NOTES
[1].In Viscount Bryce, The Treatment of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915-16, Miscellaneous No. 31 (London, 1916), p. 653. Contrary to repeated elaims by Turkish authors, throughout his life Toynbee, who was commissioned by the British Foreign Office to complete the material, stuck to his central conclusion that this crime constituted genocide. In a letter to the author he wrote, "My feelings and judgment are the same as they have always been. The genocide of the Armenians was a capital crime" (December 6, 1973).
[2].The campaign was launched by the publication of a book in Turkish that summarily dismisses these documents as fraudulent. A subsequent tract in English, French, and German, edited by Türkkaya Ataöv, Chairman of the Department of International Relations at Ankara University, summarizes the conclusions of that book. See Şinasi Orel and Süreyya Yuca, Ermenilerce Talat Paşaya Atfedilen Telegrafların Gerçek Yüzü (Ankara, 1983). A synopsis in English, French, and German of the same work is produced by Türkkaya Ataöv, The Andonian Documents Attributed to Talat ***** Are Forgeries, with corresponding French and German titles (Ankara, 1984); see also Kamuran Gürün, Ermeni Dosyası (Ankara, 1982), p. 246.
Since April 1984, universities, foreign offices, and, above all, key echelons of the media, have been inundated with copies of this synopsis. The campaign evidently did not fail to make an impression on some members of the U.N. Sub-Commission on Human Rights. As "experts" rather than as representatives of their respective countries, they had convened at Geneva in August 1985 to discuss "The Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide." Some members raised the issue of forgery on the basis of the above-mentioned pamphlet, which was handed out to them for the purpose of quashing paragraph 24 of a report that defined "the Ottoman massacre of Armenians in 1915-1916" as a bona fide "case of genocide." That report was prepared for the Sub-Commission by the latter's British member, Benjamin Whitaker. After rebutting the allegation of forgery and providing additional data and explanations on his findings, which he said involved 8 years of research, Whitaker finally prevailed. Thus ended a debate that had remained unresolved since 1971, when the U.N. Economic and Social Council, the parent body of the U.N. Human Rights Commission, had agreed to the preparation of a historical study on genocide. By a vote of 14 to 1, with 4 abstentions, the Sub-Commission on August 19, 1985, voted to "take note" of the Whitaker report. For what it is worth, an international body thus for the first time has registered its recognition of the historical fact of the Armenian genocide involving as victims "at least one million, and possibly well over half of the Armenian population" ("Revised and updated report on the question of the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide prepared by Mr. B. Whitaker," United Nations Economic and Social Council, Commission on Human Rights, Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, 38th Session, Item 4, E/CN.4/Sub.2/1985/6 [2 July 1985], pp. 8-9). In a revised and updated report Whitaker made some corrections and additions at the end of the Sub-Commission's deliberations; in note 13, for example, he changed "1 million" to "40%." See E/CN.4/Sub.2/1985/6/Corr. 1 [29 August 1985]. Furthermore, Şinasi Orel published a new article since this work was completed. It is more or less a synopsis of the original book in Turkish that has been reviewed here, without the detailed references and arguments. See "The Facts Behind the Telegrams Attributed to Talat ***** by the Armenians," Turkish Review Quarterly Digest (Winter 1985-86), pp. 83-102.
[3].Aram Andonian, Medz Vojeeru [The Great Crime], (Boston, 1921), hereafter cited as A T (Armenian translation); Aram Andonian, Documents officiels concernant les massacres arméniens, M. S. David-Beg, trans. (Paris, 1920), hereafter cited as ET; The Memoirs of Naim Bey, compiled by Aram Andonian, no translator indicated (London, 1920), hereafter cited as ET. The English translation is but a compressed version, and the French is less extensive in scope than the original Armenian. More significantly, the original of all three versions was first prepared in Armenian sometime in the summer of 1919, and its publication was delayed nearly 2 years. The resulting confusion in the publication sequence of the three volumes provides the context within which the errors of dating in a key letter (No. 1 in Table 2) will be easily understood when reviewing that error.
[4].A T & ET, p. 25, ET, p. 6. This penchant for eventually getting rid of the other nationalities, considered as obstructive to Turkish designs, is clearly indicated in the second of the two letters heading the list of the documents (No. 2).
[5].The first to point out some of these flaws was Walter Rössler, the 1908-1918 veteran German Consul at Aleppo, who in a confidential letter in the spring of 1921 described these flaws "as simple errors." He had read the French text, and the French translation of his comments are in Justicier du genocide armenien, le proces de Tehlirian (Paris, 1981), pp. 226-29. Similar and other errors are reviewed in Krieger, "Keetch Mu Lurtchoutiun" [Let Us Be A Little Serious], Houssaper (Cairo Armenian daily), December 30 and 31, 1964, and January 2 and 4, 1965; and in Krieger, "Aram Andonianee Huradaragadz Tourk Bashdonagan Vaverakrerou Vaveraganoutiunu,"[The Authenticity of the Turkish Official Documents Published by Aram Andonian] 1915-1965 Houshamadian Medz Yeghernee [Commemorative Compendium on the Great Holocaust, 1915-1965], (Beirut, 1965), pp. 229-30. Although not free from an array of errors, this study reflects the pioneering work of Krieger, who for decades singlehandedly and patiently canvassed the available archives here and abroad, especially the Jerusalem Armenian Patriarchate Archive, compiling a mass of documentary data. The author takes this opportunity to express his appreciation to Krieger, who helped him become initiated into this most neglected genre of scholarship combining Turkish and Armenian studies.
