Turkish Mythbusters - AG Resource Thread

[Joseph]

Part IV

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mistake and would regret it. He said 'we know we have made mistakes, but we never regret.'(58)

While the diary does not have the literary elegance of Ambassador Morgenthau's Story, its meaning is unambiguous: Talât confesses through his own interpreter, not a Greek or Armenian, to Morgenthau that he wants to kill all the Armenians in Anatolia and that three quarters of them are already dead. Nothing could be clearer.(59)


But Elekdag may still consider Morgenthau "the enemy," and refuse to accept his testimony even though it is transmitted by Heath Lowry, Elekdag's friend and head of the Institute for Turkish Studies. So let us get testimony from the contemporary German Ambassador whose country and the Ottoman Empire were allies during the war, a man who certainly could not be considered by Elekdag to be "an enemy." The Turks and Germans, as allies, were friends.


The third wartime German ambassador at the Ottoman court was Count von Wolff-Metternich, who, in a revealing dispatch of June 30, 1916, to his government, wrote: "The Committee [of Union and Progress] demands the annihilation of the last remnants of the Armenians, and the government must bow to its demands. The Committee does not only mean the organization of the ruling party of the capital; it is spread all over the provinces. At the side of each provincial governor, and down to each kaimakam [a village mayor], a Committee member stands, with instructions either to support or supervise."(60)


German Vice-Consul Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter, later to be a close companion to Adolph Hitler, reported to the German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg on December 4, 1916: "The fear I spoke of in my report from Erzerum, namely that the evacuation of the Armenians would be tantamount to their annihilation resp. that this was the purpose behind it, has unfortunately turned out to be true. . . . It would not be saying too much if I tell you that the Turkish Armenians, with the exception of several hundred thousand living in Constantinople and other larger cities, have been practically wiped out."(61)


Thus, we see that the testimony of the German ambassador and a Consul who was to become a member of the Nazi Party and a close friend of Hitler's, not only confirm the essence of Morgenthau's testimony but also add critical detail: the Young Turks wanted to annihilate the "last remnants of the Armenians" and used agents of the C.U.P to transmit their secret oral instructions to local governmental officials to ensure compliance. We have now produced, inter alia, the evidence of two ambassadors, one, a "friend," a German, and the other, an American, by the account only of Ambassador Elekdag, an "enemy," yet they both agree that the Young Turk Ottoman government instituted, carried out, and was responsible for the Armenian Genocide.


Next, let us grant for the moment, only for the sake of argument, that Ambassador Elekdag of Turkey is correct and that Ambassador Morgenthau of the United States is a liar. We should remember that James Ring Adams argues that Elekdag must "make liars of men like Henry Morgenthau" in order to prove his case. Were there any honest Americans, closer to the events and certainly not "deceitful" Christian missionaries, whom we can ask instead? Fortunately, there were.


The American government, as we have said, had professional consular officials stationed in each of the major cities of the Ottoman Empire and in some minor ones. The United States had consuls in Aleppo, Harpout

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(Harput), Smyrna (Izmir), Mersina (Mersin), and Trebizond (Trabzon) and at times consular agents in Ourfa (Urfa), Samsun, and Erzeroum (Erzurum), all within the areas affected by the genocide. These men sent a constant flow of reports on the Armenian Genocide to the American Embassy in Constantinople. These reports and other documents of the U.S. State Department are currently on file in the U.S. National Archives, and are open for public inspection.(62)


U.S. Consul Leslie Davis, assigned to Harput, and a veteran of many years service in the Ottoman Empire, reported on July 11, 1915: "The entire movement seems to be the most thoroughly organized and effective massacre this country has ever seen."(63) Two later reports by Consul Davis were so critical of Turkish actions that the Ottoman government repeatedly frustrated his persistent efforts to wire or even mail them to Morgenthau.(64)


In his first report Davis writes: "Another method was found to destroy the Armenian race. . . . A massacre would be humane in comparison."(65) Davis' second report is even more pointed. He writes: "That the order is nominally to exile the Armenians from these vilayets [provinces] may mislead the outside world for a time, but the measure is nothing but a massacre of the most atrocious nature.... There is no doubt that this massacre was done by order of the government, there can be no pretense that the measure is anything but a general massacre." Altogether, Davis sent dozens of reports to Morgenthau telling essentially the same story: mass murder on a horrifying scale.


While still in Turkey, Consul Davis made several trips into the countryside around Harput to see for himself if the Armenians had been merely deported or whether they were being slaughtered after they had been driven from their homes. Understanding the need for a dependable record, he took along a doctor who verified the causes of the thousands of deaths. Davis also photographed the victims and included the photographs with his report. On his return to the United States, he was asked by the State Department to summarize the findings of his personal investigation. His report has been published in a book edited by Susan K. Blair entitled The Slaughterhouse Province: An American Diplomat's Report on the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1917.(66)


In his report to the State Department, Davis writes:


Few localities could be better suited to the fiendish purposes of the Turks in their plan to exterminate the Armenian population than this peaceful lake [Goeljuk] in the interior of Asiatic Turkey, with its precipitous banks and pocket-like valleys, surrounded by villages of savage Kurds and far removed from the sight of civilized man. This, perhaps, was the reason why so many exiles from distant vilayets were brought in safety as far as Mamouret-ul-Aziz and then massacred [there] in the "Slaughterhouse Vilayet" of Turkey. That which took place around beautiful Lake Goeljuk [later renamed Hazar Gölü] in the summer of 1915 is almost inconceivable. Thousands and thousands of

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Armenians, mostly innocent and helpless women and children, were butchered on its shores and barbarously mutilated.(67)

Consul Edward I. Nathan of Mersina (Mersin) also describes "the incredible terror created by the Turkish authorities" as they expelled and massacred the Armenians in that region.(68) The seventy-seven individual consular reports on file in the National Archives regarding the Armenian Genocide go on and on, giving detailed variants on the same horrifying theme--human slaughter on a mass scale, purposeful genocide.(69)


Finally, if Ambassador Elekdag will grant that Ambassador Morgenthau could read, without translations by Greeks and Armenians, such reports coming to him from his own consuls, and that he would not, even as "an enemy of the Turks," send false reports to his own government in Washington, we will offer the following as our final piece of evidence from Morgenthau.


