The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> More From The Professor

More From The Professor
Posted by pancho (Moderator) - Tuesday, August 31 2010, 21:46:01 (UTC)
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One reason is that we have all been conditioned to expect a world of heroes and villains, or victims and villains. This feeling has sometimes caused Americans to misinterpret events, particularly in the Middle East. However, it is the Holocaust of the Jews that has most deeply and properly affected us. Our remembrance of the evils of Nazi Germany has unfortunately caused us to see other events of history through the glass of the Holocaust. In the Holocaust, an innocent people was persecuted and annihilated. There was no Jewish threat to the German State. Yet the full force of a modern state was mobilized to slaughter the innocent. We naturally think of the Holocaust when we evaluate other examples of inhumanity. But no event of history can compare to the Holocaust. Indeed, in history most loss of civilian life, has taken place in wars in which both sides were armed, both sides fought, and both sides were victims. World War I in Anatolia was such a war.


Assuming one-sided evil has led to an unfortunate approach to the history of the Armenians and the Turks. Instead of investigating the history of the time without prejudice, all the guilt has been attached to one side. Once the Turks were assumed to be guilty, the search was on to find proof. The process has been one of assertion and refutation. It was asserted that Talat Pasha, the Ottoman Interior Minister, had written telegrams ordering the murder of Armenians, but these proved to be forgeries. It was asserted that statistics supposedly “from the Armenian Patriarchate” proved that Armenians were a majority in Eastern Anatolia, but these statistics were found to have been created, without reference to any actual records, by a writer in Paris. It was asserted that letters published during World War I by the British Propaganda Office showed Turkish guilt, but these have proven to have been sent by missionaries and Armenian revolutionaries, both of whom were less than neutral sources. It was asserted that courts-martial by a post-war Turkish government proved that Turks had engaged in genocide, although careful examination of the records shows that the charges were included among long lists of ‘crimes’ brought by a government under control of British occupiers—lists that include all sorts of actions that are demonstrably false and include anything that would please the conquerors.

Justin McCarthy, at the May 15, 1996 Congressional hearing; Doctors Adalian and Marashlian sit beside him.


The problem with these assertions is that the accusations have been given wide distribution, while the reputations have been generally known only to historians, For example, so few have seen actual population statistics that it is commonly believed that Armenians were a majority in what is still called Armenia, even though Muslims actually outnumbered Armenians three to one. The British propaganda descriptions of Armenian deaths, all of them from anonymous sources, has often been reprinted, with no mention that the Armenian revolutionary parties were a source. Nor is it mentioned that history have proven that the British propagandists routinely invented their “evidence.” Those who speak of supposed evidence from the period when the British occupied Istanbul neglect to mention that the British themselves, who had complete control over all Ottoman official records, were forced at the time to admit that they could find no evidence of an organized genocide against Armenians.


Wrapping It Up for the U.S. Congressmen



There is no time in this short statement to consider all the effects of prejudice and the power of ethnic groups in America. It can simply be said that few wished to consider any but anti-Turkish statements. The Turks themselves, busy for decades with reconstruction of a war-torn country, long paid little attention to what was being said of them in America. Only recently have studies questioning conventional beliefs begun to appear. Generations of Americans had been raised with one set of beliefs, and those who have brought up opposing views have been vilified, their arguments unconsidered. Sadly for those of us who firmly believe that the Holocaust took place, some scholars of the Genocide of the Jews have attacked any reconsideration of Armenian-Turkish relations out of a fear that this will somehow give comfort to those who, against all evidence, disavow the Holocaust. It must also be admitted that we academics have been unwilling to undertake studies of Armenian-Turkish relations, because of problems with career advancement and even physical dangers.


Should what I say here prove to the United States Congress that Turks were not guilty of one-sided genocide against Armenians? No. Nor should the statements of those with opposing views convince the Congress that their views are correct. The historical questions are too involved for easy answers or quick condemnations. History should be determined by the normal procedures of historians. We should write our books and engage in debates until we gradually come to accepted conclusions. Turkish scholars, Armenian scholars, and those of us who are neither Turks nor Armenians should not feel that Congress has decided that the issue is resolved, when we know that this is not the case. Such action can only hinder real investigation of the historical question. There is a very real threat to scholarship when one group of scholars must face the awful and undeserved title of ”genocide deniers” when they do their proper work.


There is a statement on the Turkish-Armenian conflict that Congress can justifiably pass, but it is a general humanitarian statement. The lesson to be learned from the World War I experience of the Turks and the Armenians is not that one group was evil, one good. The lesson is that good people, whatever their ethnic group or religion, can be driven by events, their environment and their history to do evil, because they believe, they have no choice. In the history of war, that is all too often the case. The moral to be drawn is not that one side, one ethnic group, should be blamed. That is an historical error and a wrong that perpetuates the ethnic hatred that caused the disaster of the Armenians, as well as the disaster of the Turks. The events of World War I should be honored and mourned as a human, not an ethnic tragedy. If the Congress is to make a statement on the events of World War I, I would hope it would be a statement of pity for all those who suffered that terrible history.



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