
translated some important Turkish materials for me" (xiii). Sometimes
silence speaks louder than words.

As for "no ax to grind." Perhaps. We may never know Lewy's motives in
writing the book - except for the yearning for truth that drives all
scholars, surely. To the extent that we are know by the company we
keep, though, it is noteworthy that he spoke at a symposium at Gazi
University in Ankara in November 2005, along with the Who's Who of
Turkish Denial. Among the other speakers was one Gunay Evinch, who
spoke on "The Armenian Pressure on the Freedom of Expression in U.S. and
the Lawsuit Brought by the Turkish Americans in Massachusetts." Evinch
is a Vice President of the Assembly of Turkish American Associations
(ATAA), which is, of course, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. He
is also a principal at Saltzman & Evinch, the Washington law firm (see
www.turklaw.net). Thus, it is hardly surprising that David Saltzman,
Evinch's partner, was the first to post a review (glowing, of course) of
Lewy's book on Amazon.com before the book was available for sale.

Likewise, Lewy's articles that provided a foretaste of the book began
appearing just before the Massachusetts lawsuit was filed. One can
regard these as coincidences, or not.

One notes also that Lewy's article "Revisiting the Armenian Genocide,"
which appeared in the Fall 2005 Middle East Quarterly, also appeared in
the July-September 2005 Insight Turkey magazine. It is somewhat unusual
to publish a "scholarly article" simultaneously in two publications.

What is Insight Turkey? It is published by the Ankara Center for
Turkish Policy Studies (ANKAM), with Suat Kiniklioglu, editor in chief.

(Kiniklioglu is also director of the Ankara office of the German
Marshall Fund of the United States.) Insight Turkey is evidently a
sub-entity of ANKAM, and both appear to have a connection to SDS
International, "Turkey's Leading Private Investigations, Security, and
Risk Consultancy Company." The Insight Turkey, ANKAM, and SDS
International websites each link to each other, and only to each other.

It is not clear if they are sibling organizations or a parent and
subsidiaries.

The Armenian Massacres follows a pattern already familiar to readers of
Lewy's article "Were American Indians the Victims of Genocide?"

(published in Commentary in 2004) and The Nazi Persecution of the
Gypsies (2000), and perhaps other of his works which I have not read.

The template, to which Lewy adheres with the rigidity of a priest
reading the liturgy, is as follows:

* state clearly the argument you are going to proceed to question

* state that you have no desire to minimize the suffering of the group
in question

* establish your objectivity by pointing out the rhetorical excesses of
some of the arguments on both sides

* raise questions about the total population of the victim group (thus
setting up later questions about the number of deaths)

* duly note that, while it can in no way excuse the harsh treatment that
befell them, the group in question did plenty of despicable things
themselves; then describe them in detail, but reiterate that it has no
bearing on the question of genocide

* recite in detail the history of the mass killings, remembering to
stress the magnitude of suffering and establish your empathy with their
loss

* finally, come to the pre-determined conclusion that while what
happened was certainly a terrible human tragedy, it most certainly was
not genocide

[Joseph]

The Armenian Reporter International
April 22, 2006

The Armenian Massacres in the Ottoman Empire: A Disputed Genocide
Review by Marc Aram Mamigonian
Director of Programs and Publications
National Association for Armenian Studies and Research
Belmont, MA

Guenter Lewy, the author of The Armenian Massacres in the Ottoman
Empire: A Disputed Genocide (Univ. of Utah Press), was born in Germany
in 1923, from which he emigrated in the late 1930s to Palestine and then
to the United States. He has taught as a political scientist at Columbia
University, Smith College, and the University of Massachusetts at
Amherst, from which he retired in 1985. He is known for his revisionist
writings on the Roma (i.e., Gypsies) and the Native Americans, both of
which concluded that these groups suffered greatly but were not victims
of genocide.

I may as well add that like Lewy, I am not a scholar of the Armenian
Genocide, of Armenian history, or of Ottoman history, and I, like Lewy,
lack the language competency or training as a historian to even pretend
to be. I am, however, well read in the historiography in English, on
"both sides of the issue," as they say, and possess a functioning
critical mind.

