TURKISH TRICKS AGAIN

By  Antranig Tatossian

The current Turk Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu’s recent invitation that called for the creation of a joint commission to study the Armenian Genocide is nothing more than another Turkish deviation trick whose objective is to show the Western governments that the Turk government is ready to discuss the tragic events of April 1915, and that the Armenians are not interested to partake in discussions with the Turk government. This is not the first time,

and certainly it will not be the last time, the Turk government extends an invitation to the Armenians to discuss jointly the tragic events of the April 24, 1915 Armenian Genocide.

 

Although 102 years have elapsed from the year the Ittihadist  Young Turk Government perpetrated the Armenian Genocide, it is important to point out  that not a single self- respecting, democratically elected government in the entire world, has come up with a statement questioning or denying the veracity of the Armenian Genocide. On the contrary, the Governments of 26 democratic countries have recognized, so far, the Armenian Genocide; moreover, the governments of additional democratic countries are seriously considering to recognize the Armenian Genocide, in spite of the numerous bribery methods that are being used by the Turkish and Azerbaijani governments to dissuade additional governments from confirming Turkey as the first country to have planned and executed the 20th Century’s First Genocide.

*****

 

In the first decade of the 20th Century, there were numerous Europeans and Americans living in Constantinople. They were businessmen, members of the personnel of the embassies, and members of the foreign military missions. Also, there were numerous men and women who worked at the head offices of the European and American benevolent organizations that operated hospitals and schools in a number of towns in Western Armenia. Therefore, when the Government of Young Turks ordered the extermination, uprooting and deportation of all Armenians from the villages and towns, where their ancestor had been living from times immemorial, the European and American missionaries witnessed the atrocities committed by the Turkish and Kurdish criminals, and they alerted their superiors in Constantinople.

 

The U.S. Ambassador in Turkey, Henry Morgenthau, who knew the Turkish Minister of Interior, Talaat Bay well, invited him to the U.S. Embassy and tried to persuade him to have pity for the unfortunate women and children. But to no avail. Talaat insisted that his government has decided to deport all the Armenians living in Anatolia to the Syrian Desert. The subject of the Armenians came up again in their following meeting, which was arranged by the invitation of Talaat. “I have asked you to come here in order to let you know that our Armenian policy is absolutely fixed and that nothing can change it. We will not have Armenians anywhere in Anatolia. They can live in the desert but nowhere else.”

 

Actually, Talaat, Enver and Djemal had preplanned since 1908, the uprooting and extermination of the entire Armenian population living in the Armenian Provinces. But their plans did not include the safe transportation of 2.5 million Armenians they uprooted from Western Armenia; on the contrary, first they trapped the leaders of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation Party, in July 1914, to support the conscription of all Armenian men, between the ages of 18 to 50 years old, in the Turkish army. Next, the Turk government armed the 250,000 Armenian conscripts, and provided them weapons’ training for about two months; then, the government disarmed the Armenian conscripts and transferred them in the so-called “Amele-Tabour” or workers’ units whose tasks were to build roads, bridges, fortifications and to carry army supplies on their backs like pack animals. In the meantime, the Turk government had entered World War 1 as an ally of Imperial Germany, and the Turkish armies tried to stop the advance of the Russian armies that had begun to advance south. In the winter of 1914-1915, the Armenian soldiers were transferred to the Caucasus front, where they were left without winter clothing in the freezing temperatures of the Caucasian Mountain Ranges. Moreover, the Turks left the

Armenian conscripts without food; consequently, the majority of the Armenian soldiers died of starvation and a variety of diverse diseases; and those who managed to survive until Spring, the Turks forced them to dig their own mass graves and then shot and buried them. “This was the tragic end of all Armenian conscripts whose political, community and religious leaders had recklessly advised them to partake in the conscription of 1914.”

 

Following the conscription and extermination of the Armenian conscripts, the towns and villages of the Armenian provinces were left without protection at the mercy of the Turk and Kurd criminals that the Turk government had released from the state jails, and had armed them in order to partake in the extermination of the 2.5 million Armenians living in the Armenian provinces. At this point, it is worthy to note that if the Government of Young Turks had not uprooted and exterminated in 1915 the Armenian population of Western Armenia, its indigenous Armenian population would have been close to 30 million today. After the Genocide, the renowned Armenian poet Avedis Aharonian, summarized the feelings of his people in the following verse: ” If this much cruelty and evil is ever forgotten by our sons and daughters, let the entire world blame us for dishonoring our martyrs.”

 

*****

 

The entire civilized world learned within a couple of days about the colossal crime that had been preplanned, organized and executed by the Government of Ittihadist Young Turks. All the major newspapers, all over the world, reported on their front pages, detailed, eyewitness

accounts of the atrocities committed by the armed Turk and Kurd bands and the semi-barbarian mountain villagers that shocked their readers; but the Allied governments were preoccupied in the War, and they did not have the resources and means to interfere effectively in what was going on in that isolated corner of Asia Minor, which the Turkish government described as “internal problems of Turkey.” But this interpretation was floated by the Turkish government in order to discourage the Great Powers from interfering, in the future, in the internal affairs of Ottoman Turkey.

