Amb. Evans review of McCarthy

[Joseph]

Book review: Justin McCarthy's rationalization for genocide makes
for challenging reading

* Justin McCarthy. The Armenian Rebellion at Van. Salt Lake City:
Univ. of Utah Press, 2006. 336 pages.

reviewed by John M. Evans

http://www.reporter.am

November 3, 2007


Given that Justin McCarthy is widely known as a leading denier of the
Armenian Genocide, I did not exactly jump to respond when amazon.com
electronically offered to sell me his new book, The Armenian Rebellion
at Van. My commitment to learning more about the events of 1915, and
to hearing all sides of the story, though, eventually overcame my
initial reluctance, and I ordered the book online.

When the book arrived, the first thing to strike me was that, in
addition to Justin McCarthy, also listed on the cover were three
coauthors of whom I had little or no knowledge: Esat Arslan,
Cemalettin Taskiran, and Omer Turan. To be fair to Amazon, the fact
that this book was a collaborative effort is available to the
determined prospective purchaser who delves into the online reviews
(one of the most laudatory of which is by David Saltzman, the Embassy
of Turkey's lawyer and a law partner of the President-elect of the
Assembly of Turkish American Associations, Gunay Evinch); however,
neither the institutional affiliations nor the academic credentials of
the three Turkish coauthors are offered up on Amazon's website or
within the book itself. Nor is there any explanation of how the four
coauthors divided up their research and writing responsibilities.
Google searches yielded references to Mr. McCarthy's three Turkish
collaborators, giving their affiliations, some listings of their other
publications, and the fact that Mr. Turan was Mr. McCarthy's
supporting partner in the controversial postfilm debate portion of the
PBS broadcast on the Armenian Genocide (which reviewer/lawyer David
Saltzman tried to promote when serving as counsel to the ATAA). There
are a lot of interconnections here.

A second salient feature of the book is that its production was
funded by four Istanbul trade organizations: the Istanbul Chamber of
Commerce, the Istanbul Chamber of Industry, the Istanbul and Marmara
Aegean, Mediterranean and Black Sea Chamber of Shipping, and the
Istanbul Commodity Exchange. Who pays for a book to be written is not
always indicative of the likely direction the work will take, but
caveat lector.

Already on page one of The Armenian Rebellion at Van the reader gets
a strong signal of where the book is tending. Two American visitors to
Van in 1919, Niles and Sutherland, are characterized as having "been
fed on a diet of anti-Turkish propaganda that made the Armenians into
saints and the Turks into devils," before they saw the light and
"changed their minds." It is not made clear whether the Niles and
Sutherland report, which the authors claim without further explanation
was "deliberately suppressed by those who did not wish their account
to be seen," is now readily available; but that report is mentioned
only once in the remaining body of the text and is not listed in the
bibliography apart from a reference to Mr. McCarthy's 1994 article
"American Commissions to Anatolia and the Report of Niles and
Sutherland." One wonders whether, in its totality, the report supports
the authors' conclusions. I have since seen the report by Emory Niles
and Arthur Sutherland cited approvingly by Bruce Fein of the Turkish
Coalition of America (Washington Times, October 16, 2007, p. A16) but
that hardly erases my doubts, as an amateur historian, as to whether
the Niles-Sutherland testimony has been corroborated anywhere else, or
indeed, is really relevant.

My main concern about this work, aside from some unfortunate
disdainful comments about Armenians sprinkled into the text along the
way, is that it repeatedly makes unsupported tendentious assertions of
a global or general nature, such as "the Europeans did not care about
the Muslims," (p. 37) or "were always watchful for signs of disruption
in Eastern Anatolia," (p. 39) and "would not allow the Ottomans the
tools that they themselves used to put down revolt." By contrast,
relatively minor factual points are voluminously documented, and we
are helpfully given the Turkish translation for one of the staple
vegetables in the province of Van (broad beans = bakla).

In fact, it seems to me that the main failing of this book is to
over-research and over-emphasize the importance of the doings in Van
and to dispute the charge of "genocide" by viewing it through the
resulting microcosm, rather than by considering more broadly what had
been happening in the Ottoman Empire as a whole. There undoubtedly was
great tension in Van between Armenians and the authorities, as well as
with Kurds, and no doubt there were deaths on both sides, but isn't
this microscopic treatment missing the forest for the trees? Pushing
the narrow focus even further, McCarthy's book provides a list of
sixty-three Muslim inhabitants of Mergehu village who are said to have
been "murdered or annihilated with the utmost savagery by local
Armenians who joined Armenian gangs strengthening the Russian Forces."