[6].Not knowing English at all, Andonian could neither control typographical errors nor oversee the body of the translation. In a confidential letter to Terzian (a physician and apparently a friend of Andonian), the French translation of which is in Justicier du genocide arménien, pp. 230-37, he complained that his manuscript was treated "cavalierly," and in the process "they went a little too far" [keetch mu shad asbedoren]. Employing self-imposed secrecy, Andonian used double-digit ciphers to record his three November 1918 transactions with Naim, at the last one of which (November 14) he had induced Naim to deliver original telegrams. The Andonian-Naim file in Nubar Library at Paris starts with these coded messages. See Krieger, "Aram Andonianee," p. 230.
[7].The Ottoman calendar, otherwise called rumi, or Julian, or old style, in contradistinction to miladi, Gregorian, or new style, respectively, began on March 1, the start of the fiscal year, and ended on February 28 or 29 of the following year. The date one month after December 10, (1)330, for example, was January 10, (1)330 old style, because the Ottoman calendar year stretched through the months of January and February of the following year of the Western calendar. Only after March 1 old style, or March 14 new-style Western calendar, was the date switched to that of next year, i.e., (1)331. By applying the 13-day differential one gets thus February 16 old style as the cut-off date for the users of the Western calendar, even though Ottoman documents bore old-style dates to the end of February of a given year. This practice was discontinued on February 16, 1916 old style, i.e., February 16, 1332, so that it would coincide with March 1, 1917 new style, and became March 1, (1)333 Ottoman style. In other words, in 1917 the Ottoman Calendar shrunk by 13 days and 2 months as a result of eliminating the 13-day differential while retaining the old-style year, i.e., 1333; the following year January 1, (1)334 coincided with January 1, 1918. This practice too was eliminated on January 1, 1926, when the old style was completely eradicated through Bill No. 698, enacted on December 26, 1925, in the Parliament of the nascent Turkish Republic (J. Deny, "L'adoption du calendrier grégorien en Turquie," Revue du Monde Musulman, 18 [1921], 46-53; Tevfik Temelkuran, "Türklerin Kullandığı Takvimler ve Batı [Miladi] Takvimin Kabulü," Belgelerde Türk Tarihi Dergisi, 51 [December 1971], pp. 28-29). The tabulation on p. 360 shows selected old-style/new-style calendar conversions.
[8].After the February 18 letter is introduced as February 28 in a prefatory remark, the error is repeated in the Armenian and French versions (A T\ 29; FT 96).
[9].Ernest E. Ramsaur, Jr., The Young Turks (Beirut, 1965), pp. 123-24.
[10].The point may be illustrated with reference to Takvimi Vekayi, or TV, the Ottoman calendar of events, or the official gazette, to which frequent supplements were attached to cover the 1919-1921 court-martial proceedings. First, the trial of the two wartime cabinet ministers began on Monday, April 28, 1919 (new style). As a major event of immense public interest, the trial was covered with front-page headlines throughout the Turkish and non-Turkish press. Yet when recording the proceedings, the TV editors misprinted the date as "Sunday, April 27" on the front page of the supplement (see Table 1). Second, the fifth sitting of the Court in that trial series took place on Monday, May 12, 1919, yet TV again misprinted the date as "Wednesday, May 14, 1919." Third, when assigning a number to the particular issue covering that fifth sitting, the editors put one number on the front (3553), and another number inside it (3554), while maintaining uniform numbers for other issues. Other irregularities attend the practice of distorted chronology by which gaps are created between the date of a sitting and that of publication; later sittings are moved up, and earlier ones are delayed in the order of publication. See Table 1 for the display of these errors.
[11].Şevket Süreyya Aydemir, Makedonyadan Ortaasyaya Enver Paşa, 3 vols, (Istanbul, 1971-1972), Vol. ÜI, pp. 57-62.
[12].For item 1, see Orel and Yuca, Ermenilerce, p. 60; item 2, p. 130; item 3, pp. 34-35, 40; item 4, pp. 66, 75-76; item 5, pp. 44-45, 46-47.
[13].M. Zekeriya Sertel, Hatırladıklarım, 1905-1950 (Istanbul, 1968), pp. 63-64. Before joining the staff of Şükrü Kaya's Directorate-General to study the problem of tribes involving Alevi Kurds, SertePs newspaper had become a casualty of newsprint shortage. Moreover, in order to fashion the three makeshift notebooks he supplied to Andonian in three installments (November 6, 10, and 14, 1918), Naim had to use what scraps of paper he could scrounge, which he then tied together with a string.
[14].Ahmed Reşit [Rey], Gördüklerim-Yaptıklarım (1890-1922) (Istanbul, 1945), p. 117.
[15].Wrote the diplomatic correspondent of the Daily Telegraph: "on account of the lightning advance of Lord Allenby's forces . . . time was lacking for so complete an obliteration of the tragic archives while subordinates, who remained behind, sometime retained possession of compromising documents. ... A Turkish official employed in the local administration disclosed the series of telegrams, mostly in cipher" (Daily Telegraph, May 29, 1922. British files [Public Records Office at KEW, London] identify him as Mr. Gerstwohl, FO 371/7874/ 5516, folio 139).
