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Revisiting the Armenian Genocide
by Guenter Lewy
Middle East Quarterly
Fall 2005
The debate over what happened to Armenians in the Ottoman Empire during
World War I remains acrimonious ninety years after it began. Armenians say they
were the victims of the first genocide of the twentieth century. Most Turks say
Armenians died during intercommunal fighting and during a wartime relocation
necessitated by security concerns because the Armenians sympathized with and
many fought on the side of the enemy. For genocide scholars, the claims of the
Armenians have become incontrovertible historical fact. But many historians,
both in Turkey and the West, have questioned the appropriateness of the
genocide label.[1]
The ramifications of the dispute are wide-reaching. The Armenians, encouraged
by strong support in France, insist on a Turkish confession and apology as a
prerequisite for Turkey's admission into the European Union. Ankara's relations
with Yerevan remain frozen because of the dispute. Across the West, Armenian
activists try politically to predetermine the historical debate by demanding various
parliaments pass resolutions recognizing the Armenian genocide.
The key issue in this controversy is not the extent of Armenian suffering; both
sides agree that several hundred thousand Christians perished during the
deportation of the Armenians from Anatolia to the Syrian desert and elsewhere in
1915-16.[2] With little notice, the Ottoman government forced men, women, and
children from their homes. Many died of starvation or disease during a harrowing
trek over mountains and through deserts. Others were murdered.
Historians do not dispute these events although they may squabble over
numbers and circumstances. Rather the key question in the debate concerns
premeditation. Did the Young Turk regime organize the massacres that took
place in 1916?
Most of those who maintain that Armenian deaths were premeditated and so
constitute genocide base their argument on three pillars: the actions of Turkish
military courts of 1919-20, which convicted officials of the Young Turk
government of organizing massacres of Armenians, the role of the so-called
"Special Organization" accused of carrying out the massacres, and the Memoirs
of Naim Bey[3] which contain alleged telegrams of Interior Minister Talât Pasha
conveying the orders for the destruction of the Armenians. Yet when these
events and the sources describing them are subjected to careful examination,
they provide at most a shaky foundation from which to claim, let alone conclude,
that the deaths of Armenians were premeditated.
The Turkish Courts-Martial of 1919-20
Following the Ottoman Empire's defeat in World War I, a new government formed
and accused its predecessor Young Turk regime of serious crimes. These
accusations led to the court-martialing of the leadership of the Committee on
Union and Progress, the party that had seized and held power since 1908, and
other selected former officials. The charges included subversion of the
constitution, wartime profiteering, and the massacres of both Greeks and
Armenians.[4]
By all accounts, the chief reason for convening military tribunals was pressure
from victorious Allied states, which insisted on retributions for the Armenian
massacres. The Turks also hoped that by foisting blame on a few members of
the Committee on Union and Progress, they might exculpate the rest of the
Turkish nation and, thereby, receive more lenient treatment at the Paris peace
conference.[5]
The most famous trial took place in Istanbul, but it was not the first. At least six
regional courts convened in provincial cities where massacres had occurred, but
due to inadequate documentation, the total number of courts is not known.[6] The
first recorded tribunal began on February 5, 1919, in Yozgat, the province which
includes Ankara, charging three Turkish officials, including the governor of the
district, with mass murder and plunder of Armenian deportees. On April 8, the
tribunal found two defendants guilty, and referred the third to a different court.
Two days after they passed the verdict, local authorities hanged Mehmet Kemal,
former kaymakam (governor) of Boğazliyan and Yozgat. A large demonstration
organized by Committee on Union and Progress elements followed his funeral.
The British high commissioner in Turkey reported popular perception "regard[ed]
executions as necessary concessions to entente rather than as punishment justly
meted out to criminals."[7]
The main trial began in Istanbul on April 28, 1919. Among the twelve defendants
were members of the Committee on Union and Progress leadership and former
ministers. Seven key figures, including Talât Pasha, minister of interior; Enver
Pasha, minister of war; and Cemal Pasha, governor of Aleppo, had fled, and
therefore, were tried in absentia. "Embedded in the indictment," writes Vahakn N.