Morgenthau sent a ciphered cable to Washington on July 16, 1915, which begins: "Have you received my 841? Deportation of and excesses against peaceful Armenians is increasing and from harrowing reports of eye witnesses it appears that a campaign of race extermination is in progress under a pretext of reprisal against rebellion."(70)


But if Elekdag considers Morgenthau an "enemy," and refuses to accept his testimony, let us take evidence from the Ambassador's successor, Abram Elkus. Abram Elkus, the next United States ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, cabled the State Department in an October 17, 1916, report as follows: "Deportations accompanied by studied cruelties continue. . . . Forced conversions to Islam [are] perseveringly pushed, children and girls from deported families kidnapped. In order to avoid opprobrium of the civilized world, which the continuation of massacres would arouse, Turkish officials have now adopted and are executing the unchecked policy of extermination through starvation, exhaustion, and brutality of treatment hardly surpassed even in Turkish history."(71)


These reports, and other materials from State Department files, prove without a doubt that the genocide of the Armenians was carried out by the Young Turk Government throughout Anatolia, or in what is today Turkey. At that time, furthermore, the vast and incontrovertible evidence fully and correctly persuaded the president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, the U.S. Congress, the American people, and the Department of State.


Indeed, Woodrow Wilson, with a plentitude of information from all sources, was so moved by the Armenian plight that he advocated an American mandate over Armenia. On May 24, 1920, the president sent a message to the Senate seeking consent to take up that duty. In his official message, Wilson wrote: "I ask this not only because [the mandate resolution] embodied my own convictions and feeling with regard to Armenia and

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its people, but also, and more particularly, because it seemed to me to be the voice of the American people, expressing their genuine convictions and deep . . . sympathies. . . . The sympathy with Armenia has proceeded from no single portion of our people, but has come with extraordinary spontaneity and sincerity from the whole. . . . At their hearts, this great and generous people [the Americans] have made the case of Armenia their own."(72)

[Joseph]

Part V

Elekdag's final argument is that the Armenians were sympathetic to the Russians and had to be evacuated from the war zone in the east. However, a "removal of the Armenian population" from the "war zone" in the east, as Ambassador Elekdag claims, would have only included the provinces of Erzeroum (Erzurum) and Van in Turkey, and perhaps the areas of Kars and Ardahan in the Russian Empire.


As a matter of clear fact, Armenians were driven out and annihilated not only from their historic homeland in the east, but across the whole length and breadth of the Ottoman Empire in Asia, from the shores of the Black Sea to the deserts of Syria and from the Aegean Sea to the Caucasus mountains.(73) The Armenians were slaughtered in the cities, towns, and villages. It should be noted that the vast majority of Armenians in Anatolia were peasant farmers, although, of course, those who lived in cities were generally more visible to consular officials and visiting Europeans.


Armenians were slaughtered in the west, near Constantinople, in and around Ismid (Izmit) and Broussa (Bursa); in the center, in and around Angora (Ankara]; in the southwest, in and around Konia (Konya) and Adana (which is near the Mediterranean Sea); in the central portion of Anatolia, in and around Sivas (Sepastia), Marash (Maras), Shabin Kara-Hissar (Sebin Karahisar), Harpout (Harput), Diyarbekir (Diyarbakir), and Ourfa (Urfa); and on the Black Sea coast, in and around Trebizond (Trabzon). Only Erzeroum (Erzurum), Bitlis, and Van in the east--where they were also massacred--might rightfully be call areas "in the war zone." Clearly the others are not.


Furthermore, the fable that "Tsarist Russia incited Armenians to revolt by promising them the establishment of an independent Armenia after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire"(74) is totally without evidence. While it is true that Tsar Nicholas II issued pronouncements calling on the Armenians of Turkey to revolt, no such revolt ever took place! In any case, no Armenian would take seriously such a promise, inasmuch as it would be quite out of Tsar Nicholas's character. Nicholas could not be expected to give freedom to any element of the Russian Empire, and indeed he lost his throne rather than give freedom even to the Russians, his own people. In fact, it was the tsar's depredations of Armenian Church properties in the Caucasus in 1903 that were the immediate stimuli for the crystallization of the Armenian revolutionary movement in the Russian Empire.


Logic will not allow Elekdag to have it both ways: If "in no area of the Ottoman Empire did the Armenians constitute a majority of the population on which to build a successful break-away movement," then they

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should not have been feared by the Turkish government and exterminated. An Armenian revolutionary movement could not, in any case, have been a threat to the Ottoman government. A disarmed and dispersed minority of some three million Armenians could hardly be a threat to sixteen or more million Turks with the total power-- military, police, and bureaucratic--of the state behind them.


One by one we have called Elekdag's witnesses back for further interrogation, and their testimony, in full "context," is damning indeed.


Now let us finish our narrative. The Young Turk revolution took place in 1908, but the Committee of Union and Progress preferred to stay in the background and kept Abdulhamit II on the throne until he conspired against them in a counter-revolution in 1909. The Committee soon lost faith in liberalism and Ottomanism and turned to Pan-Turkism, a racist form of Turkish nationalism, as pointed out by Toynbee in Acquaintances, that was inspired by proto-fascistic European thought, and they demanded "Turkey for the Turks." The minorities, chiefly the Armenians, because of their religion and numbers, were in the way of a new homogeneous Turkish nation-state.(75)


Accordingly, the leaders of the Committee of Union and Progress decided on a "final solution" to the "Eastern Question": the annihilation of the Ottoman Armenians in a state-sponsored genocide.(76) The Armenian Genocide took place in 1915-16, conveniently under the cover of World War I, when all the powers, with the exception of the United States, were almost totally engrossed in the conflict.


The Genocide was premeditated and planned by the leaders of the Committee of Union and Progress. It was carried out chiefly by a covert Special Organization (Teshkilati Mahsusa) established by the Ottoman government and later taken over by the C.U.P. as separate from the state structure but controlled by it, similar to the way the Communist Party of the Soviet Union controlled the USSR without official status for sixty years, until the introduction of the "Brezhnev" constitution of 1977. Brigands, as well as thugs and murderers taken from prisons, were organized into butcher battalions (çetes) to carry out the killings, along with some army personnel, gendarmes, tribes, and villagers. Officials who refused to cooperate with agents of the Ittihad (who demanded not only the expulsion of the Armenians but also their slaughter) were dismissed from their posts or put to death.(77)


Finally, many people have asked: If there was a genocide, why was there not a war crimes trial following the war as there was following World War II at Nuremberg? Indeed, there was, and Elekdag makes reference to it.


