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Dr. Dennis Papazian

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  • Dr. Dennis Papazian

    This paper was written for the Conference on Genocide: History and Prevention, Vienna, November 8-9, 2001. It has been revised since then, and will be published in Idea: The Journal of Social Issues. This web edition © 2002 Dennis R. Papazian.

    Modern Genocide: The Curse of the Nation State and

    Ideological Political Parties

    The Armenian Case

    By Dennis R. Papazian

    The University of Michigan-Dearborn

    Résumé
    The character of the Young Turk dictatorship of Talât, Enver, and Cemal (Jemal) Pashas during the twilight of the Ottoman Empire reveals elements conducive to genocide. The state was in decline. The Empire was being drastically truncated by a series of wars. Thousands of Muslim refugees were flooding Anatolia where the bulk of Armenian peasantry had lived for centuries as a settled population. The triumvirs saw themselves as the saviors of the Turkish nation, and on this basis entered World War I on the side of Germany in the hope of recouping territorial losses and punishing an old enemy, Russia. Power was exercised through the Committee of Union and Progress, a power parallel to, but not a part of the state structure. The Ottoman elites, who heretofore had ruled the state, saw their authority become a chimera as the parallel structure exercised the real power, just as the Communist Party unofficially ruled the Soviet Union for so many years and somewhat as the Nazi Party ruled Germany.
    All three of these political parties could find domestic scapegoats during war, unencumbered by tradition and the values of the old social system. Such unlimited power, unhindered by traditional values, was ripe for solving perceived domestic problems by final solutions, the eradication of perceived domestic enemies to cleanse the state and to make it homogeneous in order to strengthen the state and make it able to achieve domestic and foreign goals.
    The avoidance of genocide in the future, accordingly, is to offer protection to minorities and to punish crimes against humanity, until such time as world markets and social internationalization develop a common standard of behavior for the nation state and weaken the current view that a given dominant population is best served by a homogeneous state rather than a multinational society of peoples. In other words, strengthen the ideas universally that nationality is determined not by language, blood, or religion, but rather by state boundaries and that all mankind shares a common humanity that transcends borders.



    Modern Genocide: The Curse of the Nation State and

    Ideological Political Parties: The Armenian Case

    By Dennis R. Papazian

    University of Michigan-Dearborn

    I want to thank the organizers of this conference for inviting me to speak. I would also like to commend them for their humanitarian concerns. In my opinion, there are three dreadful man-made evils threatening civilization today— war, genocide, and terrorism. We are dealing here with genocide, its history and prevention, one of the major three. If we can help move forward only a bit the process of eradicating genocide through the insights we provide, our time and efforts will be well rewarded.
    My assignment is to discuss the Armenian Genocide, frequently referred to as the first genocide of the 20th century, although it is sometimes known as the forgotten Genocide. The Armenian Genocide, although not well known to today's public, attracted wide attention while it was taking place in the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. While it was best known in the United States, it was also publicized in Great Britain and in continental Europe. The U.S. Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Henry Morgenthau, was inundated by reports of large scale Armenian massacres coming from his consular officials [1] and American missionaries [2] stationed throughout Anatolia (present day Turkey). He immediately relayed these reports to the U.S. State Department and, through the State Department, the information was released to the American public and published in all the major newspapers. In Britain, Viscount Bryce and his young assistant Arnold Toynbee, equally concerned, prepared a Blue Book, which was widely distributed, in which was recorded the testimony of a variety of eyewitnesses, chiefly Europeans. [3]
    Two Germans, among the many who were living at that time in the Ottoman Empire as military personnel, diplomats, consular officials, missionaries or businessmen, [4] stand out above others for their concern for the plight of the Armenians. The first was Johannes Lepsius, a missionary who reported the ongoing Armenian massacres in the German press until he was prevented from doing so by war censorship, and who after the war was given permission by the German Foreign Office to publish a large collection of official German archival documents which gave clear and compelling evidence of the guilt of the Ittihad ve Terakki Cemiyeti (Committee of Union and Progress [CUP]) in conceiving, planning, and carrying out the expulsion and massacre of the Armenian population of historic Armenia. [5]
    The second German who stands out for the contemporary evidence he provided is Armin T. Wegner, a soldier attached to the German-Ottoman Sanitation Mission, who actually took photographs in 1915 of the genocidal process as it was being carried out, one of the two most complete photographic collections extant. [6]
    Later in Germany, in 1933, The Forty Days of Musa Dagh, [7] an historical novel by Franz Werfel, a German Jewish writer, attracted wide attention and was translated into English and several other languages, and widely distributed in America. That book, the story of a small band of Armenian resisters who were finally rescued by a French ship off the coast of Cilicia, became something of a cult book, furtively passed hand to hand, among Jewish resisters during World War II. [8]
    Finally, we should mention a young soldier who was aware of the genocidal process taking place and its ultimate effectiveness. [9] Some twenty-five years later, after he had risen to power in Germany, he sent troops into Poland stating to his generals: ". . . I have placed my death-head formations in readiness—for the present only in the East—with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of the Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space (Lebensraum) which we need. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?" [10] . . . "Poland will be depopulated and then settled by Germans." [11]
    Since most people know little about the "annihilation of the Armenians," it seems appropriate, before I begin my analysis, to provide a brief outline and explanation.
    During the 19th century, Europe was modernizing politically, economically, and socially at a pace which was not matched anywhere in the world except in North America. The Ottoman Empire, while located partially in Europe, did not participate in that process of rapid modernization, thus gaining the title "the Sick Man of Europe." [12] The "Tanzimat," the political reform movement of 19th century Turkey led by the Ottoman elite, failed in large measure due to the refusal of the dominant Muslims to give up their superior social, legal, and political status [13] and to grant protection to Armenian Christians who were suffering serious depredations in the degenerated provinces of eastern Anatolia, [14] the Armenian homeland. While protection under the law was granted on paper, these measures were highly unpopular among the vast majority of the Muslim population of Turkey whose culture and traditions made reform inoperative, and even heightened latent hostility toward the minorities. [15]
    The 19th century in Europe was a century of revolution, a century of increasing domestic democratization, rising standards of living, tolerance and higher expectations for the common man. Unfortunately, the military-theocratic regime in Turkey, under the Sultan-Caliph (Kalif), was unable to come to grips with modernization, democratization, or religious toleration. The downtrodden masses in Turkey, both Christian and Muslim, became restive with dissatisfaction.
    The 19th century also witnessed the gradual disintegration of the Ottoman Empire at the same time that the European powers were in the process of expanding their supremacy over vast parts of the globe, including large areas inhabited by Muslims. [16] This inversion of the Muslims' perceived right to rule produced great consternation and frustration among them and an even greater abhorrence of Christians within the Ottoman Empire.
    Furthermore, the 19th century in Europe was a century of nationalism and the forming of nation-states. [17] The force of nationalism, the concept of the nation-state, and the rising expectations for democratic rule and a higher standard of living which were transforming Europe, also inspired the subject Christians in the Ottoman Empire, particularly those in Europe, who one by one demanded reforms, autonomy and later outright independence from their Ottoman Muslim overlords. [18] In effect the Balkan Christians were seeking no more or less than their European contemporaries. [19] Aided by the Christian powers of Europe, one by one over the century, the Balkan states gained their emancipation, thus increasing the hatred of the Turkish Muslims for Christians—the emancipated as well as the emancipators. As a consequence of their losses in Europe and Africa, by the beginning of the 20th century the Turks considered Anatolia to be their national heartland.
    The Ottoman Empire hardly felt the formative influences that produced modern European culture. There was no struggle between church and state, which would result in the separation of these powers into two separate authorities. There was no Renaissance that fed the forces of humanism, secularism and democracy in society. There was no Protestant Reformation that raised the status of the individual believer relative to the hierarchal authorities. There was no Enlightenment that taught a secular, rather than a theological, view of the universe. And the major contemporary ideologies of Europe—secularism, nationalism, social Darwinism, and Marxism—were imported as a veneer over ancient, alien, often hostile, and seemingly incompatible cultures. [20]
    General Antranik (1865-1927): “I am not a nationalist. I recognize only one nation, the nation of the oppressed.”

  • #2
    2.

