From Andrew Wheatcroft's "THE OTTOMANS," 1993:

Haul Halit, an educated and liberal man, made the direct connection between the restiveness of non-Muslim minorities and European commercial domination of the empire:

Foreign Powers ... take up, some of them, the cause of those eastern Christians who are under Ottoman rule, alleging they are acting in the name of ‘humanity’. Their real motive, however, is that they may use them as a point d’appui for their political schemes and designs. . . each native Christian community entertains, nowadays more or less without disguise, sentiments of animosity towards the Osmanlis, and even sympathizes with the enemies of the Turkish empire in times of international trouble or war.

He continued to suggest that the attacks on Christian minorities, ‘which would be represented in Europe as an outburst of Musselman fanaticism’, were an understandable response to provocation: ‘The Turk’s patience is almost inexhaustible, but when you attack his women and children, his anger is roused, and nothing on earth can control it.’ The Turks were portrayed as savages and barbarians in the West; they saw themselves as slow to anger but implacable once roused. Europeans looked down on the Turks with disdain, and the Turks returned the compliment.

 Further Factoids:

JOHANNES LEPSIUS, as a defense witness in the trial of Soghoman Tehlirian, stated "Just before the war, the Armenians in Turkey numbered 1,850,000," further adding that the figure came from the Patriarchate in "Constantinople." The Patriarch then would have fabricated his 2.1 million figure by having adding 250,000... assuming the zealous Lepsius was not himself exaggerating, as Armenian historian Kevork Aslan put the figure at 1.8 million (in 1920)... statistics he must have also received from the Patriarch.

Keep in mind Armenians like Balakian concede 1 million died, and you can see the deception with their "over a million" claims. Once the Patriarch offered the ballooned 2.1 million figure, he split it up as 840,000 dead, and 1,260,000 Armenians alive in the Ottoman Empire of Dec. 1918. Since the "alive" could be verified with better accuracy than the "dead," the 1,260,000 figure becomes better acceptable. Subtract the inflated 250,000 difference (2.1 million minus 1,850,000) from the 840,000 alleged dead, and you arrive at a mortality of less than 600,000.

Even the unreliable Patriarch has been outdone by today's dishonest genocide scholars. 

 Armenians hate it when the word "holocaust" is linked strictly with the genocide of the Jews. Balakian stakes his claim on the word by pointing out an 1895 New York Times article used the headline, ANOTHER ARMENIAN HOLOCAUST.

Balakian writes that the missionaries "had millenial views, and hopes that the conversion of the world to Christianity would bring about the Second Coming of Christ and thus the fulfillment of history. But it became clear... the Muslims of Turkey were not going to become Christian..." and so they concentrated on the Christians, and "the Armenians seemed among the most welcoming to the Protestant mission." All true. Not so true is the assertion that the missionaries concentrated on the Christians when they "realized that the Ottoman authorities and Turkish families punished and sometimes even killed Muslims who showed an interest in Christianity." Not the part that some Muslims had enough fanaticism to wish to harm those who wanted to convert... that part is believable, although once again Balakian doesn't lose an opportunity to lend further potential evidence of the barbarism of the Turks. (I wonder how a strictly Christian community from those times in America would have treated one of their own who expressed an interest to turn Muslim.) No, the part that he would want us to believe is one where the missionaries turned their attention to the Christians for humanitarian reasons, out of concern their preaching would bring harm to the Turks from other Turks. The missionaries' already-existing prejudices against the Turks intensified when the Turks refused to be converted. This is how these people of God engaged in an awful eight year program of vilification against the Turks (from 1915 on; they weren't friendly before, either), fueling their drive to raise money with the ensuing demonization. Arnold Toynbee stated ALL of the testimony from the now-discredited Bryce reports came from the missionaries, who forgot one of the basic commandments: THOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS AGAINST THY NEIGHBOR.

As Balakian proudly writes that "Armenia became the first nation to adopt Christianity," one would think such good Christians as the Armenians would be the first to honor this particular commandment. By weaving selective facts to serve his agenda, Peter Balakian is certainly not one of these good Christians.

Once the Ottomans took over, Balakian writes the Armenians were subjected to a set of oppressive social and political rules. Is he implying Muslim citizens were not subjected to similar rules that would be frowned upon in a democracy? At a point in history, for example, one of these silly rules required ethnic groups to wear different colored shoes. Balakian outlines the beastliness of the Turks in a sub-chapter entitled, "Infidel Status in the Ottoman Empire." No doubt there were injustices, but here lies the danger when one neglects perspective. As an example, Robert Curzon suggested (in his 1854 book partly entitled "Armenia") that injustices stemmed from inferior officers getting out of line without the knowledge or acquiescence of their superiors... pointing out arbitrary power was not exclusive to the Ottomans, reminding us that the USA was "a land of liberty, where every free and independent citizen had the right to beat his own nigger."