In fact, there were special courts-martial instituted by the postwar Ottoman authorities for the trial of the C.U.P. leaders and certain members of the Young Turk cabinet, as well as a government investigative commission headed by Hasan Mazhar, and yet another established by the Ottoman Chamber of Deputies. The records of these investigations and the trials are recorded in the trial supplements of the Takvimi-i Vekayi, the official record

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of the Ottoman government. As at Nuremberg, so in Istanbul, the tribunal relied on authenticated documents as well as personal testimony. Furthermore, the Turkish court sought testimony from Muslims as well as Christians. The exhibits included ciphered messages, telegrams, and written documents. Since they are authenticated by the Turks themselves, Elekdag must accept the fact that they reveal the truth.


The Turkish court concluded that the leaders of the Ittihad (C.U.P.) were guilty of murder: "This fact has been proven and verified." It maintained that the extermination of the Armenians was carried out with as much secrecy as possible and, accordingly, that records and written orders were kept to the barest minimum. The Ittihadists, the court further concluded, had maintained a public facade of relocating the Armenians, but engaged in "covert and secretive" operations, relying for the most part on the use of "oral and secret orders and instructions," and carried out the killings by a "secret network." The determination to exterminate the Armenians, furthermore, was not a hasty decision, but "the result of extensive and profound deliberations." (78)


Ismail Enver Pasha, Ahmed Cemal [Jemal] Pasha, Mehmed Talât Bey, Dr. Mehmed Nazim, and Dr. Behaeddin Shakir were convicted and condemned to death for "the extermination and destruction of the Armenians." Since they had fled and eluded arrest, the sentence was passed in absentia. Some minor officials were also convicted, sentenced, and hanged. Since, by January 1920, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was gaining effective control of Turkey, and the Greeks had invaded Anatolia through Smyrna, the trials were aborted and those prisoners who were not allowed to escape earlier were released.(79) Justice was only partially done, and, as Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the father of "modern Turkey," implied, the disrupted trials remain a blot on the Turkish record.(80)


Some partisans may attempt to dismiss the Turkish war crimes trials as biased because they were held while the British occupied Constantinople. In fact, this allegation of the influence of a British occupation is not entirely true since the trials began before the British sent troops into the city. We should be cognizant of the fact that the Turkish war crimes trials were commissioned under an imperial irade (decree) of Sultan Mohammed VI issued on December 16, 1918, well before the British soldiers landed in Constantinople on March 16, 1920. The trials were run in series, concentrating on different geographical locations. Thus, it can also be noted that both the Erzincan and Trabzon trial series came to a close before the end of 1919 and before the British troops came; and, for example, that Abdullah Avni (one of the defendants in the Erzincan series) was proven guilty, condemned, and hanged on July 22, 1919, again before the British occupation.


In any case, all the Turkish trials were run by Turks and included Turkish documentary evidence and the testimony of Muslims. In contrast, it may be noted, the Allies themselves ran the war crimes trials at Nuremberg after World War II."(81) It is generally accepted that the Turkish government held war crime trials in part because Turkey wanted a better deal at the Paris Peace Conference. They would punish their own war criminals so that the powers would not hold all Turks guilty. The fact that there were mass killings and large-scale theft of property in the first place, gave the Turks grounds to investigate the crimes and to hold trials. No crimes, no trials in the first place.

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In the light of all the available evidence, one wonders why the U.S. State Department issued a policy statement in 1982 that contradicted its own officials who were eyewitnesses to the genocide of the Ottoman Armenians by the Young Turk government? In fact, however, that policy statement was a short-lived aberration. The infamous "Note" of 1982 was quickly reversed in 1983, but apparently with no fanfare and with an ambiguous public notice.(82)


In a Freedom of Information Act law suit filed against the U.S. State Department by Van Z. Krikorian in 1988, United States District judge Royce C. Lamberth wrote at the conclusion of the trial an opinion that included his findings on facts, analysis, and conclusions. In his finding of facts, the judge placed a footnote (no.1), immediately following, and appended to, a full quotation of the notorious "Note," which reads: "The State Department rescinded the Note in 1983 and reinstated U.S. policy of recognizing the Turkish genocide of the Armenians."(83)


The documents obtained by Krikorian show how officials in the State Department took an article that initially acknowledged the Genocide, and literally rewrote the historical sections to reach an opposite conclusion.(84) While the State Department has made itself technically whole again, the denial continues on an informal basis and this nasty episode remains an embarrassment to many Americans.


Now we must ask some final questions, for which we as yet have found no answers. Why do Ambassador Elekdag and his government persist in attempting the cover-up of a crime in which they were not directly involved, and thereby become moral accessories, and equally culpable?(85) It is well known that many righteous Turks saved the lives of numerous Armenians, so why do Elekdag and his government align themselves with the criminal element. Is it merely Turkish amnesia, or is there a more somber reason behind the denial?(86) Perhaps Elekdag, or his successor, will come forth one day and enlighten us.

[Joseph]

Part VI

Return to Selected writings



1. There were eight or nine different cabinets between 1918-1923, but several of them were headed by Damad Ferit Pasha, who wanted to exculpate Turkey from the crime of the Armenian Genocide by punishing the guilty.

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2. Excerpted from the Armenian Review 45, No. 1-2/177-178 (Spring-Summer 1992), pp. 195-213. This paper was written originally to be delivered at a conference on the Armenian Genocide sponsored by the National Association for Armenian Studies and Research at Bentley College in April 1985. It was revised for publication in 1992, and it is further revised in 2001.

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3. For an excellent exposition on the general topic, see Edward Alexander, A Crime of Vengeance: An Armenian Struggle for Justice (New York: The Free Press, 1991).

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4. Parade: The Sunday Newspaper Magazine, 28 October 1984, p. 2; Wall Street Journal, 29 April 1985, p. 2. On the Institute of Turkish Studies, see Richard G. Hovannisian, "Scholarship and Politics," Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies 2 (1985-86), p. 170.