    Lacking these formative intellectual influences, the Sublime Porte, the seat of the Ottoman government, was ill prepared to accept the new forces at play in European society that began to manifest themselves among peoples, especially the Christians, of the Ottoman Empire. The Sultan-Caliph considered the Muslim world, the ummah, to be one, with himself appointed by God to rule over all. [21] He saw the Muslims as the chosen people (milleti hakime), Christians and Jews as subordinate, tolerated people (dhimmi), and the pagans, idolaters, and heathens to be beneath human status. [22]
    Thus the Sultan-Caliph Abdulhamit II (1876-1909) interpreted the demand for reform by his Christian subjects as defiance and rebellion, to be put down by naked force; [23] and that of his Muslim subjects to be misguided insubordination. The spread of modern European thought, particularly nationalism, coupled with the repressive rule of Sultan-Caliph Abdulhamit II, induced a revolutionary movement among young Turkish army officers stationed in Europe, [24] generally called the Young Turks, and among some Armenians groups within the Empire, chiefly the Dashnaks and Hunchaks. [25] The Young Turks and the Armenian Dashnaks cooperated with each other, with the intention of overthrowing the Sultan-Caliph and establishing secular rule of law under a constitution, displacing entirely the traditional Sharia courts [26] and the power of the clerical establishment which shared authority with the Caliph. The Young Turks succeeded in taking the Sultan-Caliph’s secular power [27] in 1908 and in re-establishing the moribund Midhat Constitution of 1876, the aborted fruit of the Tanzimat, which guaranteed liberty, equality, and fraternity to all citizens of the Empire. The Dashnaks, although friendly and cooperative with the upper ranks of the Young Turks, played an entirely insignificant role in taking power from the Sultan-Caliph since the revolution was finally carried out by Turkish army officers and their loyal troops, and not by Armenians.
    While the Constitution was welcomed by the minorities, and indeed by progressive Turks, only its trappings were put into effect by the Young Turk leaders, who had no experience in democracy. The implementation of the Constitution was vitiated in general by Turkish Muslim culture and tradition, as well as by the Young Turks themselves, who internalized religious attitudes of superiority as a secular ideology. Constitutional changes did not alter the fundamental hatred of the traditionally superior Muslims, both actual and titular, [28] toward the Christian and Jewish minorities. Compelling evidence of this hatred is revealed in the massacres of Armenians in Adana (Cilicia) in 1909, the year following the re-establishment of the Constitution. These extensive massacres were abetted and carried out by Turkish forces to keep the local educated and enterprising Armenians in "their place" as a subordinate, subject people who should not take their paper rights too seriously. [29]
    Furthermore, the Young Turks were chiefly army officers who, typical of their class in that era, equated success with the preservation and glorification of the state and its power, not the human rights of the “citizen.” [30] The Balkan wars and the Italian war indicated in their minds that democracy, or even the shell of it, was not a system that would serve their statist ends. In 1913 a coup d’etat took place that brought the extreme nationalists, who were also pan-Turkist, to power. Talât, Enver, and Cemal (Jemal) pashas became virtual dictators through their control of the Ittihad ve Terakki Cemiyeti, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), a subset of the Young Turks. The Ittihad was to rule Turkey from 1913 until 1918, when the Turks were defeated in World War I. The Ittihad ruled Turkey just as the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was to rule Russia from the revolution of 1917 until its collapse in 1991. Both parties—the Communist and the Ittihad—were organized parallel to the government and were in absolute control of it at every level although neither party technically was the government. [31]
    At the beginning of World War I, the ruling triumvirs and their supporting elites saw an opportunity to redress what they perceived as a loss of their national honor over the 19th and early 20th centuries by joining the war on the side of the Kaiser. In so doing, they hoped to establish a new Turkish empire, this time an ethnic and religiously homogeneous one, by joining the Turks of Turkey with the Turks of the Caucasus and Central Asia—a pan-Turkic dream. This scheme, more wishful thinking than a well thought out plan, required a military drive through the South Caucasus (Trans-Caucasus), defeating the Russians, and eradicating the Christian Armenians who stood in the way.
    The drive to the east collapsed almost immediately, in January 1915. Turkish honor was not redeemed, and scapegoats were needed to explain the failure. Unfortunately, the Armenians were both close at hand and vulnerable. The helpless Armenians could serve as a substitute for revenge against the hated Christians of Europe and the despised Russians in particular. Decisions were made at the highest echelons of the ruling elite to annihilate the Armenians in their historic homeland (today called eastern Anatolia), by expulsion and genocidal massacres. Talât Pasha, the chief of the ruling triumvirs, admitted to U.S. Ambassador Morgenthau in 1915, "we have already disposed of three quarters of the Armenians .... [W]e have got to finish with them. If we don't, they will plan their revenge." [32]
    It is instructive to outline the technique used by the Young Turks, inasmuch as it indicates the pre-meditation and rational planning that went into the genocidal process. First, Armenian men of military age were drafted into the army. [33] They were shortly thereafter, in February 1915, disarmed and placed in labor battalions to be used as pack animals. As the war progressed, they were divided into small groups, often forced to dig their own graves, and then executed in a variety of ways. This process of killing most Armenian men of military age was designed to minimize the possibility of resistance to deportation and massacre by the remainder of the Armenian population.
    Secondly, local officials in cities and towns arrested Armenian men and demanded, under threat of punishment, any arms that the Armenians might have in their possession, arms which in theory they had been allowed to own since 1908. Accordingly, the women purchased arms from local Muslims and turned them in to the authorities. The authorities then used the weapons as evidence that the Armenians had been armed and plotting rebellion. Then, the men who had been arrested earlier were taken out of the city and shot. In this way, even healthy men just beyond military age were killed, further minimizing the possibility of resistance.
    Then, in Constantinople on April 24, 1915 (the day before the Russian fleet shelled Turkish forts on the Bosphorus and the British and French landed troops on Gallipoli) and during the following weeks, hundreds of Armenian community leaders, intellectuals, clergy, editors, lawyers and the like were taken from the city and killed. Thus, the Ittihad denied the Armenian people their natural leaders, many of whom had contacts among the elites of Europe.
    Next, the Young Turk leaders took over an organization of irregulars, the Teskilâti Mahsusa [the first s should have a cedilla under it, but this cannot be done in the current encoding], and turned it into an instrument for deportation and massacre of the now totally defenseless and leaderless Armenians. The Teskilâti Mahsusa used vicious criminals and bandits taken from prison and organized them into bands (chetes, çetes) and butcher battalions (kesab taburi), as the instruments for the killings. [34] The Teskilâti Mahsusa was abetted by the local gendarmerie, which conducted the expulsion of Armenians from towns and villages and encouraged the rape, pillage, and massacre along the road to the Syrian desert by crowds purposely enraged by local imams. [35]
    When the Armenians were driven out, thousands of Muslim refugees from the Balkans and the Caucasus were settled in the homes and on the farms of the uprooted Armenians. Most of Armenian disposable wealth was confiscated by members of the Ittihad, for which some were tried by the courts martial after the war and others by Atatürk in the trials of 1926. The financial capital thus gained became the foundation for the fortune of many of today’s wealthy Turkish families. (Astourian)
    Orders for the expulsion and massacre of the Armenians in Anatolia were delivered verbally to local governors and officials (to avoid a paper trail of evidence [36] ) by Responsible Secretaries [37] of Ittihad, who carried orders from the Ittihad leaders in Constantinople. Those officials who refused to cooperate, for reasons of conscience or otherwise, were either deposed and replaced, or murdered. [38] The genocidal activity took place consecutively in one region after another, month after month, and was for the most part complete by the end of 1915, thus showing foresight and advanced planning. [39]
    The few Armenians who survived the death marches and massacres were driven into concentration camps in the Syrian desert where they were denied food and water and left to die. [40] Those few Armenians who were saved or survived, mostly teenagers or young children, were often saved by Turks or Kurds, with mixed motives, or by pious Arabs. [41] The survivors were then aided by the vast network of the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief, chartered by the U.S. Congress, later to be renamed the Near East Relief, which spent millions of dollars to save “the starving Armenians.” [42]
    It is important to stress that there were war crimes trials held by the repentant Turkish governments which held power briefly after the close of hostilities. [43] These courts martial were held by the Turks according to established Turkish law. (They differ in this respect from the Nuremberg Trials, which were held by the Allies, the victors, after World War II, in accordance with developing standards of international humanitarian law first enunciated, but not implemented, at the time of the Armenian Genocide.) [44] These Turkish courts martial tried and convicted the chief perpetrators, Talât, Enver, and Cemal pashas, and sentenced them to death. Other minor figures were also tried, convicted and hanged. The trials, however, were interrupted by the growing strength of the Nationalists under Mustafa Kemal Pasha, latter to be called Atatürk, and the weakening of the government in Constantinople. Eventually, the trials were abandoned in their entirety and the prisoners escaped or were traded in exchange for British captives illegally taken hostage by the Nationalists. [45] Thus, the threat of the British to hold war crime trials based on the principles of humanitarian intervention never materialized. [46]
    Unfortunately, even though Mustafa Kemal himself expressed regret for the death of Turkey’s "Armenian subjects" [47] (and indeed indicted in 1926 many of the perpetrators, under a different rubric of law), successive Turkish governments have denied that a genocide took place.
    The Turkish government's arguments of denial are old, varied, and contradictory. They consist chiefly in raising doubt and sowing confusion. I, and many others, have dealt with them sufficiently elsewhere. [48]
    European governments, since then, have vacillated in their recognition of the Armenian Genocide for considerations of geopolitics. [49] There was no retributive justice, and the Armenian Genocide has not only become the forgotten genocide but also a genocide denied. One cannot but conjecture that if world opinion had insisted over time on the guilt of the Young Turk government, Adolf Hitler could not have said with such assurance only twenty-four years later, "Who now remembers the annihilation of the Armenians?"
    The denial of genocide, [50] and the countenancing of that denial by world opinion, is to my mind a prime factor in the continuation of genocidal activity today. Where there is no punishment, there is no incentive to refrain from criminality. It is a known principle of criminal justice that the inevitably of punishment is a greater deterrent to crime than the severity of that punishment. Apropos to the question of denial, we may ask if genocide denial by the present-day Turkish government provides insight into the genocidal mentality? [51]
    General Antranik (1865-1927): “I am not a nationalist. I recognize only one nation, the nation of the oppressed.”

    Comment


    • #3
      3

      As previously mentioned, Henry Morgenthau the American ambassador to the Ottoman Empire at the time of the Armenian Genocide, was perhaps the chief conduit of the information coming out of Turkey, information both from his eyewitness informants as well as from his personal conversations with Talât Pasha, the chief author of the Armenian Genocide, and other leaders of the Ittihad. Since there was no term at the time for genocide, Morgenthau had to use such expressions as the “murder of a nation,” and an “organized attempt to wipe out a whole nation.” It is clear from these expressions that Morgenthau would have used the technical word “genocide” for the Ittihad’s mass murder of the Armenians if it had existed. [52]
      Robert Jay Lifton observes that "a remarkable feature of the Morgenthau story is its view of genocide from the top." It is a unique "example of a critical outsider having regular access to the highest ranking planners and perpetrators of genocide, even as it was taking place.” Thus, we can hear the arguments for the Armenian genocide from the mouth of Talât Pasha himself. [53] “The presence of such a witness among top Nazi, Cambodian, Rwandian or Serbian leaders during the course of their genocide is virtually unimaginable."
      Thus far we have looked at the technique of genocide and some of its causes. [54] Now we will turn to a comparison of the Armenian Genocide and the Jewish Holocaust. After all, it is only by comparative analysis that we can form generalizations on the cause, nature, and mechanism of the genocidal act and, hopefully, prevent genocide in the future.
      Lifton has pointed out several similarities between the Armenian Genocide and the Jewish Holocaust: Both genocides were committed at a time of national trauma, chaos and confusion: In the Ottoman case, the trauma was caused by the loss of a series of wars and much territory during the decade before World War I; and in the German case, the chaos and despair followed the destruction and dislocation following World War I.

      Both Germany and the Ottoman Empire fell into the hands of a dictatorial, ideologically driven, exclusivist political party, which expected to revitalize the state by the shedding of blood. Both ruling parties, the Nazis and the Ittihadists were driven by an extreme nationalist ideology: in the case of Turkey, pan-Turkism and the worship of the primeval Turk; and in the case of Germany, the desire to purify the Aryan race. In both cases, the nationalist ideology gained widespread support and cooperation in a plan of ethnic purification and regeneration by eliminating an undesired minority group which they considered to be less than human. As Henry Morgenthau observed, the mass murder of Armenians was in the eyes of the Turkish leaders "the first expression of this rejuvenated national life." [55]

      As with the case of the Nazis, the Ittihadist movement took on an intensely mystical quality bordering on race worship. [56] The Ittihad perceived the Armenians as dangerous to that revered national character, just as the Jews were perceived as inimical by the Nazis. Both the Nazis and the Ittihad expressed vitriolic forms of blaming the victim: the Jews had brought about a "sickness" in the Aryan race, which now needed to be "cured"; and the Turks had no choice but to destroy the Armenians who had "brought this fate upon themselves" by being unreliable subjects and plotting "revolution." Hence, Turkish leaders could speak of "solving the Armenian problem" just as Nazis did of "solving the Jewish problem," a final solution in both cases.
      Armenians were collectively "deported," and their homes and villages were then taken and occupied by Muslims. The Ittihad used the word “deport” as a euphemism for mass murder, just as the Nazis did who "deported" their victims in "transports." The Ittihad, made up chiefly of atheists, was pressured by the Kaiser to declare an all-Islamic "holy war" (jihad) against England, France, and Russia. [57] The religious passions evoked were expressed in the mass slaughter of Christian Armenians by a primitive and enraged population. The Nazis, too, were on a sacred mission for the volk, which justified public cooperation in killing Jews.
      Both the Ittihad and the Nazis used the cover of a World War, the first and second respectively, to conceal their genocidal activities and to prevent intervention. Lifton argues, rightly I believe, that "there is much to suggest that the Ittihad genocide of Armenians in 1915 and the Nazi genocide of the Jews and other groups in the 1940s were part of a single overall historical constellation, closely bound up with the devastating consequences of World War I." Finally, it is clear that Jews were an ethno-religious minority among titular Christians, while the Armenians were a ethno-religious minority among titular Muslims.
      In both the German and the Turkish cases, large numbers of people were in disagreement with the actions of the dictatorial parties, but were helpless to intervene or were themselves punished for trying. In both cases there were also righteous people who tried to help the victims, but only with varying degrees of success. Of course, there were also differences between the two genocides, the most obvious being technology and local tradition. [58]
      Denialism
      Statism, national pride, dishonor, humiliation, revenge, self and national identity are all psychological and ideological constructs which do not justify the taking of human life on a massive scale or the denial of the truth about the past. The present Turkish governing elite apparently continues to share some of these feelings. Apparently, they also are psychologically dependent on the myths developed to justify genocide. [59]
      To use the word “genocide” in connection with the Armenian tragedy of 1915-1923 arouses rage in the ruling circles in Turkey even today. [60] Were it not for profound psychological, ideological, and even a few practical problems, the present government could simply admit that the Young Turks had committed a genocide and express their regret, while denying any responsibility for what had been done by their predecessors. [61] The creation myth of the Turkish state, itself, is bound up with the first genocide of the 20th century, which makes acknowledgment all the more difficult for the Turkish elites.

      Three types of denialists encompass the vast majority of their ilk. The blatantly malevolent denialists are those who know better but who deny because it gives them a sense of power over the progeny of the victims similar to the power exercised by their predecessors over the victims themselves. The self-interested denialists, of course, know better, but imagine they are serving a higher purpose, usually some political or economic gain, either for themselves or for the state they serve. Many academics and government officials fall into this category. The pseudo-scientific denier, either uninterested or disinterested, insist that we do not have enough evidence to make a final judgment. Of course, those who take this position have not bothered to familiarize themselves with the available evidence and have no interest in seeking it. Were they to do so, they would find the evidence accessible and plentiful. Many academics fall into this category. Finally, there are the kindly self righteous denialists, who are probably the vast majority, who argue that “human beings are not capable of such evil conduct, therefore the complainant is exaggerating and at best not showing good manners by making ugly accusations. Anyway, there is probably truth on both sides and whatever happened, we should forget and forgive.” I am not so sure that if such denialists were to have his own house robbed and his own wife killed he would be so quick to forgive and forget. The action of denial has been called a repetition of genocide, or perhaps more exactly, the continuation of it, since forgetting is the last and final stage of the death of an ethnos, and denialism is an attempt to hasten the end. [62]

      Conclusion.