Lewy's best-known book is probably America in Vietnam (1978), a
revisionist take on that particular dark chapter in U.S. history that
put the best possible face on America's intentions and actions. The
book is notable for its attempt to discred John Kerry and his
involvement with the "Winter Soldier Investigation" in Detroit in 1971
which publicized alleged American war crimes and atrocities in Vietnam.

According to reporter Tom Bowman of the Baltimore Sun, writing on
February 14, 2004:

In his book, America in Vietnam, author Guenter Lewy noted a subsequent
inquiry by the Naval Investigative Service that found that many of the
veterans who spoke in Detroit refused to be interviewed even when
offered immunity, and some who reported the most grisly atrocities were
fake witnesses who had used the names of real veterans.

In an interview, Lewy termed the Winter Soldier project "completely
unreliable and untrustworthy" and doubts that Vietnam War atrocities
were officially condoned or as widespread as the Detroit testimony
indicated.

Lewy said he does not recall if he saw a copy of the naval investigative
report or was briefed on its contents. "I'm quite confident the
information is authentic," he said.

Naval Criminal Investigative Service public affairs specialist Paul
O'Donnell told the Chicago Tribune on February 22, 2004, that he "could
not confirm the existence" of the report. As those who followed the
Kerry campaign for the U.S. Presidency and those who follow denial of
the Armenian Genocide both know all too well, however, sometimes merely
casting doubt is all that is needed.

In his preface to The Armenian Massacres, while taking shots (mostly
borrowed from an article by Gwynne Dyer, "Turkish 'Falsifiers' and
Armenian 'Deceivers,'" written some thirty years ago [Middle Eastern
Studies, January 1976]) at both Armenian and Turkish historiography on
the Genocide, Lewy - the possessor of "Olympian fair-mindedness," as
fellow denier Norman Stone of Bilkent University in Ankara terms it on
the dust jacket - states: "Unlike most of those who have written on the
subject of the Armenian massacres and who are partisans of one side or
the other, I have no special ax to grind" (x), thus positioning himself
as being above the alleged partisanship that, as Lewy would have it,
leaves an irremovable taint on both Turks and Armenians who work as
scholars on the subject.

A different way of saying this would be that Lewy, a political scientist
who has written books about the Vietnam War, communism in America, the
pacifist movement in America, and the Holocaust, whose work has
demonstrated a total lack of involvement with or training in the issues
surrounding the Armenian Genocide, and who does not possess the language
skills to undertake substantially new work in the area, is in fact the
ideal person to address this history in a definitive fashion.

Lewy states, puzzlingly, that "even a person who knows Turkish and can
read it in the old script most likely would not be able to write a
definitive history of these occurrences" and "Indeed, a requirement that
only persons fluent in the Turkish language be considered competent to
write on this topic would disqualify most Armenians, who also do not
know Turkish" (x, xi). I shall let pass without comment the non
sequitur of the latter statement ("most Armenians" don't write books),
and Lewy is in fact criticizing himself. But I think it safe to say
that the subtext here is even though Lewy does not know Armenian or
Turkish he still feels himself qualified to render judgment on the
historiography because he is looking at things "objectively."

It is noteworthy that Lewy does not acknowledge who assisted him with
Turkish materials -as a scholar might normally do in such an instance-
at the conclusion of his preface. He simply thanks "those who have
translated some important Turkish materials for me" (xiii). Sometimes
silence speaks louder than words.

As for "no ax to grind." Perhaps. We may never know Lewy's motives in
writing the book - except for the yearning for truth that drives all
scholars, surely. To the extent that we are know by the company we
keep, though, it is noteworthy that he spoke at a symposium at Gazi
University in Ankara in November 2005, along with the Who's Who of
Turkish Denial. Among the other speakers was one Gunay Evinch, who
spoke on "The Armenian Pressure on the Freedom of Expression in U.S. and
the Lawsuit Brought by the Turkish Americans in Massachusetts." Evinch
is a Vice President of the Assembly of Turkish American Associations
(ATAA), which is, of course, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. He
is also a principal at Saltzman & Evinch, the Washington law firm (see
www.turklaw.net). Thus, it is hardly surprising that David Saltzman,
Evinch's partner, was the first to post a review (glowing, of course) of
Lewy's book on Amazon.com before the book was available for sale.