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5. Some government inspired Turkish scholars have argued that not all Armenians who died during the Gernocide were murdered directly, but point out that many Armenians died of hunger, thirst, and exposure to burning sun, wind and rain and resulting desease during the death marches. The final outcome, however, was the same--death. Armenians died from direct massacre--including shooting, slashing, burning, hanging, bludgening, drowning; while on the forced marches, being denied clothing, shelter, food, water, and personal safety by the gendarmes; as well as being attacked by Kurkish tribes and Turkish villagers.

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6. The figure of 1.5 million of necessity cannot be exact. It is usually applied to Armenian deaths caused by Turkish governments between 1915 and 1923, ending with the burning of Smyrna. While there is no debate among serious scholars about the Genocide of 1915-1916, some reasonable scholars do not believe that the Armenian deaths caused by Turkish governments between 1917 and 1923 were a part of the Genocide. Early Turkish governments accepted the figure of 800,000 Armenian deaths for the period 1915-1917 as official, as stated in the published figures of the Turkish War Office, not including those killed after the World War in Cilicia and in the Caucasus, while the current Turkish government gives figures of 300,000 deaths and even fewer. The farther away the Genocide in time, the fewer the deaths to which the Turkish government will admit. See Taner Akcam, Insan Haklari ve Ermeni Sorunu (Ankara: Imge Kitabevi, 1999), especially footnote 451.

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7. Andrew Corsun, "Armenian Terrorism: A Profile," Department of State Bulletin, August 1982, p. 35. The disclaimer, in a boxed "Note" at the end of the article, reads as follows: "Because the historical record of the events in Asia Minor is ambiguous, the Department of State does not endorse allegations that the Turkish government committed a genocide against the Armenian people. Armenian terrorists use this allegation to justify in part their continuing attacks onf Turkish diplomats and installations." It was later revealed that Corsun's original article recognized the Armenian Genocide as the first genocide of the twentieth century, but State Department officials heavily edited his essay to reach the opposite conclusion. See the final note to this paper.

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8. These documents and photographs can now be found in the National Archives and in the archives of the U.S. State Department. All the European powers, both allies and enemies of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, have an abundance of documentary evidence in their archives attesting to the Armenian Genocide. See Richard G. Hovannisian, The Armenian Holocaust: A Bibliography Relating to the Deportations, Massacres, and Dispersion of the Armenian People, 1915-1923 (Cambridge, Mass.: Armenian Heritage Press, 1978). For documentation of the Armenian Genocide in Turkish sources, see Vahakn N. Dadrian, "Documentation of the Armenian Genocide in Turkish Sources," in Genocide: A Critical Bibliographic Review, vol. 2, ed. Israel W. Charny (New York, N.Y.: Facts On File, 1991), pp. 86-138. For documentation of the Armenian Genocide in German sources, see Vahakn N. Dadrian, "Documentation of the Armenian Genocide in German and Austrian Sources," in The Widening Circle of Genocide, vol. 3 of Genocide: A Critical Bibliographic Review, ed. Israel W. Charny (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1994), pp. 77-125.

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9. Richard D. Kloian, ed., The Armenian Genocide: News Accounts From The American Press, 1915-1922 (Berkeley, CA: Anto Press, 1985).

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10. Herbert Hoover wrote in his memoirs: "Probably Armenia was known to the American school child in 1919 only a little less than England. . . . The staunch Christians who were massacred periodically by the Mohammedan Turks, and the Sunday School collections [of] over fifty years for alleviating their miseries." The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: Years of Adventure, 1874-1920 (New York, N.Y.: Macmillan, 1951), p. 385.

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11. See "Soiling the Altar of Freedom," Editorial, New York Times, 9 Aug. 1983, p. A22.

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12. Wall Street Journal, 9, 12, and 16 Aug. 1983.

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13. Wall Street Journal, 12 Aug. 1983, p. 20.

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14. Ibid.

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15. It was Tsar Nicholas I who coined the phrase in Russian, calling the Ottoman Empire the "Sick Bear of Europe." Other Europeans believed it to be more politic to use the expression, "Sick Man."

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16. Actually, an earlier movement carried the name "Young Turks," but the Ittihad ve Terakki Cemiyeti was called by that name in Europe. For a discussion of the Young Turks, see, Sukru Hanioglu, Preparation for a Revolution: The Young Turks, 1902-1908 (New York, Oxford University Press, 2001). Also see M. Sukru Hanioglu, The Young Turks in Opposition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).

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17. The Dashnaks (Armenian Revolutionary Federation) had their origin in the Caucasus, while the Hunchaks were officially founded in Geneva among radical Russian exile circles about the same time as the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party was organized. The Hunchaks were inspired in part by socialism and in part by nationalism, while the Dashnaks were more nationalistic than socialistic.

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18. The Dashnaks (Armenian Revolutionary Federation) and Hunchaks were strongly influenced by Russian radical populism and the Russian "to the people" (v narod) movement of the 1870s, when college students and intellectuals went among the peasants to organize them. The Armenian word "Hunchak," in fact, is a translation of Kolokol (Alarm Bell), the title of Alexander Herzen's underground populist publication. The "going to the people" of the Dashnaks and Hunchaks meant going among the Armenian peasants of the yergir (homeland) in the Ottoman Empire.

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19. Christopher J. Walker, Armenia: The Survival of a Nation, rev. 2d ed. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990), p. 179; see also Hanioglu, cited above, for a more detailed study.

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20. Leonardo P. Alishan notes that the Armenian Genocide could not have taken place in a traditional Islamic society. See Alishan, "Alliance and Encounter in the Waste Land: The Impact of the West on Turks and Armenians Prior to the Genocide," in Essays on Nationalism and Asian Literatures, ed. Michael Craig Hillman (Austin: Literature East and West, 1987), p. 106. Robert Melson believes that although Armenians and Jews were given a difficult time in previous regimes, only in the revolutionary C.U.P. and Nazi regimes would they be subject to genocide. See Melson, "Revolution and Genocide: On the Causes of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust," in The Armenian Genocide, ed. Richard G. Hovannisian, pp. 80-102, and Melson, Revolution and Genocide: On the Origins of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1992). Stephan H. Astourian shows that the change in view of the C.U.P. also mirrored a change in Turkish society. See Astourian, "Genocidal Process: Reflections on the Armeno-Turkish Polarization," in The Armenian Genocide, ed. Richard G. Hovannisian, pp. 53-79, and Astourian, "The Armenian Genocide: An Interpretation," The History Teacher 23, no. 2 (Feb.1990), pp. 111-60. This final article deals with the racist program of the Young Turks in some detail.