      We have seen, at least in the case of the Armenians and the Jews, that genocide took place in wartime, that it followed revolutions in which the limits of the old social order were shattered, that they were committed against ethno-religious minorities which while socially and economically progressive were looked down upon by those in power, that super nationalism and racism as well as religious fundamentalism played major roles in instituting genocide, that dictatorial parties were in charge of the governments, and the minorities were seen as major impediments in reaching some mystical goal of racial, religious, or national purity. In the Armenian case, the genocide went unpunished, and a major European genocide followed only 25 years later. In the Jewish case, the perpetrators were punished and no major genocide has taken place in Europe since then. I do not consider ethnic cleansing as genocide, as reprehensible as it might be, inasmuch as it is of limited scope and designed to reorganize the distribution of people on a small scale and not necessarily to destroy them. Finally, genocide is rewarded when there is no retributive justice.

      It is hard to envision the end of genocide as long as the nation state is the ultimate legal authority on earth and as long as racial ideologies and religious fundamentalism justify the taking of human life. The avoidance of genocide in the future, accordingly, is to offer protection to minorities within nation states and to punish crimes against humanity. The rule of law must replace the rule of arbitrary government. Pernicious ideologies will persist, I fear, until such time as global markets, internationalization of law and custom, and a rise in the world standard of living take place. The world must accept certain universal standards of morality or ethics, such as religious toleration, acceptance of differences in individuals, societies and cultures, and absolute respect for human life. Human rights, it must be realized, transcend borders and regions.

      In light of recent terrorism, however, it may be that global change is taking place too quickly for some societies to absorb. That in itself is acceptable and understandable, but it is not acceptable if this unrest takes on lethal aspects. The job of spreading enlightenment—to counter terrorism and genocide—is a difficult one and depends in some magnitude on the willingness of the West to have confidence in its fundamental values and to exhibit the will to stand up for them. All people must accept as fact the proposition that the value of an individual is not determined by language, blood, religion, or place of residence, but by our common humanity and destiny. We face a long and difficult struggle between a culture of tolerance and respect for human life and a culture of intolerance that sees ideology above the individual and even above life itself.
      General Antranik (1865-1927): “I am not a nationalist. I recognize only one nation, the nation of the oppressed.”

      Comment


      • #4
        4.

        APPENDICIES

        Appendix I: American Missionaries in the Ottoman Empire

        American missionaries, most of whom were affiliated with the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM), were posted all over the Ottoman Empire, and indeed had "stations" in most all the areas where the Armenians lived. They ran six American colleges/institutes, and more than a dozen schools, in the areas inhabited by the Armenians, attended in large measure by the Armenians. These schools were in Constantinople (Istanbul), Adabazar, Bardezag, Brousa (Bursa), Smyrna (Izmir), Afion Kara Hissar, Konia (Konya), Marsovan (Merzifon), Sivas (Sepastia), Cesarea (Kayseri), Talas, Tarsus, Adana, Hadjin, Marash (Maras), Aintab (Gaziantep), Oorfa (Urfa), Harpout (Harput), Diyarbekir (Diyarbakir), Mardin, Bitlis, Erzeroum (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 (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984). A map on p. 71 shows locations.

        The colleges were Central Turkey College in Aintab (1876), Euphrates College, at first names Armenia College, in Kharput (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). In terms of raw numbers, in 1900 the ABCFM ran twelve stations and 270 "outstations" in Anatolia with some 145 American missionaries and 800 non-American assistants. They had 114 churches and over 13,000 communicants/converts and they taught almost "61,000 students in 132 high-grade and over 1100 lower-grade schools" (Suzanne E. Moranian, "Bearing Witness: The Missionary Archives as Evidence of the Armenian Genocide," p. 104). Their testimonies were chiefly in the forms of letters and reports to the American Board headquarters (which can be found in the records of the American Board preserved in the Houghton Library at Harvard University).
        These records of the ABCFM also include biographies of individual missionaries and histories of mission stations as well as letters to other people in America, including the press (usually made anonymously, such as "the Rev. , missionary," of Sivas quoted in the article "The Turkish Atrocities in Armenia," in The Outlook [September 29, 1915]. For more examples see the selections in Richard D. Kloian, The Armenian Genocide: News Accounts from the American Press [1915-1922], 3d ed. [distributed, Richmond, CA: ACC Books, 1985]). Missionaries also sent letters and reports to government officials in the form of appeals to local consuls or to the American embassy in Constantinople (these appeals were often forwarded to Washington and are currently in the National Archives, along with the other diplomatic correspondence. They also submitted formal statements (one collection of formal missionary statements which was submitted to the presidential commission [and can be found in the U.S. Archives, R.G. 256, General Records of the American Commission to Negotiate Peace, Special Reports and Studies] researching various issues of the war in order to prepare for the upcoming peace conference was published in two volumes: Henry H. Riggs, Days of Tragedy in Armenia: Personal Experiences in Harpoot, 1915-1917 [Ann Arbor, MI: Gomidas Institute, 1997], and James L. Barton, comp., "Turkish Atrocities": Statements of Christian Missionaries on the Destruction of Christian Communities in Ottoman Turkey, 1915-1917 [Ann Arbor, MI: Gomidas Institute, 1998]), The Americans also wrote reports in the form of books, such as John Otis Barrows' In the Land of Ararat: A Sketch of the Life of Mrs. Elizabeth Freeman Barrows Ussher, Missionary to Turkey and a Martyr of the Great War (New York: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1916), Grace H. Knapp's The Mission at Van: In Turkey in War Time (New York: Prospect Press, 1915), and Clarence D. Ussher and Grace H. Knapp's An American Physician in Turkey: A Narrative of Adventures in Peace and in War (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Co, 1917; reprinted., New York: J.C. & A.L. Fawcett, 1990). They also produced other writings which have remained unpublished until recent years (in particular Harriet H. Atkinson, "Mrs. Harriet H. Atkinson's Eyewitness Account of the Massacres in Harpoot," Armenian Review 29, no. 1-113 [Spring 1976], pp. 3-21; Hilmar Kaiser, ed., Marsovan 1915: The Diaries of Bertha B. Morley [Reading, England: Taderon Press, 2000]; and Tacy Atkinson, "The German, the Turk and the Devil Made a Triple Alliance": Harpoot Diaries, 1908-1917 [Reading, England: Taderon Press, 2000]).

        For more information on the American missionaries see Suzanne E. Moranian, "Bearing Witness: The Missionary Archives as Evidence of the Armenian Genocide," in The Armenian Genocide: History, Politics, Ethics, ed. Richard G. Hovannisian (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992), pp. 103-128; Suzanne Elizabeth Moranian, The American Missionaries and the Armenian Question: 1915-1927 (Ph.D. dissertation., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1994); Bernhard Frederick Nordmann, American Missionary Work Among Armenians in Turkey (1830-1923) (Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1927); Joseph L. Grabill, Protestant Diplomacy and the Near East: Missionary Influence on American Policy, 1810-1927 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1971); Thomas A. Bryson, American Diplomatic Relations with the Middle East, 1784-1975: A Survey (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1977); and Robert L. Daniel, American Philanthropy in the Near East, 1820-1960 (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1970).
        For more information specifically on the missionaries and education, 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 (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984); Marion A. Nosser, Educational Policies of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in Turkey, 1823-1923 (M.A. diss., University of Chicago, [1924]); Frank Andrews Stone, "The Life and Death of Armenia or Euphrates College, Harpoot (Kharpert), Turkish Armenia," Armenian Review 30, no. 2-118 (Spring 1978), pp. 148-163; Alan Alfred Bartholomew, Tarsus American School, 1888-1988: The Evolution of a Missionary Institution in Turkey (Ph.D. dissertation., Bryn Mawr College, 1989); Barbara J. Merguerian, "The Beginnings of Secondary Education for Armenian Women: The Armenian Female Seminary in Constantinople," JSAS 5 (1990-1991), pp. 103-124; and Barbara J. Merguerian, "Saving Souls or Cultivating Minds? Missionary Crosby H. Wheeler in Kharpert," JSAS 6 (1992, 1993), pp. 33-60.

        Appendix II: Germans in the Ottoman Empire ca. 1915.

        German Military Personnel: There were many German military personnel in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. At the height of German involvement there, 700 to 800 officers and 12,000 soldiers were stationed in the Ottoman Empire (Vahakn N. Dadrian, German Responsibility in the Armenian Genocide: A Review of the Historical Evidence of German Complicity [Watertown, MA: Blue Crane Books, 1996], p. 110). Writings of the eleven following officers have been used in studies by Dadrian to document German knowledge of, and complicity in, the Armenian Genocide: Fritz Bronsart von Schellendorf, Major General, Chief of Staff, Ottoman General Headquarters (1914-1917); Wilhelm Leopold Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz, Field Marshal, Commander-in-Chief of 1st and subsequently Ottoman VIth Army (1914-1916); Hans Humann, Lieutenant Commander (Korvettenkapitan), Captain of the Ambassadorial Yacht Lorelei, Naval Attache, and a close friend and confidant of War Minister Enver Pasha (1914-1917); Friedrich Freiherr Kress von Kressenstein, Major General, Chief of Operations at General Headquarters, Chief of Staff of Cemal Pasha's IVth Army, Commander-in-Chief, VIIIth Ottoman Army, and Chief of the German Imperial Delegation in the Caucasus (1914-1918); Otto von Lossow, Major General, Professor of Tactics, Turkish Military College (Harbiye), member of the staff of Abdullah Pasha, Supreme Commander of Eastern Army, Balkan War, Military Attache (Military Plenipotentiary), and German Representative in treaty negotiations in the Trans-Caucasus (1911-1918); Ernst Paraquin, Lieutenant Colonel, Chief of Staff to a number of Ottoman Army Corps, and Chief of General Staff of Halil Pasha, Commander-in-Chief, Army Group East (1916‑1918); Otto Liman von Sanders, General (Marshal), head of the German Military Mission to Turkey, Inspector-General of the Turkish Army, Commander of the Ist and subsequently Vth Army in the Dardanelles and Commander of the Army Group F in Syria (1913-1918); Max Schlee, Major General, head of Dept. V (Weapons and Munitions), Ottoman General Headquarters (1915-1918); Hans von Seeckt, Lieutenant General, Chief of the Staff at Ottoman General Headquarters (December 1917-October 1918); Wilhelm Souchon, Rear Admiral, Chief of the German Mediterranean Fleet (Mittelmeer-Division) and the Commander‑in‑Chief of the Turkish Fleet (1914-1918); Stange, Colonel, Commander of 8th Regiment, attached to Ottoman IIIrd Army's XIth Army Corps, operating as a Special Organization Detachment comprising ex‑convicts (1915‑1916). (Source Dadrian, “Documentation,” pp. 81-82.
        German Diplomats: The Embassy. Germany had ten people who served as ambassador or substitute ambassador to the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Hans Freiherr von Wangenheim served from 1912 to October 25, 1915. Prince Ernst Wilhelm Hohlenlohe-Langenburg served as Special Ambassador from July 20 to October 2, 1915 while Wangenheim was on sick leave. Konstantin Freiherr von Neurath, the Embassy Concillor, stood in as Chargè from October 25 to November 15, 1915. Count Paul von Wolff-Metternich served as ambassador from November 15, 1915 to October 3, 1916. Wilhelm von Radowitz, the Legation Councillor, stood in as Chargè from October 3 to November 16, 1916. Dr. Richard von Kühlmann served as ambassador from November 16, 1916 to July 24, 1917. Dr. Otto Göppert, the Privy Legation Councillor, stood in as ambassador while Kühlmann was on vacation from December 26, 1916 to January 5, 1917. Count Heinrich Josef von Waldburg zu Wolfegg und Waldsee, the Embassy Councillor, stood in for Kühlmann while he was on leave from June 26 to July 7, 1917. Count Johann Heinrich Bernstorff served as ambassador from September 7, 1917 to October 27, 1918. Count von Waldburg also stood in as Chaargè from October 27 to December 20, 1918.
        Consular posts. Germany had consulates in Erzurum (moved to Sivas in 1916), Trabzon (temporarily moved to Samson in 1916 and 1917), Haifa, Jaffa, Damascus, Adana, Sivas, Mosul, Alexandretta, Smyrna, Beirut, and Aleppo. In Erzurum, the gerent (the consulate manager) from September 4, 1913 to the end of July 1914 was Dr. Edgar Anders; from September 29, 1914 to February 17, 1915 the gerent was Dr. Paul Schwartz; from August 6, 1915 to the end of February 1916 the consul was Prince Friedrich Werner von der Schulenburg (his vice consul was Dr. Max Erwin von Scheubner‑Richter from February 17 to August 6 1915); from February 12, 1916 to the end of the war the gerent was Consular Secretary Werth (and the consulate moved to Sivas in February of 1916). While in Sivas, the consul from October 8, 1917 to August, 1918 was a certain Hesse (he is not in the name index in the Lepsius collection). In Trabzon, the consul for most of the war was Dr. Heinrich Bergfeld (from 1910 to January 27, 1917, and again from July to November 1918). The consulate moved to Samson in March 1916. Vice Consul Kuckhoff was gerent at Trabzon from January 27 to August 1917, and gerent at Samson from August 1917 to January 7, 1918. In Jaffa, the consul from June to July 13, 1914 and September 9, 1914 to August 1, 1915 was Dr. Heinrich Brode. In Damascus, the consul and gerent from June 13, 1915 to May 7, 1917 was Dr. Julius Loytved-Hardegg; from August 10, 1917 to April, 1918 the gerent was Prince Friedrich Werner von der Schulenburg; and from June to the end of September 1918 the consul was Dr. Heinrich Brode. In Adana the consul from May 1910 to October 1918 was Dr. Eugen Bilge. In Mosul, the vice consul and gerent from 1911 to the end of April 1918 was Walter Holstein (with absences for various reasons from November 1 to December 19, 1914, all of October 1915, and from July 22 to September 23, 1916. In Alexandretta, the vice consul and gerent from May 10 to August 10, 1917 was Hermann Hoffmann. In Smyrna, the consul from 1910 to January 8, 1916 was Humbert; from January 8, 1916 to January 19, 1917 Prince von Spee was consul and gerent; and from January 19, 1917 to November 1918 Dr. Weber was consul and gerent. In Haifa, the gerent from September 13 to October 2, 1915 was Dr. Julius Loytved-Hardegg. In Beirut the consul from 1912 to the end of September 1918 was a certain Mutius (with a promotion to Consul General from April 15, 1916), and with leaves and vacations from June 15 to October 25 and July 1 to July 29, 1917), and the gerent there from July 1 was 29, 1917 was Prince Friedrich Werner von der Schulenburg. The consul in Aleppo from 1910 to May 10, 1918 was Dr. Walter Rössler. Finally, in Jaffa, from June to July 13, 1914 and September 9, 1914 to August 1, 1915 the consul was Dr. Heinrich Brode. (Source Dadrian, "Documentation," pp. 80-81)
        General Antranik (1865-1927): “I am not a nationalist. I recognize only one nation, the nation of the oppressed.”

