Armenia's Tears- interview with Vahakn Dadrian May 2, 2005
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By Alyssa A. Lappen
FrontPageMagazine.com | May 2, 2005
April 24, 2005 marked the 90th "anniversary" of the Armenian genocide. With the purpose of decapitating the Armenian community, on April 24, 1915, Turkish Interior Minister Mehmed Talaat ordered the arrest of all Armenian political and community leaders suspected of opposing the Ittihad (“Young Turk”) government, or favoring Armenian nationalism. In Istanbul alone, 2,345 seized leaders were incarcerated, and most were subsequently executed. None were nationalists, political or charged with sabotage, espionage, or any other crime. None were even tried.
1 According to Turkish author Taner Akcam, systematic plunder, raids, and murders of Armenians were already occurring daily, under the pretexts of “searching for arms, of collecting war levies, or tracking down deserters...”
2 Within a month, the final, definitive mass deportations of the Armenian genocide would begin.
3
In recognition of that anniversary, I interviewed Vahakn Dadrian, the world's preeminent scholar of the Armenian genocide. The author of Warrant for Genocide and The History of the Armenian Genocide in March and April alone received two lifetime achievement awards—from the Annual Scholars' Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches, and from the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. Dadrian studied mathematics, history and international law at the Universities of Berlin, Vienna and Zürich before earning his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago. He has been a Research Fellow at Harvard University, a guest professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a visiting professor at Duke University, received two large National Science Foundation grants and for years headed a genocide study project for the H. F. Guggenheim Foundation. From 1970 to 1991, he taught sociology at the State University of New York. In 1998, he received the Khorenatsi Medal, Armenia's highest cultural award. He currently heads Genocide Research at the Zoryan Institute.
*
Q. I'd like to know about your recent lifetime achievement award.
A. Which one there are many.
Q. The recent one.
A. The work by the specialists of the Holocaust [in Los Angeles] was a lifetime achievement in the area of the general genocide studies and the Armenian genocide in particular. Five years ago, the same assembly of Holocaust scholars had invited me to deliver a keynote address on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Holocaust conference, along with the Nobel prize laureate, Eli Wiesel and distinguished Holocaust scholar Yehuda Bauer. When I finished my recent delivery to the holocaust scholars, I got a standing ovation. Several people were unhappy that I couldn't speak longer. One female graduate student came to me, it is very funny, it never happened, and said at her table, they were betting that I was reading rather than speaking and she asked me to verify. I said, no, I never read, I always speak, I never read from notes.
Q. Does Yehuda Bauer recognize the Armenian genocide.
A. Bauer is one of the few holocaust scholars who does recognize the Armenian genocide, and tells everybody that whatever he knows about the subject comes from Dadrian.
Q. Well it's true, you have written an encyclopedia. What are the most important sources for your study, because I noticed in the background, you try not to use British, French, Russian sources.
A. You are so prepared. It is a pity this is for Internet.
Q. Most readers are not familiar with the historical background, so could you briefly review the Abdul Hamit era, and the triumvirate of the Young Turks or the Ittihad, in other words, the origin of the genocide.
A. The Armenian genocide was the culmination of a decades long process of persecution of the Armenians in the Ottoman empire. That persecution was punctuated in the last two decades of the 19th century during the reign of Sultan Abdul Hamit, the so-called Red Sultan.
Q. Red for blood?
A. Yes. In the period of 1894-1896, some quarter of a million Armenians fell victim, directly and indirectly, victim to a series of atrocious massacres, and what is significant about these pogroms was that there was no retribution against the perpetrators. In other words, impunity became the hallmark of the history of the Armenian persecution and it is the dominant feature of the tragedy of the Armenian people. We have yet to appreciate the incredible ramifications of the problem of impunity in international conflicts. In the most recent three volume Encyclopedia of Genocide, I have a separate article analyzing this problem in order to emphasize [its] immense destructive potential.
