Turkey And The Alleged Armenian Genocide

The “Armenian Genocide” Resolution: Insulting a nation for local political advantage?
An Open Letter to Honorable Members of Congress and concerned American Public,

Sponsored by some members of Congress anxious to please their Armenian electorate, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, upon the resolute opposition of President Bush and the Congresmen who value the friendship of Turkey, has decided to postpone the submission to vote the so-called Armenian Genocide Resolution,.
Turks are not alone in condemning this initiative in the Congress, which became a yearly mantra of the House of Representatives, as a stark example of deception and the distortion of history under ethnic-religious considerations and internal political interests.
There is no doubt that, if adopted, this resolution will cause serious damage to Turkish-US relations. An overwhelming majority of Turks will be convinced that, after all, America’s friendship since the Second World War is only a partnership of convenience which can be tossed away for the sake of self-serving interests. As an immediate consequence the already unpopular support and cooperation provided by Turkish governments to the US for military operations will completely erode under the pressure of the Turkish public opinion. However, harm done to Turkish-American relations will not stop there, for the simple reason that this Resolution will certainly be perceived by the Turkish public opinion not only as an unjust verdict without a court, but as an insult to the whole Nation.
In this unfortunate process, a vitally important precept of relations between nations is being disregarded: Political differences between nations and governments can be resolved or their harmful consequences can be alleviated, but such unsubstantiated accusations and insults to a nation by the elected representatives can hardly be forgotten. To accuse a nation with genocide, a concept developed after the Second World War, cannot be taken lightly. By taking the one-sided, biased claims of the Armenian Diaspora and their ultra nationalist allies known for their inhuman terrorist acts which claimed the lives of 46 Turkish diplomats, the US Congress will exactly be in the position of insulting a Nation who had to defend itself under the most adverse circumstances, loosing three million of its sons and daughters. This insult is further aggravated with the underlying suggestion of the responsibility of the present Turkish Republic and its people after almost a century. The Congress should not to play substitute to historians and let itself be deceived and misguided in this contentious issue.
This biased political verdict on the history cannot serve the proclaimed objective of creating “sensitivity towards human suffering” to prevent their repetition. It does not contain any word about the causes and circumstances of the 1915 wartime events and the Turkish-Muslim victims, as if to corroborate the claim that “what is important is the lives of the Christians, the lives of the Muslims do not count”. That cannot be the just and right way of combating “Islamist extremism”, which is profusely used to justify military interventions. Unfortunately such unfortunate events are not rare in the history, even among the most civilized nations. But if parliaments start picking only some of them in a biased manner and issue unfair resolutions, one can imagine what kind of service would be done to humanity.
Let us not forget the solidly documented fact that Armenian citizens of the Ottoman Empire were encouraged, organized and armed by the Allied Powers, particularly by Russia and France, for rebellion against the Government in support of their war effort. As Hovhannes Katchanouni, the first Prime Minister of the Independent Armenian Republic, has admitted in his report to the 1923 Party Convention, Armenians have been used as tools for imperial ambitions to divide and share the Ottoman territory. Is it possible to deny the share of responsibility of these Powers in all that happened to both Turks and Armenians?
Who’s truth?
From the start the Resolution takes as truth the Armenian claims which have been successfully challenged and refuted by several Turkish and American historians. Most of these accusations are based on the Memoirs of the then American Ambassador to the Ottoman Government, Henry Morgenthau, whose political ambitions and religious biases were well known. An active supporter of America’s entry into war, he had never been to Anatolia, but relied on the notes of his two Armenian assistants. At least three historians, two of them American, have found serious discrepancies between what is written in the memoirs and what actually he had reported to the State Department. In fact, the opinion of Admiral Bristol, who had served as the US High Commissioner afterwards and of several other American observers contradicted Mr.Morgenthau’s Memoirs. these reports, as well as the reports of several American observer missions’ reports to Washington have been completely ignored. If the US Congress considers it as its mandate to pass a judgment on the history, it should at least do it with the help of historians and by giving equal chance to both sides to express their views. Turkey invited the Armenian side to establish a commission composed of Turkish, Armenian and foreign historians to examine the case and the opening of all state archives, including the Armenian Archives. This proposal, formally made to President Kocharian by the Prime Minister T.Erdogan remained without response, most probably because the Armenian side considers as risky a genuine search for truth. If the Armenian side is so sure of their arguments, why do they refuse this common sense proposal of a joint commission and opening of their archives?
Who’s benefit?
There should be no doubt about the immediate harmful consequences of this resolution to Turkish-American cooperation. But the harm will not stop there. Since such resolutions are instigated and supported by the present regime in Erevan, how can anyone expect Turkey to open its borders and extend its cooperation to a hostile regime, which challenges the internationally recognized borders and still keeps under its occupation a fifth of the territory of its neighbor, Azerbaijan.
When it comes to Turkey, to accuse it with genocide may be politically convenient. But if the same criteria are applied to events of systematic subjugation and annihilation of several peoples for greed and spoils by Western colonialism, who is ready and willing to assume responsibility? To condemn nations by codification of history through parliamentary resolutions and laws may be a convenient way to exempt the privileged ones from the burden of the history. But in the long-run it can only deepen the existing divide between nations.
