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Armenian Chutzpah!
Date 08:02, 02-28, 07

It is entirely proper that Turkey would expect a degree of protest from the Jewish community about the shameless use of Holocaust allusions from the Armenian lobbies given the Armenian alliance with the Nazis. They played no small part in the atrocity they now seek to profit from.

The article to which I respond (Armenian Genocide Resolution) is built on the misguided premise that a historiography coming from a political pressure group is an accurate one, with an extract from Morganthau''s ghost-written book for substantiation. Morganthau was based in Istanbul and his testimony had no first hand backing - something the State Department took into account when looking at the total body of evidence and deciding there was nothing of any use in prosecuting the Turks for war crimes.

When the British approached the Americansduring their fruitless (eventually abandoned) search for evidence to bring charges, it resulted in the following communication:

?I have made several inquiries at the State Department, and today l am informed that while they are in possession of a large number of documents concerning the Armenian relocations, from the description, I am doubtful whether these documents are likely to prove useful as evidence in prosecuting Turks confined in Malta." - British Archives: PRO?F. 0.371/ 6500/ E.6311 Geddes to Curzon, Telegram No 374, dated June 1921.

The historians who dispute the Armenian thesis are often the excellent historians like Gilles Veinstein and Bernard Lewis, unlike the crackpots who deny the Nazi intention to exterminate the Jews. When a similar resolution went before Congress in 1985, 69 American scholars of Middle Eastern history protested the accuracy of the claims.

As Professor Lewy explains, "A large number of Western students of Ottoman history reject the appropriateness of the genocide label for the tragic fate of the Armenian community in Ottoman Turkey. This list includes distinguished scholars such as Roderic Davison, J.C. Hurewitz, Bernard Lewis, and Andrew Mango. Ignoring this formidable array of learned opinion, most Armenians and their supporters among so-called genocide scholars assert with superb arrogance that the Armenian genocide is an incontrovertible historical fact, similar to the Jewish Holocaust, which would be denied only by lackeys of the Turkish government."

The Armenian lobbies, unable to make their case stand on its own two feet, continuously associate their cause with the Holocaust and do so dishonestly. As they borrow from our credibility, we inherit the legacy of their violations of scholarly ethics.

One example of this can be found within the text of the resolution itself - the infamous Hitler quote, "Who, after all, speaks to-day of the annihilation of the Armenians?" However, the Nuremberg trials rejected the version of the speech containing this 60 years ago, authenticating instead two other versions of the speech which were consistent with each other and did not contain the relevant line.

Professor Mango, in his review of Peter Balakian''s book The Burning Tigris, elaborates further "The Burning Tigris fits in with the campaign waged by Armenian nationalists to persuade Western parliaments to recognize the Armenian genocide. It is not a work of historical research, but an advocate?s impassioned plea, relying at times on discredited evidence, such as the forged telegrams attributed to the Ottoman interior minister, Talat Pasha... Some of Balakian?s assertions would make any serious Ottoman historian?s hair stand on end. Like other similar books, it is replete with selective quotations from contemporary observers."

According to the allied intelligence figures and non-partisan historians that 600,000 - 800,000 Armenians perished. While many were caused by the same wartime famines and epidemics that killed an estimated 25% of the Anatolian Muslim population too, many were also massacred. Regarding this, there is no dispute. The disagreement arises with the question of government policy. As Professor Lewis argues, "There is no evidence of a decision to massacre. On the contrary, there is considerable evidence of attempt to prevent it, which were not very successful."

"The massacres were carried out by irregulars, by local villagers responding to what had been done to them and in number of other ways. But to make this, a parallel with the holocaust in Germany, you would have to assume the Jews of Germany had been engaged in an armed rebellion against the German state, collaborating with the allies against Germany. That in the deportation order the cities of Hamburg and Berlin were exempted, persons in the employment of state were exempted, and the deportation only applied to the Jews of Germany proper, so that when they got to Poland they were welcomed and sheltered by the Polish Jews. This seems to me a rather absurd parallel.?

The Holocaust must not be diminished with comparisons to the plight of a people whose partial relocation (Armenians away from the sensitive areas were exempted) from one part of a nation to another was ordered because they had raised an army and were exterminating the populations of cities and at least a hundred villages, turning the cities over to the invading Russians and burning the villages to the ground. That the relocation left them exposed to reprisals by locals for their actions could only have been of limited concern to Ottomans who were distracted by a fight for survival in a total war on all fronts. The survivors of the journey, like those who were exempted, were then left unharrassed.

Nonetheless, it seems this resolution will pass - as the Armenian lobbies are in the mood for historial reflection, perhaps the next resolution will be one that examinations the role of Armenia in the Holocaust. The real Holocaust.

Please read the both parts story before making a judment
Date 11:03, 03-1, 07

I would read more before judging if this was a genocide or not..
here is a little section from ...