Q. Well was the Armenia genocide the first time this happened.
A. No, I will explain what happened. The subsequent 1909 Adana massacres was a byproduct, in my judgment, of this phenomenon of impunity, even though it was carried out by a successor regime, namely the Young Turk, Ittihad triumvirate, [Constantinople military governor Ahmed Djemal Pasha, war minister Enver Pasha and interior minister Mehmed Talaat] and I maintain that the world war and the Armenian genocide is the culmination of the consequences of impunity accruing to the perpetrators of the massacres of the previous decades.
Q. Please elaborate.
A. As I see it, impunity is intimately linked to the problem of vulnerability that has been the curse of minorities, such as the Armenians and the Jews. I believe that impunity lies at the heart of the vulnerability of the potential victims. If you examine the two most prominent vulnerable minorities in modern history, that is the Armenians and Jews, you will see that the vulnerability was of dual character. First internally, which is associated with the status of minority. Minority status implies a number of disabilities that make them vulnerable. But equally and perhaps more importantly, both victim groups were vulnerable also externally, that is, they did not have a parent state to protect them. So I therefore maintain that genocide is intimately linked with the problem of vulnerability of the victim population.
Q. One thing I did before I came was to look at some maps, and Salonika is Greece, but it was part of the Ottoman empire. Can you talk about the changes of the map from 1910 to
A. There was very little change, because, geographically, the Armenian population remained constant within the confines of the Ottoman empire. In other words, there was a heavy concentration of the Armenian population in the 6 eastern provinces of the empire. It was historically and geographically Armenia, but it was never politically a separate Armenian state. Ottoman Armenians were a subject population. There was one minor change in boundaries. That was at the end of the 1877-78 Russo Turkish war, when Russia occupied the provinces of Kars and Ardahan, and therefore presently, Armenian territorial claims have relevance only with respect to those two provinces that they have considered part of Southeast Russia since 1877-78. So therefore the Armenians claim that it was reoccupied illegally by the Ottomans at the end of World War I, even though it was Ottoman territory before the 1877-78 war that Ottoman Turks had lost to the Russians.
Q. But Greece was part of the Ottoman empire, Syria was part of the Ottoman empire, all these countries that are now separate, were part of the empire. It was huge.
A. It was a huge empire, and the tragedy of the Armenian genocide is intimately linked to the massive shrinking of that empire.
Q. Explain.
A. Beginning with the end of the Russo Turkish war, one by one, the Christian nationalities of the Balkan peninsula emancipated themselves from the yoke of the Ottoman empire, and that process of emancipation reached its acme in the 1912 first Balkan war. It was in the fall of 1912 that the Ottoman Turks were literally expelled from Europe with grave consequences involving demography, human misery, destitution, frustration and anger against Christianity. I believe that this cumulative hatred against Christians very significantly played out in the World War I genocide, because many of the organizers and the perpetrators of the genocide were destitute refugees of the first Balkan war. All their cumulative hatred against non-Muslims and Christians was transferred into anti-Armenian savagery. We call this in social psychology displaced aggression. And even some Turkish historians recognize that in this sense the Armenians were the unfortunate targets, the scapegoats.
Q. Talk about it please.
A. The Bulgarians and Greeks were the main driving force in pushing the Ottomans out of the Balkans. This problem has not been sufficiently appreciated. Namely, the instrumental role of refugees of the first Balkan war in the Armenian genocide. For example, interior minister Talaat appointed 5,000 of them exclusively as gendarmes, and the gendarmes were the main escort personnel of the deportee convoys. Thousands of them were escorts.
Q. The Kurds, the Circassians.
A. The Kurds played a role in the utmost eastern provinces, particularly in Van and Bitlis. So in the Van and Bitlis segments, the Kurdish tribes were the principal instrument of the genocide. To illustrate the point, Mush city and Mush plain is the heart of historic Armenia. The golden age of Armenian civilization in the 5th century, Christianity, monasteries, the discovery of the Armenian alphabet, were all concentrated in that Mush plain. Mush city had about 15,000 Armenians and Mush plain is about 90 miles in length and had about 100,000 Armenian population. The overwhelming majority of this Armenian population experienced the most gruesome form of genocide, namely being herded into stables and burned alive. A veritable holocaust. So this is the real holocaust, burning alive, and this was done by the area's Kurdish tribes.