        Comment


        • #5
          5.

          German Missionaries: At least five separate German missionary organizations were active in the Ottoman Empire: the Kaiserswerth Deaconesses, the Jerusalems-Verein (Jerusalem Association), the Evangelischer Bund (Protestant League), the Palästinaverein (Palestine Association [Roman Catholic]), and the Deutsche Orient-Mission (Trumpener, "Germany and the End of the Ottoman Empire," p. 119). The Deutsch Orient Mission, of which Johannes Lepsius was president, was particularly concerned with the fate of the Armenians. No one has done a study on or published documents of individual German missionaries in the Ottoman Empire such as been done for American (see Appendix I), Swiss (Jakob Künzler in particular), and Danish (such as Maria Jacobsen and Karen Jeppe) missionaries. For more information, see Uwe Feigel, Das evangelische Deutschland und Armenien: Die Armenierhilfe deutscher evangelischer Christen seit dem Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts im Kontext der deutsch-türkischen Beziehungen (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1989).
          German Businessmen: There were, of course, many German businessmen in the Ottoman Empire, but to the best of my knowledge, no systematic figures are available. There were also engineers supervising the building of the Berlin to Baghdad railway.

          For more general information on German involvement in the Ottoman Empire, see Vahakn N. Dadrian, "Documentation of the Armenian Genocide in German and Austrian Sources," chap. in The Widening Circle of Genocide, Volume 3 of Genocide: A Critical Bibliographic Review, ed. Israel W. Charny (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1994), pp. 77-125; and Vahakn N. Dadrian, German Responsibility in the Armenian Genocide: A Review of the Historical Evidence of German Complicity (Watertown, MA: Blue Crane Books, 1996). Also see Ulrich Trumpener, Germany and the Ottoman Empire, 1914-1918 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968; repr., Delmar, NY: Caravan Books, 1989); and Christoph Dinkel, "German Officers and the Armenian Genocide," Armenian Review 44, no. 1-173 (Spring 1991), pp. 77-133.
          Appendix III: Wolf Metternich to Bethmann Hollweg

          Two sentences into the second paragraph of the report, it reads:

          Es hat aber niemand hier mehr die Macht, die vielköpfige Hydra des Komitees, den Chauvinismus und Fanatismus, zu bändigen. Das Komitee verlangt die Vertilgung der letzten Reste der Armenier, und die Regierung muß nachgeben. Das Komitee bedeutet aber nicht nur die Organisation der Regierungspartei in der Hauptsadt. Das Komitee ist über alle Wilajets verbreitet. Jedem Wali bis zum Kaimakam (Landrat) herab steht ein Komiteemitglied zur Unterstützung oder zur Überwachung zur Seite.

          No one any longer has the power to control the many-headed hydra of the Committee [of Union and Progress], to control the chauvinism and the fanaticism. The Committee 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 organisation of the ruling part in the capital; it is spread all over the provinces. At the side of each provincial governor [vali], and on down to each kaimakam [district head], a Committee member stands, with instructions either to support or supervise. (Lepsius 282 as translated by Christopher J. Walker, Armenia: The Survival of a Nation, Revised Second Edition [New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990], p. 235).

          Appendix IV. Report of Scheubner-Richter to Bethmann Hollweg

          A large segment of the Ittihadist party maintains the viewpoint that the Turkish empire should be based only on the principle of Islam and Pan-Turkism. Its non-Muslim and non-Turkish inhabitants should either be forcibly islamized, or where that is not possible they ought to be destroyed. (Ein großer Teil des jungtürkischen Komitees steht auf dem Standpunkt, daß das türkische Reich nur auf rein muhammedanischer, pantürkistischer Grundlage aufebaut werden muß. Die nichtmuhammedanischen und nichttürkischen Bewohner desselben müssen gewaltsam muhammedanisiert und türkisiert, wo das nicht angängig, vernichtet weden.)
          These gentlemen believe that the time is propitious for the realization of this plan. (Zur Verwirklichung dieses Planes scheint diesen Herren die jetzige Zeit die geeignetste.)

          Scheubner-Richter then goes on to detail five aspects of this plan beginning with the fact that "[T]he disposal of the Armenians came as the first point of their program." (Als erter Punkt ihres Programms kam die Erledigung der Armenier.)
          For the powers standing in alliance with Turkey a supposedly prepared revolution by the Dashnak Party was dangled. Moreover, local incidents of social unrest and acts of Armenian self-defense were exaggerated and were used as a pretext for the deportation of Armenians from threatened borderlands. Once enroute, the Armenians were attacked by Kurdish and Turkish bands and even by gendarmes instigated by the Ittihad and murdered. (Für die mit der Türei im Bündnis stehenden Mächte wurde eine angeblich vorbereitete Revolution der Partei der Daschnakzagan vorgeschützt. Lokale Unruhen und Selbstschutzbestrebungen der Armenier wurden außerdem aufgebauscht und zum Vorwand genommen, die Aussiedelung der Armenier aus bedrohten Grenzgebieten zu motivieren. Unterwegs wurden die Armenier auf Anstiftung des Komitees von kurdischen und türkischen Barden, stellenweise auch von Gendarmen, ermordet.

          Lepsius, ed., Deutschland und Armenien, Document 309, pp. 307-308; translation adapted from Vahakn N. Dadrian, "Documentation of the Armenian Genocide," p. 107. After the war, he became a Nazi, and "one of Hitler's closest advisors." (Trumpener, Germany and the Ottoman Empire, p. 207 n. 19, cited by 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), p. 412.
          Appendix V: American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief (Near East Relief)

          Because the Near East Relief (originally named the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief) was charted by the United States Congress, it was required to file an annual report to Congress. All their annual reports are in the Library of Congress. Reports for the years 1920, 1922, 1923, and 1925 have been published and are in various U.S. libraries. The published editions are entitled Near East Relief and published by "Near East Relief. Board of Trustees." Portions of the report for 1922 were also reprinted in a bilingual edition as Near East Relief: Activities regarding the Armenian Refugees (1922) / Secours au Proche-Orient: En faveur des réfugeiés arméniens (1922) (Aix-en-Provence: Edisud 1981). Near East Relief also had a serial publication first entitled Near East Relief and then later The New Near East.
          For information on the outstanding work of Near East Relief among the Armenians, see American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief, Armenia (New York: American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief, 1917); American Committee for Relief in the Near East, The American Committee for Relief in the Near East, Its History, Its Work and the Need for Support as Outlined by President Wilson and Others ([New York]: 1918); James L. Barton, Story of Near East Relief (New York: Macmillan Company, 1930; repr., New York: J.C. & A.L. Fawcett, 1991); George Lyman Richards, The Medical Work of the Near East Relief: A Review of Its Accomplishments in Asia Minor and the Caucasus during 1919-1920 (New York: Near East Relief, 1923); Stanley E[lphinstone] Kerr, The Lions of Marash: Personal Experiences with American Near East Relief, 1919-1922 (New York: State University of New York, 1973); Susan Kerr Van de Ven, Letters of Stanley E. Kerr: Volunteer Work with the "Near East Relief" among Americans in Marash, 1919-1920: Edited and with an Historical Introduction to the Turkish-Armenian Conflict (Honors thesis, Oberlin College, 1980); Daniels, American Philanthropy; Frank A. Ross, et al., The Near East and American Philanthropy: A Survey Conducted under the Guidance of the General of the Near East Survey (New York: Columbia University Press, 1929); and Sigrid Holt, comp.

          Appendix VI: Turkish War Crimes Trials

          After World War I war ended, the Turks established three national inquiries to investigate criminal activities conducted during the war. One was the investigative arm of the special courts-martial; the second, a government commission headed by Hasan Mazhar; and, third, an inquiry commission established by the Ottoman Chamber of Deputies. All three discovered evidence which was used in the actual courts-martial. The courts-martial themselves were divided into three categories, the first dealt with "deportations and massacres" and had its own national inquiry commission. The provinces also had local inquiry commissions to gather evidence for the centrally held courts-martial.

          The trials were conducted in series: a cabinet ministers' series, an Ittihad secretaries' series, and then a series based around various locations (Bayburt, Büyükdere, Erzincan, Harput, Mosul, Trabzon, and Yozgat). The trial series overlapped in time, and all the trials were held in the Ottoman Parliament building. Major figures in the Young Turk government, including Cemal, Enver, and Talaat Pashas were condemned to death in absentia, as were Drs. Nazïm and Sakir. Many defendants were out of reach of the courts and could not be arrested. Three defendants were actually hanged: Ali Kemal, the interim mutasarrïf of Yozgat; Abdullah Avni, head of the Erzincan police; and Behramzade Nusret, kaymakam and then mutasarrïf of Ergani, and then mutasarrïf of Urfa. The trials slackened when Grand Vizier Damad Ferit Pasha's third government collapsed on October 2, 1919. They came to a halt on October 21, 1920 and were formally abolished on January 13, 1921.

