FULCRUM UPON WHICH ISSUE SITS

[MJ]

Dear Ali,

 

The primary chunk of the Armenian people fighting against the Ottoman Empire have been Armenians of Eastern Armenia (geographically speaking), some symbolic numbers for other countries like Iran, France, USA, etc, and definitely a symbolic number of Western Armenians. Additionally, the division between the Western and Eastern Armenians at the time were so significant that you could safely assume that you where dealing with two totally different nations – not that I don’t get this feeling in our days.

 

The core of the Army of the Republic of Armenia has consisted from the volunteers who had fought against the Ottoman Empire in the ranks of the Russian Army. On the tope of them, you can add those peasants, etc, of the Republic of Armenia, which had been drafted to the Army due to the mandatory military service laws. All this brings us to 60,000 at its apogee. As far as the diminished numbers of Armenian male population are concerned, those who had fought the Ottoman Empire would’ve not been subjected to Genocide, but rather would’ve been killed in action, at best. Therefore, to claim that the 60,000 number is resulted from the massacres is not persuasive, if not illogical.

 

As far as your observation #3 is correct, as far as the conflict of the interests between Armenia and Russia are concerned, however I miss the point as far as the Armenian Army and its “shrunk” numbers are concerned.

 

As far as the funding was concerned, I don’t think that it was a major problem at the time. Armenia had become a recipient of significant foreign aid from the USA, UK, etc.

 

Additionally, not only Armenia had not had militia but the regular Army was eliminating the small group of militia, or let’s call it “fedayees,” who had become nothing else but bandits, and the official policy of the Republic was “kill’em.” In any case, they have not outnumbered some several thousand heads.

 

This was a very quick response. Cannot be more detailed at the time.

 

Regarding the quotation of the Turkish hard-liners. “…the Armenian leaders made a cold-blooded calculation that if their peoples would suffer atrocities at the hands of the ottoman Turks…” There is a great deal of truth in this allegation. It is not made out of the thin air. Indeed such theory has existed in certain circles of Armenian Revolutionaries – primary of pagan belief. It is documented in the Armenian literature. It was something that “our land requires sacrifices, we have to nourish it with our blood,” and additionally, there has been another motto in some other revolutionary circles, “ the worse it is the better it is.” These “ideologists have existed, and I am aware of their existence up to our days.

But I think the Turkish hard-liners are taking it out of its context and proportions. I strongly believe that the Armenian Revolutionaries have to be judged on their merits in the court of Armenian History. However, they should be deemed responsible for what they have done, and the Turkish authorities have to be deemed responsible for what they have done to this nation.

 

As far as the rest of the nonsense related to the retributions and the land claims is concerned, I think we have discussed these issues multiple time in the Hye Forum, and perhaps we should ask TB to sell us another bridge – this time the Golden Bridge, but in such a way that when we but it for $999.99, we also get the Brooklyn Bridge free, and we get tax breaks due to the compensatory character of the sale.

 

Sorry, gotto run.

[MJ]

On the other hand, when one reads a little bit carefully what the Turkish hard-liners say, one case extract a great deal of confession.

 

Is that literally what they say, Ali, or did you just paraphrase their thesis?

 

Thanks.

[aurguplu]

dear mj,

 

of course there is a great deal of confession. the whole absurdity of turkey denying the genocide is statements to the contrary made by the contemporary turkish eyewitnesses and perpetrators abound. if you really tried to erase the memory of the genocide from turkish sources, you would have to do away with a substantial chunk of post-ottoman turkish literary figures, which you cannot do.

 

the absence of popularly disseminated information in turkey stems from the low reading rate of the population (as distinct from the literacy rate) and also the difficulty of linguistic access to the sources from the terminal ottoman-early republican periods due to the script and language reforms. ostensibly done to increase literacy and the influx of western ideas into turkey, and also to "break away with the ottoman past (ostensibly meaning the sultans etc.)", in my opinion one of the welcome fringe benefits was that access to the records of the last few years of the empire and first few years of the republic was thus effectively eliminated.

 

the above summary of the hardliners' position has been distilled from years of experience so does not reflect the stance of any particular person. but i think that i have reflected it reasonably accurately, and that many hardliners would subscribe to it.

 

by the way, i am positively surprised that you say there is a great deal of truth in it. if this stance were adopted by both parties to the conflict earlier, perhaps a solution could by now have been found.

 

i had forgotten to add a major important part to it, which i shall do as soon as possible.

 

cheers,

[aurguplu]

i largely agree, especially about the existence of a large chunk of ottoman armenians who had no truck wit the revolutionaries. the thing is that they were pacifists, and pacifists are usually not very active people. the revolutionaries, although smaller in number, were more active and thus able to create greater turmoil. the fly is small, but it makes your stomach turn, as we say in turkish.

