The Role of Turkish Physicians...

[Guest Fadi]

The Conclusion of Dadrians essay, "The Role of Turkish Physicians in the World War I Genocide of Ottoman Armenians." (Published in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 169-192, 1986)

 

 

 

pp. 182-184

 

 

CONCLUSION

 

There are striking similarities between the Armenian genocide and the Jewish Holocaust in the behaviour of the perpetrators. In this sense, the Armenian experience can be seen as a precedent for the subsequent Jewish experience. It cannot be discounted that the former in some respects directly influenced, if not stimulated, the latter.

 

Foremost among these similarities are the incidents of experiments on subjects treated as guinea-pigs for the development of serums as antidotes against typhus. Moreover, the fear of typhus epidemics seemingly prompted Ottoman and German health authorities to respond in like manner. In the section dealing with Professor Numan, a piece of court-martial testimony was adduced depicting him as the authority ordering the destruction of certain clusters of population which were feared as agents of epidemic contagion. This pattern of behaviour is singled out by Robert Jay Lifton, in his analysis of German conduct vis-à-vis their victims. Referring to the general conduct of German physicians, Lifton notes the 'extensive sadism' that was part of the overall scheme of 'mass murder'.72 The contraption purporting to be for purposes of 'disinfection' but causing instant death to the infant victims in the Trabzon area looks disturbingly like a kind of prototype for the World War II Nazi gas chamber. Equally if not more important is the fact that both the Turkish and the German physicians were not only identified with but were functionaries and leaders of a monolithic political party that was in charge of the State.

 

The second point to be made is that however exhaustive a study may be, and this one is not, there should not be explicitly or implicitly any blanket condemnation of all the physicians of a system. Turkish physicians who went out of their way to shelter and even protect Armenian colleagues and deportees were not lacking; some of them did so at considerable personal risk. But in the setting in which they worked, such behaviour represented a deviation from the prevalent norms. The brave revelations by the two Turkish surgeons during the first months of the Armistice on the treatment of young Armenians as guinea-pigs, and the speed with which they were silenced by Turkish nationalists is a case in point.

 

Role perception and role performance are often coherent fixtures of a behavioural pattern essentially responding to their own dynamics. Turkish physicians and surgeons, to the degree of their involvement in the pursuits of the Ittihad party, did not hesitate to become the servants of that party. They felt even less inhibited by the emergencies, and more emboldened by the opportunities of the global war into which Ittihad had plunged Turkey. This involvement was not free from crass opportunism, nor was it devoid of a measure of fanaticism that served to substitute what Nietzsche called 'refined cruelty' for the art and science of healing. The Hippocratic oath could only be discarded or subverted by invoking higher loyalties through a socio-political system that not only legitimized lethal role performance but also promoted and rewarded the performers. Next to the military, the medical professionals in Turkey represented the stratum that was the closest to Ittihad and to its aspirations. The more committed ones completely abandoned their profession and became provincial commissars and administrators overseeing the macabre details of the mass slaughter.

 

Role perceptions are inextricably interwoven with self-images. In the enactment of genocide, the self-images of the physicians involved were not only stimulated by the resurgence of an atavistic nationalism but, more importantly, they were nurtured in the conspiracy of a political party investing these physicians with a elitist mind-set. They thought of their destructive role performance as a pioneering service both to their nation and to the party they considered to be the focus of the chosen ones. The explosiveness of such twin attitudes, intertwined as they are, came into full relief in the Armenian genocide, and in more amplified form in the Holocaust of the Jews. This kind of elitist and at the same time brutal embrace of party and nation is the most important aspect of these two castastrophes, and as such, a major factor in the genocidal process. For any such enterprise, all other things being equal, the chief warrant for success is inexorableness in the pursuit of the goals, and therefore, of the victims; tight party control and discipline, and a high level of party cohesiveness are supposed to be the indispensable prerequisites for such inexorableness.73 In other words, genocide, in order to justify itself, is to be enacted with ruthless severity, with its authors remaining oblivious to cost, another phenomenon in which the Armenian and Jewish experiences seem to converge remarkably.74