[16].Justicier, p. 228; a copy of the original report in German is in the possession of this author. Commenting on this condition, Andonian wrote to Terzian: "This Aleppo office was one of the worst in terms of orderliness; the disorganization was indescribable. The documents were piled pel mel in the drawers, without being registered, without any system of classification. This condition was typical of other offices with similar functions." Justicier, p. 234.
[17].For the first British author see George Young, Corps de droit Ottoman (Oxford, 1906), Vol. 2, p. XVI; for the other, see John A. S. Bucknill and H. A. S. Utidjian, The Imperial Ottoman Penal Code: A Translation from the Turkish Text (London, 1913), p. XVI. The presumption of Armenian authorship for "poor Turkish" is whimsical, if not frivolous, since many a literate Armenian surpassed many a Turk in the command of that language.
[18].Ahmed Mithat, "Münakaşai Lisaniye," Tarik, 4624, November 18, 1898; Şemseddin Sami, "Şür ve Edebiyattaki Teceddüdü Ahirimiz," Sabah, November 29, 1898. Both authors are quoted in Niyazi Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey (Montreal, 1964), p. 320. Ahmed Mithat was not only a prolific author of novels and historical works, but was also Director of the Imperial Press [Matbaai Amire], editor of the governmental gazette Takvimi Vekayi, and founder of the Turkish newspaper Tercümani Hakikat. As an Ottoman delegate he participated in the International Congress of Orientalists held in Stockholm in 1888.
[19].Thirteen authentieated cipher telegrams were introdueed as evidence at that sitting on March 6, 1919, one of which, marked "secret," was from the Boğazlıyan Gendarmery Chief informing his superiors at Kayseri that Armenians from the area "were deported, namely destroyed" (sevkiyat, yani mahv manasına). Despite this paraphrasing at the trial, the court decided to retain the original version with the notation, "for the record, the very inept writing has been kept intact; it conforms to the original" [pek acemi yazısı aynen kaydedilmiştir, aslına mutabıkdir] (Nor Giank, Renaissance, Vakit, ikdam, March 7, 1919 issues; Krieger, Yozgadee Hayasbanoutian Vaverakragan Badmouti-ounu [The Documentary History of the Armenian Genocide at Yozgad], [New York, 1980], pp. 265-66). The Interior Minister's remark is in Ahmet Reşit [Rey], Gördüklerim, p. 183 footnote.
[20].Ismail Hami Danişmend, izahlı Osmanlı Tarihi Kronolojisi (Istanbul, 1961), Vol. 4, p. 452. In this volume of his encyclopedie work the author focuses not only on the quality of Talat's Turkish but on the contents of the letter as well to conelude that Talat, without being specific, "personally admitted that he deserved punishment and that he was willing to courageously submit to 'the supreme punishment'" Çcezayi kemali cesaretle çekmek isterim' demek suretiyle cezaya layik olduğunu itiraf etmiştir).
[21].Philip H. Stoddard, The Ottoman Government and the Arahs, 1911 to 1918: A Preliminary Study of the Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1963 (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University Microfilms, 1964), p. 230.
[22].On doubting Naim's existence, see Orel and Yuca, Ermenilerce, pp. 23, 24; Ataöv, Andonian Documents, p. 9. On pp. 11 and 12, these two authors raise the question as to how a man dismissed early in 1916 (the Meskene appointment) could have procured and transmitted to others documents 2'/2 years after his dismissal. Having relied on the French translation, it is conceivable that they gave a one-sided interpretation to the French word révoquer, which in addition to "dismiss," has the meaning of "recall." Naim discloses in his annotations that he not only returned to his post after the Meskene recall but was entrusted with a new mission for Sivas (AT 190, ET 135). See appropriate columns under A T, FT, and ET in Table 2.
[23].Krieger, Aram Andonianee, pp. 245-46.
[24].Orel and Yuca, Ermenilerce, p. 24.
[25].There are many other errors of counting, dating, and inaccurate referencing. Here are some examples: (1) The March 25 letter (No. 2) is not misprinted as February 8, as they assert, but rather is printed in the ET correctly. (2) Contradicting themselves, they then reproduce the March 25 date when quoting from the same ET on another page. See Orel and Yuca, pp. 33, 140. (3) Again on p. 33 they inaccurately report that the FF has omitted the year of the February 18 letter (No. 1); it did not. (4) Of the Talat ciphers, only three have no date and registry number, only three have no date, and only twelve have no registry number, rather than five, five, and nine, respectively, as reported on p. 4 by Orel and Yuca. (5) On pages 124 and 330, a document by Third Army Commander Vehib Paşa is introdueed in which the number 3,000 is raised to 30,000, presumably by mistake for another Ottoman document, dated 18 days later, specifically cites 2,127 casualties (Documents [Ankara, 1983], document No. 69, of April 1, 1918). In his Kafkas Yollarında Hatıralar ve Teşebbüsler, Turkish historian and Intelligence Officer Ahmed Refik (Altınay), who investigated the sites of the atrocities as a member of a joint Turko-German inspection team, states that there were no more than 10,000 people in Erzurum since "the residents had not returned from their flight to the interior of Anatolia by April 1915." See A. Alper Gazigiray, Ermeni Tenorunun Kaynakları (Istanbul, 1982), pp. 495-96, 503.