 

i largely agree that istanbul and a few other western provinces) were spared the massacres because they would have been too visible, but 1) armenians originally residents of the eastern provinces could come to istanbul with their families to escape the massacres, and 2) some categories of armenians (like some religious denominations and specific places in anatolia) were spared the deportations.

 

i do not confuse the motives of the armenian leadership and those of the armenian community as a whole. obviously, the community was a very diverse group, with some opposing the empire and others supporting it, but as i said above, the rebellious faction was louder.

 

the whole thing is not incomparable to the plight of the kurds during our 15-year long conflict, where you could be a 85-year old veteran of the independence war with your medal proudly on your chest, and your grandson could be a member of the pkk because your people cannot speak their language in the country you fought to create. the armenians had major contributions to ottoman life, thus they had in a sense, invested in it, but of course the structure of the state, especially the legislation, failed to give you an equal status with the muslims. so morally speaking it is totally understandable that an armenian who contributed more than his fair share to the empire would resent his being treated as less than a less contributing member of the empire, especially a kurd.

 

i will continue with this, but have to dash now,

 

cheers,

[aurguplu]

dear thoth,

 

this will be a partial response as i am short of time (we all seem to be pretty busy these days). i shall try to address a few points you raised in your above posting.

 

1. re noubar. he might of course have been exaggerating, as his stance was basically "we bled for the common cause, and therefore have a right to a place of our own". but the thing is, some of the things he said are verifiable from other contemporary sources and witnesses etc. it is true that quite a few armenians had been organising against the empire way before the war. it is true that they had a separatist agenda. it is true that they were protected, assisted, encouraged, trained, financed and even manned by the great powers, especially russia. the numbers, he might have exaggerated with the 50,000 volunteers but the 5,000 armenians in french armies (these were active around antep if i remember correctly), and the 150,000 in the russian ranks are verifiable from these countries' sources. also as i pointed out, noubar delivered his speech to those who had fought the war and knew exactly what each participant did to what extent. he could have overdramatised certain things but he could not have painted them a picture which they knew to differ too much from the reality they themselves had witnessed. so the noubar testimony, some exaggeration aside, is an accurate reflection of the facts in its broad outlines.

 

2. as with the later kurdish issue, legal restrictions on a nation does not necessarily impede a nation's capability. the kurds are not allowed almost anything, yet in the late 1980's and early 1990's the pkk was asking for kurdish visas on turkish passports 20 miles east of erzincan, and the visas had to be issued by the kurdish "consulate" in belgium! and the pkk was 50,000 strong at the peak of its power. they were capable of antitank and anti-aircraft operations, and brought down a few high ranking officials and statesmen. so don't underestimate a well-organised group's action capability (plus the armenians had a legal right to organise, whereas the kurds didn't. they still managed to. imagine what the armenians could have done with their legal rights!). so even if the numbers and ratios are subject to dispute, yes, i do think that the armenians had everything they needed to organise militarily in a substantial manner in the eastern provinces, and have no reason to believe that they didn't use the opportunity. and also do not forget that in guerilla warfare the ration of classical army to a guerilla army is about 1:17, i.e. it takes at least 17 soldiers of a classical army to do in one guerilla (i am flaunting here my army training as a tank officer). of course we are proud to have brought this ratio down to 1:1.5, by using counterguerrilla, but in 1915 we did not have counterguerilla capability, and were using kurds and circassians, or worse, convicts to make up for that deficiency.

 

also, regarding "Do you think that the Ottomans could have even held the countryside in the face of such forces (with the Russians also pressing trhe attck...). Please." well, it was precisely the countryside where the ottomans had least grip, and for a greater part of the war until 1917, when the russians got out for internal reasons, the situation in the countryside was dire. it wasn't only the armenian militia, of course, the kurdish, circassian, and turkish militias all contributed to the pandemonium.

 

re "Also - it should be noted that until 1917 (Russian Revolution & breakdown of control over the army) it was Czarist policy to ship Armenian to the Balkans to fight because of fear of potential Armenian nationalist ambition." this i didn't know. at any rate there were russian armenian volunteers both in the russian army as well as militia operating in turkey. this is a fact. the russians may have had such a policy, but then where and how did these guys come from?

 

we keep repeating a line in turkey that some czar - i think it was alexander ii - said that he wanted an armenia next to the turkish border with no armenians in it. are you aware of this quote and if so, what do you think of it?

