THE ARMENIAN HERO WHOM TURKEY WOULD PREFER TO FORGET

[Yervant1]

ROBERT FISK: THE ARMENIAN HERO WHOM TURKEY WOULD PREFER TO FORGET

 

Sunday 12 May 2013

 

Sarkis Torossian, the Armenian-Turkish officer, was awarded medals

by Mustafa Kemal

 

"Torossian was personally awarded medals for his courage by Mustafa

Kemal"

 

Confronted by the chilling 100th anniversary of the genocide of

1.5 million Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Turks in 1915,

Turkey's government is planning to swamp memories of the massacres

with ceremonies commemorating the Turkish victory over the Allies

at the battle of Gallipoli in the same year. Already, loyalist

academics have done their best to ignore the presence of thousands

of Arab troops among the Turkish armies at Gallipoli - and are even

branding an Armenian Turkish artillery officer who was decorated for

his bravery at Gallipoli as a liar who fabricated his own biography.

 

In fact, Captain Sarkis Torossian was personally awarded medals for his

courage by Mustafa Kemal, one of the Turkish heroes of Gallipoli who

later, as Ataturk, founded the modern Turkish state. But in view of the

desire of some of Turkey's most prominent historians to brand Torossian

a fraud, the word "modern" should perhaps be used in inverted commas.

 

Now these academics are even claiming that the Armenian army captain

invented his two medals from the future Ataturk. Yet one of the

most the outspoken Turkish historians to have fully acknowledged

the 1915 genocide, Taner Akcam, has tracked down Torossian's family

in America and inspected the two Ottoman medal records; one of them

bears Ataturk's original signature.

 

Turkey, as we all know, wants to join the EU. I also, by chance,

happen to think it should. How can we Europeans claim that the

Muslim world wishes to stay "apart" from our "values" when an entire

Muslim country wants to share our European society? We are hypocrites

indeed. Yet how can Turkey still hope to join when it still refuses

to acknowledge the truth of the Armenian genocide - and symbolises

this denial by a scandalous attack on a long-dead Ottoman officer?

 

Captain Torossian's memoirs, From Dardanelles to Palestine, were

first published in Boston in 1947. Ayhan Aktar, professor of social

sciences at Istanbul Bilgi University, first came across a copy of

the book 20 years ago and was amazed to learn that there were officers

of Armenian descent fighting for the Ottomans.

 

The eight-month battle for Gallipoli - an Allied landing dreamt up by

Churchill in the hope of capturing Constantinople and breaking the

deadlock on the Western Front - was a disaster for the British and

French, and the mass of Australian and New Zealand troops fighting

with them. They abandoned the beach-heads in January of 1916.

 

In his book, Torossian recounts the fighting at Gallipoli and other

battles in which he participated - until, towards the end of the Great

War, he found his sister among the Armenian refugees on the death

convoys to Syria and Palestine. He then turned himself over to the

Allies, meeting (but not liking) T E Lawrence and re-entering Turkey

with French forces. He eventually travelled to the US where he died.

 

The gutsy Professor Aktar, however - noticing his colleagues'

unwillingness to acknowledge that Arabs and Armenians fought in the

Ottoman Army - decided to publish Torossian's book in the Turkish

language. Initial reviews were favourable until two historians from

Sabanci University took exception. Dr Halil Berktay, for example,

wrote 13 newspaper columns in Taraf calling the entire book a fiction

and Torossian a liar.

 

Taner Akcam, the Turkish historian who discovered Torossian's family,

was stunned by the reaction to the Turkish edition of the book; one

critic, he says, even claimed Torossian did not exist. The Turkish

Foreign Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, spoke at Gallipoli two years ago

and gave a perfectly frank account of how Turkey planned to define

the Armenian genocide on its hundredth anniversary. "We are going to

make the year of 1915 known the whole world over," he said, "not as an

anniversary of a genocide as some people claimed and slandered (sic),

but we shall make it known as a glorious resistance of a nation -

in other wour defence of Gallipoli."

 

So Turkish nationalism is supposed to win out over history.

 

Descendants of those who died with the Anzac troops at Gallipoli,

however, might ask their Turkish hosts in 2015 why they do not honour

those brave Arabs and Armenians - including Captain Torossian -

who fought alongside the Ottoman Empire.

 

Comments have been closed for legal reasons

[Yervant1]

http://www.armradio.am/en/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/logo_up_en.png

Lecture at Clark University to commemorate anniversary of Armenian Genocide

16:02 22.03.2014

 

http://www.armradio.am/en/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Taner-Akcam-1-620x300.jpg

To mark the 99th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, Clark University’s Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies will present a lecture by Professor Taner Akçam. “On Truth and Memoirs: The Case of an Armenian Soldier in the Ottoman Army” will explore the subject of a vigorous debate over the authenticity of a memoir recently published in Turkey.

Akҫam will discuss the case of Sarkis Torossian who served as a lieutenant in the Ottoman Army during World War I. According to his memoir, Torossian was a graduate of a military college and a decorated Ottoman officer who served at Gallipoli and other important battle fronts. Learning that his parents and sister were deported and died in the Armenian Genocide, Torossian changed allegiance. He joined the Arab rebellion in Palestine and Syria and fought with a French battalion against Kemalist forces in Cilicia. Akçam will consider the veracity of Torossian’s account and interpret the public debate surrounding the memoir in Turkey. Turkish scholars Ayhan Aktar and Edhem Eldem will comment and respond.

Torossian immigrated to the United States in 1920. In 1947, he published his memoirs in English, “From Dardanelles to Palestine: a true story of five battle fronts of Turkey.” Following the Turkish translation published in 2012, reactions in the Turkish press have been intense. Some discredited the memoir as fabricated. Others championed its authenticity. Akҫam will discuss the veracity of Torossian’s account and interpret the public debate surrounding the memoir in Turkey.