The big picture, however, was that the Ottoman Empire was an extremely tolerant nation, especially when compared to the European nations, where a Muslim was not even considered a human being. The Armenians greatly prospered under the Ottomans... how else could they have become as wealthy as they did? Quite a few Armenians even rose to the highest governmental rank of Pasha, during the days when a Catholic in America had little hope of getting elected dog catcher.

When Balakian begins quoting the hopelessly racist Prime Minister of England, William Gladstone, as the author does at the beginning of Chapter 4, we know we're in trouble. (Gladstone referred to Sultan Abdul Hamid II as "the bloody Sultan" and "the great assassin"; not to be outdone, French President Clemenceau joined in the chorus with "the Red Sultan." A more reasonable Armenophile, however, had painted a different picture of the Sultan, in 1895.) Gladstone used his hopelessly exaggerated Bulgarian massacres for political gain, keeping quiet... as to be expected.... regarding Bulgarian atrocities against Turks.

Let us be reminded by where Gladstone was coming from ("The Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East," 1876): he asserted the Turkish race was... from the first black day they entered Europe, the one great anti-human specimen of humanity... as far as their dominion reached, civilisation vanished from view. Just one propagandistic example of The Terrible Turk corrupting western minds, from early on.

Balakian throws selectively incriminating passages from two Britons, P.H. Massy, who wrote (among other things) that the Armenians couldn’t earn a living. If the Armenians couldn’t earn a living, how would they be able to… in large part… control the economy? (See The 1915 Armenian Revolt in Van: Eyewitness Testimony, for a different perspective on how Armenians lived; many seem to have been better off than most Turks. One of them, for example, served as the mayor of Van… before getting shot by his own. Better yet, an Armenian explained in an 1857 book all the way from America that the Armenians were so prosperous, they "constitute the very life of Turkey.") William Ramsay is said to have been “fond” of the Turks, but one wouldn’t know it if he actually used the word “slavery” to describe the lot of the Armenians, whom he elaborates were “mats on which (the Turk wiped the mud from his feet).”

From Wheatcroft's "The Ottomans"

(British Captain Norman) points out that the assertion concerning the Hamidieh Cavalry being employed in Sassoun "is equally false and the number of troops employed was greatly exaggerated." He adds: "Three weak battalions and one mountain battery are all that were sent into the valley... and the total Armenian losses did not exceed 200 men in the fighting with the regular troops." — "The Armenians Unmasked," 1895

"Abdul Hamlet"; a critical Turkish cartoon of the period
(Wheatcroft's "The Ottomans")

 Balakian lays the groundwork to establish what a “mentally unstable” tyrant the sultan was. At times, he certainly was no angel. However, let us listen to what an even-handed historian says of the matter, as Andrew Wheatcroft, in “The Ottomans”:

“It is not uncommon for political adversaries to describe an opponent as ‘evil’ or ‘mad’. The enemies of Abdul Hamid, both inside and outside the empire, considered him both mad and bad. His ‘madness’ lay in not following the approved path of Westernization… if his rhetoric was of the past, the sultan was also the most effective modernizer of Ottoman society. Many of the promises embodied in the constitution were fulfilled. He provided the empire with a basic structure of secondary education, with a network of railways and… roads… telegraph…”

“Although there was considerable brutality – particularly in the capital, with the sultan’s secret police – fear rather than brutality was the controlling ethic of the system… Abdul Hamid failed not because he was brutal or cruel but because he lacked the will to control his own creation.”

“As the secret Hamidian state became more powerful and more secretive, its need for enemies – real or imaginary – grew ever greater. The most notable focus for these obsessive fears was the Armenians… As a group they were not popular, given their traditional role as moneylenders and bankers. Many of the Western reports by journalists and missionaries supported the Armenians’ cause; others condemned them. The bloody events under both Abdul Hamid and his successors are read differently by each side, but for the Ottomans the Armenians represented a threat to their control of the state. Abdul Hamid was himself a target for assassination, and the occupation of the Ottoman Bank in Constantinople by Armenian nationalists in 1895 was a mortal affront. “

“The degree of the sultan’s responsibility for the killings that followed is uncertain: he assuredly could not have been unaware of what was going on… (As with past inter-communal conflicts in Bulgaria and Bosnia), the Ottoman authorities simply encouraged long-standing hatreds to spill over into massacre. The role of the state was one of ‘restoring order’.”

“No Ottoman sultan has ever been more universally execrated than Abdul Hamid. On the one side he was condemned as ‘Abdul the Damned’, or ‘the Red Sultan’.”… in Western eyes, by 1907 he had come to embody all the worst features attributed to the Ottomans – cruelty, cowardice and, less plausibly, lust.”

Balakian details the awful crimes perpetrated against the Armenians, among whom no doubt many innocents suffered. However, as with the “genocide” years, the picture being presented is that of a poor, helpless people being set upon because they complained of the injustices with double taxation and the Kurds… and whatever violence that took place from their end was nothing more than self-defense.