 

re "Why are there no accounts whatsoever of any deportation convoys being rescued/liberated? - not a single one." this is a stong point. well, during the kurdish uprising there was a very strong kurdish militia, but still, some 2,000 villages that sheltered them were evacuated. to the best of my knowledge the pkk never undertook any operation to stop a single evacuation. they rather made sure it received as much coverage as possible in the west to popularise the issue and condemn the turk (the hardliners' line with the armenian organisations sacrificing their people to draw attention to their cause). the same could have been the case with the armenian deportations, also, it could be that they were strong enough to cause damage in the countryside, which was de-manned (males conscripted to the army and ended up in far away places) but not as strong to carry out such an operation against the ottoman army or kurdish militia. also, they might have chosen to concentrate their efforts on depopulating the countryside first and then dealing with the regular army in larger theatres.

 

but i concede that this is a strong point in your argument, and i am not rejecting it in total.

 

3. i agree with the material gain and scapegoat-finding motives of the CUP, also the attitude of muslim turks - especially that of the muslim refugees from the balkans - and their being used by talat and his men. but that alone cannot fully explain it. a scapegoat must be a goat first. if the armenians had not given them the pretext, they would have had no pretext to use. the jews, just as rich, with greater connections everywhere, alike of a different religion, traditionally mistrusted, despised and disliked, with lower rates of fluency in turkish, suffered nothing similar, because they did not participate in the attempt to break up the ottoman state.

 

4. as i had stated in earlier postings, i do not think that pan-turkism was initially a motivating factor in the genocide. i think that they first planned they genocide (and i very, very strongly suspect the initial inspiration, and much of the planning, were german), and then they realised that such a move could also open up the way to central asia, and then it was drummed. i think so because at the time pan-turkism was a very young ideal with little or no roots in "turkish" society, which had not even yet got used to the idea of defining itself as turkish. so they could not rally up the people behind them saying that they had to get rid of the armenians to join our central asian brethren, because no-one cared. they could only rally people up by pointing the visible danger of turkey breaking up, and infidels taking over the country, and killing off the turks. this was far more relevant than the brethren in the altai mountains. but of course, when the idea of getting rid of the armenians was planted in minds, that fringe benefit was also seen.

 

let me also point out here - for sake of accuracy and scholarly honesty - that i am perhaps in the minority with this line of thought, both among foreign scholars and probably the turkish ones as well. the foreign scholars would accept the pan-turkic theory because a) they are familiar with parallel developments from their own histories, it serves the purpose of painting a bloodthirsty image of the turks, c) it can be used endlessly against the germans for having implanted the ideas (pan-turkism was born in berlin) and d) it is partially correct. the turks would embrace that theory because a) republican ideal stressed turkish identity, if not any pan-turkic ideal (the soviets!), the CUP were the scapegoat for the disintegration of the empire (to be honest, they were largely responsible for it) in the republic, and c) turkish pride probably found it hard to stomach that we lost the empire just because of the incompetence of the CUP, maybe we had to find some grand ideal.

 

all this said, it is not to be denied that there was a pan-turkic ideal that cost us a great deal. i may perhaps be wrong in downplaying the role played by pan-turkism, but frankly speaking, i don't see that it was a driving force strong enough to result in something like this. but perhaps i am wrong.

 

in the above discussion - as in many other discussions about armeno-turkish relations - both parties suffer from the one-sidedness of the sources to some extent. i am familiar to a certain degree with the theses and at least the secondary sources of the turkish position, and also some western sources, you are familiar with the armenian versions of the same kinds of sources. now much of the picture that emerges from both groups of sources largely reflect the truth, or rather, several truths. of course the sources are imperfect: they are biased, exaggerate certain facts, downplay others, omit yet others, and in some cases are not above inventing things. this is understandable because both emanate from parties that fought.

 

you can take me to many armenian families who can tell me stories i could rarely if ever hear in turkey, i can take you to turkish families who could tell you stories you would never hear from your armenian community or anywhere in armenia. if we are narrow-minded bigots, we will stick to the stories of our respective communities - which are undoubtedly to a very large extent demonstrably true -, but if we are more than that, we will cross the isthmus and examine the other's stories with a critical eye. this is why i keep disagreeing with Domino when he says that turkish sources are biased and therefore to be dismissed. no. of course they are biased, as are the armenian ones and probably most of the other ones. there were very few, if any, totally impartial observers at the scene then. if we had hindu or chinese or japanese or non-muslim, non-christian african sources relating the events, we could argue that they would be as free from bias as possible and accept their verdict. but this is not the case. most of our sources are from people who were directly involved in the conflict. therefore we must read them all.

 

gotta dash now,

 

cheers,

 

[ June 20, 2002, 08:27 AM: Message edited by: aurguplu ]

[MJ]

No, Movses, hitting the keyboard with a pencil in my mouth.

[MosJan]

WoW