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Re: History of the Armenian-Turkish conflict
ESU - 25.04.2005, 11:05History of the Armenian-Turkish conflict
http://www.tallarmeniantale.com/background.htm
Prof. Justin McCarthy provides a background look at the conflict
The history of the Armenian-Turkish conflict is complicated and
contentious, impossible to describe accurately in statements of
one-sided guilt such as that presently before Congress.
Ethnic conflict between Turks and Armenians actually began more
than 100 years before World War I. Actions of the Russian Empire
precipitated the conflict. In 1800, Armenians were scattered within and
beyond a region that now encompasses Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and
Eastern Turkey. In all but small districts, Armenians were a minority
which had been under Muslim, primarily Turkish, rule for 700 years. The
Russian Empire had begun the imperial conquests of the Muslim lands
south of the Caucasus Mountains. One of their main weapons was the
transfer of populations — deportation. They ruthlessly expelled whole
Muslim populations, replacing them with Christians whom they felt would
be loyal to a Christian government. Armenians were a major instrument of
this policy. Like others in the Middle East, the primary loyalty of
Armenians was religious. Many Armenians resented being under Muslim
rule, and they were drawn to a Christian State and to offers of free
land (land which had been seized from Turks and other Muslims). A major
population exchange began. In Erivan Province (today the Armenian
Republic) a Turkish majority was replaced by Armenians. In other regions
such as coastal Georgia, Circassia, and the Crimea, other Christian
groups were brought in to replace expelled Muslims. There was massive
Muslim mortality—in some cases up to one-third of the Muslims died.
The Russians expelled 1.3 million Muslims from 1827 to 1878. One
result of this migration, serving the purposes of the Russians, was the
development of ethnic hatred and ethnic conflict between Armenians and
Muslims. Evicted Muslims who had seen their families die in the Russian
Wars felt animosity toward Armenians. Armenians who hated Muslim rule
looked to the Russians as liberators. Armenians cooperated with Russian
invaders of Eastern Anatolia in wars in 1828, 1854, and 1877. When the
Russians retreated, Armenians feared Muslim retaliation and fled. Hatred
grew on both sides.
The situation was exacerbated by rebellions of Armenian
revolutionaries in the 1890s in which cities in Eastern Anatolia were
seized and many Muslims and Armenians were killed. Intercommunal warfare
between Turks and Armenians in Azerbaijan during the Russian Revolution
of 1905 added to the peoples’ distrust of each other. Muslims and
Armenians were now divided into sides, antagonists. Each group believed
that in a war they would be killed if they did not kill first, a classic
self-fulfilling prophecy. Most Muslims and most Armenians had no wish to
be a part of this, but they were caught in the awful consequences of
their expectations and their history.
Intercommunal war erupted when the Ottoman Empire entered World War
I. Armenian revolutionaries, many trained in Russia, attempted to seize
main Ottoman cities in Eastern Anatolia. They took the city of Van and
held it until Russia invaders arrived, killing all but a few of the
Muslims of the city and surrounding villages. In the countryside, Muslim
tribesmen killed the Armenians who fell into their hands. Armenian and
Kurdish bands killed throughout the East, and massacre was the rule of
the time. Russian and Ottoman regular troops were less murderous, but
they too gave little quarter to those viewed as the enemy. Some of the
worst civilian deaths of Turks and Armenians came at the end of the war.
The killing went on until 1920. Many more died of starvation and disease
than from bullets.
The results were among the worst seen in warfare. More than forty
per cent of the Anatolian Armenians died; similar mortality was the fate
of the Muslims of the war zone. In the province of Van, for example, 60%
of the Muslims were lost by war’s end.
During the war, each side engaged in de facto deportations of the
other. When the Russians and Armenians triumphed, all the Muslims were
exiled, as were all the Armenians when the Ottomans triumphed. The
Ottoman government also organized an official deportation of Armenians
in areas under their control. None of these deportations was wholly
justified by wartime necessity, but the deportations were not acts of
one-sided genocide on the part of either Turks or Armenians.