Ambassador Morgenthau reported to Washington that "it appears that a
campaign of race extermination is in progress under a pretext of
reprisal against rebellion." The argument of McCarthy's book is that
the Armenian revolutionaries (especially the Dashnaks) brought a
tragedy down upon the heads of Anatolia's Armenian population, while
"remaining loyal to the Ottoman Empire would have been the better
choice" (the last words of the book). But it is the Russians who
actually are blamed repeatedly in this book: "It was the Russians, not
the Armenian revolutionaries, who gave the first impetus to Armenian
separatism." (p. 46) And the Russians -- not the Armenians -- are also
credited with having carried out the "first major massacres of Muslim
civilians." (p. 233)

Whoever was at fault, in this telling, it certainly was not the Turks.

And yet, some possibly unintentional elements of self-criticism
sneak through. On page 92, the authors note that although "it did not
become government policy until World War I, villages that supported
rebels were sometimes (not often) burned." And Enver Pasa comes in for
criticism of the adventure that led to the Ottoman defeat at
Sarikamis. Furthermore, the misrule of Van Governor Cevdet who had set
about killing local Armenian leaders is termed "brutal and illegal,"
although the overall assessment of his tenure is positive. The authors
admit that such technically legal actions as drafting young Armenian
men in the spring of 1915 "might indeed have cause the Armenians to
fear," but then ask rhetorically, "what choice did the government
have?" Such rhetorical questions smack more of sharp debating
technique than of serious history.

There is some odd reasoning at work here as well. The basic argument
with regard to the action at Van's Aygestan is that (1) Ottoman troops
were the best but (2) the Armenians resisted rather successfully;
therefore (3) there must have been more Armenians present than the
Armenians claim. The authors seem nearly as concerned to defend
Ottoman martial prowess as to prove that the Armenians were rebelling
rather than acting in self-defense.

This ultimately unsatisfying account of the rebellion at Van ends by
noting that "the Armenian rebellion could never have triumphed on its
own, because Armenians were such a small minority in the territory
they claimed" and that they were "dependent on intervention from a
European power." The question this raises is: if the Armenians were
such a small minority, why was the Committee of Union and Progress
that then controlled the declining Ottoman State so obsessed with them
that it arranged for the deportations and mass killings of Armenians
of all ages and from all parts of Anatolia? Perhaps the oddest note is
the authors' assertion that Mao Tse-Tung would doubtless have approved
of killing the Armenian revolutionary leaders earlier, as they clearly
believe the Ottoman authorities ought to have done. I'm not sure that
constitutes a successful bid for most readers' sympathy. The book
makes for challenging reading.

* * *

John M. Evans was the U.S. ambassador to Armenia from 2004 to 2006.

[Joseph]

Interview with Evans

An Interview With Former US Ambassador to Armenia John Evans
08-02-08
Long-time Asbarez correspondent and contributor Raymond Kupelian recently attended the Armenian Heritage Cruise, where former US Ambassador to Armenia John Evans was a special guest. During the trip, Kupelian interviewed the Ambassador. We present the interview below.

Raymond Kupelian: You became a legend for millions of Armenians around the world. To them, you are more popular than the US president. You earned that popularity the hard way; by endangering your job and your future as a diplomat. What prompted you to follow your conscience?

John Evans: The last thing I was thinking about when I decided to level with my audiences about the Armenian Genocide was whether it would make me “popular” with anyone. To the contrary, I knew that doing so would make me very unpopular with my own employer, the U.S. Department of State, and that was very much on my mind. But I felt then, and I feel now, that it was unhealthy for American officials, elected or appointed, not to be able to discuss serious issues honestly with fellow American citizens. It is almost impossible to speak honestly and with any credibility to a knowledgeable audience, Armenian or non-Armenian, while pretending, for policy reasons alone, not to know and recognize that the Armenian Genocide happened.

R.K.: Why is the State Department so obsessed with the idea of not offending Turkey, while, when invading Iraq we realized how unreliable our so called “staunch ally” was?

J.E.: I would not say that the State Department is “obsessed” with not offending Turkey; rather, the cold, rational calculus has always been that Turkey is our NATO ally, and that we would go out of our way to avoid “offending” the Turks, even at the cost of withholding the truth about the Genocide. In fact, no U.S. official has ever denied the facts about what happened in 1915; it is only the characterization of those facts as a case of genocide that has been withheld.

As for the March 2003 decision of the Turkish National Assembly not to grant U.S. forces the possibility of invading Iraq from Turkish territory, that was a decision that the Turks made after intense discussion, and, although the Administration did not like it, NATO Allies remain sovereign powers and can take such decisions on occasion.