 

One type of such cost involved the consequences of destroying Armenian medical personnel when the Ottoman Army and the destitute civilian population were in dire need of health care. As a Swiss chronicler of the war stated, 'Armenian military physicians, who in the lazarettes day and night were serving with great sacrifice, were taken away and liquidated'.75 Included in this category were the Armenian nurses.76 The Armenian medical profession with its auxiliary services sustained losses proportionate to the losses of the total population. Many of them vanished from the scene without a trace; others fell victim to epidemics or battle. But for those who are known to have been massacred or killed individually, mostly by the complicity of fellow physicians, Armenian sources supply the following breakdown: sixty-seven physicians and surgeons, fifty-four pharmacists, ten dentists' and five medical students.77 This decimation in part affected the poor health conditions of the Turkish troops, as 'lack of sanitary arrangements and of sufficient medical help is decimating the ranks of the Turkish soldiers in a manner unthinkable under German conditions'.78

 

The participation of medical professionals in the murder sometimes led to the deaths of victim and victimizer alike. According to the testimony of a Turkish staff captain in the Ottoman army, this is what happened in Bitlis.

 

All Armenians had been deported from the region, and there remained in Bitlis only some three hundred young girls, belonging to the best Armenian families in the town, who had been compelled to remain. All were kept under close supervision in the Armenian church, and were reserved for the use of the army. Soldiers and officers alike visited the church, which soon became a hotbed of disease. Each regiment that passed through the town on its way to the front left its traces, so after a time all these unfortunate girls became infected. The commandant of the town, seeing this state of affairs, ordered that 'all these women shall be punished for exhausting the vital forces of the Ottoman army and poisoning with their infection the children of the Fatherland', and as a result the military commandant decided to get rid of them. Some were poisoned, others were executed.79

 

A German medical officer focused on this phenomenon of sexual assault in a two-volume study, The Moral History of World War I, describing scenes of 'incredible bestiality' perpetrated on Armenian girls and young women in a scheme of

 

deportation which Turkish rulers justified through a trumped-up charge of armed Armenian uprisings and which unquestionably represents the greatest crime of World War I with its 1.2 million civilian victims. It is at the same time a singular instance in world history of aggregate cases of robbery slayings, sex murders, theft, rape, pimping, and white slavery.80

 

Even in the throes of defeat, the momentum of murder was sustained as if to register a sense of frustration for incomplete results. Dr. Þakir, sensing impending defeat, asked the wartime American Acting Consul at Erzurum, Stapleton, to tell the Russian Commander about to capture the city that should Russian soldiers 'touch a single hair of a Turk', whatever is left of the Armenian nation will be wiped out in retaliation. Þakir added:

 

It is imperative that from Istanbul to India and China there be only one unitary Muslim population with Syria serving as a nexus between the Muhammedan worlds of Asia and Africa. This vast project will be accomplished through the scientific genius and organizational talent of the Germans and the valiant arm of the Turks.81

 

In the final analysis, there was very little racism in the ideology that authorized and legitimized the genocide of the Armenians. Not only were a large number of children adopted, not only were young girls and women encouraged to convert in order to escape extermination, but quite a few doctors, dentists, pharmacists and nurses were virtually compelled to opt for apostacy as the only path to deliverance and salvation. It is evident that not only was there a marked absence of racism, but a pronounced effort to mingle Armenian blood with the gene-pool of the new, homogenized Turkish nation. It is nationalism which emerges as the proper frame of reference for the Armenian genocide.