Dadrian, the best-known defender of the Armenian position, were "forty-two
authenticated documents substantiating the charges therein, many bearing
dates, identification of senders of the cipher telegrams and letters, and names of
recipients."[8] Among these documents is the written deposition of General Vehib
Pasha, commander of the Turkish Third Army, who testified that "the murder and
extermination of the Armenians and the plunder and robbery of their property is
the result of decisions made by the central committee of Ittihad ve Terakki
[Committee on Union and Progress]."[9] The indictment quoted another
document in which a high-ranking deportation official, Abdulahad Nuri, relates
how Talât Pasha told him that "the purpose of the deportation was
destruction."[10] On July 22, the court-martial found several defendants guilty of
subverting constitutionalism by force and found them responsible for massacres.
Talât, Enver, Cemal, and Nazim Bey, a high Committee on Union and Progress
official, were sentenced in absentia to death while others received lengthy prison
sentences.[11]
Despite widespread hatred of the discredited Young Turk regime, the Turkish
public was lukewarm to the trials of the Committee on Union and Progress
leadership. On April 4, 1919, Lewis Heck, the U.S. high commissioner in Istanbul,
reported that "it is popularly believed that many of [the trials] are made from
motives of personal vengeance or at the instigation of the Entente authorities,
especially the British."[12] Opposition to the trials increased after the Greek army
occupied Smyrna (Izmir) on May 15, which led to an outburst of patriotic and
nationalistic feeling.
Under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, a highly decorated Turkish
officer, a nationalist movement emerged that would eventually overthrow the
sultan's government in Istanbul. From the beginning, the Kemalists criticized the
sultan for his abject surrender to the Allies, and they increasingly expressed the
fear that the trials were part of a plan to partition the Ottoman Empire. On August
11, 1920, the Kemalist government in Ankara ordered a stop to all court-martial
proceedings; the resignation of the last Ottoman cabinet on October 17, 1920,
marked the end of the trials.[13]
Armenian writers have praised the contribution of the military tribunals for their
elucidation of historical truth, but such broad conclusions are problematic given
both the procedures of the trials and questions over the reliability of their findings.
The tribunals lacked the basic requirements of due process. Few authors familiar
with Ottoman jurisprudence have a positive assessment, all the more so with
regard to military courts. The Ottoman penal code did not acknowledge the right
of cross-examination, and the role of the judge was far more important than in
the Anglo-American tradition. The judge weighed the probative value of all
evidence submitted during the preparatory phase and during the trial, and he
questioned the accused.[14] At the 1919-20 trials, the presiding officer acted
more like a prosecutor than an impartial judge. Ottoman rules of procedure also
barred defense counsel access to pretrial investigatory files and from
accompanying their clients to pretrial interrogations.[15] On May 6, 1919, at the
third session of the main trial, defense counsel challenged the court's repeated
references to the indictment as proven fact, but the court rejected the
objection.[16] Throughout the trials, the court heard no witnesses, and the verdict
rested entirely on documents and testimony never subject to cross-examination.
Heck expressed disapproval that the defendants in the Yozgat court were tried
on the basis of "anonymous court material."[17]
Probably the most serious problem affecting the probative value of the 1919-20
military court proceedings is the loss of all their documentation. What is known of
the sworn testimony and depositions is limited to that related secondhand in
selected supplements of the official gazette of the Ottoman government, Takvim-i
Vekayi, and press reports. What is not known is the accuracy of the transcription
and whether the newspapers reprinted all or only part of texts entered as
evidence.
According to Dadrian, "before being introduced as accusatory exhibits, each and
every official document was authenticated by the competent staff personnel of
the Interior Ministry who thereafter affixed on the top part of the document: ‘it
conforms to the original.'"[18] However, few historians would take period officials
at their word without verification. The historical weight of the Nuremberg trials, for
example, rests upon the sheer mass of original documentation. The historical
significance of the Nuremberg verdicts would be undercut had the record of the
trials been lost or not subject to outside review.