Likewise, Lewy's articles that provided a foretaste of the book began
appearing just before the Massachusetts lawsuit was filed. One can
regard these as coincidences, or not.

One notes also that Lewy's article "Revisiting the Armenian Genocide,"
which appeared in the Fall 2005 Middle East Quarterly, also appeared in
the July-September 2005 Insight Turkey magazine. It is somewhat unusual
to publish a "scholarly article" simultaneously in two publications.

What is Insight Turkey? It is published by the Ankara Center for
Turkish Policy Studies (ANKAM), with Suat Kiniklioglu, editor in chief.

(Kiniklioglu is also director of the Ankara office of the German
Marshall Fund of the United States.) Insight Turkey is evidently a
sub-entity of ANKAM, and both appear to have a connection to SDS
International, "Turkey's Leading Private Investigations, Security, and
Risk Consultancy Company." The Insight Turkey, ANKAM, and SDS
International websites each link to each other, and only to each other.

It is not clear if they are sibling organizations or a parent and
subsidiaries.

The Armenian Massacres follows a pattern already familiar to readers of
Lewy's article "Were American Indians the Victims of Genocide?"

(published in Commentary in 2004) and The Nazi Persecution of the
Gypsies (2000), and perhaps other of his works which I have not read.

The template, to which Lewy adheres with the rigidity of a priest
reading the liturgy, is as follows:

* state clearly the argument you are going to proceed to question

* state that you have no desire to minimize the suffering of the group
in question

* establish your objectivity by pointing out the rhetorical excesses of
some of the arguments on both sides

* raise questions about the total population of the victim group (thus
setting up later questions about the number of deaths)

* duly note that, while it can in no way excuse the harsh treatment that
befell them, the group in question did plenty of despicable things
themselves; then describe them in detail, but reiterate that it has no
bearing on the question of genocide

* recite in detail the history of the mass killings, remembering to
stress the magnitude of suffering and establish your empathy with their
loss

* finally, come to the pre-determined conclusion that while what
happened was certainly a terrible human tragedy, it most certainly was
not genocide

PART II

I will not go through Lewy's book page by page, although I have done so
and marked relevant passages. Most of the book gives the impression of
a fairly straightforward recitation of the events of 1915-16. Lewy does
not deny massive Armenian deaths, but he finds no evidence of
premeditation or intent (which he seems to regard as the same thing).

He chastises both the "Armenian version" that "maintains that the
Armenians were the innocent victims of an unprovoked act of genocide"
(ix) - as opposed to a "provoked" act of genocide? - and the "Turkish
version" which asserts that the Armenian minority of some 2 million who
could not legally bear arms until 1908 and who were known proverbially
as the "loyal millet [nation]" rose up in massive numbers against the
Turks, who controlled the military, the government, the means of
transportation and communication, and who were allied with the mighty
German Empire, in a great "civil war."

Lewy insists that he is not interested in "nomenclature" - i.e., whether
the "massacres" constitute genocide in the legal sense. He is a
historian and therefore above such mundane concerns: "I have
concentrated on what appears to me to be the far more important task of
clarifying what happened. The issue of the appropriate label to be
attached to these occurrences is relevant for the ongoing polemics
between Turks and Armenians. It is of secondary importance for
historical inquiry ..." (xii).

For all his disavowal of any interest in the terminology of genocide,
Lewy spends a substantial amount of time and energy in the book and in
recent articles in the neo-conservative outlets Middle East Quarterly
and Commentary dwelling on the issue of intent - patently in an attempt
to demonstrate that genocide is not the correct term without having to
come out and say it. Of course, Lewy should be aware that any time an
independent body has looked at the "events" of 1915-16, it has concluded
that they do constitute genocide in both the general and legal senses of
the term. Furthermore, in 1997 the International Association of
Genocide Scholars, the major body of North American and European
scholars of all genocides, formally recognized it as such. Clearly this
does not impress Lewy, who pooh-poohed the IAGS in a letter to
Commentary as "self-proclaimed experts on Ottoman history [who] have
never set foot in an archive or done any other original research on the
subject in question" (Feb. 2006, p. 8) - a description that fits Lewy
himself better than those at which it is directed.