Captain Charles Boswell Norman wrote in "The Armenians Unmasked" (1895)  that these stories should not be accepted at face value: "The Osmanli (Ottoman) has yet to be heard." (The English have) "heard stories ad nauseam of massacres, of pillages, of the ravishing of women, but none of these stories have been corroborated by a single European eyewitness."

The author ignores Western reports that do not suit his agenda. As early as 1877, for example, the British Ambassador (Sir Henry Layard) was told by the Armenian Patriarch that he would be behind rebellions to gain the attention of Europe.

The Armenians were aware, especially since England became rabidly anti-Turkish during these years (under the leadership of Gladstone; the Russian, Mayewski, wrote an excellent paper describing exactly what was going on), that the European powers were looking forward to taking the “Sick Man” apart. (Establishing secret treaties to do so... particularly in the later WWI years.) Aside from conditioned anti-Turkish prejudice, another reason not to accept at face value many of these Western reports (decrying what happened to the Armenians) is because they easily could have had ulterior motives. The Armenian plan was to provoke; they purposely instigated massacres to get the Europeans to step in, knowing the Europeans were hovering like vultures to do so.

I did not concentrate on the 1890s end of the genocide tale too much at this site, although you can find many 19th Century Western accounts with a different view than Peter Balakian’s sprinkled throughout. When I rebutted Dr. Dennis Papazian’s “Misplaced Credulity,” I inadvertently got into this area in more detail. See, for example, how there were 22 Armenian provocations throughout different provinces of the empire in the last three months of 1895, alone... where the Armenians did not just heroically fight back (as Balakian details with 600-700 holding off four Turkish battalions in 1896), but went about their own violent sprees targeting innocent Muslims. It’s the same M.O. as with “1915”… they fired the first shot and rebelled; and when the response came (the same response any other nation would claim the right for), the Turks would become perceived as the bloody barbarians.

Meline Toumani, "The Burden of Memory," Sept. 3 2004, The Nation. (More excerpts.)

  Kamuran Gurun wrote during a two year period of this rebellion, perhaps 5,000 Turks died at the hands of the Armenians, without provocation (and less than 20,000 Armenians died, including Armenians killed by Armenians… one-tenth of Balakian’s ballooned figure, from 1890-1896; 20,000 sounds a lot closer to the Turk-hating Lepsius’ figure of less than 89,000… no doubt  exaggerated in itself; Bliss concluded 41,000-42,000)… what about the “human rights” of those victims Peter Balakian contemptuously doesn’t waste a breath on? As Gurun logically wrote: “It would be fair... to remember how many people lost their lives in rebellions or disorders in their own or other countries, and think how much right they have to use the term massacre."

Consequently, the American press and people became outraged, as Chapter 6, “Humanity on Trial,” outlines. Little surprise, with only one side of this story blasting away.

The massacres played a part in the Republican party platform in 1896, Balakian writes… the two other international issues being Cuban independence from Spain (where Cubans suffered probably worse than the 1915-1916 Armenians, with twice the number “deported,” and probably no less deaths), and the annexation of Hawaii. I wonder why the injustices from the latter two episodes are practically never spoken of today? Why… would you... $uppo$e?

Balakian outlines all the many Western books and accounts to validate his version of events. One in particular caught my attention: Frederick Davis Greene’s “The Armenian Crisis in Turkey: The Massacre of 1894, Its Antecedents and Significance.” The “evidence”? “Missionary and relief worker reports,” published “anonymously.” That’s right… as if these people who gave up their lives at home to live in an alien land, fueled by a single-minded purpose…  would be objective and bias-free, and would not take the word of Armenians' “survivor testimony” at face value, or wouldn’t even be motivated enough to “embellish” such stories. Greene, a missionary himself, was BORN of missionary parents, in Turkey… a potential zealot’s zealot.

Greene even had the audacity to write, “it seems to be the systematic policy of the government to crush the Armenians, and it looks as though they will be exterminated.” Ahhhh… just the kind of man after Peter Balakian’s heart.

History gives the answer to how valid Greene’s prediction turned out to be. Regardless, his is the perfect example as to why this propaganda has unilaterally poisoned the minds of Americans, and other Westerners. “Greene’s book… was reviewed widely around the nation and had a large impact on the national consciousness.” Who would have doubted Greene’s word? After all, he was a man of honor and conscience… since he was a man of God. The precedent to his counterpart today, the “genocide scholar.” They, too, must be people of honor and conscience, because they appear humanitarian… by speaking out against the worst crime toward humanity. Everything that they are saying must be the truth.

Clara Barton

Balakian outlines all the many lazy-thinking “intellectuals” in America who jump at accepting one side of a story without bothering to do any objective homework… giving credibility to the “Turks are monsters” version of these massacres all the more. (“What the Friends of Armenia had started… had become a national movement by the summer of 1895.”) Soon, Clara Barton would head the relief organization, staying at the famous Pera Palace hotel in Istanbul, “with the stench of death hanging in the air.”(Must be quite a time machine in the possession of the poet-turned-historian.)