[26].The Armenian National Union was convened under the aegis of Catholicos Sahag, the Supreme Armenian Patriarch of the Sea of Cilicia, who selected nine persons as members, the president being a Protestant physician, and the vice-president, a Catholic Armenian: FO 608/108, General Head-quarters Intelligence summary of March 4, 1919, p. 4 of the report. These documents were validated "after many long tests" (Krieger, Aram Andonianee, p. 232; Justicier, p. 237).
[27].0n Naim never having lied, on his relative "saintliness," and on testing his reliability along with that of his documents, see Krieger, Aram Andonianee, p. 232. It should be pointed out that Krieger culled these revealing details mostly from the assemblage of Andonian's Unpublished Essays and Papers, deposited in Nubar Library at Paris, and subsumed under the file index "Haigagan Deghahanoutiantz yev Tcharterou Badmoutian Hamar" [Toward the History of the Armenian Deportations and Massacres], containing also Naim's notebooks. Series 672, Carton 5-2-6: For the nonavailability of this file and the documents thereof at the present time see Table 2, note e. For Andonian's avowedly faithful translations, see Orel and Yuca, Ermenilerce, pp. 30, 33, 42, 51, 53, 64, 65, 66, 73; for Naim's occasional tears in connection with his recording coded telegrams that decreed the death of the Armenian nation see A T 22, 91; FT23, 72; ET 3.
[28].Justicier, pp. 227, 228.
[29].During the June 2-3, 1921, Berlin-Moabit Criminal Court trial an attempt was made to introduce into evidence Talat's 5 ciphers in the original (Nos. 5, 11, 19, 25, and 36, with No. 5 misprinted in the Proceedings as September 15 instead of 16). Additionally, the photocopies of these 5, and those of 16 other ciphers, were distributed in the Court. Upon the suggestion of the presiding judge that such an introduction at that juncture of the trial might be prematüre, Gordon, one of the three defense lawyers, agreed to drop the idea, provided the Court would concur with his claim that "the defendant believed . . . not without good reason . . . that Talat was the author [ Urheber] of the terrible atrocities against the Armenians for which he was responsible." The Procuror-General concurred only with the point that the defendant really believed Talat to be guilty. Thus the documents never had a chance to be tested in a court of law, including the Turkish Military Tribunal, since they were hastily taken to London for translation and submission to the Peace Conference. all that the Berlin Criminal Court did was to certify the accuracy of the translations (Der Prozefi Talaat Pascha [stenographie account of the trial] [Berlin, 1921], pp. 69, 86, 132-36). Ataöv credits Gollnick, the Procuror-General at the trial, with a definitive statement declaring the documents as "false"; this attribution itself is false because Gollnick never made such a statement. The issue involved the 5 original Talat ciphers that were not introduced and therefore could not be tested; Gollnick merely raised the possibility of falseness out of a general skepticism (Ataöv, The Andonian Documents, p. 9). The same misrepresentation is indulged in by the two Turkish authors, who inserted the word "fake" (düzmece) when quoting the German Procuror-General: Orel and Yuca, Ermenilerce, p. 19. For the involvement of the German Foreign Office in the trial, and for defense attorney Gordon's efforts to secure the testimony of Rössler, see German Foreign Office Archives (Bonn), or Aus-wàrtiges Amt, Politische Abteilung 5/Tùrkei, Po 11 No. 3, vol. 1, June 1 and 2, 1921. Andonian declared that, except for the February 18 Şakir letter and some other original ciphers, a few of which were sent back to the Armenian Patriarchate at Istanbul in connection with A. Nuri's moribund trial, he left the Naim documents with the Berlin Court that had compiled a Tehlirian file, and that for some years his subsequent efforts to reclaim them from Berlin proved unsuccessful (Justicier, p. 233). This author on May 10, 1979, wrote a letter to the Justice Ministry of the German Federal Republic inquiring about the possibility of locating the Tehlirian file from the archives of the Moabit Criminal Court and of retrieving the documents for purposes of examination. In a response on May 29, 1979, the Berlin plenipotentiary of Justice informed me that the matter was referred to Berlin District Attorney Krause, who in turn declared, in a letter of June 15, 1979, that the file and the documents "no longer exist; they have been destroyed."
[30].Johannes Lepsius, Deutschland und Armenien, 1914-1918 (Berlin, 1919).
[31].In the annotative part of his material Naim cited two instances that the Court Martial subsequently specifically verified. They deserve to be introduced here because of their substantial value. One refers to Naim's exchange with his superior, A. Nuri, who confided that before Nuri's departing to his new post at Aleppo, Talat took him to a comer in Talat's office and told him, "You surely do know what you have to do. I am not going to put up with the continuous existence in Turkey of those accursed people anymore," meaning of course the Armenians (AT 32; FT 31; ET 13). This lethal instruction was independently confirmed and substantiated before the Turkish Court Martial by Ihsan, a former staff member in Talat's Interior Ministry Special Secretariat, who directly quoted A. Nuri as saying that he "personally received Talat's order of extermination" of the Armenian deportation survivors (imha emirlerini bizzat aldım) (TV, 3540, p. 5 of the Indictment; reference to investigative papers, p. 15).