 

The fact that not a single member of the Turkish medical personnel has been subjected to retributive justice (rather than to a pro-forma prosecution through a series of indictments) is a telling commentary on the pervasive links between justice and might. The extensive preparations by the victorious Allies for an International Tribunal to try Turkish war criminals accused of massacres' were aborted, and Turkish courts-martial were sidetracked by the advent of Kemalism that rose to defy the feuding, discordant and weary Allies, and ultimately imposed its will upon them in the July 1923 Lausanne Treaty,82 in which, as Winston Churchill scornfully put it, 'history will search in vain for the word "Armenia"'83

 

 

 

 

pp. 191-192

 

 

NOTES

 

 

72. Robert Jay Lifton,'Medicalized Killing in Auschwitz', Psychiatry 45 No. 4 (November 1982),

288, 289, 297. Lifton published a massive volume on this subject after the present study went to

press. See The Nazi Doctors. Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide (New York: Basic

Books, 1986). References to this author and the Armenian genocide are in Chapter 21, and on pp.

470-80, 492-3.

 

73. At the third sitting of Harput trial series Special Organization Colonel Hüsameddin Erturk

testified to the fact that Dr. Þakir recruited his assistants for that organization from the local cells of

the Ittihad party. Renaissance, 7 August 1919.

 

74. In his impressive study of the Jewish case, Hilberg, after making some rough computations

about overall German gains and losses, concluded that, This figure [the losses] swamps the entire

income derived from the destruction process'. He also cites from a circular, issued by the Nazi Party

Chancellery, 'confidentially' exhorting its agents to act with 'ruthless severity'. Raul Hilberg, The

Destruction of European Jews (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1961), pp. 646,651. As to the Armenian case, if one disregards the overall figures computed by the Armenians, American Ambassador,

Abram Elkus, Morgenthau's successor, addressing just the matter of tax revenues told the State Department, 'it is estimated three millions annually [Turkish pounds, then 1 TP was worth about $9 in paper, as assessed by Elkus] in taxes have been lost, because of the Armenian massacres'. Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, The Lansing Papers, 1914-1920, p. 785, 17 November 1916 report. As to the losses to the Turkish war effort, French military historian Larcher, despite his sympathies for the Turks, concedes that the Armenian deportations 'deprived the Illrd Army of the valuable services of many skilled and educated men, eliminating a large part of the resources in the operational zone'. Commandant M. Larcher, La Guerre Turque dans la guerre mondiale (Paris: Chiron, 1926), p. 396.

 

75. S. Zurlinden, Der Weltkrieg, Vol. 2 (Zürich: Art. Institut Orell Füssli, 1918), p. 640.

 

76. Professor Elmer of Anatolia College on Merzifun related that 'the nurses were caring for the

sick soldiers of the Ottoman Army under the auspices of the American Red Cross Society . . . nearly

all the nurses of the hospital were Armenians ... [they] were driven away by the gendarmes just like

the rest of their unfortunate sisters'. Bryce-Toynbee, The Treatment, pp. 336-7. According to the

testimony of two American nurses employed in the Military Hospital of Bitlis, 'All the Armenian

nurses, druggists and orderlies in the hospital were also taken. It mattered not that they were the

most intelligent and faithful helpers, and that there was no one left to prepare medicines for the

Turkish patients—all had to go'. Knapp, The Tragedy, p. 54.

 

77. Les persecutions contre les medicins Armeniens, pp. 26-58; a large, comprehensive

volume in Armenian is offered by T. M. Garoyan, Medz Yegernee Nahadag Hai Pujhishgneru

(Boston: p.p., 1957).

 

78. Liman von Sanders (General of Cavalry), Five Years in Turkey (Annapolis: U.S. Naval

Academy, 1927), p. 89.

 

79. Ararat VI, No. 66 (Summer 1919), 422; in the Jerusalem Armenian Patriarchate Archive,

Series 7, File H, No. 107, the captain is identified as Nabil Bey, the son of Sþkir Paþa, and

Adjutant to then Commandant de la Place of Istanbul, Esad. The wholesale slaughter of Bitlis

province was observed in its aftermath by a Venezuelan officer with German affiliations who had

taken part in the military operations against the Armenians at Van. See Rafael de Negates, Four

Years Beneath the Crescent, p. 124.