Q. A lot of the methodologies were later used in the Nazi period. Burning and drowning.
A. There was some of this in the Jewish holocaust, but in the Armenian genocide, it was massive. It was the main instrument but also in Harput, and Mush were massive episodes of burning. There is a description by a Jewish eyewitness of the massive burning of Armenian orphans.
Q. I recall this from your article.
A. Of course, speaking of methods of genocide, another ghastly method that is unique to the Armenian genocide is the massive drowning operations. In particular in the Black sea coast, involving such cities as Trabzon, Samsun and Ordu, and many of the tributaries of the Euphrates River, in particular there is a spot of the Euphrates, north of Erzurum city, called the Kemach Gorge, where nearly 20,000 to 25,000 were mutilated and thrown into the river. And Ambassador Morgenthau says in his memoirs that at that spot in the river, the corpses were so massive that the river changed course for about 100 meters.
Q. Clearly there is a dispute about the statistics. What are your estimates and how do you source that.
A. I am glad that you used the word estimates, because given the primitive conditions of the empire and the statistics, there are no definite and reliable statistics. They are all estimates. I estimate that the number of dead as a result of the deportations and massacres [during the World War I genocide] was 1.2 million and an additional several hundred thousand succumbed subsequently to their deprivations and hardships. Included in that category are also tens of thousands of forcible conversions to Islam of children and women, orphans and harem victims. And I rely mostly on German estimates, and this is more acceptable because, unlike the British and the French, Germany was the military ally of the Ottoman empire.
Q. Does that include the massacres of 1894 to 1896?
A. No. My estimates for the victims of the Abdul Hamit era massacres, direct and indirect, is some 200,000 because large numbers of Armenians succumbed to the wounds inflicted in the massacres. There is one more thing. During the same massacres, in the aftermath of them, many Armenians died of famine. Indeed, because of the cataclysmic events of the massacres, tens of thousands of other Armenians succumbed to famine, starvation.
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--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Alyssa A. Lappen
FrontPageMagazine.com | May 2, 2005
April 24, 2005 marked the 90th "anniversary" of the Armenian genocide. With the purpose of decapitating the Armenian community, on April 24, 1915, Turkish Interior Minister Mehmed Talaat ordered the arrest of all Armenian political and community leaders suspected of opposing the Ittihad (“Young Turk”) government, or favoring Armenian nationalism. In Istanbul alone, 2,345 seized leaders were incarcerated, and most were subsequently executed. None were nationalists, political or charged with sabotage, espionage, or any other crime. None were even tried.
1 According to Turkish author Taner Akcam, systematic plunder, raids, and murders of Armenians were already occurring daily, under the pretexts of “searching for arms, of collecting war levies, or tracking down deserters...”
2 Within a month, the final, definitive mass deportations of the Armenian genocide would begin.
3
In recognition of that anniversary, I interviewed Vahakn Dadrian, the world's preeminent scholar of the Armenian genocide. The author of Warrant for Genocide and The History of the Armenian Genocide in March and April alone received two lifetime achievement awards—from the Annual Scholars' Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches, and from the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. Dadrian studied mathematics, history and international law at the Universities of Berlin, Vienna and Zürich before earning his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago. He has been a Research Fellow at Harvard University, a guest professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a visiting professor at Duke University, received two large National Science Foundation grants and for years headed a genocide study project for the H. F. Guggenheim Foundation. From 1970 to 1991, he taught sociology at the State University of New York. In 1998, he received the Khorenatsi Medal, Armenia's highest cultural award. He currently heads Genocide Research at the Zoryan Institute.