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21. The volume was first published in London in 1916.

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22. Arnold Toynbee, Acquaintances (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967), p. 149.

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23. Emphasis added. The ruling Turkish triumvirate included Talât, Enver, and Cemal (Jemal).

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24. This is an antiquated word, used mostly by the British. It means "Anyone who is especially cruel, brutish, or hideous." American Heritage Dictionary, New College Edition (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1980), p. 913.

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25. Toynbee, Acquaintances, p. 241.

[Joseph]

Part VII

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26. Ibid., p. 240.

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27. British Propaganda at Home and in the United States from 1914 to 1917 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1935).

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28. Ibid., p. 14.

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29. Ibid., p. 16.

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30. William L. Langer, The Diplomacy of Imperialism, 1890-1902, 2d ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1960).

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31. See a refutation of the provocation thesis by Robert Melson, "Provocation or Nationalism: A Critical Inquiry into the Armenian Genocide of 1915," in The Armenian Genocide in Perspective, ed. Richard G. Hovannisian (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1986), pp. 61-81.

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32. Marcia and Malcolm Stevens, Against the Devil's Current: The Life and Times of Cyrus Hamlin (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1988), pp. 467,471.

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33. New Series, vol.12 (Oct. 1897-Oct. 1898), pp. 288-94.

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34. lbid., p. 292. Emphasis added.

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35. Loc. Cit.

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36. Nation, 13 June 1923, p. 705.

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37. Ibid., p. 706.

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38. Seven years after Elekdag's letter appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Heath W. Lowry, the director of the Institute for Turkish Studies in Washington, D.C., published a booklet entitled The Story behind Ambassador Morgenthau's Story (Istanbul, Turkey: Isis Press, 1990), attempting to discredit Morgenthau and his book. Lowry demonstrates that Morgenthau's book was written with the help of his personal secretary and a ghostwriter, and that Robert Lansing, the United States Secretary of State, approved it in detail. Lowry argues that the writers perhaps took artistic license in recreating direct quotations from Talât Pasha, inasmuch as Morgenthau's personal notes and diary do not have direct quotations, and that in some cases the writers merged two separate interviews with Talât into one. We will accept the Lowry booklet as an exhibit and deal with it below, even though he presents nothing surprising. Important political figures almost universally use secretaries and ghostwriters (although today the custom is to acknowledge them), and administrative officials most often are required to have their books approved by their responsible government agency. This hardly discredits the book in any way. In fact, it ensures its accuracy.

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39. See essay, not published as of this writing, by Henry Morgenthau III, in the soon to be published [2001-2002] reprint of the original Morgenthau book by Wayne State University Press [Detroit, Michigan], in which the grandson of the Ambassador tells how the Jewish community in America persecuted his grandfather because he refused to be a Zionist.

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40. See Thomas A. Bryson, American Diplomatic Relations with the Middle East, 1794-1975: A Survey (Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1977), pp. 60-63; Joseph L. Grabill, Protestant Diplomacy and the Near East: Missionary Influence on American Policy, 1810-1927 (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1971), pp. 91-94; Stephen B. L. Penrose, Jr., That They May Have Life: The Story of the American University of Beirut, 1866-1941 (New York: Trustees of the American University of Beirut, 1941), pp. 162-63; Paul C. Helmreich, From Paris to Sevres: The Partition of the Ottoman Empire at the Peace Conference, 1919-1920 (Columbus: Ohio State Univ. Press, 1974), p. 20); Robert L. Daniel "The Friendship of Woodrow Wilson and Cleveland Dodge," Mid-America 43 (1961), pp. 192-93, Lewis Einstein, A Diplomat Looks Back (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1968), p. 137; and Robert L. Daniel, American Philanthropy in the Near East, 1820-1960 (Athens: Ohio Univ. Press, 1970), pp. 154-55.

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41. There were still some Armenians in Constantinople and Smyrna, major cities with many Westerners, but of course Bristol did not believe anything they might say.

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42. Levon Marashlian, The Armenian Question from Sevres to Lausanne: Economics and Morality in American and British Politics, 1920-1923 (Ph.d. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1992), p. 108.

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43. Marjorie Housepian Dobkin, Smyrna 1922: The Destruction of a City (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1988), p. 76.

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44. Levon Marashlian, "Cleansing Turkey of Armenian Survivors, 1920-1923," in Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide, ed. Richard G. Hovannisian (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1999), pp. 122-124.

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45. These schools were in Constantinople (present day Istanbul), Adabazar, Bardezag, Brousa (Bursa), Smyrna (Izmir), Afion Kara Hissar, Konia (Konya), Marsovan (Merzifon), Sivas (Sepastia), Cesarea (Kayseri), Talas, Tarsus, Adana, Hadjin, Marash (Mara), Aintab (Gaziantep) Ourfa (Urfa), Harpout (Harput), Diyarbekir (Diyarbakir), Mardin, Bitlis, Erzurum, and Van. See Frank Andrews Stone, Academies for Anatolia. A Study of the Rationale, Program and Impact of the Educational Institutions Sponsored by the American Board in Turkey, 1930-1980 (New York, N.Y.: University Press of America, 1984), p. 71, for location on the map. The colleges were Central Turkey College in Aintab (1876), Euphrates College in Harput (1878), Central Turkey Girls' College in Marash (1882), Anatolia College at Marsovan (1886), St. Paul's Institute at Tarsus (1888), and International College at Smyrna (1891).

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46. Grabill, Protestant Diplomacy and the Near East, p.10.

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47. Microfilm copies of this collection, entitled "Papers of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions," have recently been made available by Research Publications of Woodbridge, Connecticut.

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48. Lowry, The Story behind Ambassador Morgenthau's Story, quoting Morgenthau, p.16.