In the absence of complete original documents, historians examining the
Armenian question have relied only on selected excerpts and quotations. For
example, Dadrian related how the deposition of General Vehib Pasha,
commander of the Turkish Third Army, described Behaeddin Şakir, one of the top
Committee on Union and Progress leaders, as the man who "procured and
engaged in the command zone of the Third Army, the butchers of human beings
… He organized gallows birds as well as gendarmes and policemen with blood
on their hand and blood in their eyes."[19] Parts of this deposition were included
in the indictment of the main trial and in the verdict of the Harput trial,[20] but an
indictment is not proof of guilt. The context of the quoted remarks has been lost.
While the entire text of the deposition was allegedly read into the record of the
Trabizond trial on March 29, 1919, the proceedings of this trial are not preserved
in any source; only the verdict is reprinted in the official gazette.
Contemporary Turkish authors dismiss the military tribunals of 1919-20 as tools
of Allied retribution.[21] At the time, the victorious Allies considered them a
travesty of justice. The trials, British high commissioner S.A.G. Calthorpe wrote
to London, are "proving to be a farce and injurious to our own prestige and to that
of the Turkish government."[22] In the view of Commissioner John de Robeck,
the tribunal was such a failure "that its findings cannot be held of any account at
all."[23] When the British government considered holding trials of alleged
Ottoman war criminals in Malta, it declined to use any evidence developed by the
1919-20 Ottoman tribunals.
The Role of the Teşkilat-i Mahsusa
Several of the courts-martial held in 1919-20 made references to the destructive
role of a unit called Teşkilat-i Mahsusa (Special Organization). Many proponents
of the Armenian cause accept this accusation. Dadrian described the members
of this unit as the main instrument used by the Committee on Union and
Progress to carry out its plan to exterminate the Armenians. "Their mission was
to deploy in remote areas of Turkey's interior and to ambush and destroy
convoys of Armenian deportees,"[24] he wrote. The Special Organization's
"principal duty was the execution of the Armenian genocide."[25]
The Special Organization, which developed between 1903 and 1907, only
adopted its name in 1913. Under the direction of Enver Pasha and the command
of many talented officers, the Special Organization functioned like a special
forces outfit. Philip Stoddard, the author of the only full scholarly study of the
group, called it "a significant unionist vehicle for dealing with both Arab
separatism and Western imperialism." At its peak, it enrolled about 30,000 men.
During World War I, the Ottoman command used it for special military operations
in the Caucasus, Egypt, and Mesopotamia. In 1915, for example, Special
Organization units seized key oases along the Ottoman line of advance against
the Suez Canal. The regime also used the Special Organization to suppress
"subversion" and "possible collaboration" with the external enemy. However,
according to Stoddard, this activity targeted primarily indigenous nationalists in
Syria and Lebanon. The Special Organization, he maintained, played no role in
the Armenian deportations.[26]
Yet, the main tribunal's indictment accused the Special Organization of carrying
out "criminal operations and activities" against the Armenians. According to
Dadrian:
The Ittihadist [Unionist] leaders redeployed the brigand units for use on the home
front internally, namely against the Armenians. Through a comprehensive sweep
of the major cities, towns, and villages, containing large clusters of Armenian
populations, the Special Organization units, with their commanding officers more
or less intact, set to work to carry out Ittihad's blueprint of annihilation. [27]
Turkish as well as German civilian and military sources, Dadrian maintained,
confirm this information, including the employment of convicts in Special
Organization death squads. But Dadrian's references do not always prove his
claims. While the Ottoman government released convicts during World War I in
order to increase its manpower pool for military service, there is no evidence
beyond the indictment of the main trial for the assertion that the Special
Organization, with large numbers of convicts enrolled in its ranks, took the lead
role in the massacres. Nor was the presence of convicts abnormal. Use of
convicts for military duty in wartime had precedent including use by U.S. and
British armies. During World War I, U.S. courts released almost 8,000 men
convicted of serious offenses on condition of their induction into military