*
Q. I'd like to know about your recent lifetime achievement award.
A. Which one there are many.
Q. The recent one.
A. The work by the specialists of the Holocaust [in Los Angeles] was a lifetime achievement in the area of the general genocide studies and the Armenian genocide in particular. Five years ago, the same assembly of Holocaust scholars had invited me to deliver a keynote address on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Holocaust conference, along with the Nobel prize laureate, Eli Wiesel and distinguished Holocaust scholar Yehuda Bauer. When I finished my recent delivery to the holocaust scholars, I got a standing ovation. Several people were unhappy that I couldn't speak longer. One female graduate student came to me, it is very funny, it never happened, and said at her table, they were betting that I was reading rather than speaking and she asked me to verify. I said, no, I never read, I always speak, I never read from notes.
Q. Does Yehuda Bauer recognize the Armenian genocide.
A. Bauer is one of the few holocaust scholars who does recognize the Armenian genocide, and tells everybody that whatever he knows about the subject comes from Dadrian.
Q. Well it's true, you have written an encyclopedia. What are the most important sources for your study, because I noticed in the background, you try not to use British, French, Russian sources.
A. You are so prepared. It is a pity this is for Internet.
Q. Most readers are not familiar with the historical background, so could you briefly review the Abdul Hamit era, and the triumvirate of the Young Turks or the Ittihad, in other words, the origin of the genocide.
A. The Armenian genocide was the culmination of a decades long process of persecution of the Armenians in the Ottoman empire. That persecution was punctuated in the last two decades of the 19th century during the reign of Sultan Abdul Hamit, the so-called Red Sultan.
Q. Red for blood?
A. Yes. In the period of 1894-1896, some quarter of a million Armenians fell victim, directly and indirectly, victim to a series of atrocious massacres, and what is significant about these pogroms was that there was no retribution against the perpetrators. In other words, impunity became the hallmark of the history of the Armenian persecution and it is the dominant feature of the tragedy of the Armenian people. We have yet to appreciate the incredible ramifications of the problem of impunity in international conflicts. In the most recent three volume Encyclopedia of Genocide, I have a separate article analyzing this problem in order to emphasize [its] immense destructive potential.
Q. Well was the Armenia genocide the first time this happened.
A. No, I will explain what happened. The subsequent 1909 Adana massacres was a byproduct, in my judgment, of this phenomenon of impunity, even though it was carried out by a successor regime, namely the Young Turk, Ittihad triumvirate, [Constantinople military governor Ahmed Djemal Pasha, war minister Enver Pasha and interior minister Mehmed Talaat] and I maintain that the world war and the Armenian genocide is the culmination of the consequences of impunity accruing to the perpetrators of the massacres of the previous decades.
Q. Please elaborate.
A. As I see it, impunity is intimately linked to the problem of vulnerability that has been the curse of minorities, such as the Armenians and the Jews. I believe that impunity lies at the heart of the vulnerability of the potential victims. If you examine the two most prominent vulnerable minorities in modern history, that is the Armenians and Jews, you will see that the vulnerability was of dual character. First internally, which is associated with the status of minority. Minority status implies a number of disabilities that make them vulnerable. But equally and perhaps more importantly, both victim groups were vulnerable also externally, that is, they did not have a parent state to protect them. So I therefore maintain that genocide is intimately linked with the problem of vulnerability of the victim population.
Q. One thing I did before I came was to look at some maps, and Salonika is Greece, but it was part of the Ottoman empire. Can you talk about the changes of the map from 1910 to
A. There was very little change, because, geographically, the Armenian population remained constant within the confines of the Ottoman empire. In other words, there was a heavy concentration of the Armenian population in the 6 eastern provinces of the empire. It was historically and geographically Armenia, but it was never politically a separate Armenian state. Ottoman Armenians were a subject population. There was one minor change in boundaries. That was at the end of the 1877-78 Russo Turkish war, when Russia occupied the provinces of Kars and Ardahan, and therefore presently, Armenian territorial claims have relevance only with respect to those two provinces that they have considered part of Southeast Russia since 1877-78. So therefore the Armenians claim that it was reoccupied illegally by the Ottomans at the end of World War I, even though it was Ottoman territory before the 1877-78 war that Ottoman Turks had lost to the Russians.
Q. But Greece was part of the Ottoman empire, Syria was part of the Ottoman empire, all these countries that are now separate, were part of the empire. It was huge.