"Armenian Allegations: Myth and Reality The preceding is a transcript of a testimony delivered by Prof. Justin McCarthy before the House Committee on International Relations on May 15, 1996"

"Large Armenian populations, such as those of Istanbul and other major cities, remained throughout the war. These were areas where Ottoman power was greatest and genocide would have been easiest. To decide whether genocide was intended, it is instructive to compare this to the Nazi genocide of the Jews. The Jews of Berlin were killed, their synagogues defiled. The Armenians of Istanbul lived through the war, their churches open."
(http://www.tallarmeniantale.com/background.htm)

Besides according to any records given including Ottoman, British, American and so on there were ~ 1 million Armenians in Ottoman. I still can't understand how 1.5 million died in the war when there is less than that. Let's assume there were 1.5 million (highest of any record of any country). So all died and no Armenians left. There are hundreds of thousands of Armenians live in Todays Turkey not including the ones who are living in Syria, lebanon and so on where Ottoman ruled.

Nobody deny that hundreds of thousands of Armenians died for many reasons like war, starvation or illness. But we should understand that this was a two sided war and Ottoman's lost around 600000 (possibly more unrecorded) who killed by Armenians.

Here is a part of a my grandma told me stories that we generally hear from Armenians but this one is from Turkish side

"...On my mother's side, six family members were butchered by the Armenian goon squads that were ravaging the Turkish countryside, while all the sons of that nation were away at half dozen war fronts fighting for the very survival of their country.

The Armenian hoodlums set upon defenseless Turkish villages where only the old people, women and children were to be found. Six hundred thousand Turkish deaths are directly attributable to the savagery of the Armenians led by the DASHNAKS (Armenian Revolutionary Federation.)... " by JEAN MARAIS, Paterson, N.J.
(http://www.ataa.org/spotlight/r_marais_may4.html)

or this one

"My mother quickly dressed me like a girl and took near her, and saved me so. But they took 4-5 boys among us, put them near the men. They poured oil on them and burned. The cries raised to sky. They gathered the women and took them out. They teased saying " Women, rest and watch how the dogs are fighting". Whom they called dog was a son, a husband or a father of one of the women. They were crying "God" as they burn. we had to sit there for about one hour." by Zekeriya Yakuboğlu, 1908, born in Ayanıs-Van
(http://www.armenianreality.com/massacres_in_anatolia/an_armenian_massacre_in_van.htm)

Turkish records show the mass killings of turks in the eastern Anatolia like the extermination of all Turks in the city of Van and around during the war. to learn more please read pages here

http://www.armenianreality.com/massacres_in_anatolia/massacres_in_anatolia.html

Here are some others (not from Turkish records)..

- ? The Moslems who did not succeed in escaping [the city] were put to death..." ( Grace H. Knapp, ?The Tragedy of Bitlis,? 1919, pp. 146.)

- "Few Americans who mourn and justly, the miseries of the Armenians, are aware that till the rise of nationalistic ambitions, beginning with the seventies, the Armenians were the favored portion of the population of Turkey, or that in the Great War, they traitorously turned Turkish cities over to the Russian invader; that they boasted of having raised an army of one hundred and fifty thousand men to fight a civil war, and that they burned at least a hundred Turkish villages and exterminated their population." ( John Dewey , ?The Turkish Tragedy?, 1929)

and you may find many more by just searching the internet.



Please do not trust on one sided stories. Read both sides and judge for yourself.

Please follow the links for other references..

http://www.ataa.org/ataa/ref/ref.html
http://www.devletarsivleri.gov.tr/kitap/ (turkish)
http://www.tallarmeniantale.com/background.htm
http://www.armenianreality.com/

Sincerely,
Okan Esenturk

Very disappoınted by the ignorance of the author of this article
Date 08:03, 03-1, 07

Hello,

I have read this article with great distress, dismay and disappointment as a seasoned Turkish diplomat and as an Ambassador.

I have also dealt with the Turkish interests of the file of the "Nazi Gold." I am sure that every Jewish American would know about this file.The head of the American delegation was Ambassador Stuart Eisenstat.
So , when preparing the Turkish file, I have studied in depth the chronological history of the Jewish elements in the Turkish history, i.e. the Sephardic Jews of Spain, took asylum in the Ottoman Empire when the Inqisition was expelling them. They came to Turkey with many ships in thousands.In 1492 when Columbus was sailing from Spain westwards to find India, the Sepahrdic jews were sailing astwards to Istanbul to save their lives.
After this time the Ottoman Jews were a very important component of the society; they were given important positions both in the official posts and also in daily life, in commerce. They never encountered any pogroms, any discrimination or any holocoust like in other European countries..

Because of this mutual trust between the Turks and the jews, the Turkish Jewish community did not want to identify themselves as a seperate "minority community" like the other non-Muslim minority communities (ie: Greeks, Armenians, Bulgarians) during the foundation of the Turkish Republic in Lausanne when the Lausanne Treaty was being negotiated. The Turkish Jews wanted to be normal Turkish citizens, not a minority community. They were confident with the trust given to them by the Turkish people throughout history.