One notes that Lewy was interested enough in nomenclature in The Nazi
Persecution of the Gypsies to state: "in my view, the various
deportations of Gypsies to the East and their deadly consequences do not
constitute acts of genocide" in any meaningful sense of the word,
including the 1948 U.N. definition (223). In "Were American Indians the
Victims of Genocide?" Lewy determines that "the sad fate of America's
Indians represents not a crime but a tragedy." It is possible that Lewy
has had an epiphany regarding the role of the historian and the use of
legal nomenclature. But, more likely, he knew he could get away with
writing that because the Gypsies and the Native Americans do not have
the worldwide support structures that Armenians do. With the Armenians
Lewy could always say, in a pinch, "I didn't say it wasn't a genocide; I
just said that I could find no conclusive evidence that it was."

Lewy diminishes to the point of insignificance the post-war trials in
Constantinople; and he regards the evidence of the involvement of the
Special Organization (Teºkilat-i Mahsusa) as non-existent. He is
especially critical of Vahakn Dadrian's work on these subjects. (Dr.

Dadrian who was born in Turkey and possesses full command of Turkish, is
widely considered to the foremost scholar of the Armenian Genocide in
the world.) For Lewy, the Armenian deaths were not the result of a
centrally planned, intentional campaign of extermination - what Raphael
Lemkin invented the term "genocide" to describe. Lemkin himself would
beg to differ with Lewy. Lemkin, in a 1949 interview with CBS
Television, stated: "I became interested in genocide because it happened
to the Armenians."

To Lewy, what befell the Armenians was more a question of bad judgment,
bad luck, bad planning, bad weather, bad local officials, and bad Kurds.

All in all, Lewy wears the mask of the agnostic: There may have been an
Armenian Genocide, but there is not sufficient evidence to say for sure;
and he seems uncannily sure that there probably never will be. Lewy,
evidently, is able to see into the future as well as the past.

There is, then, unintended comedy in Norman Stone's dust jacket effusion
that Lewy's book "now replaces everything else." I realize dust jackets
are not the place for measured appraisals, but such a statement is daft
even by Stone's standards; unless by "everything else" he means less
sophisticated works of denial.

One has to wade through 252 of the book's 272 pages of prose (excluding
notes, bibliography, index, etc.) before one gets to a statement which
should be placed at the beginning of the book where it belongs, in order
to warn people about what they are about to get into. In the section
"An Alternative Explanation," Lewy writes: "I start with the assumption
that the various decrees issued by the government in Constantinople
dealing with the deportation and its implementation are genuine and were
issued in good faith" (252, my emphasis). If he offers any coherent
justification for this extraordinary leap of faith, I missed it.

Evidently the dictators who ruled the Ottoman Empire were gentlemen of
their word, and that is good enough for Dr. Lewy. Generally, though, a
modicum of skepticism is helpful, especially when the disparity between
the alleged intent of the decrees and the results is so vast, not to say
unbridgeable. "Credo quia absurdum!" I believe it because it is
absurd!

These orders, lest we forget, allegedly provided for the "temporary"
exile of the Armenians, for the protection of their property by the
government (while they were away), and their safety and comfort during
their journey. Lewy, from his Olympian height, perceives that "[t]he
momentous task of relocating several hundred thousand people in a short
span of time over a highly primitive system of transportation was simply
beyond the ability of the Ottoman bureaucracy" (253). This presumes, of
course, that the Ottoman leadership (1) desired an efficient relocation
and (2) was totally unaware of the "primitive system of transportation"
that existed in their lands and the obvious consequences of their
actions - even though, as Lewy notes, their "own population" (meaning
Turks - Lewy seems to forget that the Armenians were Ottoman citizens,
too) and their own army were suffering terribly from the same "primitive
system" and its consequences.

In fact, Lewy infantilizes the Ottoman leadership. Like children, they
are not to be held responsible for the consequences of their actions.

The mass executions, the shootings, the rapings, the drownings, the
starvation, the disease - this was not at all what they had intended.

Just a temporary relocation to the Syrian desert.

