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Chicago Tribune
Armenian story has another side
By Norman Stone, a historian and the author of "World War I: A Short
History"
October 16, 2007
http://www.chicagotribune.com/services/newsp aper/printedition/tuesday/chi-oped1016endoct16,0,2 073252.story
All the world knows what the end of an empire looks like: hundreds of
thousands of people fleeing down dusty paths, taking what was left of
Their possessions; crammed refugee trains puffing their way across arid
plains; and many, many people dying. For the Ottoman Empire that process
began in the Balkans, the Crimea and the Caucasus as Russia and her
satellites expanded. Seven million people -- we would now call them
Turks -- had to settle in Anatolia, the territory of modern Turkey.
In 1914, when World War I began in earnest, Armenians living in what
is now Turkey attempted to set up a national state. Armenians revolted
against the Ottoman government, began what we would now call "ethnic
cleansing" of the local Turks. Their effort failed and caused the
government to deport most Armenians from the area of the revolt for
security reasons. Their sufferings en route are well-known.
Today, Armenian interests in America and abroad are
well-organized. What keeps them united is the collective memory of
their historic grievance. What happened was not in any way their
fault, they believe. If the drive to carve out an ethnically pure
Armenian state was a failure, they reason, it was only because the
Turks exterminated them.
For years, Armenians have urged the U.S. Congress to recognize their
fate as genocide. Many U.S. leaders -- including former secretaries of
state and defense and current high-ranking Bush administration
officials -- have urged Congress either not to consider or to vote
down the current genocide resolution primarily for strategic purposes:
Turkey is a critical ally to the U.S. in both Iraq and Afghanistan and
adoption of such a resolution would anger and offend the Turkish
population and jeopardize U.S.- Turkish relations.
Given this strong opposition, why would Congress, upon the advice of the
House Foreign Affairs Committee, make itself arbiter of this
controversy?
What makes the Armenians' dreadful fate so much worse than the
dreadful fates that come with every end of empire? It is here that
historians must come in.
First, allegedly critical evidence of the crime consists of forgeries.
The British were in occupation of Istanbul for four years after the
war and examined all of the files of the Ottoman government. They
found nothing, and therefore could not try the 100-odd supposed
Turkish war criminals that they were holding. Then, documents turned
up, allegedly telegrams from the interior ministry to the effect that
all Armenians should be wiped out. The signatures turned out to be
wrong, there were no back-up copies in the archives and the dating
system was misunderstood.
There are many other arguments against a supposed genocide of the
Armenians.
Their leader was offered a post in the Turkish Cabinet in 1914, and
turned it down. When the deportations were under way, the populations
of the big cities were exempted -- Istanbul, Izmir, Aleppo, where
there were huge concentrations of Armenians. There were indeed
well-documented and horrible massacres of the deportee columns, and
the Turks themselves tried more than 1,300 men for these crimes in
1916, convicted many and executed several.
None of this squares with genocide, as we classically understand it.
Finally, it is just not true that historians as a whole support the
Genocide thesis. The people who know the background and the language
(Ottoman Turkish is terribly difficult) are divided, and those who do
not accept the genocide thesis are weightier. The Armenian lobby
contends that these independent and highly esteemed historians are
simply "Ottomanists" -- a ridiculously arrogant dismissal.
Unfortunately, the issue has never reached a properly constituted
court. If the Armenians were convinced of their own case, they would
have taken it to one. Instead, they lobby bewildered or bored
parliamentary assemblies to "recognize the genocide."
Congress should not take a position, one way or the other, on this
affair.
Let historians decide. The Turkish government has been saying this for
years. It is the Armenians who refuse to take part in a joint
Historical review, even when organized by impeccably neutral
academics. This review is the logical and most sensible path
forward. Passage of the resolution by the full House of
Representatives would constitute an act of legislative vengeance and
would shame well-meaning scholars who want to explore this history
from any vantage point other than the one foisted upon the world by
ultranationalist Armenians.