The other has reference to Naim's assertion that the frequently used phrase "the deportees have been sent to their destination" was a euphemism for "they were killed" (AT 174; FT 125; not cited in ET). At the ninth sitting of the Yozgad trial series (February 22, 1919) this assertion was documented. One of the 11 ciphers read into the record at that sitting was Boğazhyan Recruitment Bureau Chief Mustafa's wire informing the Deputy Commander of t;ie Fifth Army Corps at Ankara that the deportees in question were "sent off to their destination"' (müretteblerine sevk). When Commander Recayi asked for clarification, the answer came on the same day: "They were killed" (katledildikleri) (Nor Giank, Renaissance, Yeni Gün, ikdam, February 23, 1919 issues).
[32].The full text of Radi's deposition is in Krieger, Yozgadee, pp. 387-95; the quotation used is on p. 389.
[33].Nor Giank, March 6 and 7, 1919; Renaissance, March 6, 1919.
[34].Faiz el Ghusein, Martyred Armenia, translation from the original Arabic, no translator indicated (New York, 1918), p. 40. A member of the Damascus Governor's staff and subsequently subdistrict commissioner in the province of Harput, el Ghusein had been imprisoned as an Arab nationalist following the Aliya Court Martial. During and after his imprisonment at Diyarbekir he gained, as a fellow Muslim, the confidence of some Turks who had played active roles in the massacres, and who opened up to him with all sorts of revelations. He learned, for example, that the Arab killed was Sabat el Sueidi, the subdistrict commissioner of El Beşiri, a county of Diyarbekir district, and that the other victim, the subgovernor of Lice, was an unnamed Albanian. (This was independently confirmed by an August 20, 1915, German report in Türkei 183, vol. 38, A24658, enclosure No. VI; and by a September 27, 1915, Rössler report in Türkei 183, vol. 39, A30049, p. 7.) The total number of Armenians, native and others, that constituted the large convoys passing through the city and were massacred in and around Diyarbekir (a hub of transit for convoys) was 570,000, as confided to el Ghusein by one of the organizers of these massacres (p. 41). When relating the narration of Shahin Bey, a Turkish military who had participated in the massacre of a large convoy, el Ghusein adds, "So after the gendarmes had killed a number of Armenian men they put on them turbans and brought Kurdish women to weep and lament over them. They also brought a photographer to photograph the bodies and the weeping women, so that at a future time they might be able to convince Europe that it was the Armenians who had attacked the Kurds and killed them, that the Kurdish Tribes had risen against them in revenge, and that the Turkish government had no part in the matter" (pp. 37 and 38). In his epilogue the author absolves "the faith of Islam and Muslims generally," depicting Ittihad's "fanaticism and their jealousy of the Armenians" as responsible for the crimes; "the Faith of Islam is guiltless of their deeds" (p. 49). Commenting on the production of fake photographs, Andonian adds to the Diyarbekir case one involving Urfa; this picture was so carelessly composed as to allow native Armenians to identify in it certain local Armenians as the actual victims (AT222; FT 152). Providing full details, another Armenian author identifies by name and position the leading executioners of that particular carnage at Diyarbekir, after also confirming the falsity of the photo (M. Agounie, Million Mu Hayerou Tchartee Badmoutiunee [The Story of the Massacre of One Million Armenians] [Istanbul, 1920], p. 67). The prewar Armenian Vice Consul at the British Consulate of Diyarbekir, where he had served for 19 years, asserts the fake nature of the photo, specifying the location of the atrocity, describing the printing process, and sketching the Unes of governmental propaganda that followed (Tovmas Mugurditchian, Dikranagerdee Nahankeen Tcharteru Yev Kùrderou Kazanoutiun-neru [The Massacres of Diyarbekir Province and The Ferocity of the Kurds] [Cairo, 1919], pp. 74-75). Such fraudulence was not limited to pictures purporting to be evidence of Armenian atrocities against Muslims. A Venezuelan officer attached to the Turkish army through German mediation, who had witnessed several scenes of massacres in the Van and Bitlis provinces, relates a similar pattern regarding caches of arms purporting to be evidence of plans of wartime Armenian insurgency in Diyarbekir. The two pictures showed "a stack of arms which [supposedly] had been found in the houses and even the churches of the Armenians. However, a close contemplation of those interesting photographs revealed plainly that the park therein represented was composed almost entirely of fowling-pieces easily disguised by a thin layer of army guns" (Rafaël de Nogales, Four Years Beneath the Crescent, Numa Lee, trans. [New York, London, 1926], pp. 139-40; for a graphie description of a ghastly scene of massacre at Sürt, Bitlis province, see p. 124. The German translation of these accounts is in Nogales, Vier Jahre unter dem Halbmond, no translator indicated [Berlin, 1925], pp. 100 and 89. Countless passages and sentences portraying Ittihad leaders in atrocious behavior, particularly the warlord Enver, are deleted in this German edition).
[35].Türkei 183, vol. 37, A23232, July 17, 1915, report.
[36].Talat told Mordtmann, who was in charge of the German Embassy's Armenian desk, that he intended to get rid of Turkey's "Internal foes" by "taking advantage of the war" (den Weltkrieg dazu benutzen . . . um mit ihren inneren Feinden . . . gründlich aufzuraumen) (Türkei 183, vol. 37, A19744, June 17, 1915, Wangenheim report). Some six weeks later Talat told Interim Ambassador Hohenlohe that the Armenian Question is finished, is no more (La question armenienne n'existe plus) (Türkei 183, vol. 38, A24674, September 4, 1915, Hohenlohe report; see also in the same archive at Bonn Botschaft Konstantinopel 170, No. 549 [5118]). In a 22-page report Jàckh, a key promoter of friendship ties with Turkey, describes Talat's "unabashed sense of political relief over the destruction of the Armenian people" as he summarizes the findings gathered during his September-October 1915 trip to Turkey (Türkei 158, vol. 14, folio 034, p. 18 of report).