service.[28]
Many of the allegations linking the Special Organization to massacres are based
not directly on documents but rather on the sometimes questionable assumptions
of those reading them. Dadrian has been among the most prominent scholars
making assertions for which the original sources do not allow. He described a link
between the Special Organization and the Armenian massacres, but Stange, the
German officer who wrote the document in question, never actually mentioned
the Special Organization but instead referred to "scum."[29] Nor is there any
indication that Stange had any role in the Special Organization, as Dadrian
asserted.[30] In view of the tension between Ottoman and German secret
services, it would be an unlikely assignment.[31] More likely was that the German
Foreign Ministry files were accurate when they described Stange as commanding
a detachment of 2,000-3,000 mostly Georgian irregulars who had volunteered to
fight the Russians.[32] Another German officer related that the Stange
detachment included Armenians,[33] surely a curious fact in the case of a unit
said to have been part of an apparatus for the implementation of the Armenian
genocide. The question of who carried out the killings of the Armenian deportees
is difficult to resolve conclusively. While it may be politically expedient to blame
the Special Organization, more likely, the perpetrators were Kurdish tribesmen
and corrupt policemen out for booty.[34]
Dadrian has taken similar liberties with a Turkish source that deals with the
leading Special Organization official, Eşref Kuşçubasi. At the outbreak of World
War I, Eşref was director of Special Organization operations in Arabia, the Sinai,
and North Africa. Captured while on a mission to Yemen in early 1917, the British
military sent him to Malta where he remained until 1920. British officers
interrogated Eşref, but he denied any involvement with the Armenian massacres.
He died in 1964 at the age of 91.[35] Dadrian has argued that Eşref admitted
participating in the massacres in an interview with the Turkish author Cemal
Kutay.[36] Closer inspection, though, reveals Eşref made no such admission.
The assertion was instead constructed by selective ellipses and inaccurate
paraphrasing.[37] Likewise, despite claims to the contrary, while the indictment of
the 1919 court-martial linked the Special Organization to the Armenian
massacres, neither the trial's proceedings nor its verdict support the claim.
Rather, defendants described the Special Organization's role in covert operations
behind Russian lines.[38] Gwynne Dyer, one of the few Western scholars to have
done research in the Ottoman military archives, has characterized as "gossip"
the assertion that the Special Organization was complicit in the Armenian
massacres.[39] The archive of the Turkish General Staff is said to contain
ciphered telegrams to the Special Organization,[40] but these documents have
not been subject to scholarly inquiry. Until new documents emerge, a link
between the Special Organization and the Armenian massacres is nothing but
uncorroborated assertion.
The Memoirs of Naim Bey
The third pillar upon which the charge of Armenian genocide rests is Aram
Andonian's Memoirs of Naim Bey. Aram Andonian was an Armenian, employed
as a military censor at the time of mobilization in 1914. After his April 1915 arrest
and deportation from Istanbul, he made his way to Aleppo where he obtained a
permit for temporary residence. After the British liberation of the city in October
1918, Andonian collected the testimonies of Armenian men, women, and children
who had survived the deportations. As he relates the story, he also made contact
with a Turkish official named Naim Bey, who had been the chief secretary of the
deportations committee of Aleppo. Naim Bey handed over to Andonian his
memoirs, which contained a large number of official documents, telegrams, and
decrees, which, he stated, had passed through his hands during his term of
office. Andonian translated these memoirs into Armenian. After some delay, they
were published in Armenian, French, and English editions.[41]
The documents reproduced in Naim Bey's memoirs are the most damning
evidence put forward to support the claim of genocide. Particularly incriminating
are the telegrams of the wartime interior minister. If authentic, they provide proof
that Talât Pasha gave explicit orders to kill all Turkish Armenians—men, women,
and children. One telegram dated September 16, 1915, notes that the Committee
on Union and Progress had
decided to destroy completely all the Armenians living in Turkey. Those who
oppose this order and decision cannot remain on the official staff of the empire.