Armenian story has another side
By Norman Stone, a historian and the author of "World War I: A Short
History"
October 16, 2007
http://www.chicagotribune.com/services/newsp aper/printedition/tuesday/chi-oped1016endoct16,0,2 073252.story
All the world knows what the end of an empire looks like: hundreds of
thousands of people fleeing down dusty paths, taking what was left of
Their possessions; crammed refugee trains puffing their way across arid
plains; and many, many people dying. For the Ottoman Empire that process
began in the Balkans, the Crimea and the Caucasus as Russia and her
satellites expanded. Seven million people -- we would now call them
Turks -- had to settle in Anatolia, the territory of modern Turkey.
In 1914, when World War I began in earnest, Armenians living in what
is now Turkey attempted to set up a national state. Armenians revolted
against the Ottoman government, began what we would now call "ethnic
cleansing" of the local Turks. Their effort failed and caused the
government to deport most Armenians from the area of the revolt for
security reasons. Their sufferings en route are well-known.
Today, Armenian interests in America and abroad are
well-organized. What keeps them united is the collective memory of
their historic grievance. What happened was not in any way their
fault, they believe. If the drive to carve out an ethnically pure
Armenian state was a failure, they reason, it was only because the
Turks exterminated them.
For years, Armenians have urged the U.S. Congress to recognize their
fate as genocide. Many U.S. leaders -- including former secretaries of
state and defense and current high-ranking Bush administration
officials -- have urged Congress either not to consider or to vote
down the current genocide resolution primarily for strategic purposes:
Turkey is a critical ally to the U.S. in both Iraq and Afghanistan and
adoption of such a resolution would anger and offend the Turkish
population and jeopardize U.S.- Turkish relations.
Given this strong opposition, why would Congress, upon the advice of the
House Foreign Affairs Committee, make itself arbiter of this
controversy?
What makes the Armenians' dreadful fate so much worse than the
dreadful fates that come with every end of empire? It is here that
historians must come in.
First, allegedly critical evidence of the crime consists of forgeries.
The British were in occupation of Istanbul for four years after the
war and examined all of the files of the Ottoman government. They
found nothing, and therefore could not try the 100-odd supposed
Turkish war criminals that they were holding. Then, documents turned
up, allegedly telegrams from the interior ministry to the effect that
all Armenians should be wiped out. The signatures turned out to be
wrong, there were no back-up copies in the archives and the dating
system was misunderstood.
There are many other arguments against a supposed genocide of the
Armenians.
Their leader was offered a post in the Turkish Cabinet in 1914, and
turned it down. When the deportations were under way, the populations
of the big cities were exempted -- Istanbul, Izmir, Aleppo, where
there were huge concentrations of Armenians. There were indeed
well-documented and horrible massacres of the deportee columns, and
the Turks themselves tried more than 1,300 men for these crimes in
1916, convicted many and executed several.
None of this squares with genocide, as we classically understand it.
Finally, it is just not true that historians as a whole support the
Genocide thesis. The people who know the background and the language
(Ottoman Turkish is terribly difficult) are divided, and those who do
not accept the genocide thesis are weightier. The Armenian lobby
contends that these independent and highly esteemed historians are
simply "Ottomanists" -- a ridiculously arrogant dismissal.
Unfortunately, the issue has never reached a properly constituted
court. If the Armenians were convinced of their own case, they would
have taken it to one. Instead, they lobby bewildered or bored
parliamentary assemblies to "recognize the genocide."
Congress should not take a position, one way or the other, on this
affair.
Let historians decide. The Turkish government has been saying this for
years. It is the Armenians who refuse to take part in a joint
Historical review, even when organized by impeccably neutral
academics. This review is the logical and most sensible path
forward. Passage of the resolution by the full House of
Representatives would constitute an act of legislative vengeance and
would shame well-meaning scholars who want to explore this history
from any vantage point other than the one foisted upon the world by
ultranationalist Armenians.