Do we have a right to ignore the history?
The text of the resolution contains several mistakes and distortions. We need not repeat here all of them.
Suffice it to mention only a few that:
• The figure of the victims of the relocation: The total number of Armenians dead as the result of relocation from the war zone is blown up to 1.5 million, sometimes even to 2 million, which corresponds to more than the total of all Armenians living in Turkey at that time. Armenians in Western Turkey, catholic and protestant Armenians were not relocated.Even the Armenian representative to the Paris Peace Conference of 1921 had given a figure of 600-700 thousand as being relocated.
• Indictment of the “top leaders by a Turkish Court”: Indeed such a court had been established by orders of the occupying powers in Istanbul. The nature of this Court is well described by the British High Commissioner Calthorpe in his report to London in 1921: “…trials were proving to be a farce and injurious to our own prestige and to that of the Turkish Government”. In fact, the Court of Appeals later annulled all the judgments of this “kangaroo court”, as it is named by Prof. Justin McCarthty, the author of the most serious, documented demographic research on the Armenian and Muslim populations. If in the opinion of the authors of this resolution those who were responsible of the crimes have been punished, what is now the sense of accusing the whole Nation of the same crimes once again?
• The assertion that the chief organizers of the “Armenian Genocide” were condemned to death by court-martial: This is false. The three Ministers were condemned “in absentia” for “political crimes of dragging the country into a terrible war”. Two of them have later been assassinated by Armenian terrorists.
• Reliability of the American Records: Records by individuals of various origins referred to in the Resolution are carefully picked among those favorable to Armenian views by Ambassador Morgenthau’s secretaries, leaving aside the reliable ones. A notable example of exclusion is the report of the US Consul in Aleppo stating that the number of Armenians who reached Aleppo was 500.000 (of the 900.000) and they were settled in houses and camps established by the Ottoman Administration. Another report by Captain Emory Niles and Mr. Arthur Sutherland, ordered by the United States Government to investigate the situation in Eastern Anatolia is ignored. Just a few words from this report: “In this entire region we were informed that the damage and destruction had been done by the Armenians who, when the Turkish Army advanced, destroyed everything belonging to the Musulmans…committed murder, rape, arson and horrible atrocities of every description…For instance the only quarters left intact in the cities of Bitlis and Van are the Armenian quarters…while the Musulman quarters were completely destroyed”. According to Justin McCarthy this report was never included in the papers of the American Investigation Commissions. Only a partial copy of it can be found in the American Archives (See U.S. 867.00/1005).
• February 9,1916 Resolution of the Congress to help the relocated Armenians: It is interesting to note that, Robert Lansing, in his report dated Nov.21, 1916 to President Wilson stated that the Armenian deportation was due to the betrayal of Armenians. The Ottoman Government, after initial hesitation that American assistance would encourage the rebels and fall in the wrong hands, later accepted its distribution despite its misgivings. Is it imaginable that a government with the aim to “annihilate the Armenian race” would accept the distribution of humanitarian assistance?
• Words attributed to Adolph Hitler suggesting that the World has forgotten the “Armenian annihilation”: As proven by the American and Turkish historians this quote was not found in any speech delivered by Hitler, but was invented by an American journalist.
• Recognition of the “Armenian Genocide by the UN”: The United Nations has never decided upon or accepted such a claim. The fact is that a pro-Armenian report, based on the works of Armenian historians, was submitted to the UN Human Rights sub-committee, but rejected also with the vote of the Western representatives, including American, on the grounds that the UN cannot pass judgment on history.
• International recognition and affirmation of the “Genocide”: Such affirmations are purely political and based on the propaganda documents of the 1914-1925 eras against Turkey, which was in war against the Allied Powers or where the Armenian Diaspora has political influence. Mentality in all of them is “Christian versus Muslim”. We cannot live in the XXI Century with such bias and the Crusades mentality. Wrong analogies are made with the holocaust, forgetting that, contrary to the Jewish Holocaust, in the present case there was an open rebellion and collusion with the enemy. Turks do not deny the excesses, shortcomings and tragic loss in the relocated Armenian population due to epidemics, poor logistics and insufficient protection, but Turks themselves were not exempt from the same catastrophes, their loss is no less.
• Armenian side has not been able to exhibit even a single document to prove that the relocation was decided by the Ottoman Government with the intention to annihilate its Armenian subjects. Let us recall the words of Admiral Bristol: “…I have received reports from Americans who were there at that time to the effect that the Christians cleared out the Muslim population completely so that there was not a living thing, even a dog, a cat or a chicken left in the country”.

Our intention is not to repeat here all the arguments proving the defects of this resolution, but to invite their authors for respect of the minimum standards of common sense and fairness. American culture and tradition, as we know it, is based on these two principles, which should not be sacrificed for the sake of election considerations, in particular in the case of a nation who strongly supported the US in Korea, during the missile crisis of 1960, in Somalia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and several others. By implying that the Turkish people may not show the same spirit of cooperation in the future, we do not mean a threat or retaliation, but simply want to draw attention to an eventual, unfortunate mistake which would deeply wound the Turkish people’s honor, as well as its and feelings towards to a valued friend and ally.
A Group of Friends of America in Turkey