An end must be put to their [the Armenians'] existence, however criminal the
measure taken may be, and no regard must be paid to either age or sex nor to
conscientious scruples.[42]
The utter ruthlessness of Talât Pasha is a recurring theme in The Memoirs. Such
a demonization, though, represents an important change from the way many
Armenians regarded Talât before 1915. On December 20, 1913, for example,
British embassy official Louis Mallet reported the Armenians had confidence in
Talât Pasha, "but fear that they may not always have to deal with a minister of
the interior as well disposed as the present occupant of that post."[43] Similarly,
the German missionary Liparit described Talât as a man "who over the last six
years has acquired the reputation of a sincere adherent of Turkish-Armenian
friendship."[44] Even the American head of the international Armenian relief effort
in Istanbul recalled that Talât Pasha always "gave prompt attention to my
requests, frequently greeting me as I called upon him in his office with the
introductory remark: ‘We are partners; what can I do for you today?'"[45] Talât
Pasha may have turned into a vicious fiend, but the opinions of his
contemporaries do not support this characterization.
There are many doubts as to the authenticity of the documents reproduced in
Naim Bey's memoirs. Several Armenian scholars suggest that a German court
authenticated five of the Talât Pasha telegrams during the 1921 trial of
Soghomon Tehlirian, who assassinated Talât Pasha in Berlin on March 15,
1921.[46] However the stenographic record of the trial, published in 1921, shows
that defense counsel von Gordon withdrew his motion to introduce the five
telegrams into evidence before their authenticity could be verified.[47]
Two Turkish authors, Şinasi Orel and Süreyya Yuca, who undertook a detailed
examination of the authenticity of the documents in the Andonian volume,
suggest that the Armenians may have "purposely destroyed the ‘originals,' in
order to avoid the chance that one day the spuriousness of the ‘documents'
would be revealed."[48] Orel and Yuca argue that discrepancies between
authentic Turkish documents and those reproduced in the Naim-Andonian book
suggest the latter to be "crude forgeries."[49] In addition, the two authors could
find no reference to Naim Bey in the official registers and cast doubt on his very
existence.
When The Memoirs were published in 1920, Armenian activists described its
author as an honest individual driven to make amends for his misdeeds. But
according to a letter composed by Andonian in 1937, Naim Bey was addicted to
alcohol and gambling, and the documents he provided were bought for money.
To have "unveiled the truth about him," Andonian wrote, "would have served no
purpose."[50] More likely, it would have undercut the very effectiveness of The
Memoirs. Nobody would have believed the word of an alcoholic and gambler who
might have manufactured the documents to obtain money.
The documents contained in The Memoirs of Naim Bey depict both the Young
Turk leadership and the general Turkish public as ruthless and evil villains.
These materials were to influence public opinion in the United States and
Western Europe and to provide the Armenians lobbying at the Paris peace
conference with ammunition to support their calls for independence.[51] That is
why the Armenian National Union, formed under the leadership of the veteran
Armenian statesman Boghos Nubar Pasha, purchased the documents and
entrusted Andonian with bringing them to Europe. While telegrams from the
Naim-Andonian book were included in a dispatch sent to London in March
1921[52] and also in the dossiers of the Malta detainees, the British government
never made use of these telegrams. The law officers of the crown apparently
regarded the Naim-Andonian book as another of the many forgeries that were
flooding Istanbul at the time.
Turkish authors are not alone in their assessment that the Naim-Andonian
documents are fakes. Dutch historian Erik Zürcher, writing in 1997, argued that
the Andonian materials "have been shown to be forgeries."[53] British historian
Andrew Mango speaks of "telegrams dubiously attributed to the Ottoman wartime
minister of the interior, Talât Pasha."[54] It is ironic that lobbyists and
policymakers seek to base a determination of genocide upon documents most
historians and scholars dismiss at worst as forgeries and at best as unverifiable
and problematic.
Conclusion
The three pillars of the Armenian claim to classify World War I deaths as
genocide fail to substantiate the charge that the Young Turk regime intentionally
organized the massacres. Other alleged evidence for a premeditated plan of
annihilation fares no better.