In Lewy's version of history, no one could have foreseen that it would
all go so badly. Except that so many people did: Germans, Turks,
Americans, British, pretty much anyone who saw what was happening - and
many people did, and they wrote about it. But Lewy discards their
first-hand impressions and eye-witness accounts as being no proof of
governmental intent to exterminate. Why believe them, when you have the
word of the Ottoman government that the temporary deportation was to be
carried out in a humane fashion? Why would they lie about such a thing?

But of course the Ottoman government also foresaw the outcome, as
Armenian property, allegedly being held in safety until their eventual
return, was liquidated as "abandoned goods" in August 1915. The
government knew that the Armenians were not coming back, because most of
them were already dead.

Lewy's book has the imprimatur of a university press; it is clearly
written, a brisk read, as such books go; it does not engage in the
traditional hamfisted denialism. For all of these reasons, it will
quickly come to be cited by denialists as an "impartial" work. In the
end, it contribute nothing to the understanding of the Armenian Genocide
but it does establish a new benchmark of sophistication in the denial of
that Genocide. It is no longer sufficient to deny bluntly the existence
of the Genocide. One must contextualize and stress that the issue is
"controversial" and that there are always two sides to each historical
issue - and so there are. Sometimes, though, one side is supported by
facts and the other is not.

[Gavur]

"A New Brand of Denial by the Turkish General Staff - by Proxy"By Vahakn Dadrian

"The Armenian Genocide: A New Brand of Denial by the Turkish General
Staff - by Proxy"
(With Reference to Edward J. Erickson, Ordered to Die.
A History of the Ottoman Army in the First World War, Westport, CT:
Greenwood Press, 2001, 265pp, $67.95)

Armenian News Network / Groong
September 21, 2004

By Prof. Vahakn. Dadrian

http://groong.usc.edu/tcc/tcc-20040922.html

[Joseph]

http://www.zoryaninstitute.org/Table_Of_Contents/genocide_docs_executions.htm

The Executions of Some of the Arch-perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide by the Ittihadists and Kemalists, 1915-1926
by Prof. Vahakn N. Dadrian


[Editor's note: The Turkish version of this article appeared in two installments in the November 2 and 3, 2000 issues of the radical-liberal Turkish newspaper Yeni Gündem, arousing great interest among many readers as well as among some officials and intellectuals. Despite the abundant exposure of the crime of genocide in this article, Turkish authorities now have been hard put to confront the newspaper. The reason is not difficult to surmise: they are confounded by the fact that these Ittihadist chieftains were caught in a web of conspiracy to have Mustafa Kemal assassinated and at the same time seize power by overthrowing the fledgling Kemalist regime. What Mustafa Kemal and his subalterns did was nothing short of a wholesale liquidation through a series of executions by way of public hangings. Prof. Dadrian plans to expand this piece into a full-length journal article with many additional details.]

The existing literature on the World War I Armenian Genocide has but scant references to the acts and methods of retribution against the principal authors of the wartime mass murder. The reasons are obvious. First of all, those who were tried, convicted, condemned to death and eventually executed by the Turkish Military Tribunal in the 1919-1920 period of the Armistice, were an embarrassment to Turkey herself. The post-war Ottoman authorities only grudgingly and with much trepidation had agreed to institute these courts martial. Pressing national interests, such as prospects of favorable or mild terms of a peace settlement, were considerations making these trials for Turkey an urgent necessity at the time. After all, the Allies had. let it be known in so many ways that unless Turkey redeemed herself by severely punishing those responsible for the massacres against the Armenians, the terms of the projected peace were most likely to be very severe.

Furthermore, the punishment of those key actors of the genocide, who had managed to escape and had become fugitives of justice, had required elaborate measures of secrecy, detective work and many illegal arrangements. The Armenian Revolutionary Federation, otherwise known as Dashnags, which masterminded these punitive operations, did not provide many details revealing organizational contacts, resources and methods of intelligence. What we know about the series of executions against such architects of the Armenian Genocide as Talaat, Dr. Benhaeddin Shakir, Trabzon governor Cemal Azmi, Grand Vizier Said Halim and some other lesser figures, derives from the memoirs of the Armenian avengers who were assigned by the A.R.F. to carry out the executions. These memoirs are inevitably embellished accounts in which to the dastardly and criminal image of the victim is counterposed the heroic saga of the individual executioner. What was common to both categories of Young Turk Ittihadist leaders or functionaries is the level and duration of apprehension with which they were haunted until they died at the scaffold or by bullets.