A. It was a huge empire, and the tragedy of the Armenian genocide is intimately linked to the massive shrinking of that empire.
Q. Explain.
A. Beginning with the end of the Russo Turkish war, one by one, the Christian nationalities of the Balkan peninsula emancipated themselves from the yoke of the Ottoman empire, and that process of emancipation reached its acme in the 1912 first Balkan war. It was in the fall of 1912 that the Ottoman Turks were literally expelled from Europe with grave consequences involving demography, human misery, destitution, frustration and anger against Christianity. I believe that this cumulative hatred against Christians very significantly played out in the World War I genocide, because many of the organizers and the perpetrators of the genocide were destitute refugees of the first Balkan war. All their cumulative hatred against non-Muslims and Christians was transferred into anti-Armenian savagery. We call this in social psychology displaced aggression. And even some Turkish historians recognize that in this sense the Armenians were the unfortunate targets, the scapegoats.
Q. Talk about it please.
A. The Bulgarians and Greeks were the main driving force in pushing the Ottomans out of the Balkans. This problem has not been sufficiently appreciated. Namely, the instrumental role of refugees of the first Balkan war in the Armenian genocide. For example, interior minister Talaat appointed 5,000 of them exclusively as gendarmes, and the gendarmes were the main escort personnel of the deportee convoys. Thousands of them were escorts.
Q. The Kurds, the Circassians.
A. The Kurds played a role in the utmost eastern provinces, particularly in Van and Bitlis. So in the Van and Bitlis segments, the Kurdish tribes were the principal instrument of the genocide. To illustrate the point, Mush city and Mush plain is the heart of historic Armenia. The golden age of Armenian civilization in the 5th century, Christianity, monasteries, the discovery of the Armenian alphabet, were all concentrated in that Mush plain. Mush city had about 15,000 Armenians and Mush plain is about 90 miles in length and had about 100,000 Armenian population. The overwhelming majority of this Armenian population experienced the most gruesome form of genocide, namely being herded into stables and burned alive. A veritable holocaust. So this is the real holocaust, burning alive, and this was done by the area's Kurdish tribes.
Q. A lot of the methodologies were later used in the Nazi period. Burning and drowning.
A. There was some of this in the Jewish holocaust, but in the Armenian genocide, it was massive. It was the main instrument but also in Harput, and Mush were massive episodes of burning. There is a description by a Jewish eyewitness of the massive burning of Armenian orphans.
Q. I recall this from your article.
A. Of course, speaking of methods of genocide, another ghastly method that is unique to the Armenian genocide is the massive drowning operations. In particular in the Black sea coast, involving such cities as Trabzon, Samsun and Ordu, and many of the tributaries of the Euphrates River, in particular there is a spot of the Euphrates, north of Erzurum city, called the Kemach Gorge, where nearly 20,000 to 25,000 were mutilated and thrown into the river. And Ambassador Morgenthau says in his memoirs that at that spot in the river, the corpses were so massive that the river changed course for about 100 meters.
Q. Clearly there is a dispute about the statistics. What are your estimates and how do you source that.
A. I am glad that you used the word estimates, because given the primitive conditions of the empire and the statistics, there are no definite and reliable statistics. They are all estimates. I estimate that the number of dead as a result of the deportations and massacres [during the World War I genocide] was 1.2 million and an additional several hundred thousand succumbed subsequently to their deprivations and hardships. Included in that category are also tens of thousands of forcible conversions to Islam of children and women, orphans and harem victims. And I rely mostly on German estimates, and this is more acceptable because, unlike the British and the French, Germany was the military ally of the Ottoman empire.
Q. Does that include the massacres of 1894 to 1896?
A. No. My estimates for the victims of the Abdul Hamit era massacres, direct and indirect, is some 200,000 because large numbers of Armenians succumbed to the wounds inflicted in the massacres. There is one more thing. During the same massacres, in the aftermath of them, many Armenians died of famine. Indeed, because of the cataclysmic events of the massacres, tens of thousands of other Armenians succumbed to famine, starvation.
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