A One-Sided Accusation
It is the Muslim actions against Armenians that have been called
genocide, an accusation that is primarily based on counting only the
Armenian dead, not the Muslim dead. I do not believe the Ottoman
government ever intended a genocide of Armenians. This conclusion is
based on both evidence and logic:
• Of the masses of secret deportation orders seen to date, not one
orders murder. Instead, they order Ottoman officials to protect deported
Armenians. It has been argued that the Ottomans must have sent out
another set of secret orders, contradicting the first set of secret
orders, which were a subterfuge. This assumes that the Ottomans
deliberately confused their own officials in wartime so that future
historians would be fooled—a more than unlikely proposition.
• Large Armenian populations, such as those of Istanbul and other
major cities, remained throughout the war. These were areas where
Ottoman power was greatest and genocide would have been easiest. To
decide whether genocide was intended, it is instructive to compare this
to the Nazi genocide of the Jews. The Jews of Berlin were killed, their
synagogues defiled. The Armenians of Istanbul lived through the war,
their churches open.
• Another telling argument against genocide is that hundreds of
thousands of Armenians survived deportation to the Arab World. If
genocide were intended, it must be believed that the Ottomans could not
manage to kill them, even though these Armenians were completely under
Ottoman control for three years. This is not believable.
It was in fact in the regions where Ottoman control was weakest
that columns of Armenian deportees suffered most. The stories of the
time give many examples of columns of hundreds of Armenians guarded by
perhaps two government guards. When the columns were attacked by
tribesmen or bandits Armenians were robbed and killed. It must be
remembered that these tribes were those who had themselves suffered
greatly at the hands of Armenians and Russians. Were the Ottomans
guilty? They were guilty of not properly protecting their citizens.
Given the situation of the time, with Turks and Kurds fighting for their
lives against Russians and Armenians, this is understandable, although
it is never excusable for a government not to protect its people.
Conditions are best illustrated in the Van province, where Muslim
mortality was greatest. The central government ordered the Van governor
to send gendarmes, rural policemen, to guard columns of Armenian
deportees. He responded that he had 40 gendarmes at his disposal—all the
others were fighting at the Russian Front. The 40 gendarmes were
protecting Muslim villages against Armenian attacks. He refused to let
the Muslims be killed by Armenians so that Armenians could be protected
from Muslims.
While Ottoman weakness should be censured, should we not also ask
how well Armenians and Russians protected the Turks and Kurds who fell
under their control? The answer is that in provinces such as Van, where
intercommunal fighting was fiercest, Muslims who could not escape from
Armenian bands were killed. Virtually the entire Muslim population of
southeast and far eastern Anatolia either became refugees or died. Like
the deportation of Armenians, this too was a deportation with great
mortality. It should also be recorded when the evils of deportation are
considered.
Few of the historical questions raised by the Muslim-Armenian
conflict can be answered in a short description such as the above, nor
can they be answered by Congressional votes. Why then has the Congress
sometimes in the past voted condemnation of one side in the conflict?
A World of Black and White
One reason is that we have all been conditioned to expect a world
of heroes and villains, or victims and villains. This feeling has
sometimes caused Americans to misinterpret events, particularly in the
Middle East. However, it is the Holocaust of the Jews that has most
deeply and properly affected us. Our remembrance of the evils of Nazi
Germany has unfortunately caused us to see other events of history
through the glass of the Holocaust. In the Holocaust, an innocent people
was persecuted and annihilated. There was no Jewish threat to the German
State. Yet the full force of a modern state was mobilized to slaughter
the innocent. We naturally think of the Holocaust when we evaluate other
examples of inhumanity. But no event of history can compare to the
Holocaust. Indeed, in history most loss of civilian life, has taken
place in wars in which both sides were armed, both sides fought, and
both sides were victims. World War I in Anatolia was such a war.