Whether to apply the genocide label to the events that occurred almost one
hundred years ago in the Ottoman Empire may be of minor consequence to
many historians, but it remains of great political relevance. Both Armenian
partisans and Turkish nationalists have staked claims and made their case by
simplifying a complex historical reality and by ignoring crucial evidence that might
yield a more nuanced picture. Professional scholars have based their positions
on previous works, often unaware that these represented a bastardized
interpretation of the original sources. With the political stakes high, both sides
have sought to silence opponents and stymie a full debate. In one famous
example, in 1995 a French court partially upheld a civil complaint brought by an
Armenian group against eminent historian Bernard Lewis because they objected
to a letter he had published in Le Monde on January 1, 1994, in which he had
questioned the existence of a plan of extermination on the part of the Ottoman
government.[55] Turkish leaders have applied diplomatic pressure and threats;
the Armenian government has accused those who do not acknowledge that the
massacres constituted genocide of being deniers who seek to appease the
Turkish government. Some Turkish and Armenian historians have suggested
recently that it is time to "step back from the was-it-genocide-or-not dialogue of
the deaf, which only leads to mutual recrimination" and instead concentrate on
empirically grounded historical research that seeks a common pool of firm
knowledge.[56] Time will tell whether it will be possible to rescue history from
nationalists who have plundered history to serve their own political ends.
Guenter Lewy is professor emeritus of political science, University of
Massachusetts, and the author of The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey:
A Disputed Genocide (University of Utah Press, 2005).
[1] For example, see Kamuran Gürün, The Armenian File: The Myth of Innocence
Exposed (Nicosia and London: K. Rustem and Brother and Weidenfeld and
Nicolson, 1985), pp. 214-5 (the Turkish edition of this book, Ermeni Dosyasi, was
published by Türk Kurumu Basimevi, Ankara, 1983); Bernard Lewis, The
Emergence of Modern Turkey, 3rd rev. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press,
2002), p. 356.
[2] Turkish authors such as Gürün speak of 300,000 Armenian deaths. The
estimates of most Western scholars are far higher.
[3] Aram Andonian, comp., The Memoirs of Naim Bey: Turkish Official
Documents Relating to the Deportations and Massacres of Armenians (Newtown
Square, Pa.: Armenian Historical Society, 1965, reprint of London, 1920 ed).
[4] Taner Akçam, Armenien und der Völkermord: Die Istanbuler Prozesse und die
türkische Nationalbewegung (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 1996), p. 185.
[5] Vahakn N. Dadrian, "The Documentation of the World War I Armenian
Massacres in the Proceedings of the Turkish Military Tribunal," International
Journal of Middle East Studies 23(1991): 554; idem, "The Turkish Military
Tribunal's Prosecution of the Authors of the Armenian Genocide: Four Major
Court-Martial Series," Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 11(1997): 31.
[6] Akçam, Armenien und der Völkermord, p. 148.
[7] Calthorpe to Foreign Office, Apr. 17, 1919, Foreign Office, 371/4173/61185, p.
279.
[8] Dadrian, "The Turkish Military Tribunal's Prosecution," p. 45.
[9] Akçam, Armenien und der Völkermord, p. 204. For the entire indictment, see
pp. 192-207.
[10] Dadrian, "World War I Armenian Massacres," p. 558.
[11] The verdict is reproduced in Akçam, Armenien und der Völkermord, pp. 35364.
[12] U.S. National Archives, RG 59, 867.00/868 (M 353, roll 7, fr. 448).
[13] Akçam, Armenien und der Völkermord, pp. 114-9.
[14] Yilmaz Altug, trans., The Turkish Code of Criminal Procedure (London:
Sweet and Maxwell, 1962), art. 232.
[15] Vahakn N. Dadrian, "Genocide as a Problem of National and International
Law: The World War I Case and Its Contemporary Legal Ramifications," Yale
Journal of Law, 14 (1989): 297, n. 286.
[16] Taner Akçam, ed., "The Proceedings of the Turkish Military Tribunal as
Published in Takvim-i Vekayi," part 1, 3rd sess., pp. 24, 27. This mimeographed
edition of the trial proceedings represents a German translation used by Taner
Akçam and deposited by him at the Armenian Research Center of the University
of Michigan-Dearborn.
[17] Heck to State Department, Feb. 7, 1919, U.S. National Archives, RG 59,
867.00/81 (M 820, roll 536, fr. 440).