Now, what government (unless very poor and desperate; the Ottomans were poor, but not desperate) would give permission for a foreign entity to set up shop on their soil, for the purpose of providing relief, particularly from a nation not that friendly? Imagine if, say, Iran wanted to bring a whole kit and caboodle of their people into the United States, with the purpose of looking after the many innocent Muslim-Americans who were imprisoned in the wake of the hysteria produced after 9-11?

How funny that the nation interested in having the Armenians “exterminated” would be kind enough to allow an army of potentially unfriendly visitors, who could do the Turks’ reputation even greater harm than they already had. However, with the promise that her goal would purely be “humanitarian” (avoiding the word “Armenian,” which could also imply helping the Turks victimized by the Armenians… which, of course, was the farthest thing from her mind; not to diminish Clara Barton, she appeared to be otherwise a great woman), and also by promising “we… shall not go home to write a book about Turkey,” and doing anything “sly or underhanded.” Permission was granted, thus showing the great heart of the Turks.

The next chapter provides all the grisly details… enough to “write a book about.”

 British author C. F. Dixon-Johnson presented a different view in his 1916 work, “The Armenians.” He maintained the suggestions of the pro-Armenians that these were "unprovoked massacres inspired by the Turkish Government" were false. Here is how he described the events of the Ottoman Bank takeover:

The Ottoman Bank under attack by Armenians

Having failed to stir up a general rise in Asia, the Armenians were "determined to adopt desperate measures in Constantinople in the hope of forcing the hands of the Ambassadors. They attacked the Ottoman Bank with bombs and revolvers, killing twelve guards. They seized the European staff as hostages and threatened to blow up the building with all who were in it. The ambassadors appealed to the Porte, which allowed them to guarantee a safe conduct to the conspirators. Bombs were also thrown in the Grand Rue de Pera, and "some of the conspirators who had taken a position upon the roofs of the houses in that, the principal thoroughfare of Constantinople, fired upon the populace in the street below". Dixon-Johnson continues as follows:

"There seems little doubt that the revolutionists had contemplated a series of attacks at different important points, to be followed by a more or less general rising of the Armenian population....

"A cry went through the city that the Armenians had risen in revolt and were massacring the other citizens. Many persons armed themselves with cudgels and, joined by a cosmopolitan mob from Pera and Galata, many of whom were Greek anxious to pay off old scores on their hated commercial rivals, wreaked vengeance on the Armenian population. The soldiers and police took no part in the killing. It is estimated that about 1,000 persons perished, including those killed by the bombs and revolvers of the conspirators. What happened in London and Liverpool after the sinking of the Lusitania affords an idea of how the East End people of London, who claim to be far more highly educated... would have behaved if German desperadoes, after murdering twelve of the sentinels on guard at the Bank of England, had been allowed to escape free in deference to the representations of the American and Spanish Ambassadors, especially after the fears and passions of the mob had been aroused by German aliens shooting and bombing from the roofs of the houses..."

There are more details on TAT's Ottoman Bank page.

Woodrow Wilson

Chapter 10 begins with a look at British propagandist Viscount Bryce, and the depth of his commitment to the Armenians. Bryce began defending the sympathy-seeking people as early as 1881. “Like Gladstone, he was a liberal with a passion for human beings,” Balakian writes... not the only common trait shared with Gladstone… the willingness to present false information as fact was another. He served under Gladstone, and Woodrow Wilson, while a professor, praised an 1889 Bryce book examining the United States. Two decades later, President Wilson would regard Bryce’s now infamous “Blue Book” as a bible.

Balakian bemoans that an American minister (who turns out to be a rare exception to the Turk-hating rule! ADDENDUM 3-07: Minister Alexander W. Terrell was not a religious minister or missionary, but a minister of government; he served as what passed for the U.S. ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, at the time.), A. W. Terrell ("criticized by the Protestant missionaries") produced what Balakian considered a puff piece in Century Magazine’s November 1897 issue, in response to an article that appeared in Harper’s Weekly written by James Bryce (Bryce found the sultan to be a “fiercely anti-Christian autocrat”).

Here’s what Balakian transcribes about the way in which Terrell explained the massacres, in Balakian’s words: "…because the Armenians had established 'revolutionary committees,' they had to be massacred." "They had to be massacred"? I have a funny feeling that must not have been the way Terrell put it.

(Chapter 12: "Adana, 1909: Counterrevolution and Massacre"... a preliminary examination of this chapter may be found here.)

Chapter 13 covers the Balkan Wars. CUP leader Abdullah Jevdet is quoted as warning the Armenians that the Armenians should not feel emboldened because of the losses in European Turkey. "Anatolia is the well spring of every fire of our life." In other words…. there is no way the Turks can afford to lose their heartland, as that would spell the end of the Turkish nation. Makes sense to me! However, Balakian editorializes: "Jevdet’s nationalist fervor was indicative of the new tone of pan-Turkism that was defining the Young Turk regime."