Assuming one-sided evil has led to an unfortunate approach to the
history of the Armenians and the Turks. Instead of investigating the
history of the time without prejudice, all the guilt has been attached
to one side. Once the Turks were assumed to be guilty, the search was on
to find proof. The process has been one of assertion and refutation. It
was asserted that Talat Pasha, the Ottoman Interior Minister, had
written telegrams ordering the murder of Armenians, but these proved to
be forgeries. It was asserted that statistics supposedly “from the
Armenian Patriarchate” proved that Armenians were a majority in Eastern
Anatolia, but these statistics were found to have been created, without
reference to any actual records, by a writer in Paris. It was asserted
that letters published during World War I by the British Propaganda
Office showed Turkish guilt, but these have proven to have been sent by
missionaries and Armenian revolutionaries, both of whom were less than
neutral sources. It was asserted that courts-martial by a post-war
Turkish government proved that Turks had engaged in genocide, although
careful examination of the records shows that the charges were included
among long lists of ‘crimes’ brought by a government under control of
British occupiers—lists that include all sorts of actions that are
demonstrably false and include anything that would please the conquerors.
The problem with these assertions is that the accusations have been
given wide distribution, while the reputations have been generally known
only to historians, For example, so few have seen actual population
statistics that it is commonly believed that Armenians were a majority
in what is still called Armenia, even though Muslims actually
outnumbered Armenians three to one. The British propaganda descriptions
of Armenian deaths, all of them from anonymous sources, has often been
reprinted, with no mention that the Armenian revolutionary parties were
a source. Nor is it mentioned that history have proven that the British
propagandists routinely invented their “evidence.” Those who speak of
supposed evidence from the period when the British occupied Istanbul
neglect to mention that the British themselves, who had complete control
over all Ottoman official records, were forced at the time to admit that
they could find no evidence of an organized genocide against Armenians.
Wrapping It Up for the U.S. Congressmen
There is no time in this short statement to consider all the
effects of prejudice and the power of ethnic groups in America. It can
simply be said that few wished to consider any but anti-Turkish
statements. The Turks themselves, busy for decades with reconstruction
of a war-torn country, long paid little attention to what was being said
of them in America. Only recently have studies questioning conventional
beliefs begun to appear. Generations of Americans had been raised with
one set of beliefs, and those who have brought up opposing views have
been vilified, their arguments unconsidered. Sadly for those of us who
firmly believe that the Holocaust took place, some scholars of the
Genocide of the Jews have attacked any reconsideration of
Armenian-Turkish relations out of a fear that this will somehow give
comfort to those who, against all evidence, disavow the Holocaust. It
must also be admitted that we academics have been unwilling to undertake
studies of Armenian-Turkish relations, because of problems with career
advancement and even physical dangers.
Should what I say here prove to the United States Congress that
Turks were not guilty of one-sided genocide against Armenians? No. Nor
should the statements of those with opposing views convince the Congress
that their views are correct. The historical questions are too involved
for easy answers or quick condemnations. History should be determined by
the normal procedures of historians. We should write our books and
engage in debates until we gradually come to accepted conclusions.
Turkish scholars, Armenian scholars, and those of us who are neither
Turks nor Armenians should not feel that Congress has decided that the
issue is resolved, when we know that this is not the case. Such action
can only hinder real investigation of the historical question. There is
a very real threat to scholarship when one group of scholars must face
the awful and undeserved title of ”genocide deniers” when they do their
proper work.
There is a statement on the Turkish-Armenian conflict that Congress
can justifiably pass, but it is a general humanitarian statement. The
lesson to be learned from the World War I experience of the Turks and
the Armenians is not that one group was evil, one good. The lesson is
that good people, whatever their ethnic group or religion, can be driven
by events, their environment and their history to do evil, because they
believe, they have no choice. In the history of war, that is all too
often the case. The moral to be drawn is not that one side, one ethnic
group, should be blamed. That is an historical error and a wrong that
perpetuates the ethnic hatred that caused the disaster of the Armenians,
as well as the disaster of the Turks. The events of World War I should
be honored and mourned as a human, not an ethnic tragedy. If the
Congress is to make a statement on the events of World War I, I would
hope it would be a statement of pity for all those who suffered that
terrible history.
From Armenian Allegations: Myth and Reality — The preceding is a
transcript of a testimony delivered by Prof. Justin McCarthy before the
House Committee on International Relations on May 15, 1996.
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