[18] Vahakn N. Dadrian, The Key Elements in the Turkish Denial of the Armenian
Genocide: A Case Study of Distortion and Falsification (Cambridge, Mass.:
Zoryan Institute, 1999), p. 27.
[19] Quoted in Vahakn N. Dadrian, "The Armenian Genocide and the Pitfalls of a
‘Balanced' Analysis: A Response to Ronald Grigor Suny," Armenian Forum,
Summer 1998, p. 89; Akçam, Armenien und der Völkermord, p. 204.
[20] For the text of the indictment, see Akçam, Armenien und der Völkermord, pp.
192-207; for the verdict of the Harput trial, see Haigaz K. Kazarian, "The
Genocide of Kharpert's Armenians: A Turkish Judicial Document and Cipher
Telegrams Pertaining to Kharpert," Armenian Review, Spring 1966, pp. 18-9.
[21] See, for example, Gürün, The Armenian File, p. 232.
[22] Calthorpe to Foreign Secretary, Aug. 1, 1919, Foreign Office,
371/4174/118377.
[23] De Robeck to London, Sept. 21, 1919, Foreign Office, 371/4174/136069.
[24] Vahakn N. Dadrian, The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict
from the Balkans to Anatolia and to the Caucasus (Providence: Berghahn, 1995),
pp. 236-7.
[25] Ibid., p. 237; Vahakn N. Dadrian, "The Role of the Special Organization in
the Armenian Genocide during the First World War," in Panikos Panati, ed.,
Minorities in Wartime: National and Racial Groupings in Europe, North America,
and Australia during the Two World Wars (Oxford: Berg, 1993), p. 51.
[26] Philip H. Stoddard, "The Ottoman Government and the Arabs, 1911 to 1918:
A Study of the Teskilat-i Mahsusa," unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton
University, 1963, pp. 1-2, 52-8.
[27] Dadrian, "The Role of the Special Organization," p. 56.
[28] Second Report of the Provost Marshal to the Secretary of War on the
Operations of the Selective Service System to December 20, 1918 (Washington,
D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1919), p. 149.
[29] Stange to the German military mission, Istanbul, Aug. 23, 1915, Politisches
Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes, Botschaft Konstantinopel/170 (Fiche 7254);
Johannes Lepsius, ed., Deutschland und Armenien, 1914-1918: Sammlung
diplomatischer Aktenstücke (Potsdam: Tempelverlag, 1919), pp. 138-42. A
reprint of this collection was published by Donat und Temmen, Bremen, in 1986.
[30] Vahakn N. Dadrian, "Documentation of the Armenian Genocide in German
and Austrian Sources," in Israel W. Charny, ed., The Widening Circle of
Genocide: A Critical Bibliographical Review, vol. 3 (New Brunswick: Transaction,
1994), p. 110.
[31] Walter Nicolai, The German Secret Service, George Renwick, trans.
(London: Stanley Paul, 1924), p. 138; Hans Werner Neulen, Adler und
Halbmond: Das deutsch-türkische Bündnis 1914-1918 (Frankfurt/Main: Ullstein,
1994), pp. 166-7; Ulrich Trumpener, "Suez, Baku, Gallipoli: The Military
Dimensions of the German-Ottoman Coalition," in Keith Neilson and Ray Prete,
eds., Coalition Warfare: An Uneasy Accord (Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier
University Press, 1983), p. 40.
[32] Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes, Weltkrieg, no. 11d, vol. 9 (R
21016), p. 31; Felix Guse, Die Kaukasusfront im Weltkrieg: Bis zum Frieden von
Brest (Leipzig: Koehler und Amelang, 1940), p. 38; Edward J. Erikson, Ordered
to Die: A History of the Ottoman Army in the First World War (Westport, Conn.:
Greenwood Press, 2001), pp. 54-5. On the role of the Georgian volunteers see,
William E. D. Allen and Paul Muratoff, Caucasian Battlefields: A History of the
Wars on the Turco-Caucasian Border, 1828-1921 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1953), pp. 274-5.
[33] Paul Leverkuehn, Posten auf ewiger Wache: Aus dem abenteuerlichen
Leben des Max von Scheubner-Richter (Essen: Essener Verlagsanstalt, 1938),
p. 33.