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49. There are two large collections of Morgenthau papers, one housed in the Library of Congress and known as The Papers of Henry Morgenthau (which, following Lowry, we will cite as LC:PHM), and the other in the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library in Hyde Park, N.Y., called the Henry Morgenthau Sr. Papers (and not the Henry Morgenthau, Jr. Papers as called by Lowry [p.7]). These papers will be referred to, again following Lowry, as FDR: HMS.

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50. LC:PHM, reel no. 5, Morgenthau Diary entry for 8 Aug. 1915, as found in Lowry, The Story behind Ambassador Morgenthau's Story, pp. 49-50.

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51. Heath W. Lowry currently (2001) holds the Atatürk Chair in Turkish History (established by the Turkish Government) at Princeton University.

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52. Emphasis added.

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53. It is interesting to note that Dr. Lowry, while head of the Institute for Turkish Studies, drafted a letter for then Turkish ambassador Nuzhet Kandemir to send to Robert Jay Lifton accusing Lifton of bad scholarship in his book The Nazi Doctors, Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide [New York, Basic books, 1986], refering to the Armenian Genocide as an "alleged" Genocide. After having served as the head of the Institute for Turkish Studies, Lowry received appointment to the Atatürk Chair in Turkish History at Princeton University, a chair established by a grant from the Turkish government. See, Roger W. Smith, Eric Markusen, and Robert Jay Lifton "Professional Ethics and the Denial of the Armenian Genocide," in Remembrance and Denial, pp. 271-295.

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54. Lowry, The Story behind Ambassador Morgenthau's Story, p. 14.

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55. Ibid., p. 15. Emphasis added.

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56. Ibid.Lowry, The Story behind Ambassador Morgenthau's Story, p. 49. Emphasis added.

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57. Ibid., p. 2. The word "Syrian" is used here by Morgenthau to refer to the Semitic Christians who lived in the upper reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. They were known more popularly as Assyrians, to differentiate them from the Muslim Syrians of the Fertile Crescent. As we said above, the Christian Assyrians were almost completely wiped out by the Young Turk dictatorship, and few of them live presently in their ancestral homeland.

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58. Lowry, The Story behind Ambassador Morgenthau's Story, p. 49. Emphasis added.

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59. The conversation continued. Talât went on to demand that Morgenthau have the American insurance companies that had insured the lives of Armenian provide him with a complete list of their Armenian policy holders. "They are practically all dead now and have left no heirs to collecte the money. It of course all escheats to the State."

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60. Walker, Armenia: The Survival of a Nation, p. 235. See Johannes Lepsius, ed., Deutschland und Armenien, 1914-1918: Sammlung Diplomatischer Aktenstücke (Potsdam: Der Tempelverlag, 1919; repr., Bremen: Donat & Temmen Verlag, 1986), p. 277. Emphasis added.

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61. Schuebner-Richter to Bethmann Hollweg, 4 December 1916, No. 309 in Lepsius, Deutschland und Armenien.

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62. See, U.S. Department of State, Record Group 59, Internal Affairs of Turkey, 1910-29. A collection of these materials has been published in three volumes under the title United States Official Documents on the Armenian Genocide (Watertown, Mass.: Armenian Review, 1994-1995).

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63. Davis to Morgenthau, 11 July 1915, Record Group 59, 867.4016/122. Emphasis added.

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64. They were finally smuggled into the U.S. Embassy in Constantinople in the shoe of an American missionary. See Armen Hairapetian, " 'Race Problems' and the Armenian Genocide: The State Department Files," Armenian Review 37, no. 1-145 (Spring 1984), p. 48.

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65. R.G. 59,867.4016/269. Emphasis added.

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66. New Rochelle, N.Y.: Aristide D. Caratzas, 1989.

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67. Davis, The Slaughterhouse Province, p. 87. The mutilations consisted mostly of the women being split open from the vagina to the belly and their gut being strewn about the ground. The killers believed that Armenian women either swallowed gold coins or hid them in their privates in order to avoid their being stolen by brigands.

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68. Nathan to Morgenthau, 7 Aug. 1915, R.G. 59, 867.4016/124. See Hairepetian, " 'Race Problems' and the Armenian Genocide," p. 48.

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69. The word "genocide" did not, of course, come into use until 1944 when it was introduced by Rafael Lemkin, so the American consuls had to use expressions such as "a general massacre" or a "method was found to destroy the Armenian race." By modern definition, the attempt to destroy a race is considered genocide. In fact, Raphael Lemkin was conscious of the Armenian Genocide when he coined the expression. See the letter of Israel Charny, head of the Institute for the Study of Genocide, Jerusalem, to Bernard Lewis, December 27, 1994, published in Israel W. Charny, "The Psychological Satisfaction of Denials of the Holocaust or Other Genocides by Non-Extremists or Bigots, and Even by Known Scholars," Idea: A Journal of Social Issues 6, No. 1 (July 2001), Appendix 2.

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70. R.G. 59, 867.4016/76. Emphasis added.

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71. R.G. 59, 867.4016/299. Emphasis added.

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72. Congressional Record, 66th Cong. 2d sess., 1920, 59, pt. 7, pp. 7533-34.

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73. Lord Bryce presents eyewitness testimony from Van, Bitlis, [Persian] Azerbaijan, Erzeroum (Erzurum), Mamouret-ul Aziz (Harpout, Harput), Trebizond (Trabzon), Shabin Kara Hissar (Sebin Karahisar), Sivas (Sepastia), Kaisaria (Cesarea, Kayseri), Marsovan, Angora (Ankara), Constantinople (Istanbul), Broussa (Brusa), Ismid (Izmit), Konia (Konya), the area of Cilicia on the Mediterranean coast (Adana, Marash [Maras], Zeitoun, Jibal Mousa [Mousa Dagh]), and Ourfa (Urfa). In other words, eyewitness reports from the four corners of the Ottoman Empire in Asia.

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74. Elekdag, p. 33.

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75. While the Kurds were used by the Young Turks to help carry out the Armenian Genocide, the Turkish government was later to turn on the Kurds. The Kurdish "problem" has not yet been solved.