There is, however, a third category of Turkish perpetrators, whose fatality has thus far escaped general recognition. Among these were brigand chiefs, the so-called çetebashis, who wrought havoc with thousands of trapped Armenian deportees by subjecting them to kinds of barbarities unexcelled even in Turkish history. They were most effective in their pursuit primarily because their charges, whom they led and directed, were almost entirely felons, carefully chosen bloodthirsty criminals who were released from the many prisons of the Ottoman Empire mainly, if not only, for this purpose. Then there are the chief Ittihadists who closely collaborated with Talaat and the Special Organization in organizing and implementing the massacres. Many of these were tried, convicted and condemned to death in 1926 by the Independence Court of the Ankara government on charges of conspiracy to kill Mustafa Kemal and take over the Turkish government. The brigand chiefs were killed individually by either Ittihadists or by Kemalists, whom they had joined in the Armistice period. Other perpetrators died as a result of heart attacks or strokes they suffered in connection with events related to the Armenian massacres. Finally, there is the category of suicide resulting from post-war despondency of one kind or another, and death by fatal accidents.


I. Death by Conviction and Hanging

Nearly all of these defendants were prominent ex-Ittihadists whose trials were divided into two judicial proceedings with venues in Izmir and Ankara. The fIrst series started in Izmir on May 26, 1926 and ended on the day of the verdict, i.e., on July 13, 1926, when seven conspirators were condemned to death and hanged the same day at midnight. Of these, three were involved in the organlization of the Armenian genocide, with two of them having played a key role.

1. Halis Turgut was a party operative and Parliamentarian. During the war he served as commander of a Special Organization contingent operating in Sivas province. He later operated at the Caucasus front, including the Nachitchevan region in the 1917-18 period. To escape prosecution by the Turkish Military Tribunal, investigating the crime of Armenian deportations and massacres, he had escaped in Sivas to the mountains with a small guerilla unit.

2. Ahmed Shükrü was wartime Minister of Education, a fanatical Ittihadist and arch foe of the Armenians. He was hanged twice as the rope on his neck snapped the first time, with Shükrü collapsing on the floor half-dead and finally expiring on the gallows while emitting death-rattle sounds. This man who helped send tens of thousands of inoffensive Armenian peasants to their gruesome deaths, was sufficiently terrified to cry out "Oh! alas, Oh! alas," (Vah! Vah!) upon seeing the gallows on his way to execution.

3. Ismail Canbolat. He was the right hand man of Talaat, was in charge of the empire's Public Security office (Emniyeti Umumiye), the Prefect of the Ottoman Capital, and later in the war, Interior Minister.

The second series started at Ankara on August 2, 1926. It was set aside for a group of top lttihadist leaders accused likewise of plotting to kill Mustafa Kemal and restore the Ittihadist regime and rule. The trials ended on August 26, 1926, and four very prominent Ittihadists were executed on the gallows at 10 p.m. the same night. One of them was Economic Minister Cavid, whose role in the scheme of the Armenian genocide, if any, was negligible. But the other three were perhaps the most ferocious organizers of it - next to Talaat.

1. Dr. Nazim. A central figure in the Supreme Directorate of the party and in many respects the braintrust of the very conception of the wholesale destruction of the Armenians. He operated behind the scenes and exerted great influence in the councils of the party leadership, including Talaat. He approached the gallows in a state of shock and trembling, protesting his innocence with such words as "vallahi" (I swear, I swear!)

2. Yenibahçeli Nail. Was Ittihad's Responsible Secretary for the province of Trabzon, and at the same time the head of the Special Organization forces of the province, whose Armenian population was subjected to the most severe forms of expulsion and destruction through massacres, sparing neither children, the infirm nor the old. But on the gallows he pleaded with his son to take good care of his mother and siblings.