R.K.: The world looks upon the US as the bastion of democracy, moral values, and the future architect of a just and decent world. What message is the Bush administration is conveying to our friends and foes by covering up crimes committed against humanity, specifically the Armenian Genocide?

J.E.: I believe the world still views the United States as a leader in human rights, although that reputation, which was decades in the making, has certainly been tarnished in recent years. Our policy of going along with Turkey in its denial of the Armenian Genocide is clearly motivated by current considerations of Realpolitik rather than by any innate desire to “cover up” crimes against humanity. In March of last year, in a hearing on U.S.-Turkish relations, Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried actually used the term “ethnic cleansing” to refer to the events of 1915. “Ethnic cleansing” is seen as a crime against humanity, although the phrase, which has negative connotations on account of its implication that some territory needs to be “cleaned,” has been called “genocide from the point of view of the perpetrators.”

R.K.: Isn't our unconditional support to Israel radicalizing the Moslem world, when half of our oil supply comes from the Middle East? And yet we shy away from just pronouncing the G world, to not offend Turkey?

J.E.: There are really two questions here. The United States has supported the State of Israel since its foundation sixty years ago this year, and there is no reason to imagine that that support will not continue indefinitely. It seems to me that the important thing we could bring to the central Middle East conflict is our credibility as an honest broker of a just and lasting peace. I'm afraid we have lost some of that credibility in recent years.

As for Turkey and the question of the Armenian Genocide, I think I have already given you an answer.

R.K.: Recognition of the Genocide has been pushed to the back burner, as some of our intellectuals were advocating for years. By sheer evolution, now the G word has conceded its place to Reparation. Armenian political leaders were moving toward the Reparation long before the failure of the House Genocide resolution 106. With Turkey knocking at the doors of EU, is there any chance of settling the long overdue issue?

J.E.: The so-called “Copenhagen Criteria” that the European Union agreed Turkey would need to meet in order to qualify for accession to the EU do not include recognition of the Armenian Genocide, although mending relations with its neighbors and opening the land border with Armenia are included at least by implication.

It seems to me that a measure of compensation for the wrongs committed by the Young Turks in the Ottoman Empire is more likely to come about as the result of a political process that includes democratic political evolution within Turkey than as a consequence of any single legislative or judicial act.

R.K.: There are two ongoing presidential elections; the US Primaries and the one in Armenia. As for US elections, who are your choice among the democrats and the republican Candidates?

J.E.: As one who has long been an independent, I have not yet fully made up my mind yet. But I like what Senator Obama has said about the need to put an end to the genocide that keeps happening in our world and about the Armenian Genocide in particular. He is reported to have said, when the question of my statements about the Genocide were being discussed: “That the invocation of an historical fact by a State Department employee could constitute an act of insubordination is deeply troubling and is a clear sign that it is time to revisit the Administration's guidance on this issue.”

R.K.: Are you planning to write a book about your recent experience with the State Department, on the Armenian Genocide?

J.E.: Yes, I am working on a book about the issue of the Armenian Genocide.

R.K.: What is your impression of the Secretary of State Ms. Condoleeza Rice. As a person of African descent, one would have expected her to be more sympathetic toward the sufferings and the plight of others?

J.E.: I do not believe it is fair to generalize about Dr. Rice's views either from the facts of her own heritage or from her policy 's which has long been the policy of successive Secretaries of State of both parties 's on the Armenian Genocide.

R.K.: In recent years, beside Ambassador Joe Wilson and his wife Valerie Plame, you where one of the few high ranking person in the foreign services, subjected to harsh treatments, to say the least. Are you hoping to be vindicated with a democratic win in this year's White House race?

J.E.: I see very little in common between my case and that of Ambassador Wilson and his wife Valerie Plame. They became embroiled in a party-political matter. The issue of the Armenian Genocide is not a partisan one.

I do not look at our elections this year as an opportunity for vindication, but I do hope that the new administration, of whichever party, will take a fresh view of the issue of the Genocide. My book will contain some practical, though principled, suggestions as to some things that could and should be done about it. As discussions during this Armenian Heritage Cruise have again shown, the issue is not simply going to go away.

R.K.: Are you planning to sue the State Department or Secretary Condoleezza Rice for their ill advised behavior?

J.E.: No.

R.K.: Would you be willing to return to Armenia as the U.S. Ambassador?

J.E.: Yes, but only on the condition that the U.S. policy of withholding the historically accurate qualification of the events of 1915 as “genocide” is changed.