          The trial proceedings, including the evidential materials, were published by the Turkish government in supplements to the Takvîm-i Vekâyi. Most copies of these records have disappeared, but many are dispersed in individual copies around the world. The full collection was recently made and has been translated into German and into modern Turkish, with diacritical marks to refer to the original spellings in the Arabic script. These collections, in German and modern Turkish, are now in the possession of the Armenian Research Center at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.
          Although the courts-martial were abortive, they do provide a mass of evidence (provided nearly entirely by Muslims) which directly contradicts the patterns of present-day Turkish denial. For instance, the Yozgat and Trabzon trials explicitly debunk the theory of Armenian revolt; the Yozgat series also refuted a thesis of civil war and established that "deportation" was in fact massacre. It should also be mentioned that some of the trials were concluded and sentences rendered before the British occupied Constantinople on March 16, 1920. See Dadrian, History of the Armenian Genocide, pp. 317-343; Dadrian, "Documentation of the World War I Armenian Massacres," and Taner Akcam, Armenien und der Völkermord: Die Istanbuler Prozess und dir türkische Nationalbewegung (Hamburger: Hamburger Edition, 1996). Foreign Relief and Rehabilitation--A Bibliography (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1943).

          Appendix VII: Allied and British Attempts to Punish “Crimes Against Humanity and Civilization.”
          General Antranik (1865-1927): “I am not a nationalist. I recognize only one nation, the nation of the oppressed.”

          Comment


          • #6
            6

            On May 24, 1915, concerned at ongoing Armenian massacres, which were considered to be "crimes of Turkey against humanity and civilization," the Allied governments issued a joint declaration stating that they would "hold personally responsible . . . all members of the Ottoman government and those of their agents who are implicated in such massacres." (Dadrian, History of the Armenian Genocide, p. 216). In consequence, the Allies made two attempts at bringing the murderers to justice. The first attempt was incorporated in articles 226 and 230 of the Treaty of Sèvres. By these articles the Ottoman government was bound to hand over to the Allies for trial anyone identified by the Allies as guilty of either committing acts against "the laws and customs of war" (some of which had been identified in the Geneva Conventions of 1864 and 1906 and the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907) or "being responsible for the massacres" in the Ottoman Empire (Dadrian, History of the Armenian Genocide, p. 305). Unfortunately, the Treaty of Sèvres never came into force.
            The second attempt was conducted by the British, who themselves attempted to bring individuals to trial. Putting pressure on the Ottoman government to arrest designated suspects, the British managed to remove 118 culprits to Malta for trials. Unfortunately, evidence was difficult to obtain, since the Nationalists were in effective control of Turkey and the British were unable to acquire the evidence gathered by the various Turkish enquiry commissions. The trials deferred and never carried out. With the advent of Mustafa Kemal, whose Nationalist forces illegally held British prisoners, the British government washed its hands of the issue and traded the prisoners on Malta for the freedom of the illegally detained British captives of the Nationalists.

            The British law office answered the British Foreign Office in a report that advised that nothing under British law would support a trial of the accused members of Ittihad unless the British once more declared war on the Ottoman Empire or invoked the Treaty of Sèvres. Dadrian, History of the Armenian Genocide, p. 308 argues that the British actually had the right to try the accused Young Turks, and that they knew it: Dadrian, "The Armenian Genocide and the Legal and Political Issues in the Failure to Prevent or to Punish the Crime," p. 70 says the British Legal Office agrees that British Courts Martial could try offenders themselves in the zones of occupation (which at most for this case was Constantinople and its environs) and with the consent of the Turkish government offenders outside the zones of occupation (something which it could not obtain because the Nationalists were by this time in effective control of Turkey.

            Dadrian, History of the Armenian Genocide, pp. 7-20; shows the history of humanitarian intervention by the European powers. For more on the expansion of humanitarian intervention from Russia to all the powers and the limits thereof, see Dadrian, History of the Armenian Genocide, pp. 21-110. Original attempts at humanitarian intervention in the Ottoman Empire were those of a single power. Russia gained the right to intercede on behalf of Russian Orthodox, and by extension, all Orthodox (but the actual Treaty wording says "la religion chrétienne"--not a specific Christian faith) by the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarci (July 21, 1774). The Treaty of Yassi (Jassy) (January 9, 1792) and the Treaty of Bucharest (May 28, 1892) reaffirm it for the Romanians; the Treaty of Akkerman (Sept 7, 1826) and the Treaty of Adrianople (Sept 14, 1829) gave protection to the Serbs. Greece was the first case of multilateral intervention, during the Greek War of Independence, but that might be because the Greek case was different in that Muhammed Ali, the ruler of Egypt, had intervened first. Concerning the Greeks, Great Britain, France, and Russia intervened on the basis of "fulfill[ing] an imperative duty of humanity in putting an end to the troubles which were devastating these unhappy countries." (p. 14) The real turning point for intervention came with the Crimean War. Russia gave up its claim to protect Christians in the Ottoman Empire in the Treaty of Paris (March 30, 1856); all the Powers in the Paris Treaty "expressed appreciation" for the Ottoman Reform act of February 18, 1856, which decreed equal treatment for Muslims and non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire. (p. 19) From that point on, humanitarian intervention in the Ottoman Empire was supposed to be by the Powers together, not by a single one (although the Russians tried again with the Treaty of San Stefano, but that was overturned by the Congress of Berlin). However, as the Duke of Argyll pointed out "What was everybody's business was nobody's business." (p. 107)

            Appendix VIII: Rich Literature on Armenian Genocide Denial
            A rich literature exists on Armenian Genocide denial. See Rouben Adalian, "The Armenian Genocide: Revisionism and Denial," Genocide in Our Time: An Annotated Bibliography with Analytical Introductions, ed. Michael N. Dobkowski and Isidor Wallimann (Ann Arbor, MI: 1992), pp. 85-105; 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); Vahakn N. Dadrian, The Key Elements in the Turkish Denial of the Armenian Genocide: A Case Study of Distortion and Falsification (Toronto, Ont.: Zoryan Institute of Canada, 1999); Vahakn N. Dadrian, "Ottoman Archives and the Denial of the Armenian Genocide," The Armenian Genocide, pp. 280-310; Marjorie Housepian Dobkin, ed. Denial of the Armenian Genocide: Compounding the Crime (New York: Armenian Center at Columbia University, 1993); Richard G. Hovannisian, "The Armenian Genocide," in Genocide: A Critical Bibliographic Review, ed. Israel W. Charny (New York: Facts on File, 1988), pp. 112-115; Richard G. Hovannisian, "The Armenian Genocide and Patterns of Denial," in The Armenian Genocide in Perspective, pp. 111-133; Richard G. Hovannisian, "Denial of the Armenian Genocide in Comparison with Holocaust Denial," Remembrance and Denial, pp. 201-236; Marc Nichanian, "The Truth of the Facts: About the New Revisionism," Remembrance and Denial, pp. 249-270; Dennis R. Papazian, "`Misplaced Credulity': Contemporary Turkish Attempts to Refute the Armenian Genocide," Armenian Review 45, no. 1-2/177-178 (Spring/Summer 1992), pp. 185-213; Roger W. Smith, "The Armenian Genocide: Memory, Politics, and the Future, in The Armenian Genocide, pp. 1-20; Roger W. Smith, "Denial of the Armenian Genocide," in Genocide: A Critical Bibliographic Review, Vol. 2, ed. Israel W. Charny (New York: Facts on File, 1991), pp. 63-85; Roger W. Smith, "Genocide and Denial: The Armenian Case and Its Implications," Armenian Review 42, no. 1-165 (Spring 1989); Roger W. Smith, Eric Markusen, and Robert Jay Lifton, "Professional Ethics and Denial of the Armenian Genocide," Remembrance and Denial, pp. 271-295; Yves Ternon, "Freedom and Responsibility of the Historian: The `Lewis Affair,'" Remembrance and Denial, pp. 237-248.

            Appendix IX: Lemkin and the Armenian Genocide (Genocide: The Word and its Inception)
            The term genocide is of recent derivation; etymologically, it combines the Greek word for group, tribe—genos, with the Latin word for killing—cide. In 1933, at a time when neither the extensiveness nor character of the barbarous practices subsequently carried out under the Third Reich could have been foreseen, the jurist Raphael Lemkin submitted to the International Conference for Unification of Criminal Law a proposal to declare the destruction of racial, religious or social collectivities a crime in international law. In 1944 he published a monograph, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, in which he detailed the exterminatory practices and policies pursued by the Third Reich and its allies. He went on to argue the case for the International regulation of the “practice of extermination of nations and ethnic groups,” a practice to which he referred to now as genocide. Lemkin was also instrumental in lobbying United Nations officials and representatives to secure the passage of a resolution by the General Assembly affirming that “genocide is a crime under international law which the civilized world condemns, and for the commission of which principals and accomplices are punishable.” The matter was referred for consideration to the UN Economic and Social Council, and their deliberations culminated with the signing of the 1948 United Nations Convention on Genocide (UNCG). [63]

            Four quotations from Raphael Lemkin on the Armenian Genocide: [64]

            From a letter to Mrs. Thelma Stevens, Methodist Women’s Council, July 26, 1950:

            q “This Convention is a matter of conscience and is a test of our personal relationship to evil. I know it is very hot in July and August for work and planning, but without becoming sentimental or trying to use colorful speech, let us not forget that the heat of this month is less unbearable to us than the heat of the ovens of Auschwitz and Dachau and more lenient than the murderous heat in the desert of Aleppo which burned to death the bodies of hundreds of thousands of Christian Armenian victims of genocide in 1915.”

            From Totally Unofficial, the unpublished autobiography of Raphael Lemkin.

            q “In 1915 the Germans occupied the city of W. and the entire area. I used this time to read more history, to study and to watch whether national, religious, or racial groups are being destroyed. The truth came out only after the war. In Turkey, more than 1,200,000 Armenians were put to death for no other reason than they were Christians… . After the end of the war, some 150 Turkish war criminals were arrested and interned by the British Government on the Island of Malta. The Armenians sent a delegation to the peace conference in Versailles. They were demanding justice. Then one day, the delegation read in the newspapers that all Turkish war criminals were released. I was shocked. A nation was killed and the guilty persons were set free. Why is a man punished when he kills another man? Why is the killing of a million a lesser crime than the killing of a single individual?”

            q “I identified myself more and more with the sufferings of the victims, whose numbers grew, as I continued my study of history. I understood that the function of memory is not only to register past events, but to stimulate human conscience. Soon contemporary examples of genocide followed, such as the slaughter of Armenians in 1915. It became clear to me that the diversity of nations, religious groups and races is essential to civilization because every one of those groups has a mission to fulfill and a contribution to make in terms of culture… . I decide to become a lawyer and work for the outlawing of Genocide and for its prevention through the cooperation of nations.”

            q “…A bold plan was formulated in my mind. This consisted [of] obtaining the ratification by Turkey [of the proposed UN Convention on Genocide. Ed] among the first twenty founding nations. This would be an atonement for [the] genocide of the Armenians. But how could this be achieved?… The Turks are proud of their republican form of government and of progressive concepts, which helped them in replacing the rule of the Ottoman Empire. The genocide convention must be put within the framework of social and international progress. I knew however that in this conversation both sides will have to avoid speaking about one thing, although it would be constantly in their minds: the Armenians.”
            General Antranik (1865-1927): “I am not a nationalist. I recognize only one nation, the nation of the oppressed.”

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              Appendix X: Taner Akçam’s Observations

              Turkish nationalists faced specific difficulty inasmuch as over the Ottoman centuries, Islam had gradually effaced Turkish identity in the Empire. Turkish nationalist theoreticians had to look back beyond the Empire to find historic roots, Turkism, while at the same time identifying with the glories of the Ottoman past to give themselves pride and a sense of exalted status. But over the 19th century, the Ottoman Empire, in a series of bloody wars, slowly disintegrated, suffering tens of thousands of casualties in the process. The Young Turks, as soldiers and patriots, internalized these defeats as a personal humiliation and dishonor. One by one the Christians of the Balkans, and certain Muslims in North Africa, became independent of the Empire and more dependent on the Europeans. Between 1879 and 1918, alone, the Ottoman rulers lost 85% of their Empire’s territory and 75% of its population, due in part to the ineffectuality of its armies and the powerful enemies opposing it. What remained was considered by the Ittihadists as the Turkish heartland.