When Hitler came to power in early 1930's many German academicians of Jewish descent or social democrat inclinations found refuge in Turkey and were given important posts at the Turkish Universities (like Prof Neumann, Prof Ernst Reuter, Prof Hirsch).
During the Second World War, many Turkish diplomats saved thousands of Jews in countries under the Nazi occupation (in France, Romenia, Greece etc.) Three of them (Necdet Kent, Namık Yolga and Selahattin Ulkumen) were given Honorary status by the State of Israel and even a stamp had been issued for one of them (Ulkumen).
I hope the author of this article is not ignorant of this fact.
Now in Turkey there is avery influential Jewish community living in Istanbul (as well as the Armenian community-and many Armenian workers are still coming to Istanbul to find jobs.

The author's ignorance is unfortunately very obvious when he mentions about the Armenian case during the First World War.
He should think twice why the Jews did not have any problem with the Ottoman Government when the Armenians were creating uprisings in Anatolia. As he has also confirmed, Armenians were the first to attack the innocent Turks and Kurds when the Tsarist Russian Empire occupied the Eastern part of Anatolia. They were also instigated by the other occupying power France and they also killed many Turks in the southern part of Turkey under the French occupation.
Ambassador Morgenthau wrote that book only through his dialogues with Armenian false witnesses. He was very anti-Turkish diplomat which does not suit a proper diplomat's qualities.His book has been disproved many times.It was just a propoganda publication against the Turks.
During the same period the Turkish Ambassador in Washington Ahmet Rustem(of Polish descent) wrote a book(originally in French) about the Armenian atrocities against the Turks. It seems that the author seems also ignorant of this book.
This Ambassador was of Polish descent because there were also many Polish refugees in Turkey like the Jews (escaping from Poland when the Russians invaded Poland.
Historian Arnold Toynbee also had a counterfeit book against the Turks in a book called "The Blue Book" commissioned by the British Government to defame the Ottoman authorities. Ambassador Morgenthau's book is similar as a propoganda with false accusations and bigotry against the Turks.

This article may tarnish undeservedly the Turkish image among American Jews and unnecessarily hurt Jewish-Turkish relations.


Respectfully Yours

Mehmet Nuri Yildirim
Ambassador
Ankara, Turkey

Armenian Genocide is a FACT!!!
Date 07:03, 03-6, 07

Thank you for the article. It's about time!

Let's set the record straight. Prof Justin McCarthy (if that is what you want to call him) is a paid historical mercenary. The Turkish government pays him handsomely with my U.S tax dollars. He has been to Ankara on many occasions to confer with the government there to figuire out ways to deny the facts of the Armenian Genocide.

Hardly any real scholar, outside of Turkey, denies the Armenian Genocide. In fact there are thousands of pages written in our own U.S archives and those of many countries, as well as eye witnesses, of the brutal, systematic extermination of the Armenians in Turkey.

Unlike Germany of WWII, none of the Turks were punished or brought to justice. So it was in the best interest of Turkey to almost revamp it's history, to teach it's youth that somehow it was Armenians who were traitors and were ruining the country etc. (Sounds the same as what Hitler preached to the Germans to justify his exterminating the Jews.)The most absurd is the idea that Armenians killed an equal number of turks. Any minority, including Armenians under Ottoman rule, were not allowed to bear arms. Even to this day, anyone other then Turks are deemed second class citizens and do not having equal rights.

One has only to look at Turkish history to know that anywere Turks went they raped, murdered and tortured it inhabitans. And now claim to be human beings who were victimized themselves.

There were more then 2 millions Armenians in Turkey at the turn of the century. There are less then 50 thousand today. What happened to them all? What happened to their property? To their possessions? To their lives?

The Armenian Genocide is finally being recognized all over the world as a fact. Any country not recognizing it, does so, not because they belive it didn''t happen, but rather, cower to the silly threats that are made by Turkey anytime recognition comes forward. I can''t think of any reason, not political, not economical or strategical that would justify denying the deliberate, brutal extermination of 1.5 million Armenians. It was genocide and Turkey needs to finally come to terms with that. Or it will be the only country left in denial.

The truth!

Why Would Jews Support Turks?
Date 12:02, 02-2, 08

Do you really think Turkey will stand by you alone? If it weren't for the benefit they receive from America and the West, Turkey would join with the rest of the Muslims in the Arab middle-east to destroy Israel. Just look at their society - they have democratic enamel over rotting Islamic fundamentalist wood. That enamel is there for show and won't last for much longer. As soon as their benefit is lost from the West, the REAL Turkey we all know will resurface again with their murderous, rapist, theiving nature.

Muslim Turks have been waging war against the West since the 1300's through till the Empires collapse at WW1. Sorry, 600 years of murdering and raping doesn't leave an entire nations nature by passing a few secular laws - especially when the religion held by a majority of its citizenry supports it.