Hovhannes Katchaznouni, First Prime Minister of the Independent Armenian Republic

 Chapter 14: "Government Planned Genocide." Balakian’s chance to run through the familiar Armenian monologue. The same old distortions easily found everywhere.

Another motive for killing the Armenians is the humiliation of defeat. The Turks got into a hissy fit over the loss of so much territory, and had to take out their frustrations on someone. Forget the fact that the Armenians had been the favored ones throughout the centuries… they had to be the scapegoats for no good reason.

Balakian naturally travels down this road as well, and on pg. 178 declares: "…After Enver Pasha’s humiliating defeat by the Russians at Sarikamish in December 1914-Jamuary 1915, the minister of war and his ruling elite, needing a scapegoat, blaming the Armenians, claiming that they were in sympathy with the Russians."

"Claiming..." Balakian would have his reader believe there was no truth to Armenians’ not just having "sympathy," but engaging in outright rebellion, on the side of the enemy. He certainly has started on the right foot in his new career as "historian," by respecting the facts.

ADDENDUM: One source attesting to the Armenians' treacherous role at Sarikamish is one of Balakian's favorites, Armen Garo. (Bank Ottoman: Memoirs of Armen Garo, p. 21.)

Balakian has reproduced examples of the anti-Turkish New York Times' many false genocide accounts, but has failed to resort to one that can be confirmed in countless other references: The Nov. 7, 1914 report, entitled “Armenians Fighting Turks,” which outlines how the Armenians rose up in rebellion, as planned… as soon as the Ottoman Empire was at her weakest, that is, at war. Russia had declared war only five days previously.

In reality, Enver Pasha got a promise of loyalty from the Armenians, represented by the Dashnak Congress, in 1914. Enver counted on 50,000 Armenian troops who could have made the difference at Sarikamish. These Armenians never showed up, breaking their loyalty oath... one of the reasons why the untrustworthy soldiers who hadn't yet deserted from the army were disarmed. Armenian historians will further elaborate here.

Prof. Nursen Mazici found documents in the U.S. archives linking the role of Armenians at Sarikamish; one sent by Armenian commanders stated that "the communications of the Turkish army with the rear-front was cut off as earlier planned, therefore it could be possible to annihilate at least sixty thousand Turkish soldiers," and they were extremely happy and proud of the advantages taken by that effort.

Balakian then writes, familiarly, that the Armenian men in "the army were disarmed, thrown into labor battalions and then the army began an organized plan of massacring most of the Armenian (troops)." Let’s check out the logic, here.

For centuries, only the Turks safeguarded the lives of the residents of the Ottoman empire… one of the benefits of a tax certain minorities had to pay. As the footnote here states (Erik Jan Zucher, “Ottoman Labor Battalions in World War I,” 2002), Christians had first been conscripted into the Ottoman army in 1909. They’re not historically used to the idea of risking their lives for the preservation of their welfare, putting in doubt whether some had their hearts in this new military role; and they know there is an Armenian movement afoot to hook up with the enemy and betray their nation.

A Dashnak committee order spelled out the Armenians’ duty: "As soon as the Russians have crossed the borders and the Ottoman armies have started to retreat, you should revolt everywhere. The Ottoman armies thus will be placed between two fires. On the other hand, the Armenians in the Ottoman army should desert their units with their weapons and unite with the Russians." I’d think any nation would think very carefully when signs of a rebellion appear, before allowing weapons to remain in the hands of potential traitors.

Arthur Tremaine Chester explains: “The facts are that the Turks sent an army to the Russian border to defend their country against the threatened Russian invasion. The army consisted of Turkish subjects of all nationalities, being drafted just as ours are drafted. At the front the Armenians used blank cartridges and deserted in droves. This was bad enough, but the Armenians were not satisfied with this form of treachery. The provinces in the rear of the army had a large Armenian population, and these people, feeling that there was an excellent chance of the Russians defeating the Turks, decided to make it a certainty by rising up in the rear of the army and cutting it off from its base of supplies.”

Now why would it make sense to go through all the expense of arming, maintaining and training Armenian troops, if the “secret” goal was to exterminate them? Wouldn’t there be more expedient ways? They could have just rounded up the men, and killed them. (That is, whatever Armenian men were left among the non-soldiers of the citizenry, after so many had traitorously joined the Russians.)

If the manpower-deprived Ottoman army truly had the evil intention of using "slave labor" (the way Armenians love to classify these labor battalions, forgetting that all soldiers, in effect, are slaves), why would these healthy men be killed, if they were providing such a necessary function?

Lastly, were Turkish troops treated so beautifully? Regarding the “humiliating defeat” Balakian mentioned, Enver threatened to shoot the Turkish troops if they did not advance. Result: up to 90,000 "snow statues," many of whom never had a chance to fire a shot. (Balakian writes 75,000 casualties out of 95,000, and he could be right on this point.)