3. Filibeli Hilmi. Was Ittihad's Delegate for the province of Erzurum, where he served as Dr. Behaeddin Shakir's right hand man, and as the chief of the Special Organization total forces of the entire region. The deportation and extermination of that province's large Armenian population was supervised by him. Like ex-Education Minister Shükrü, he too fell from the gallows as the rope snapped during the execution, and he too was hanged twice.

It is significant to note that already during the Armistice Mustafa Kemal had decried the Ittihadist leaders for their war crimes, including the Armenian massacres. In an interview with Maurice Prat, the special correspondent of Petit Parisien, he had exclaimed: "Qu' attendent les Alliés pour faire pendre toute cette canaille?" (Why do the Allies delay having all these rascals hung?).


II. Ittihad Executing Some Brigand Chiefs Involved in the Genocide

Foremost among these are two party officers who devastated the border regions in the east of Turkey with inordinate savagery and repeatedly boasted about their lethal role in this respect.

1. Çerkez Ahmed. Major in the army. He was the main assistant of Van governor Cevdet in the campaign to liquidate the Armenian population of the province. He later served under Diyarbekir governor Dr. Reshid and in the process carried out the murder of Vartkes and Zohrab, the two Armenian Deputies in the Ottoman Parliament. Charged with the crime of murder and plunder. He was court martialled, convicted and hanged, along with his consort, Lieutenant Halil, by Cemal Pasha in Damascus on September 17/30, 1915. When commenting on this execution, Cemal's Chief of Staff, General Ali Fuad Erden noted, "Indebtedness to executioners and murderers is bound to be heavy... those who are used for dirty jobs are needed in times of exigencies [in order to shift] responsibility. It is likewise necessary, however, not to glorify but to dispose of them like toilet paper, once they have done their job." When ordering his court martial and sentencing, Talaat, for his part is quoted as saying, "His liquidation in any case is necessary. Otherwise he will prove very harmful at a later date" [on account of his knowledge of and involvement in the massacres).

2. Yakub Cemil. Major in the army. Like Çerkez Ahmed, Cemil played a major role in the extermination of large clusters of Armenian populations in eastern Turkey. However, he had a falling out with Enver and Talaat and began to threaten them. He too was tried, convicted and executed on September 11/24, 1916 as a result of the intervention of Talaat and his crony Kara Kemal, who succeeded in railroading his conviction.

3. Kurdish Brigand Chief Amero. After he carried out the mutilation and murder of 636 Armenian notables of Diyarbekir on orders of Governor Dr. Reshid, he was set upon by 10 Circassian brigands and killed on orders of the same governor and Diyarbekir Deputy Feyzi, two arch organizers of the mass murder.

4. Kurd Murza Bey. Kemach Defile Brigand Chief. He boasted of having killed 70,000 Erzurum province Armenians passing through the Kemach defile. He was shot dead following a decision by his superiors that he could prove dangerous afterwards on account of his penchant for boasting.

5. Cemal Pasha hanged a number of Kurds for participation in atrocities against Armenians in Islahiye.

6. Vehib Pasha hanged two officers of the Special Organization for organizing the massacre of 2,000 Armenian labor battalion soldiers in Susehir, Sivas.


III. Kemalists liquidating Brigand Chiefs

Involved here are three prominent Special Organization chieftains, whose brutality and bloodthirstiness against their Armenian victims constitute legends in the macabre saga of the World War I Armenian genocide.

1. Yahya Kaptan. He was in charge of the massive drowning operations at Trabzon harbor on the Black Sea littoral. Thousands and thousands of Armenian children, women and old men would be loaded on lighters, taken to the high sea and thrown overboard after being bayoneted by boatmen from other boats accompanying them. Yahya Kaptan later joined the Kemalist insurgents without completely severing, however, his ties to the Ittihadists, especially Enver. This suspected duplicity sealed his fate; he was ambushed and killed by unknown assassins in Trabzon in July 1922. It should be noted, however, that Yahya Kaptan during inquiries into his loyalties had threatened to reveal all he knew about state secrets in the event he was to be pressed hard with such inquiries and investigations.