[37].Correcting his earlier diagnosis, the German Ambassador concluded that "the deportations" were a stepping stone to the act of "destruction" (Türkei 183, vol. 37, A22110; see also Botschaft Konstantinopel 169, folio 142-6, No. [4018], July 16, 1915, Wangenheim report). About a week before his sudden death through stroke, the same Ambassador, reacting to Talat's "denials" of massacres, advised Berlin to conclude from these denials that "massacres in fact did take place," and that "the denial" (Dementi) was a cop-out (Türkei 183, vol. 39, A30634, October 15, 1915, Wangenheim report). Wangenheim's successor called Talat "unscrupulous," and "a double-dealer" (ein Doppelganger) (Türkei 159, No. 3, vol. 4, A24679, September 7, 1916, Metternich report). On December 7, 1915, Metternich reported to Berlin, "Protests are useless and Turkish denials ... are worthless" ( Türkei 183, vol. 40, A36184). The Austrian Ambassador complained to Vienna that Talat is "throwing dust in the eyes," and five days later described him as a man "engaging in double-dealing" (ein Doppelspiel treiben) as Talat persisted in his denials (Austrian Foreign Affairs Ministry Archive at Vienna, i.e., Haus- und Hof-Archiv, PA 12, Karton 209, No. 72, September 3, 1915, and PA 12, Karton 209, No. 73, September 8, 1915, Pallavicini reports, respectively).
[38].The German Adana Consul branded Talat's denials as "brazen-faced deception" (dreiste Tauschung) (Türkei 183, vol. 38, A27578, September 10, 1915, Büğe report). The German Musul Consul on his part condemned the denials as "blatant lies" (krasse Lügen) (Botschaft Konstantinopel 170, No. 24 [4729], September 10, 1915, Holstein report). Finally, the German Aleppo Consul, responding to the same denials, exclaimed, "Indeed, I could not trust my eyes as I read this declaration of denial, and I find no expression to characterize this abysmal untruth" (Furwahr ich habe meinen Augen nicht getr aut. . . .) (Türkei 183, vol. 38, A23991, July 27, 1915, Rössler report).
[39].Henry Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau's Story (Garden City, N.Y., 1918), pp. 140-45. On pp. 37, 181, 184, 239 the Ambassador reiterates the point that he kept a regular diary, indicating that most of his accounts were based on entries.
[40].FO 371/9158/E5523, folios 106-7, May 22, 1923, communication.
4,"In Turkey Behind the Scenes," Morning Post, December 5, 1918, p. 7; the quotation is repeated on p. 9 of the December 7, 1918, issue of the same paper.
[42].The first quotation is in Şevket Süreyya Aydemir, ikinci Adam (Istanbul, 1973), p. 45; the second is in Aydemir, Suyu Arayan Adam, 7th ed. (Istanbul, 1979), p. 273.
[43].FO 371/7869/E7840, folio 262, p. 2 of August 1, 1922, report.
[44].It developed that Şakir had kept copies of all or of some of his communications, and that the letter in question was among those found in the suitcase discovered during a December 12, 1918, search by the military police at the home of Ahmed Ramiz, a brother-in-law of Şakir (Turkish daily Akşam, December 12, 1918). After being impounded, some of those letters found their way to the press and were published either entirely or in part by a number of anti-Ittihad Turkish dailies in Istanbul. According to the Turkish daily Tasviri Efkar (February 3, 1919), the documents and letters, which criminally implicated Ittihadist leaders, were secured and photographed subsequently. An Armenian Deputy of the Ottoman Parliament in his memoirs states that Şakir also kept a diary (Vahan Papazian, Eem Housheru [My Memoirs] [Beirut, 1952], Vol. Ü, p. 295).
[45].The February 18 letter contains the following passage: "Unable to forget the humiliations and the bitterness of the past, and filled with an urge for vengeance, the Cemiyet [Ittihad], full of hope for its future, has reached a decision. The Armenians, living in Turkey, will be destroyed to the last. The government has been given ample authority. As to the organization of the mass murder, the government will provide the necessary explanations to the governors, and to the army commanders. all the delegates of Ittihad ve Terakki in their own regions will be in charge of this task. No Armenian will be allowed to get any help and support." (Türkiyede yaşayan bil umum Ermenileri, bir tanesi kalmayınca kadar, mahva karar, ve bu hususta hükümete salahiyeti vasiye ita etmişdir. Tertibatı katliye hakkında hükümet vali ve ordu komandanlarına izahatı lazimei verecekdir. Ittihad ve Terakkinin bilumum murahhasları bulundukları yerlerde bu meselenin takibüle meşgul olacaklar. Hiç bir Ermeninin nayili müzaharet ve muavenet olmasına meydan verilmiyecekdir.) The March 25 letter has this passage: "As stated in the February 18, 1915 letter, the Cemiyet has decided to tear from its roots and destroy the various forces which for years have been hampering its efforts and clashing with it. The measures adopted for this purpose are unfortunately very bloody. . . . [esasdan kal' ve imhaya karar vermiş ve bu babda maatessüf pek kanlı tedabir ittihazına mecbur kalmışdır] There is no point in dealing with the other [troublesome nationalities] before the measures adopted against the known persons [the Armenians] produce results."