Zucher mentions in his footnote “Arabs, Kurds, Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians and others were subjected to brutal treatment. Arab soldiers, for example, were often sent to the front lines at gunpoint, shackled in chains and escorted by Turks.”

It’s getting very tiresome to run into accounts by such biased "historians" anxious to make out the Turks to be inhuman, every chance they get. What of the Europeans’ treatment of their men? Did the English, French, Germans, Russians treat their soldiers with the utmost dignity and love? Perhaps Mr. Zucher should bone up on WWI history.

Also in fairness… what would any army do to their soldiers who refuse to go to the front? After all…. who wants to go to the front? However, the front is where some soldiers need to be, because… well, that’s where the enemy is advancing, and somebody has got to be there to stop them. If the Arab soldiers refused to go to the front, what should their commanders have done? Say, okay, war’s over for you… you can go home? (I’m not saying getting sent at gunpoint is a civilized thing to do, but… they’re soldiers. And soldiers are supposed to obey orders, in the uncivilized business of warfare.)

 In this chapter Balakian engages in a bloodlust frenzy in providing the typical Armenian assertions, and it would take forever to address them all. I am sorry, Peter, but no real historian is going to take at face value your propagandistic sources such as Arnold Toynbee’s "Armenian Atrocities: The Murder of a Nation," and Vahakn Dadrian’s "The Role of the Special Organization in the Armenian Genocide during the First World War." (Dadrian, as usual, earning his keep at the partisan Zoryan Institute by working for years to prosecute Turks in any and every way, here comes up with a Nazi parallel of Ottoman SS troops. Dadrian decided the "CIA" of the Ottoman Empire, mostly involved in trying to persuade Moslems in enemy armies to give up their allegiance, would fill the role of the Gestapo. In this section, according to Footnote 17, it looks like Prosecutor Dadrian used a "Turkish confession" after war’s end, when hapless ex-officials were trying to save their skins in an atmosphere of recriminations, within kangaroo courts that even the British ignored use of for their own Malta Tribunal. See last link for an analysis of the Dadrian's Special Organization claims.) Jay Winter was the "historical" voice behind PBS’ lamentable “genocide” segment of their “The Great War” series…. whom I have a special beef with.

One bit of business I never heard of is called “The Ten Commandments.” Now, this is the kind of thing that looks like the rare document that truly affirms the genocide. Discovered and translated in early 1919 by British occupiers, no doubt making preparations for the Malta Tribunal, the Nuremberg of WWI. (Which Balakian makes very brief note of and, falsely, as an extension of the 1919 Ottoman kangaroo courts. These were two separate trials.) “It is a blueprint of the Armenian extermination operation and appears to have been the centerpiece of a secret party meeting, which took place sometime in late December 1914 or in January 1915." Balakian asserts this document came from the office of an intelligence minister, Ahmed Essad. Article 5 orders all males under 50 to be exterminated, and all Armenians in the military to be similarly snuffed out.

Genocidal proof? I’ll look forward to learning more about this. Unfortunately, Dadrian is again behind this "evidence," although the British archival number is supplied. What raises my eyebrow is that the time period sounds way too premature to consider the relocation policy… this was a decision made slowly, as Armenian treachery became more and more apparent. (April 24 of 1915 is when the policy was signed — as all Armenians know, since they have decided to “celebrate” the depressing "date of doom" in their parades as the Number One highlight of their people’s long and rich history — and not implemented until the following month. In reality, it is this May 2 telegram when the relocation policy first began to be considered.) Even if we suspend disbelief and allow for the ridiculous idea of desperately-needed Armenian soldiers getting systematically murdered, it does not make sense such a decision would have been made only two months into the war. I don’t know how the British came by this document… was it found casually left behind in Ahmed Essad’s desk drawer, even though Article 10 stipulates these instructions need to be "strictly confidential," and "may not go beyond two or three persons"? Or was it produced through other helping hands, as Aram Andonian came by his forged “Naim Bey” work?

In any event, if this document was available in early 1919, at the very outset of the Malta Tribunal, it would have been exactly the sort of evidence the British were desperately looking for to convict the up to 144 Ottoman officials being held for war crimes. After all, there it is, in black and white… orders for extermination. Yet, the Malta Tribunal dragged on until mid-1921, as the British continued to look for legitimate evidence... of which they found absolutely none. There must have been some reason why "The Ten Commandments" was ultimately determined to be phony.

How come Vahakn Dadrian does not raise these very important issues? Could it be because… he is a prosecutor, and not a professor?