2. Topal Osman. Milice Colonel. A veteran guerilla from the days of the 1912-1913 twin Balkan wars, Osman during the war operated in the eastern border regions, as a Special Organization brigand (chétté). He too repeatedly had bragged about his murder missions against the Armenians. After the war he too joined the Kemalist insurgents and in the process organized extensive massacres against Greek populations in the Trabzon area as reprisal, as well as against clusters of surviving Armenians. He eventually was awarded by Mustapha Kemal with the position of Chief of the Personal Guard Contingent with duties to protect M. Kemal. But he incurred the wrath of the Kemalist Deputies in the fledgling Parliament in Ankara when he lured a deputy to his home and out of spite strangled him. He was killed during an exchange of gunfire with military units trying to capture him, and his corpse was subsequently hanged in front of the Parliament in March 1923.

3. (Deli) Halit. Colonel, later General in the Turkish Army. As a Special Organization officer, he too was a participant in the killing operations in the eastern provinces. An ardent Ittihadist, he subsequently became an ardent Kemalist, while being sought by the post-war Turkish Court Martial as a suspect in the crime of massacres. A cantankerous and defiant man, he got embroiled in altercations with other Kemalist leaders and deputies and was shot dead during one of these broils in the vestibule of the Turkish parliament on February 9, 1925.


IV. Suicides of Top Ittihadists Involved in the Genocide

1. Dr. Reshid. Governor of Diyarbekir Province. Following his arrest, escape from Bekiraga prison, and recapture by Istanbul police, Dr. Reshid shot himself to death in January 1919. He was one of the most ferocious governors, who with great zeal executed Ittihad's plan of genocidal destruction of Diyarbekir Armenians, as well as multitudes of other Armenians who had to pass through that city, which was a hub for deported convoys, en route to the deserts of Mesopotamia.

2. Mahmud Kâmil. General. Commander of IIId Army, 1915-1916. His command zone encompassed the 6 "Armenian provinces," plus Trabzon province, whose extermination was entrusted to him by Ittihad and of which he was an ardent member. He gave special orders not to spare the old, the infirm, or the pregnant women from the perils of deportation. He also threatened to hang in front of his house any Muslim who might dare to provide shelter to any Armenian. On November 28, 1922 he took his life through suicide.

3. Kara Kemal. A top leader of Ittihad and the alter ego of party chief Talaat. All secret deliberations and plans of the party were under the supervision of Kemal at Ittihad's headquarters in Nuriosmaniye. He was indicted along with other Ittihadists by the Independence Court in 1926 on charges of conspiracy to murder Mustafa Kemal but had managed to escape. When caught in a chicken coop, he shot himself to death on July 29, 1926, 4 days before he was formally indicted.


V. Accidents

1. Nuri Pasha Killigil. Commander of Army of Islam, Transcaucasus and Baku. Brother of War Minister Enver, Nuri was responsible for the perpetration of a series of massacres in Russian Armenia and Azerbaijan, especially the 1918 September Armenian massacre in Baku. After World War I, Nuri became a businessman and by the end of World War II he had become an industrialist, operating in Istanbul a factory for weapons and ammunition. On March 2, 1949, he perished along with others in the rubble of that factory which was blown to pieces following a huge explosion and a holocaust engulfing the entire complex in massive flames.

2. Mehmed Memduh. Erzincan District governor, Erzurum province. (Subsequently consecutively Governor of the provinces of Bitlis, Baghdad, Musul). He was the chief organizer of his district's massacres, in close cooperation with the local operatives of the Special Organization. He accumulated great wealth he acquired through his Armenian victims but died in a fatal auto accident while trying to establish a business in Smyrna (Izmir) after the war.


VI. Heart Attacks and Strokes

1. Hashim Beg. Deputy from Malatya in the Parliament. A fanatic Ittihadist and foe of the Armenians, he sponsored his son Muhammed Beg's operations as a brigand chief of the area, carrying out a series of massacres annihilating Malatya's Armenian population. Following a quarrel with an old Kurd about a stolen horse and an attack on him, Muhammed Beg is shot by the son of the Kurd. Deputy Hashim, his father, thus suffered a stroke and after much agony he died in 1917.

2. Sagir Zade. Mufti of Malatya. He directed the strangulation of the Armenian Catholic Primate of Malatya, after subjecting him to manifold tortures and body mutilations for having refused to convert to Islam. Barely back home, the Mufti suffered a stroke and died instantly.