[46].As some other high officials had done, Harput governor Sabit had saved a few incriminating ciphers he had received, as a hedge against the liabilities of a possible defeat, which might involve reckoning before the bar of justice. In order to shift the blame to higher authorities, he reportedly handed out this particular cipher to the Mazhar Inquiry Commission whose magistrates had taken him in custody, subjecting him to a pretrial interrogatory (Jamanag, December 12; Ariamard, December 13, 1918). Mehmed Namık, the police chief of Dersim (Harput province district), confirmed this rationale of compliance with higher authorities. He testified that working closely with Nazım, Ittihad's Responsible Secretary of that province, Sabit, adamantly enforced the radical measures against the entire Armenian population there. Following an investigation ordered by Sabit, the police chief had rounded up 29 Dashnaks, finding "but a very few bombs." As he proposed "to punish these men only, Sabit Bey refused to listen, replying that orders had come from the Central Government, signed by Behaeddin Shakir, that the whole Armenian population had to be deported and annihilated" (FO 371/6500, 30/A/4, Appendix B, folio 370/103).
[47].In February 1916, Vehib had replaced Mahmud Kamil Paşa, under whose aegis the Armenian population of "the six provinces" in the East was all but wiped out, and whose order forbidding shelter to any Armenian deportee under pain of death is cited in the Indictment (TV 3540, p. 7, ref. series 13, doc. no. 1). As Commander of the Second Army at the Dardanelles Southwestern Front, Vehib had distinguished himself; his brother, Esad Paşa, was Commander of the Dardanelles Western Army Group, which included Mustafa Kemal's (Atatürk) famous nineteenth division. Promoted to Commander-in-Chief of Army Group East in the spring of 1918, Vehib soon advanced ali the way to the pre-1877 borders of Caucasus. Before Turkish authorities decided to arrest him as a suspect for wartime black-marketeering (TV, 3571), he prepared a lengthy deposition at the request of the Mazhar Inquiry Commission that was conducting pre-Court Martial investigations on the massacres. While in prison, he was unexpectedly visited one day in September 1919 by Şakir's wife, who began attacking him with a whip, prompting the General to cali out, "Help! [aman], take this woman out, I can't strike at a woman" (Djagadamard, Jhamanag, September 9, 1919).
[48].General Sabis in his memoirs complained about Şakir's key role in Turkey's entry into the war, the Sarıkamış battle disaster, and his Pan-Turanist, or Pan-Turkist, ideology, denouncing Şakir's lack of grasp and incompetence in military affairs (Ali Ihsan Sabis, Harb Hatıralarım [Istanbul, 1943], Vol. 1, pp. 64-65; Arif Baytin, ilk Dünya Harbinde Kafkas Cephesi [Istanbul, 1946], pp. 49-51). Colonel Baytin, who was a Deputy from Ankara in the Turkish Republic when he published his book, was in charge of the twenty-ninth division of the Ninth Army Corps of the Third Army. He bitterly denounced Şakir's "optimum influence" (tesiri azami). That "undeniable" influence was brought to bear upon Enver who, yielding to Şakir's intervention, relieved the Commander of that Ninth Army Corps, replacing him with Şakir's choice, i.e., General Ihsan Giresonlu, then the commander of the thirty-fourth division of the Eleventh Army Corps. According to the Turkish daily Sabah, the Intelligence (istihbarat) branch of the War Office (i.e., Department Ü) mapped the strategy for massacres carried out by the çetes that were organized by Ittihad's Central Committee and directed by Şakir (Ariamard, December 13, 1918).
[49].Galib Vardar, in S. N. Tansu, ed., ittihat ve Terakki içinde Dönenler (Istanbul, 1960), pp. 244, 276-77.
[50].Türkei 198, vol. 8, A2616, and IA Orientalia Generalia 9, vol. 7, January 20, 1917.
[51].Politische Abteilung 3/ Türkei Po. 11 No. 3, vol. 1, submitted by Weismann on May 21, 1921, i.e., in the wake of Talat's assassination in Berlin (March 15, 1921). Some 13 months later (April 17, 1922), Şakir too was assassinated by an Armenian.
[52].Botschaft Konstantinopel 170, No. 3841, August 23, 1915. For his guerrilla activities, which included the brief capture of Ardahan, see Grofies Hauptquartier 186, Türkei 18/2 report Nos. 2734, 2736; 18/3 and 4, report Nos. 39, 43, 59, and 170. The capture by the Special Organization units of Ardahan and Artvin following the start of the Russo-Turkish hostilities in the winter of 1914 was accompanied by large-scale massacres of the native Armenian populations of these two cities. Apart from many other reasons fueling the Turko-Armenian conflict, these atrocities were the catalyst for a new cycle of violence, culminating in the wholesale destruction of the Armenians. This fact is conceded by a Turkish captain at the War Office's Intelligence Section, i.e., Department IL In his article series in a Turkish daily, and subsequently in a book, this captain refers to the criminal gangs who were "released from the prisons, and after a week's training at the War College's training grounds, were sent off to the east as the çetes of the Special Organization, perpetrating the worst crimes against the Armenians [Ermeni mezaliminde en büyük cinayetleri bu çeteler ika ettiler). Upon my 1918 visit to the sites of the atrocities, I have confirmed these 1914-15 massacres, and the role in them as brigand chiefs of Çerkez Ahmed and Lieutenant Halil, the two murderers of Zohrab and Vartkes, the Armenian Deputies in the Ottoman Parliament, and of Erzurum Deputy Sudi. The aim of Ittihad was to destroy the Armenians, and thereby to do away with the Question of the Eastern Provinces [Ermenileri imha etmek ve bu suretle Vilayati Şarkiye meselesini de ortadan kaldırmak istediler]" (Ahmed Refik [Altınay], iki Komite-Iki Kıtal [Ottoman script] [Istanbul, 1919], p. 23; for the author's personal confirmation of the massacres in Ardahan and Artvin see pp. 36-38; ikdam, December 23-28, 1918 installments, quotation from the December 26 issue). Altınay subsequently became a prolific author of historical works.