              The Young Turk Ottoman elite "crushed by the weight of a glorious past and suffering from a loss of self-esteem, saw the First World War as a historic opportunity for the state to regain its former grandeur and recover its national pride." [e-mail letter] That illusion vanished with the failure of Enver Pasha's foray toward the Caucasus and the rise of the Arab rebellion. “In the atmosphere of disillusionment, an aura of resentment built up which sought out those responsible for their defeat. Since it was impossible to punish the Great Powers, the Armenians became a substitute, a scapegoat, for the Great Powers [all titular Christian], including the arch enemy Russia as well as the Christians of the Balkans.” Unpublished essay on file in the Armenian Research Center. Taner Akçam, "The Genocide of the Armenians and the Silence of the Turks" in Dialogue Across an International Divide: Essays towards a Turkish-Armenian Dialogue (Toronto: Zoryan Institute of Canada, 2001).

              Appendix XI: Ziya Gökalp.

              [This section is taken from Stephan Astourian, “The Armenian Genocide: An Interpretation,” The History Teacher 23, no. 2 (February 1990), pp. 132-133.]

              The most influential thinker, however, was Mehmet Ziya, known under his pen name of Ziya Gökalp. A member of the ruling Central Committee of the Union and Progress from 1909 to 1918 and its main ideologue as well, he formulated the values and provided the vision that led the empire to enter World War 1. Total and unquestioning service to the nation he deemed the basis of morality. In his poem "Vazife" [Duty, 1915], he wondered:

              "What is duty? A voice that comes down from the throne of God,
              Reverberating the consciousness of my nation
              I am a soldier, it is my commander,
              I obey without question all its orders.
              With closed eyes
              I carry out my duty."
              His conception of the nation, in turn, was strictly limited to Turkish-speaking Muslims. The territory of the Turks was to be, however, larger than the Ottoman Empire. As he suggested in one of his poems,

              The country of the Turks is not Turkey, nor yet Turkestan,
              Their country is a broad and everlasting land - Turan. [65]

              Upon the outbreak of World War I, he formulated the aims and methods of the Ottoman Empire in no uncertain terms:

              The land of the enemy shall be devastated,
              Turkey shall be enlarged and become Turan. [66]

              This mystical vision of blood and race would indeed be devastating for the Armenians and many other non -Turks. For one reason, Turkism, a radical rejection of Ottomanism, excluded the Armenians not just from state power, which had always been the case, but also from society at large: Armenians were neither Turkic racially, nor Muslim religiously, and they had no share in the Turkish tradition. From a Pan-Turkist, irredentist viewpoint the location of most Ottoman Armenians in eastern Anatolia was considered as a barrier between Turkey and the Turkic groups living in the Russian Empire, from today's Azerbaijan to Central Asia. The elimination of this barrier played no small part in the execution of the Armenian genocide. The fervor with which most of the Ottoman leaders believed in these ideologies is proved by their policies. As early as November 1910, the second annual convention of the Committee decided to carry out these Turkist and Pan-Turkist projects, and the subsequent conventions only enlarged their scope.

              Appendix XII: Turkish Reaction to French Bill on Armenian Genocide Recognition.

              On January 18, 2001, the French National Assembly passed a bill stating that the Armenians suffered genocide in 1915. This bill did not state who was responsible, and did not name any country. Even before the bill was signed into law by President Jacques Chirac on January 30, the Turkish government took steps to punish France and French companies. Immediately after the bill was passed, the Turkish ambassador was recalled to Ankara. On January 23 the Turkish government annulled a $200 million spy satellite contract with the French company Alcatel and excluded Giat Industries from a $7 billion tank tender. Once the bill was signed into law, further steps were taken by the Turkish government: the government cancelled a $200 million contact with Thales to upgrade F-16 fighter planes, scrapped the planned purchase of six Aviso submarines, worth $500 million, and cancelled a joint project to produce Eryx anti-tank missiles. On February 1, the Turkish government cancelled a an Istanbul bridge tender. Additional measures, including excluding French companies from wheat sales, were also taken. Finally, on February 8, the French companies Alcatel Space Industries and Mantra Marconi Space were barred for a year from Turkish defense tenders. Also, private Turkish companies were ended business relationships with French companies. ("Alcatel loses 200mln usd Turkish satellite deal after genocide vote," AFX News, 23 January 2001; "Turkey scrapes spy satellite agreement with French firm," Associated Press, 23, 2001; Amberin Zaman, "`Genocide bill costs France £142m deal," Electronic Telegraph, 31 January 2001; "Turkey intensifies retaliation against France over genocide claim," AP Worldstream, 31 January 2001; "Turkey calls off bridge tendering over French `genocide' resolution," Deutsche Press-Agentur, 1 February 2001; Sibel Utku, "French firms complain of Turkish red-tape after genocide vote," Agence France Presse, 2 February 2001; "Alcatel, Matra Marconi banned from Turkish defense tenders after genocide," AFX 8 February 2001).

              Return to Selected Writings of Dr. Dennis R. Papazian

              Endnotes

              [1] The United States had consuls in Aleppo (Halep), Harpout (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 Constantino ple. These reports are currently on file in the U.S. Department of State, and are open for public inspection. They can also be purchased on microfilm. See U.S. Department of State, Record Group 59, Internal Affairs of Turkey, 1910‑1929 (Microfilm Publications) Microcopy 353: 88 reels, espe cially 867.4016/1-1011, reels 43‑48. These U.S. documents are also available (organized differently) on microfiche as The Armenian Genocide in the U.S. Archives, 1915-1918 (Alexandria, VA: Chadwyck-Healey, 1991). Rouben Adalian, ed., Guide to the Armenian Genocide in the U.S. Archives, 1915-1918 (Alexandria, VA: Chadwyck-Healey, 1994) is the essential guide for that version of the U.S. archival records.
              For an introduction to the Armenian Genocide and the U.S. Government archives during the early stages of the Armenian Genocide, see Armen Hairapetian, "`Race Problems' and the Armenian Genocide: The State Department File," Armenian Review 37, no. 1-145 (Spring 1984), pp. 41-59 (with selected documents from pages 60 to 145). For an introduction to the Armenian Genocide and the U.S. Government archives after the war ended see Armen K. Hovannisian, "The United States Inquiry and the Armenian Question, 1917-1919: The Archival Papers," Armenian Review 37, no. 1-145 (Spring 1984), pp. 146-163 (with selected documents from pages 164 to 202).

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              [2] See Appendix I: American Missionaries in the Ottoman Empire.

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              [3] Viscount Bryce, The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915‑1916: Documents Presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon (London, UK: Sir Joseph Causton and Sons, 1916). Later in 1916, an key to the names of persons places left out of the work was printed as a separate publication. The Blue Book was reprinted in Beirut, Lebanon by G. Doniguian & Sons in 1972, with a new preface by Me. Moussa Prince, and with the separate key printed in the back. It was reprinted in Astoria, New York by J.C. & A.L. Fawcett in 1990 without the key. A new edition, with the names in the separate key integrated into the text itself was published in Princeton, New Jersey by the Gomidas Institute in 2000. The Bryce Blue Book was translated into French as Le traitmement des Arméniens dans l'Empire Ottoman (1915-1916): Documents présentés au vicomte Grey of Fallodon, secrétaure d'état aux affairs étrangères par le vicomte Bryce, avec une préface du vicomte Bryce (Laval, France: Impr. Moderne, G. Kavanagh & Cie, 1917).

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              [4] See Appendix II: Germans in the Ottoman Empire ca. 1915.

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              [5] Some authors believed that the Lepsius documents were themselves censored to reduce suggestions of German complicity. In 1915 Lepsius was the president of the German Orient Mission and president of the German-Armenian Society. Johannes Lepsius, ed., Deutschland und Armenien, 1914‑1918: Sammlung Diplomatischer Aktenstücke (Germany and Armenia, 1914‑1918: A Collection of Diplomatic Documents) (Potsdam: Tempelverlag, 1919). This book was reprinted with an additional introduction by Tessa Hofmann in Bremen by Donat & Temmen Verlag in 1986. A new and revised edition in German as well as in English, prepared by Wolfgang and Sigrid Gust in cooperation with Taner Akçam, is available on the World Wide Web at http://www.armenocide.de. Another electronic Lepsius edition is available at the Armenian Research Center, University of Michigan-Dearborn.
              Excerpts from these documents were translated and published in French as Johannes Lepsius, Archives du genocide des Armeniens: recueil de documents diplomatiques allemands, extraits de Deutschland und Armenien (1914‑1918) (Archives of the Armenian Genocide: ... German Diplomatic Documents, extracts from Deutschland und Armenien [1914‑1918]) (Paris: Fayard, 1986).

              These documents make clear the guilt of the Young Turks in the Armenian Genocide. One of the most damaging pieces in Lepsius' collection is from Document 282, a message from the German ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Count Paul von Wolff-Metternich, to the German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, dated June 30, 1916.

              See Appendix III: Wolf-Metternich to Bethmann Hollweg.

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              [6] According to Tessa Hofmann and Gerayer Koutcharian in their article ("`Images that Horrify and Indict': Pictorial Documents on the Persecution and Extermination of Armenians from 1877 to 1922," Armenian Review 45 no. 1-2/177-178 (Spring-Summer 1992), pp. 53-184,) thirty-two of the roughly two hundred Wegner photographs in the Schiller National Museum and Literature Archive (in Marbach am Neckar) are on the Armenian Genocide. They also note that parts of his photographic collection are lost today. Hofmann and Koutcharian present twenty-five of the Wegner photos in their article.
              Additional Armin T. Wegner photographs were published in the bilingual (Italian-English) Armin T. Wegner e gli Armeni in Anatolia, 1915: Immagini e testimonianza / Armin T. Wegner and the Armenians in Anatolia, 1915: Images and Testimonies (Milan: Edizioni Angelo Guerini e Associati, 1996), which also includes selected writings by and about him. The second extensive collection of photographs of the Armenian Genocide is that of Near East Relief.
              General Antranik (1865-1927): “I am not a nationalist. I recognize only one nation, the nation of the oppressed.”

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              • #8
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                [7] Franz Werfel, Die vierzig Tage des Musa Dagh (The Forty Days of Musa Dagh) (Berlin, Vienna, and Leipzig: Paul Zsolnay Verlag, 1933). It was translated into English by Geoffrey Dunlop and first published in the United States by Viking Press in 1934. The Dunlop translation has been continuously reprinted in the United States. It has also been translated into French, Dutch, Armenian, Iranian, and many other languages. Werfel was born in Prague in 1890, an Austrian subject. He was Jewish by ancestry and faith. In December 1933, he apply for admission in the Reich Association of German writers, calling himself "a Czechoslovak citizen," "a member of the German minority in Czechoslovakia resident in Austria, "a resident of Vienna." (Peter Stephan Jungk, Franz Werfel: A Life in Prague, Vienna, and Hollywood, trans. Anselm Hollo [New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1990], p. 144).
                An attempt was made by MGM studios in Los Angeles to make a film out of this book. Unfortunately, that effort was prevented by the Turkish government in collusion with the United States Department of State. See, Edward Minasian, “The Making of the Forty Days of Musa Dagh,” unpublished book length manuscript based on research in the MGM archives, on file at the Armenian Research Center. See the shorter, published version: Edward Minasian, "The Forty Years of Musa Dagh: The Film That Was Denied," Journal of Armenian Studies III, no. 1-2 (1986-1987), pp. 121-131.

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                [8] Yair Auron, "The Forty Days of Musa Dagh: Its Impact on Jewish Youth in Palestine and Europe," in Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide, ed. Richard G. Hovannisian (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1998), pp. 147-164, esp. pp. 156-160. Also see Yair Auron, The Banality of Indifference: Zionism & the Armenian Genocide, trans. Maggie Bar-Tura (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2000), esp. pp. 293-311.