 

80. Magnus Hirschfeld and Andreas Caspar, Sittengeschichte des L Weltkrieges, Vol. 2

(Leipzig, 1929-30), pp. 289-90; 2nd edn. (Hanau: Schustek, 1964), pp. 510-11.

 

81. J. de Morgan, Contre leþ barbares de l'Orient (Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1918), p. 188. See

also Journal d'Orient, 11 May 1919, p. 2, col. 3. Following the declaration of 'holy war' against the

infidel Allies (14 November 1914), the large crowd had proceeded to the German Embassy from the

balcony of which Dr. Nazim, consistent with this affinity for Germany, held a speech depicting

Germany as the genuine friend of three hundred million Muslims for whom Kaiser Whilhelm II had

sworn his allegiance. Deutsche Tageszeitung, 16 November 1914. Nazim repeated his exaltation of

Germany at the 1910 annual congress of Ittihad (31 October/1 November-13 November), and

especially of the Kaiser. Türke/158/11,A15682, Saloniki Consul Dr. Schwörbel's 14 September 1910

report.

 

82. Ismet Pasa's deputy who headed the Turkish delegation at Lausanne, Dr. Riza Nur, was a

member of the opposition party (itilaf), with some personal experience of persecution, including

torture, inflicted upon him by Ittihad in the prewar years. Still he shared Ittihad's views on the

Armenians. In his memoirs he recounted how he mocked the Allies' request to grant the Armenians a

national home in some part of Turkey, then being formed by the Kemalists. Alluding to the humanity

and comforts of America, Dr. Nur suggested that such a home should be offered by the United

States. 'Everyone laughed.' When Giulio Cesare Montagna, the session chairman, appealed to Dr.

Nur's magnanimity by reminding him of the approaching Christmas season, the latter retorted saying

it was a western and Christian holiday. 'Again they laughed, and we laughed too. The matter was

closed and my remarks were not included in the official transcripts'. When the massacres were

brought up on 6 January 1923, he denied them, and blaming the deaths on disease, hunger and

deportations, he walked out. Kissing his cheek, Ismet, his chief, thereupon congratulated him,

declaring, 'You buried the Armenian Question. I congratulate you'. Dr. Nur also issued a threat to an

Armenophile American in Lausanne: 'Should the Armenians take the life of a single Turk, the people

are sworn to massacre in his place ten thousand Armenians remaining in Turkey'. Dr. Riza Nur,

Hayat ve Hatiratim, Vol. Ill (Istanbul: Altindað, 1968), pp. 1058-74. This penchant for threatening

resort to wholesale murder as a means of punishment or deterrence was evident in Dr. Riza Nur's 25

May 1921 letter to the Commander of the Eastern Front regarding suspicions that Soviet historians

were spying on the Turks by pretending to study the ruins of Ani, the mediaeval centrepiece of the

architectural treasures of the Armenian Church. He suggested that 'the relics and traces of the

monuments of Ani be wiped off the face of the earth. You will be rendering a great service to Turkey

when you accomplish this goal'. Kazim Karabekir, istiklal Harbimiz (Istanbul: Türkiye, 1969), p. 905.

 

83. Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty (1911-15), and later the Secretary of State for War

(1919-21), observed: There is no reasonable doubt that this crime was planned and executed for

political reasons. The opportunity presented itself for clearing Turkish soil of a Christian race opposed

to all Turkish ambitions . . . and planted geographically between Turkish and Caucasian Moslems'.

Winston S. Churchill, The World Crisis: The Aftermath {London: T'. Butterworth, 1929), pp. 405, 407.

Lloyd George who was part of the Allied front repeatedly making solemn promises of justice and

redemption to the Armenians denounced the behaviour of the Allies, the signatories of the Lausanne Peace Treaty, as 'abject, cowardly and infamous'. Stephen Bonsai, Suitors and Suppliants, The Little Nations at Versailles (New York: Prentice, 1946), p. 198.

[MSHAK]

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[DominO123]

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