[53].Admiral de Robeck's report is in F0 371/5O89B/E949, February 18, 1920; the Intelligence report is in F0 371/5171/E12228, p. 7 of the 26-page report, August 29, 1920.
[54].Doğan Avcıoğlu, Milli Kurtuluş Tarihi (Istanbul, 1974), Vol. ÜI, p. 1,135.
[55].Rössler's quotation in original French is in Justicier, p. 228; his report to Berlin is in Türkei 183, vol. 40, A468, December 20, 1915. Rössler was not sure whether it was Şükrü or his deputy, A. Nuri, who made that remark. Biographical details provided by Nuri's brother indicate that Nuri did not know French well enough to converse in that language (Yusuf Kemal Tengirşek, Vatan Hizmetinde [Ankara, 1981]). Şükrü, on the other hand, had graduated from Galatasaray College, where the French language was prevalent, and had gone to Paris for advanced studies following his graduation from Istanbul Law School. After returning from Malta, where he had been interned along with other Ittihad leaders by the British, he served for a long time (first installed in Fethi Okyar's 1924 Cabinet) as Interior Minister in the nascent Turkish Republic, as well as Secretary General of the People's Party (Halk Partisi) founded by Atatürk.
[56].Türkei 158, vol. 24, A1373, January 3, 1916, report. Bastendorff's report is dated December 18, 1915. According to a British intelligence report Bastendorff was employed as an engineer at the No. 1 Section, 3rd Division of Baghdad Railway, at a location between Arada and Darbeesa. FO 608/244/6474.
[57]. Kölnische Zeitung, January 1, 1917.
[58].Vakit, December 12, 1918.
[59].FO371/6504/E10319.
[60].Der Zor was an independent district, mutasarrıflık, embracing Sabka, an open-air concentration camp site, and Ras ul Ain, a gigantic slaughterhouse; the other sites at Meskene, Abu Hrera, Hammam, Rakka, and Zierat were part of the Aleppo province.
[61].The details of this enclosure highlight the standard pattern of massacre in this part of the desert of altogether some 150,000 Armenians over a period of several weeks. After having been collected together at a spotin this case, Maratthe victims were then marched off in convoys of 2,000-4,000 each to Şedadiye on the Çabur River, a tributary of the Euphrates and several days away from Marat. A squad of mounted brigands surrounded the convoy, robbing the victims of the last of their possessions, including their clothing. They were then driven, completely naked, to Karadağ, a 3-hour-distant plateau encircled with hills, where they were set upon by the brigands and butchered with "axes, swords, and daggers," the whole slaughter being "watched by Salihzeki from a carriage from which he kept egging on the butchers with loud shouts" (Türkei 183, vol. 45, A31831, November 5, 1916, report to Chancellor Hollweg).
[62]. FO 608/244/8183.
[63].U.S. National Archives, Record Group 59.867.4016/373; Jackson's 25-page summary report of March 4, 1918, was compiled in Washington, D.C. Significantly, the Consul, who, like his German counterpart Rössler, lived in Aleppo for 10 years, also reveals that much documentation involving "details of massacres," which was too risky to relay to Washington via regular channels, was burned in Aleppo following the U.S. entry into the war in April 1917 (p. 20). The Consul further states that in one week 60,000 Armenians were butchered outside Der Zor, and that the total toll of the successive mass murders was 300,000 (pp. 11, 13); he attributed all this to Salihzeki having replaced Ali Suad, whom Jackson describes as a "high class gentleman who had spent 15 years of his life in Egypt, spoke English and French, and was highly esteemed by many in Aleppo" (p. 11); an almost identical view is in Türkei 183, vol. 42, A12911, Rössler's April 27, 1916, report.
[64].Enclosure to Consul Rössler's September 20, 1916, No, 93 report in Türkei 183, vol. 45, A28162; and in 183, vol. 44, A26116, September 5, 1916, report. For similar details from other sources, see also Rössler's July 29, 1916 report in 183, vol. 44, A21969.
[65].Türkei 183, vol. 44, A26116, September 5, 1916, report.
[66].Meclisi Mebusan Zabt Ceridesi 1918, No. 14, pp. 110-14. In its November 19, 1918, issue Journal d'Orient carried excerpts from that speech.
[67].Jhogovourt, December21, 1918.
[68].AT23, 24, 33, 41, 98, 102; FT24, 25, 32, 37, 74, 77, 78; ETA, 5, 14, 19, 41, 42.
[69].Botschaft Konstantinopel 169, No. (3378) folio 13, June 3, 1915, report.
Edited by QueBeceR, 22 November 2005 - 04:33 PM.