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                [9] Dr. Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter was Vice Consul at Erzurum from February 17 to August 6 1915, as well as the co-commander (along with the Ittihadist leader Ömer Naci), of the Caucasus Expedition to conduct guerilla operations behind Russian lines in the Fall and Winter of 1915. Scheubner-Richter was literally arm-in-arm with Adolf Hitler at the Munich Beer Hall Putsch, during which Max was killed by the Bavarian police. While there is no direct proof that Scheubner-Richter was Hitler's source for knowledge of the Armenian Genocide, it must be supposed that Hitler's close advisor who witnessed scenes of that genocide, when Armenians were not only slaughtered but had Muslims settled in their place, would have discussed the subject with Hitler, especially as Scheubner-Richter is also known to have made at least one comparison of Armenians to Jews (in a report of August 15, 1915 which was not published in Deutschland und Armenien). Dadrian, History of the Armenian Genocide, pp. 412, 419 n. 43.
                On December 4, 1916, after Scheubner-Richter returned to Munich, he wrote a memorandum to Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg in which he discusses the guilt of the Young Turks in carrying out a genocide against the Armenians. In his report he states that "I have conducted a series of conversations with competent and influential Turkish personalities and these are my impressions:" (Eine Reihe von Gesprächen mit masßgebenden türkischen Persönichkeiten hinterließ bei mir folgende Eindrücke See Appendix IV: Report of Scheubner-Richter to Bethmann Hollweg.

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                [10] Kevork B. Bardakjian, Hitler and the Armenian Genocide (Cambridge, MA: The Zoryan Institute for Contemporary Armenian Research and Documentation, 1985), p. 43. This is the most famous quote by Adolph Hitler on the Armenians, and has also been questioned by deniers of the Armenian Genocide. The speech itself has been verified by Winfried Baumgart (who was not specifically researching this quotation) in his "Zur Ansprache Hitler's vor den Führern der Wehrmacht Am 22. August 1939. Eine quellenkritische Untersuchung," Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte 12, no. 2 (1968) and by Kevork Bardakjian, in Bardakjian, Hitler and the Armenian Genocide.
                There is an earlier explicit quote as well that show Hitler's familiarity with the genocide of the Armenians In 1931, Hitler granted two interviews to Richard Breiting, the editor of the daily Leipziger Neueste Nachrichten. In the second interview, he stated ". . . erinnern Sie sich doch an die Ausrotting Armeniens" (remember the extermination of the Armenians). Edourd Calic, Ohne Maske: Hitler-Breiting Geheimgespräache, 1931 (Frankfurt: Societäts Verlag, 1968), p. 101, quoted in Dadrian, History of the Armenian Genocide, p. 408 and Bardakjian, Hitler and the Armenian Genocide, p. 40 n. 62; English translation from Edouard Calic, ed., Secret Conversations with Hitler: The Two Newly-Discovered 1931 Interviews, trans. Richard Barry (New York: The John Day Company, 1971), p. 81.

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                [11] Kevork Bardakjian, Hitler and the Armenian Genocide, p. 44. It is interesting to note in this regard that the Ittihad resettled Balkan and Caucasian refugees in the properties which the Armenians were forced to abandon during the World War I genocide of the Armenians. The Ottoman Empire lost nearly all of its remaining Balkan possession between 1908, when the Young Turks came to power, and 1913 during the second Balkan war. Certain denialists will point to messages in the Ottoman archives as proof that the Ottoman Government intended to genuinely resettle Armenians. As was shown in one particular case, these documents refer to the muhajirs to be resettled in 1913-1914, and not the Armenians. Vahakn N. Dadrian, Warrant for Genocide: Key Elements of Turko-Armenian Conflict (New Brunswick, NJ and London: Transaction Publishers, 1999), pp. 144-147. See Walker, Armenia, p. 203 on the policy of settling muhajirs on formerly Armenian properties. One particular example of this subterfuge can be found in Ara Sarafian, "The Ottoman Archives Debate and the Armenian Genocide," Armenian Forum 2, no. 1 (Spring 1999), pp. 41-42. In any case, the Ittihad did as many governments did then and even today, they produced a fraudulent paper trail to cover their tracks.

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                [12] The term was originally “the Sick Bear of Europe” as coined by Czar Nicholas I.
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                [13] See Bat Ye'or, The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians under Islam, trans. David Maisel, Paul Fenton, and David Littman (Rutherford, Madison, and Teaneck, NJ: Fairleigh xxxxinson University Press, 1985; London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1985), esp. pp. 56-57, 62-67; and Bat Ye'or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude: Seventh-Twentieth Century, trans. Miriam Kocham and David Littman (Madison and Teaneck, NJ: Fairleigh xxxxinson University Press, 1996; London: Associated University Presses, 1996), esp. pp. 81-83, 91-99.

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                [14] “The Kurdish feudal Beys ruthlessly exploited and oppressed the Armenian peasants, who were completely devoid of rights… . ‘In the kaza [district]of Sasun,’ the Russian vice-consul Tumanskii wrote at the turn of the twentieth century, ‘there is an almost serf-like dependence of Armenians on Kurds, with all its legal consequences: each Armenian is attached to some Kurd or other and obliged to pay him rent; when in need of money the Kurds sell their serfs; should a Kurd kill a serf, the latter’s master avenges himself by killing a serf belonging to the murderer.’ ‘Some beys even kept, in Armenian villages, the ‘right of the first night.’” Charles Issawi, The Economic History of Turkey, 1800-1914 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980). p. 66.

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                [15] Dadrian, History of the Armenian Genocide, pp. 32-34; Dadrian, Warrant for Genocide, pp. 21-26, 44-45, 133-160. Interestingly, Martin Kramer, an American-born scholar at Tel Aviv University, in his book Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America (Washington, D.C.: The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2001) argues that “Time and again, academics [of the Middle East] have been taken by surprise by their subjects; time and again, their paradigms have been swept away by events.” He attributes these failures to a lack of understanding of the powerful role of Islam in the culture and politics of the Middle East, and argues that the field is dominated by scholars looking for signs of secular, democratic, and pro-Western elements that they themselves prefer and ignoring the darker side of Islam.

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                [16] William L. Langer, The Diplomacy of Imperialism: 1890-1902, 2nd edition (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1960.)
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                [17] Birdsall S. Viault, Modern European History (New York: McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, 1990), p. 244., in which he discusses the rise of nationalism in Germany, Italy, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. For brilliant anti-Marxian discussions of nationalism, on a much broader scale, see Adrian Hastings, The construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1997; and for a Marxian view see E.J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality. See also Hans Kohn, The Age of Nationalism: The First Era of Global History, and The Idea of Nationalism: A Study in Its Origins and Background. See also Hans Kohn, The Age of Nationalism: The First Era of Global History (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1962); Kohn, The Idea of Nationalism: A Study in Its Origins and Background (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1960); Kohn, Nationalism: Its Meaning and History (Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand, 1965); Kohn, Prophets and Peoples: Studies in Nineteenth Century Nationalism (New York: Collier Books, 1966); and Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London and New York: Verso, 1991). In Europe, this process of state formation was a centripetal as well as a centrifugal force. In the Ottoman Empire, however, the process of nation-state formation was entirely centrifugal, as with the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires, thus antagonizing the power at the center.

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                [18] Marxism, we should remind ourselves, preached class struggle and the internationalization of classes, while nationalism taught that all classes making up an individual ethnos should work together for the common good. For nationalism to bear its fruits, it was necessary for all nations to form their own state, a nation-state. Of course, fundamentally, nationalism is incompatible with Islam, a religion that teaches rather effectively that all Muslims in the ummah, the Muslim “ecumene,” are one people. The spirit of brotherhood among Muslims is very strong.

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                [19] This is one reason why the Balkan Christians received so much sympathy from the democratic elements in the European governments and in European society, as for example in England Gladstone, the liberal, supported the Balkan Christians and the Armenians, while Disraeli, the conservative, did not.

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                [20] This is not to ignore the great contribution made by Muslims in the Middle Ages to art, science and medicine, but for reasons not fully understood, that development was grossly attenuated in succeeding centuries and the Muslim masses were generally not touched by modernization.

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                [21] The rule of Sultan Abdulhamit II was not only authoritarian but also repressive and violent toward his subjects.. The Sultan was viewed as being preordained by God and was not responsible any one. His laws and actions were not to be questioned. Interestingly, the authoritarian elements of his rule were affirmed in the constitution that said “he was responsible to no one except God.” “The clash between Democratic Norms and Theocratic Dogmas,” in Dadrian, Warrant for Genocide, pp. 15-38.

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                [22] Bat Ye’or, The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians under Islam (Teaneck, NJ: Fairleigh xxxxinson University Press, 1985). Dadrian, History of the Armenian Genocide, pp. 3-6; and Dadrian, Warrant for Genocide, pp. 5-14; also Ye'or, Decline of Eastern Christianity.

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                [23] Abdulhamit II carried out a series of bloody massacres of the Armenians in Anatolia from 1894-1896. Most sources claim that 300,000 Armenians were killed and that another 100,000 or so died of injuries, exposure, or starvation during the next and following years.

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                [24] The Turkish revolutionaries were mostly students and officers at the Ottoman military school in the rather international city of Salonika (Thessalonica). Salonika was also the headquarters of the Turkish Third Army Corps.
                General Antranik (1865-1927): “I am not a nationalist. I recognize only one nation, the nation of the oppressed.”

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                  [25] The Dashnak Party [Hay Heghapokhakan Dashnaktsutiwn, Armenian Revolutionary Federation] was founded in 1890 as umbrella group of parties but, failing that purpose, became a distinct party in 1892. It was chiefly active in the Russian Empire at first, and then it established branches in the Ottoman Empire. The Hunchaks were founded in 1887 in Geneva, among the Russian radicals in exile, as the Hunchakian Revolutionary Party and later to be known as the Social Democratic Hunchakian Party [Sotsial Demokrat Hnchakean Kusaktsutiwn]). Both of these parties were strongly influenced by Russian radical populism and the Russian “to the people” [v narod] movement of the 1870s. The Armeni an word "Hunchak," in fact, is a translation of the Russian word Kolokol, or Bell, the title of Herzen's underground populist publication. The “to the people” of these Armenian groups was not to the Russian peasants but rather the downtrodden Armenians of the Ottoman Empire. These two parties were later joined in 1903 by the Constitutional Democratic [Sahmanadrakan Ramkavar] Party, which later became the Armenian Democratic Liberal Party [Ramkavar Azatakan Miutiwn], to be the major Armenian political parties at the time of the Armenian Genocide.

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                  [26] The Sheria “could not admit of [non-Muslim] equality in matters over which it ruled. [Even the subsequent secular laws based on the concept of Kanun (non-religious law)] did not imply equality between Muslims and non-Muslims." Dadrian, Armenian Genocide, pp. 4-5.
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                  [27] The Turkish nationalists abolished the Sultanate on November 1, 1922 and the Caliphate on March 3, 1923.

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                  [28] Most of the Young Turk leaders were agnostics at best.

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                  [29] Walker, Armenia, pp. 182-188. Dadrian, History of the Armenian Genocide, pp. 179-184, although Dadrian characterizes it differently.

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                  [30] In the Ottoman Empire most inhabitants were considered “subjects” and not “citizens.”

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                  [31] See the Wolff-Metternich quote in Appendix III regarding how the Ittihad ruled.

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                  [32] Henry Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story, pp. 337, 338.

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                  [33] In 1908, with the re-adoption of the constitution of 1876, for the first time in Ottoman history Christians were recruited into the armed forces.

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                  [34] They were actually tested for their cruelty before being accepted. Dadrian, History of the Armenian Genocide, pp. 236-239, esp. p. 238; Vahakn N. Dadrian, "The Role of the Special Organisation in the Armenian Genocide during the First World War," in Minorities in Wartime: National and Racial Groupings in Europe, North America and Australia during the Two World Wars, ed. Panikos Panayi (Providence, RI and Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1993), pp. 50-82, esp. p. 60.

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                  [35] In this context, it is instructive to note that in 1895, after the Bab Ali incident in Constantinople, students from the madrassas (Koranic schools), who were called softas in Turkish, left Friday prayers and taking cudgels provided by the police, went around the city killing Armenians. Today, students from the madrassas in Afghanistan and Pakistan, called taliban, have also engaged in a jihad against Christians, particularly the United States.
                  In Saudi Arabia, even today, children are taught not to befriend Christians. As Neil MacFarquhar reported in the New York Times (Friday, October 19, 2001, p. B1, from Riyadh, “The text book for one of the five religion classes required of all 10th graders in Saudi public high schools tackles the complicated issue of who good Muslims should befriend. After examining a number of scriptures which warn of the dangers of having Christian and Jewish friends, the lesson concludes: “It is compulsory for the Muslims to be loyal to each other and to consider the infidels their enemy.”
                  It would be interesting as well as instructive if we had examples of the books used in the Ottoman Empire by the madrassas which, I believed, provided education for the vast majority of the male Muslim population.