[34] See, for example, Henry H. Riggs, Days of Tragedy in Armenia: Personal
Experiences in Harpot, 1915-1917 (Ann Arbor: Gomidas Institute, 1997), pp. 1278.
[35] Philip H. Stoddard in the prologue to Eşref Kuşçubasi, The Turkish Battle of
Khaybar, Philip H. Stoddard and H. Basri Danisman, trans. and eds. (Istanbul:
Arba Yayinlari, 1999), pp. 21-32.
[36] Vahakn N. Dadrian, "Ottoman Archives and Denial of the Armenian
Genocide," in Richard G. Hovannisian, ed., The Armenian Genocide: History,
Politics, Ethics (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992), pp. 300-1.
[37] Cemal Kutay, Birinci Dünya Harbinde Teşkilat-i Mahsusa Ve Hayber'de Türk
Cengi (Istanbul: Tarih Yayinlari, 1962), pp. 18, 36, 78.
[38] Akçam, "The Proceedings of the Turkish Military Tribunal," part 1, especially
5th and 6th session of the main trial.
[39] Gwynne Dyer, "Letter to the Editor," Middle Eastern Studies, 9 (1973): 379.
[40] Edward J. Erickson, "The Turkish Official Military Histories of the First World
War: A Bibliographical Essay," Middle Eastern Studies, 39 (2003): 198, n. 7.
[41] Şinasi Orel and Süreyya Yuca, The Talât Pasha "Telegrams": Historical Fact
or Armenian Fiction (Nicosia, Cyprus: K. Rustem, 1986), pp. 2-4.
[42] Andonian, The Memoirs of Naim Bey, p. 64.
[43] Louis Mallet to Foreign Office, Foreign Office, 371/1773/58131.
[44] Report of December 1914, Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes,
Botschaft Konstantinopel /168 (Fiche 7243).
[45] Louise Jenison Peet, No Less Honor: The Biography of William Wheelock
Peet (Chattanooga: E.A. Andrews, 1939), p. 170.
[46] Gerard Chaliand and Yves Ternon, The Armenians: From Genocide to
Resistance, Tony Berrett, trans. (London: Zed Press, 1983), p. 93; Mary
Mangigian Tarzian, The Armenian Minority Problem, 1914-1934: A Nation's
Struggle for Security (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992), p. 65; Jean-Marie Carzou,
Un génocide exemplaire: Arménie 1915 (Paris: Falmmanion, 1975), p. 248.
[47] Tessa Hofmann, ed., Der Völkermord an den Armeniern: Der Prozess Talaat
Pasha (Berlin: Gesellschaft für bedrohte Völker, 1985, reprint of Berlin, 1921
ed.), p. 69.
[48] Orel and Yuca, The Talât Pasha "Telegrams," p. 23.
[49] Ibid., p. 145.
[50] Aram Andonian to Mary Terzian, in Comité de Défense de la Cause
Arménienne, Justicier du Génocide Arménien: Le Procès de Tehlirian (Paris:
Editions Diasporas, 1981). Translation in Orel and Yuca, The Talât Pasha
"Telegrams," p. 9.
[51] Andonian, The Memoirs of Naim Bey, p. 225.
[52] Embassy to Foreign Office (Mar. 1921), Foreign Office, 371/6500/E3557, pp.
2, 6-8.
[53] Erik Jan Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History (London: I.B. Tauris, 1997), p.
121.
[54] Andrew Mango, "Turks and Kurds," Middle Eastern Studies, 30 (1994): 985.
[55] Yves Ternon, "Freedom and Responsibility of the Historian: The ‘Lewis
Affair,'" in Richard G. Hovannisian, ed., Remembrance and Denial: The Case of
the Armenian Genocide (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1999), pp. 2436.
[56] Selim Deringil, "In Search of a Way Forward: A Response to Ronald Grigor
Suny," Armenian Forum, Summer 1998, pp. 69-71; Ronald Grigor Suny, "Reply
to My Critics," Armenian Forum, Summer 1998, p. 136.