 

There were, of cause, thousands Armenian survivors who provided eye witness accounts of the atrocities committed by the Turk and Kurd criminals, but for obvious reasons, we have preferred to rely on the eyewitness accounts of reliable Turk, Arab, English and American persons who witnessed the Armenian Genocide, and whose accounts have been established beyond any doubt for their veracity. We already have outlined the U.S. Ambassador’s consistent efforts to stop the Government of Young Turks executing their planned Armenian Genocide. Another well-known political personality was Feiz El-Ghusein. He was a Syrian lawyer who had been a Turkish government official in Syria. Because of his leanings towards the independence movement in Syria, he was exiled by the Turkish government to Diarbekir where he witnessed the atrocities committed by the Turks and Kurds against the local Armenian population. In 1916, he wrote a book in Arabic entitled “Massacres In Armenia”, in which he outlines his eyewitness accounts of the Genocide, and exposed its systematic nature. In 1917, his book was translated and published in English under the title “Martyred Armenia” according to his testimony, his book contains only a small proportion of the atrocities committed by the Turks and Kurds against the Armenian population.

 

One of the well-known Turk officials who witnessed the massacres of the Armenians was Racit Akif Pasha. He was the Governor of Sivas. He was also a Cabinet Minister and a member of the Ottoman Parliament. On November21, 1918, he outlined the special terminology that was being used by the top Ittihadist government officials that enabled them to exchange the word “deportation only” with the word “massacres.” These messages were sent from the headquarters of the Committee of Union and Progress, and often from the residence of Talaat Pasha himself who was the organizer of the Genocide. Another important Young Turk politician was Ahmet, Riza, who was a member of the Turk parliament. He opposed the law of temporary

deportations because he claimed that the bill was unconstitutional since it was never voted, and it was never approved by the Ottoman Parliament.

 

Walter M. Geddes was an American businessman. He provided detailed eyewitness accounts of the situation of the Armenian Deportees, in Asia Minor and the Syrian Desert. While in Aleppo, he witnessed thousands die of exposure and starvation. Upon returning to Smyrna, Geddes remarked:  “The sights that I saw on my return trip, were worse than on my trip going.” He was so much disturbed and affected by the scenes he witnessed that he committed suicide on November 7, 1915, in his hotel room in Smyrna.

 

Also, besides the above outlined eyewitness accounts, there are the German, French, English, Russian and the U.S. World War 1 archives which confirm escaped from Constantinople with the assistance of German authorities. The seven fugitives included the ruling triumvirate Mahmet Talaat, Ismail Enver and Ahmet Cemal, plustwo physicins,Behaeddin Sakir and Mhmet Nazim, and the chiefs of Police Directorate and Public Security, Osman Badri and Huseyin Azmi. With the exception of Cemal, they all were held to be the principal perpetrators of the crime under review.”

 

All the above outlined eyewitness accounts and multiple official documentations as well as the numerous Turkish top officials who were convicted in the Turkish courts as principal perpetrators for crimes they Committed in the period of the Armenian Genocide, leave no doubt whatsoever that the Ittihadist Young Turk Forefathers, of the current generation of the so-called modern Turks, pre-planned, organizes and executed the Armenian Genocide. Therefore, it is absolutely useless for the Armenians to get involved now, or in the future, in meaningless discussions with the Turk Government about this already internationally confirmed criminal event, unless the Turk Government undertakes, beforehand, to fulfill the following three conditions:

1.      It must admit that their forefathers committed the Armenian Genocide in 1915.

2.      It must undertake to pay reasonable compensation to the Republic of Armenia for the human and material losses caused to the Armenian Nation by the Genocide of 1915.

3.       It must undertake to restore to the Republic of Armenia some of the territorial losses caused by the Genocide of 1915, so that she can freely establish land and sea   commercial links worldwide.

However, it is important to make a comparison between the position taken by the government of the German Federal Republic in 1952 and the Turkish consecutive governments that have run the so-called Republic of Turkey, since the perpetration of the Genocide in 1915 by the Turkish government. In 1952  the German Chancellor Conrad Adenauer negotiated an agreement with the Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett to compensate the Jewish State for the human and material losses caused by the Holocaust. It is precisely the reason why Germany and its people are respected as a civilized nation by the international community.

As for the successive Turkish governments that have ruled Turkey, since the Armenian Genocide, they all have, consistently, denied that their grand-fathers and great grand- fathers have exterminated 1.5 million children, women and old persons and that uprooted and forced into exile an additional one million Armenians from their ancestral towns and villages, where their ancestors had been living from time immemorial. As we noted above, the international community is aware that the Turkish Government preplanned and executed the Armenian Genocide. As long as the successive Turkish Governments deny the truth, it will remain in the

Annals of history as an event of extreme barbarism perpetrated by the forefathers of the so- called modern Turks.

 

Footnotes:

1. Henry Morgenthau, “The Murder Of A Nation,” PP.  50-51

2. Henry Morgenthau, “The Murder OF A Nation,” PP.67

3. Linda V. Avakian, “The Cross And The Cresent,” PP.27, Quoted by Antranig Chelebian in “General Antranig And The Armenian Revolutionary Movement,” PP.337

4. Winter, J.M., “America and the Armenian Genocide of 1915, Cambridge University Press.  PP180

5. Vahakn N. Dadrian and Taner Akcam, Judgement at Istanbul, P.24, Berghahn books

 

Antranig Tatossian, August 16, 2017