ADDENDUM (3-06)

It's been a while since the writing of this page, and I certainly have come across more on "The Ten Commandments." Highlights:

1) Dadrian has written (in "The Secret Young Turk Ittihadist Conference," p. 178) that "Essad's document [i.e., "The Ten Commandments"] on the transmission of an official order by the Ottoman War Minister is verified by the testimony of a military commander..." in Dadrian's bread and butter, the 1919-20 kangaroo courts, allowing Dadrian to conclude a "demonstrated authenticity." But the original text of the testimony is unavailable, and Dadrian relied on a newspaper account. Prof. Guenter Lewy has concluded: "This, I submit, is hardly the kind of evidence that can be used to demonstrate the authenticity of a document." (And I submit, what does one expect of a master of propaganda, to find "evidence" wherever Dadrian sees fit?)

2) At first (in early 1919), the British suggested Essad be arrested "to prove to the hilt the authenticity of the draft 'Ten Commandments' document." [FO 371/4172/31307, p. 386.] It turns out that Essad, described as a "low class intermediary" by the British, was employed as an agent by the British High Commissioner in Istanbul at least until Sept. 1919. Yet, Essad was never arrested, nor questioned, because the British "soon had come to doubt the authenticity of this document," as Lewy has written. [Gwynne Dyer, "Letter to the Editor," Middle Eastern Studies 9 (1973): 378.] Prof. Lewy informs that the document was "never noted or used by the law officers collecting evidence against the Young Turks" interned in Malta.

3) Dr. Gwynne Dyer, in his careful analysis of "The Ten Commandments" all the way back in 1973 (noted above), pointed to its forgery by stating that they "resemble the result of an attempt after the fact to reconstruct what might have been said, had the actual events of April 1915-mid 1916 all been fore-ordained in a single comprehensive official document months before their initiation."

In keeping with the "Armenian AND? Anthem," unscrupulous propaganidists like Vahakn Dadrian and Peter Balakian turn a blind eye to such realities, in the hopes that the old dirt can still prove useful in the minds of the unwary. Thoroughly disgraceful.

(The above references are from Guenter Lewy's The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey, A Disputed Genocide, 2005, p. 48.)

 

Chapter 15 (Van, Spring 1915) already starts off with an inaccuracy: “By the nineteenth century Van’s Armenian population was greater than its Turkish and Kurdish populations combined.” No source is provided, but Prof. Justin McCarthy, famous for his careful studies of population demographics, wrote: "Was there an Ottoman Armenia, that is, an area in which the majority of the population were Armenians? For the period before the nineteenth century there is no way to know for certain. No one took a census... We do know that in the period of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Armenians were a distinct minority in every province of the Ottoman Empire.”

The author also mentions a Turkish delegation asked the Ottoman-Armenians if they would kindly be on the side of the nation where they prospered for centuries, by coaxing the Russian-Armenians to the Turkish side… just as the Russian-Armenians and Armenians from Europe were busily trying to get the Ottoman-Armenians on the Russian side. The leadership declined, remembering the massacres and "betrayed promises from the Turks over the past decades"… forgetting about the betrayed promises from the Russians, since the time of Peter the Great.

Dennis Papazian wrote in "What every Armenian Should Know," in an effort to play down the fact that the Armenians sided with the Russians: "Russia under the Tsars never offered the Armenians or any other subject peoples their freedom. The last tsar, Nicholas II, would not even share power with his own Russian people, which helped prompt the Russian revolution during World War I. {Russia even forbade Armenian refugees, who had managed to flee the Genocide, from returning to their lands, which the Russian armies had overran during the war.} Prince Lobanov-Rostovsky, foreign minister of Russia in 1895, summed it all up by saying, ‘Yes, Russia wants Armenia, but without the Armenians.’" So let’s see… centuries of prospering under the Ottoman Empire… vs. centuries of getting used by the Russians as pawns. Once again: loyalty and Armenians; like oil and water.

Balakian fails to mention at the end of this meeting, the Ottoman-Armenians pledged their loyalty to their own country (as Kerope Papazian wrote in "Patriotism Perverted", also informing us the Armenians broke a 1907 promise to start an Armenian uprising in the Caucasus, the very promise the Turks were expecting to be upheld)… a promise they had absolutely no intention of keeping, having hoarded stockpiles of Russian-provided arms and uniforms throughout the empire, to be used to backstab their nation the moment war broke out. “In the beginning of fall 1914, when Turkey had not yet entered the war, but was preparing to, Armenian volunteer groups began to be organized with great zeal and pomp in Trans-Caucasia. In spite of the decision taken a few weeks before at the General Committee in Erzurum, the Dashnagtzoutune actively helped the organization of the aforementioned groups, and especially arming them, against Turkey.” The writer was Hovhannes Katchaznouni, Armenia's First Prime Minister.

"...In the early part of 1915, therefore, every Turkish city contained thousands of Armenians who had been trained as soldiers and who were supplied with rifles, pistols, and other weapons of defense. The operations at Van once more disclosed that these men could use their weapons to good advantage…." The writer is Henry Morgenthau, from pg. 301 of his ghostwritten book. (This is the Doubleday version, and not the new one edited by Peter Balakian himself. Why would a reprint require an editor, anyway? I hope Mr. Balakian did not edit out passages like the above not completely in line with Armenian-speak.)