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[Joseph]

Part VIII

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76. Vahakn N. Dadrian, "The Documentation of the World War I Armenian Massacres in the Proceedings of the Turkish Military Tribunal," International Journal of Middle East Studies 23 (1991), p. 558. In this study, Dadrian used the materials from the Turkish war crimes trials organized by the government of Damad Ferit Pasha following World War I. Also see Vahakn N. Dadrian, The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus, 3d rev. ed. (Providence, RI: Berghahn Books, 1997), esp. pp. 303-343.

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77. Dadrian, "The Documentation of the World War I Armenian Massacres," p. 560.

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78. Dadrian, "The Documentation of the World War I Armenian Massacres," pp. 560-63, citing Takvim-i Vekayi.

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79. One should also add that Turkish public opinion had turned in the meanwhile from being strongly in favor of the trials to being strongly opposed to them. When the Turkish public was first made aware of the Armenian Genocide, it was scandalized for humane reasons and demanded the punishment of the offenders. But by 1920, the Greeks, Turkey's ancient and mortal enemy, had invaded western Anatolia and it was becoming apparent that the Allies, excluding the United States as an Associated Power, were ready to carve up not only the Ottoman Empire but also Anatolia itself. The Turks, understandably, became xenophobic and resentful of all non-Turkish peoples foreign interference and against all non-Turkish peoples. Had the Greeks not invaded Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk himself might have continued the trials against the Young Turks inasmuch as he thought ill of the Armenian and Assyrian genocides.

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80. In an interview published in the Los Angeles Examiner Atatürk said that the leaders of the C.U.P. "should have been made to account for the lives of millions of our Christian subjects who were ruthlessly driven en masse from their homes and massacred!" Emile Hildebrand, "Kemal Promises More Hangings of Political Antagonists in Turkey," 1 Aug. 1926.

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81. Dadrian, "The Documentation of the World War I Armenian Massacres," pp. 554, 561, and 575.

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82. The State Department seemed to vacillate in its position in an "Editor's Note" in the September 1982 Bulletin, which stated: "The article, 'Armenian Terrorism: A Profile,' which appeared in the feature on terrorism in the August 1982 issue of the Bulletin, does not necessarily reflect an official position of the Department of State, and the interpretive comments in the article are solely those of the author."

In the light of later information, it now appears that the State Department finally backed down from its denial of the Armenian Genocide in its "Editors Note" in the April 1983 Bulletin, which states: "The article 'Armenian Terrorism: A Profile,' which appeared in the August 1982 issue of the Bulletin, and its accompanying note and footnotes were not intended as statements of policy of the United States. Nor did they represent any change in U.S. policy." [Emphasis added.]

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83. See Court Order, U.S. District Court, District of Columbia, Civil Action No. 88-3419 (RCL), dated December 18, 1990, filed December 19, 1990.

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84. Below are some critical examples of the original draft text of Corsun's article immediately followed by the actual published text in the State Department Bulletin, as rewritten by State Department officials. The draft text was provided to me by Van Z. Krikorian from the documents which he obtained by his FOIA case against the State Department. The copies provided by the State Department are on file in the offices of the Armenian Assembly of America in Washington, D.C.

ORIGINAL: "Fearful of the increased boldness of the suppressed nationalities of the Empire, the Turks responded with unprecedented brutality which resulted in the killing of 300,000 Armenians from 1894 to 1896. These killings pale significantly in comparison with the full-scale attempts by the nationalistic Young Turks in 1915."


REWRITTEN: "In a multi-ethnic state, such as the Ottoman Empire, nationalism was viewed by Turks as a serious internal threat. The result was harsher repression by the Ottoman government which led to thousands of Armenian deaths in 1895" (Bulletin, p. 35).

ORIGINAL: "With the advent of World War I, the stage was set for what was later to be called the first 'genocide' of the 20th century."


REWRITTEN: "With the advent of World War I, the stage was set for what was later alleged to be called the first 'genocide' of the 20th century" (Bulletin, p. 35).

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85. We should note here the verdict of the Permanent People's Tribunal (Paris, 13-16 April 19841, which states: "The Armenian genocide is also an 'international crime' for which the Turkish state must assume responsibility, without using the pretext of any discontinuity in the existence of the state to elude that responsibility; this responsibility implies first and foremost the obligation to recognize officially the reality of this genocide and the consequent damages suffered by the Armenian people." See Permanent Peoples' Tribunal, Session on the Genocide of the Armenians, April 13-16, 1984, Paris: Verdict (Cambridge, Mass.: Zoryan Institute, 1984), p. 22.

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86. One can only make conjectures, without further evidence, about the motives of the present Turkish government. Certainly, we must allow for the possibility that the vast majority of the Turks, including many of their active political leaders, do not know the facts of the case. Furthermore, even if leading Turks have slowly learned the truth over time through international contacts, it would be embarrassing at this late date for their country to finally admit to what they have so long denied.

Then some Turkish apologists claim, including many commentators in various Turkish newspapers, that the Armenians want recognition of the Genocide only as a first step towards determining monetary reparations or even, perhaps, a return of the Armenian provinces to Armenian control. Such a scenario, whether or not it is likely, they see as antithetical to their national interest. There is perhaps one other, even more fundamental reason, for denial by the ruling Turkish elites. The present-day Turkish nation-state (relatively homogeneous, except for the presence of the Kurds, toward whom the state continues to take repressive measures) was founded on the eradication of groups that could not be assimilated, the largest and most important being the Christian Armenian population. This is perhaps why the Turkish apologists continue to claim that something in the way of a civil war took place. They may mean that there could be no Turkish nation-state if the significant Armenian presence in Anatolia had remained there, and that the enterprising Armenians might have established some kind of economic or political hegemony over the Turkish masses. As unlikely as that might have been, in their minds, perhaps, there could be no "Turkey for the Turks" if the Armenians were present. No nation would like to admit, understandably, that its very foundation is based on the crime of genocide. Yet Turkey cannot have full democracy until its past is open to public scrutiny and debate. Truth and openness are necessary elements for democracy and full participation in world affairs.