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                  [36] Of course no operation as extensive as a genocide was accomplished without a some sort of paper trail of direct and indirect evidence.

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                  [37] “Secretary,” in this context is similar to the way America, and others, use the term to designate a high official, for example “Secretary of State,” “Secretary of the Treasury,” “Secretary of Defense,” and so on. The term secretary was also used in the Soviet Union to designate high officials. For example, Stalin (who ruled as a dictator) was merely designated as the General (or First) Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and did not take the title of Premier until well into World War II.

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                  [38] Vahakn N. Dadrian, "The Documentation of the World War I Armenian Massacres in the Proceedings of the Turkish Military Tribunal," Journal of Political and Military Sociology 22, no. 1 (Summer 1994), p. 108; Gerard J. Libaridian, "The Ultimate Repression: The Genocide of the Armenians, 1915-1917," in Genocide and the Modern age: Etiology and Case Studies of Mass Death, ed. Isidor Wallimann and Michael N. Dobkowski (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1987), p. 205; and Walker, Armenia, pp. 226, 229.

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                  [39] Armenians along the Black Sea coast were often drowned in groups. Those in the valleys south of the mountains were frequently burnt alive in their churches, true holocausts. Those in the southerly tier were driven from their homes on death marches toward the Syrian desert around Der Zor. Those in the west were sometimes put on trains and then sent on forced marches into the desert to die. As the Armenians were marched through villages, the local Muslim cleric (imam) would often excite and incite the ignorant population to massacre the Christians, much as the imams do in some undeveloped parts of the world today. If we consider our experience over the last few decades with domestic ethnic cleansing and international terrorism fired by religious hatred, conflict of cultures, and human egoism, we can get some insight into why and how the Armenian Genocide was carried out.

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                  [40] The camps were at xxxanti, Mamoura, Intili, Islahiyé, Katma, Radjo, Azaz, Akhtérim, Bab, Karlik, Sébil, Téfridjé, Lalé, Mounboudj, Meskéné, Dipsi, Abouharar, Hamam, Sebka, Deir-Zor, Marat, Souvar, Ras ul-Aïn, and Kahdem. With the exception of xxxanti, in northwest Cilicia, and Kahdem, in Lebanon, the camps were in the deserts of Syria or Northern Mesopotamia. See Raymond H. Kévorkian, ed., L'Extermination des Déportés Arméniens Ottomans dans les Camps de Concentration de Syrie-Mésopotamite (1915-1916): La Deuxième Phase du Génocide, a special issue of Revue d'Histoire Arménienne Contemporaine II (1998), esp. pp. 48-49.

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                  [41] Donald E. Miller and Lorna Touryan Miller, Survivors: An Oral History of the Armenian Genocide (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), pp. 182-186. The Millers state that several survivors believed that everyone who survived did so because of Muslim intervention, but they themselves describe such intervention as merely "frequent." Also see Richard G. Hovannisian, "Intervention and Shades of Altruism during the Armenian Genocide," in The Armenian Genocide, pp. 173-207. Only 34.7% of his 527 interviewees indicate outside intervention.

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                  [42] See Appendix V: American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief (Near East Relief).

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                  [43] See Appendix VI: Turkish War Crime Trials.

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                  [44] For information on the Nuremberg trials and their relationship to the Armenian Genocide, see Dadrian, History of the Armenian Genocide, pp. 394-419, esp. pp. 412-416; and Vahakn N. Dadrian, "The Historical and Legal Interconnections Between the Armenian Genocide and the Jewish Holocaust: From Impunity to Retributive Justice," Yale Journal of International Law 23, no. 2 (Summer 1998), pp. 503-559. For more information see Dadrian, History of the Armenian Genocide, pp. 303-316; and Vahakn N. Dadrian, "The Armenian Genocide and the Legal and Political Issues in the Failure to Prevent or to Punish the Crime," University of West Los Angles Law Review 29 (1998), pp. 45-78.

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                  [45] British Parliamentary Undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs Cecil Harmsworth noted that his parliamentary colleagues believed that "one British prisoner was worth a shipload of Turks," and Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Lord Curzon, reflecting this attitude, actually gave preliminary instructions that for each British prisoner repatriated three Turks might be released. See Levon Marashlian, "Finishing the Genocide: Cleansing Turkish of Armenian Survivors, 1920-1923," Remembrance and Denial, p. 125; and Levon Marashlian, The American Question from Sèvres to Lausanne: Economics and Morality in American and British Policies, 1920-1923 (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1992, p. 296.)
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                  [46] See Appendix VII: Allied and British Attempts to Punish “Crimes Against Humanity and Civilization.”

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                  [47] See Appendix VIII: Some Literature on Armenian Genocide Denial. Dadrian, "The Documentation of the World War I Armenian Massacres," p. 100. See also unpublished essay by Taner Akçam on file at Armenian Research Center.

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                  [48] Appendix VIII: Some Literature on Armenian Genocide Denial.

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                  [49] The most recent countries which have confirmed/reaffirmed recognition are: France (2001), Italy (2000), Lebanon (2000), Sweden (2000), the Vatican (2000), the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (1998), and Belgium (1998).

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                  [50] The term “genocide” was not used at the time to describe the Armenian holocaust, since the word “genocide” had not yet been created by Raphael Lemkin, although according to Robert Jay Lifton, Israel Charny and others who have studied the Lemkin papers, Lemkin was influenced in its creation by the Ottoman Turkish mass murder of the Armenians. Encyclopedia of Genocide, Israel Charny, ed., (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 1999, p.79. See Appendix IX: Lemkin and the Armenian Genocide, which gives specific examples of some Lemkin’s references. The term is used here in its classical designation as defined by the United Nations, the attempt at mass destruction of a people.

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                  [51] The most penetrating analysis of the cause of the Armenian Genocide and the reason for denial by the present Turkish government, and perhaps the most sympathetic to the Young Turks, has been made, in my opinion, by a Turkish sociologist, Taner Akçam. For his chief points see, Appendix X. Taner Akçam’s Observations.

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                  [52] Preface to Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story, unpublished introduction to a yet to be issued reprint of Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story, by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan. We should note here that Morgenthau’s book was based entirely on his personal diary, which he kept daily. Contrary to the claim by Heath Lowry in The Story Behind Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story (Istanbul: Isis Press, 1990), the Morgenthau book is entirely dependable since it is drawn chiefly from Morgenthau’s diary and a few personal papers.

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                  [53] Morgenthau recognized that “personal charm can coexist with murderous policies.” He tells how “intolerable” it became for him to engage in “daily association with men who, however gracious and accommodating and good-natured they might have been to the American Ambassador, were still reeking with the blood of nearly a million human beings.” In the same way, many of the Nazis were reputed to be polite and charming in their own circles while systematically murdering millions of human beings. Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau's Story, p. 385.

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                  [54] We should note, following Robert Melson, that under the old regimes of the Ottoman Empire and the German empire, Armenians and Jews were ethno-religious minorities of inferior status that were experiencing rapid social progress and mobilization in the 19th century. These circumstances helped to create what were known as the “Armenian Question” and the “Jewish Problem,” respectively. Under the old regimes, Armenians may have suffered persecution and Jews may have experienced discrimination, but in neither case was a policy of genocide formulated or implemented to solve “questions” or “problems.” In both cases, genocide followed revolution in which the old system was destroyed and traditional social controls and limits were shattered. The Armenians and the Jews respectively were disposed of under wartime conditions which allowed the majority to see them as internal enemies and deadly threats to the new order. Robert F. Melson, Revolution and Genocide: On the Origins of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp. 41-135, p. 275.

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                  [55] Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau's Story, p. 274; from S. Astourian lecture 5/2/2000 at Berkeley: "So the imperial idea based on race, creating an empire to unite people belonging to the same race is in the air. But the most important thinker is Ziya Gökalp. He was a member of the central committee of the CUP. I will quote him just to give you an idea of those times. Ziya Gökalp has an idea which he calls “the new life.” In Turkish it's Yeni Hayat, and the “new life” basically refers to the future of the Turks.
                  “'This new life' he says 'will show that the civilizations of Europe were based on rotten, sick, putrid foundations. These civilizations are condemned to decline, annihilation. The genuine civilization is the Turkish civilization which will start only with the development of the new life. The Turkish race, unlike other races, has not been corrupted by alcohol and dissipation. The Turkish blood has been stilled, rejuvenated in glorious battles.'” “Convinced that the Turks are superior, he doesn't hesitate to assert the following, and I am quoting him from one of his articles which he republished at the end of the First World War, after first publishing it in early 1914: 'The superman whom the German philosopher Nietzsche imagined are the Turks. The Turks are the new man of every age.' ”

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                  [56] For some examples of mysticism in Ziya Gökalp, one of the CUP's leading ideologues, see Uriel Heyd, Foundations of Turkish Nationalism: The Life and Teachings of Ziya Gökalp (London: Luzac & Company and The Harvill Press, 1950, pp. 113-114; Taha Parla, The Social and Political Though of Ziya Gökalp, 1876-1924 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1985), p. 57; Niyazi Berkes, trans. and ed., Turkish Nationalism and Western Civilization: Selected Essays of Ziya Gökalp (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1959), p. 156. See Appendix XI: Ziya Gökalp.
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                  [57] Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau's Story, pp. 161-166. The Sheikh-ul-Islam declared the Jihad on November 16, 1914. Chronology of the Great War, 1914-1918, ed. Lord Edward Gleichen (London: Greenhill Books, 2000.), and November 29,

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                  [58] In the Ottoman Empire, the only “modern” facility frequently used was the telegraph and a stretch of railway line in the west. The Nazis, on the other hand, were more systematic and made full use of trucks, the railways, organized death camps, and lethal technology to do away with the Jews and other undesirables. The Nazis made great use of death camps, the preferred method of killing Jews; while the death camps of the Ittihad were the final stage of Armenian destruction following prolonged wholesale massacre. There was no wholesale Jewish massacres in Germany proper, while the vast majority of the Armenians were killed in the Ottoman Empire, thus suggesting a predisposition for massacre in Turkey the which was not present in Germany. Melson, p. 275.

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                  [59] As Taner Akçam argues, democracy will not take deep roots in Turkey until the Turkish elites can confront their past and build their national myth on a less lethal foundation. Dialogue, pp. 5-6, also e-mail essay.

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                  [60] One recent example involves Turkey and France. For details, see Appendix XII: Turkish Reaction to French Bill on Armenian Genocide Recognition.

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                  [61] The fact of the matter is that recognition of the Armenian Genocide by the present-day Turkish government would open a Pandora’s box of questions regarding the very foundation of the present state and the nature of Turkish history. Taner Akcam argues that the Turkish government from the beginning of the Republic had a problem of creating its nationalist myth. It had overthrown the old Ottoman regime, although many in the Ittihad gloried in to old Empire, and the old regime was too Muslim for the secular taste of the new regime. Accordingly, the Turkish Historical Society had to reach back to pre-Ottoman times to attach itself to the Turkish regimes of history. This effort required the minimization of the contribution of the old Ottoman elite and of the Christian minorities who contributed to Ottoman glory, particularly the Armenians. Armenia and Armenians have been completely written out of modern Turkish history while the Turks have tried to trace their origin to the Indo-European Hittites and other early inhabitants of Anatolia.

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                  [62] Israel Charny argues that denialists get a psychological satisfaction from their denial, a sense of being the victors, the superior nation, of pride in getting away with murder and laughing in the face of the victim. Charny, "Psychological Satisfaction."

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                  [63] Stuart D. Stein, “Genocide,” in Dictionary of Race and Ethnic Relations, Fourth Edition, ed. Ellis Cashmore, et al. (New York: Routledge, 1996), p. 143.

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                  [64] Source: Rare Books and Manuscripts Division, the New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations, as quoted in the Encyclopedia of Genocide, Editor-in-Chief Israel Charny (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 1999), p. 79.

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                  [65] As quoted in Uriel Heyd, Foundations of Turkish Nationalism: The Life and Teachings of Ziya Gökalp London: Luzac & Company Ltd., 1950), p. 126.

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                  [66] As quoted in Foundations of Turkish Nationalism, p. 128.

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                  General Antranik (1865-1927): “I am not a nationalist. I recognize only one nation, the nation of the oppressed.”

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