 

I have made a note to try and track down Rafael de Nogales’ Four Years Beneath the Crescent. The Venezuelan mercenary and American cattle thief fought on the side of the Turks, and there are passages from his book I have used on the TAT site. (“When you see a good war, go to it,” the adventurer wrote.) Balakian has presented other excerpts from this book where De Nogales mentions the extermination order of Armenian males, as told him by the mayor of Van. However, he has also written, “the Armenians of the vilayet of Van rose en masse against our expeditionary army in Persia.” That makes it sound like the Armenians were the aggressors, but Balakian quotes him as saying “the aggressors had not been the Armenians, after all, but the authorities themselves!” Other than what the mayor told him, I don’t see how he could have reached such a conclusion, and I suppose the reading of his book will clarify where the señor stood.

Robert Melson

"Genocide scholar" (Integrity Alert!) Robert Melson explains: "the Armenians were neither attempting to destroy the Turks… nor attempting to secede or join Russia." The President of the Armenian National Bureau in Tiflis, in response to Czar Nicholas II's visit to the Caucasus, led one to believe otherwise: “Let the Armenian people of Turkey who have suffered for the faith of Christ receive resurrection for a new free life under the protection of Russia."

Here is Balakian’s closing paragraph to demonstrate the Armenians were the poor, innocent victims of the Van episode:

“In assessing Turkish claims that Armenians provoked their fate because they were a threat to national security, Robert Melson has put it well: “If the Armenians had behaved differently, if they had acted less threateningly, the CUP would not have decided on genocide in 1915. If there had been fewer Jewish communists, or bankers or department store owners, or journalist, or beggars, there would have been no Holocaust.”

That’s Peter Balakian’s opinion of “putting it well?” To me, these stupid words perfectly illustrate what one gets when one listens to the convoluted logic of a “genocide scholar” so hopelessly linked with the Armenians that he serves on the board of the seven-member Academic Council of the Armenian National Institute (ANI), which outright declares: “Its overarching goal is affirmation of the worldwide recognition of the Armenian Genocide." (Some of the other partisans include Richard Hovannisian, Christopher Simpson, Roger Smith …. and Peter Balakian himself.)

Peter Balakian revealed in his Black Dog of Fate that the cousin of the author's grandfather was Bishop Krikoris Balakian ... the holy relative being a hero of Peter Balakian's. The action priest (1873-1934) served as a witness in the trial of Soghoman Tehlirian, and when Tehlirian's Armenian-financed attorneys asked the priest whether he had seen Talat Pasha's signature on Aram Andonian's forged telegrams, the priest broke one of God's commandments by lying. (His reply: “Yes, I saw it with my own eyes." Although, curiously, he added that he couldn't verify whether it was "authentic," even though he had no reason to doubt the Ottoman official who showed it to him.) Of course, such a telegram ordering the annihilation of the Armenians never existed. However, the deed was done; the stamp of religious authority was enforced on what was seen by the German jury as a Muslim-Christian conflict... one of the influences that surely must have helped sway the Christians on the jury. Like grandfather's cousin, like cousin's grandson... where honesty and the truth is concerned.

ADDENDUM, 9-2006: Balakian was the author of "The Armenian Golgotha," one of the three books that fried Vahakn Dadrian's brain, inciting the Prosecutor to embark on his hateful, genocide-affirming quest. Bishop Krikoris Balakian unconscientiously cited lie after lie in this horrible work.  For example, he implicated over 10,000 Turkish peasants and villagers who went on a mad Muslim bloodlust, crying God's name ("Allah, Allah"), as they murdered 6,400 "Armenian children, young girls, and women from Yozgad" with “hatchets, meat cleavers, saddler’s knives, cudgels, axes, pickaxes, shovels." How did the priestly Balakian know this? The "gendarmerie commander confided to the priest-author, whom he did not expect to survive the mass murder," as Dadrian was reported to have said at a 2005 conference. Little did the commander know he was confiding in the Action Priest, who like a superhero, managed to "witness" the most grisly events, only to escape and tell about them!

In addition, to better understand the "holiness" of a priest who condones the acts of a murderer, let's refer to an article on the terrorist and former ANCA chairman Mourad Topalian: "Sixty people, including some priests, provided 'good-character' letter for Topalian. How could anybody consider a man having 'good-character' who acted as a terrorist? This was no different than the Tehlirian case where Balakian, an Armenian priest, blessed him for his terrorist acts." (Assassination of Talat Pasha and Harootiun Mugerditchian,  Review of Armenian Studies, Volume 1 Number 3 2003, Etruks Türker.)

 

Parts III and IV follow. We are only about halfway into THE BURNING TIGRIS, at this point. My intention was not to get into too much detail, and this is why the first half of the book was condensed into this one page. However, I took the rest of my analysis at a more leisurely pace. The next installment:

 

Part III's Chapter 17 on Henry Morgenthau