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Return to Selected writings

[Joseph]

Myths Of Panturkism

http://www.rozanehmagazine.com/NoveDec05/aazariINDEX.HTML

[Joseph]

Conspiracy theories related to Armenians

Although this is from a wikipedia entry, it is a decent summary of various conspiracy theories that make the rounds in the Turkish community.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_conspiracy_theories

Armenian conspiracy theories

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Armenian conspiracy theories are any number of conspiracy theories that allege a conspiracy involving or revolving around ethnic Armenians, including the Republic of Armenia, the Armenian Church and the widespread Armenian diaspora. Such claims are frequently associated with denial of the Armenian genocide and other anti-Armenian sentiments, particularly in Turkey and Azerbaijan.
Contents [hide]
1 Samuel A. Weems
2 Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh
3 Hrant Dink
4 Other modern theories
5 See also
6 References
[edit]Samuel A. Weems

One of the most prominent and radical proponents of Armenian conspiracy theories was Samuel Weems.
Samuel A. Weems (December 12, 1936— January 25, 2003) was a writer and a disbarred lawyer in Arkansas, United States.[1] In his book, Armenia: The Secrets of a Christian Terrorist State (2002), he stated that the Armenian Genocide was a gigantic fraud designed to "fleece" Christian nations out of billions of dollars. He also claimed that the Armenian Church was a "state owned" entity that organizes and funds terrorist attacks and that Armenians had "infiltrated" the United States.[2] That book states that Armenian Diaspora communities in the United States and throughout the world are actually "colonies": political bases intended to gain money and support for Armenian Republic. The books also claims Armenia is founded on land stolen from Muslims and that Armenians have perpetrated enormous massacres against Turks and Azeris, both recently (in the Nagorno-Karabakh war) and in the past. He has been quoted as saying "The religion of the Armenians is fake" and that his research shows "that there is clearly an Armenian Master Plan that generates Armenian hate around the world".[3] Prior to his death in 2003, he was preparing to write a second book claiming the international Armenian community collaborated with and supported Nazi Germany.
The book, along with essays and homemade videos by Weems, have been criticized as racist and Anti-Armenian by the Armenian Assembly of America.[4] The book is available in several online bookstores in United States and Europe. It has also been translated in Turkish and distributed in Turkey.[5]
[edit]Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh

Belief in an "Armenian International Conspiracy", that ethnic Armenians are attempting to change history and hide certain facts for political gain, can also be encountered in Azerbaijan,[6] which has clashed with Armenia over Nagorno Karabakh, a de facto independent republic, officially part of Azerbaijan. Many Azeris believe that the Sumgait pogrom, where ethnic Azeris massacred Armenians during the dissolution of the Soviet Union, was in fact intentionally provoked by Armenians for propaganda purposes. The Sumgait pogrom is considered the primary trigger of the Nagorno Karabakh war.
The pogrom also lead way to the formulation of several conspiracy theories. According to a theory advanced by the Azerbaijani historian Ziya Bunyadov, the head of the Azerbaijan Academy of Sciences, who claimed that the massacre had been premeditated by the Armenians to cast a negative light against Azerbaijan.[7] By late 1988, the majority of Sumgait Azerbaijanis had accepted the view that the Armenians had provoked the rioting with this objective in hand.[8] In an article that appeared in an Azerbaijani journal, Bunyadov claimed that Armenians had organized the pogroms: "The Sumgait tragedy was carefully prepared by Armenian nationalists...Several hours after it began, Armenian photographers and TV journalists secretly entered the city where they awaited in readiness."[7]
Davud Imanov, an Azerbaijani filmmaker, expanded on this theory in a series of films called the Echo of Sumgait where he accused Armenians, Russians and Americans of conspiring together against Azerbaijan and claiming that Karabakh movement was a plot organized by the CIA.[7] Other conspiracy theories revolve around the idea the massacre was instigated by Soviet hardliners in an attempt to discredit Gorbachev's policies.
[edit]Hrant Dink

There have been several conspiracy theories involving the assassination of Hrant Dink. Allegations that Hrant, an ethnic Armenian living in Turkey, was assassinated by the Armenian diaspora. The official spokesperson of the “Turkish Orthodox Patriarchate,” Sevgi Erenerol, has claimed that Dink was killed because of he did not strongly campaign for Armenian Genocide recognition, and that he "realized he was being used". As evidence, she points to the fact Dink was buried in an Armenian Orthodox cemetery, although he was an Armenian Protestant. [9] She further claims that Ogun Samast was in fact in on the plot, and claimed that "Samast" literally means "church doorman" in the Armenian language (as if Samast was hired by Armenians to remove Dink), and concludes that "a big game is being played against the Turkish people".[9]
[edit]Other modern theories

Chairman of the Turkish History Institution, Yusuf Halaçoğlu, has stated he believes that Armenian converts to Alevism are behind much of the PKKs separatist activities. He reportedly stated that “many of them, who converted from Armenian origins to Kurdish Alevism, are not really sincere. It is known that they are trying to open a church. For example when some PKK members are arrested it becomes apparent that they are not circumcised. We have to be careful about where the terror comes from.” [10] Halaçoğlu has also claimed that many members of the outlawed Turkish Workers and Peasants Liberation Army (TİKKO) and Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) are just converted Armenian Kurds. He has come under fire for his comments from the Armenian Agos newspaper, the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party and the Alevi Bektaşi Federations.[10]
In the Republic of Georgia, anti-Armenian paranoia has been stirred up by the anti-Russian and anti-Abkhazian sentiment due to the Abkhazian conflict. Several Georgian newspapers predicted that the upcoming elections the Abkhazia enclave would be distinctly in the local Armenian's favor, suggesting that the election Armenian president would be very possible.[11] Georgian media also suggested that Abkhazia would soon receive funding from the Armenian diaspora. The conflict, which cost many lives and led to the virtually complete evacuation of all ethnic Georgians from the area, is widely believed in Georgia to have been instigated by Russia with Armenian help.
The APA news agency in Azerbaijan has made similar claims, stating that Armenia's ultimate goal is to occupy Abkhazia, and along with Javakheti, gain access to the sea. [12] The unconfirmed report from the APA claims that 60 members of the Georgian intelligentsia have asked the Georgian President to acknowledge cultural genocide committed against Georgians both in Abkhazia and Javakheti by Armenians, and a similarly uncorroborated quote suggested that Armenians were only waiting for Russia's recognition of that state as independent to occupy it.[12]
[edit]See also

Anti-Armenianism
Denial of the Armenian Genocide