V. D. next moves on to “The historical background: the antecedent massacres as a rehearsal and prelude to the genocide,” where he explains it all began with “The Red Sultan.” Abdul Hamit “unleashed in the 1894-1896 period the historically notorious ‘Armenian massacres.’ Approximately 150,000 Armenians... fell victim to these empire-wide bloodbaths.” As with the 1915 period, the master propagandist makes no mention of the terrorist groups’ violence initiating “bloodbaths” that went both ways. Dadrian quotes William Langer as having written (The Diplomacy of Imperialism, 1935): “It was perfectly obvious that the Sultan was determined to end the ‘Armenian question’ by exterminating the Armenians,” and it would be worthwhile to dig up whether that was Langer’s conclusion, or whether he was quoting another’s opinion.

Reason for suspicion rests with the lack of logic for a deeper thinker as Langer; if Abdul Hamit had intended to “exterminate” the Armenians, it would have made as little sense for him to have stopped in 1896 as it similarly makes no sense for the Young Turks to have stopped in 1917... and as Prof. Jeremy Salt concluded after scholarly analysis, “there is nothing that links Abdulhamit to a policy of massacre." Langer’s book is also filled with contradictory statements, as on p. 157 of the book’s second edition: “Europeans in Turkey were agreed that the immediate aim of the [Armenian] agitators was to incite disorders, bring about inhuman reprisals, and so provoke the intervention of the powers." For more of Langer’s thoughts on the sultan, tune in here, and here for a further examination of the events and mortality figures: After deceptively summing up the fate of the Armenians as “wholesale annihilation” (remember, the definition of annihilation means “not a trace is left”), Dadrian tells us:

The resolve of the Turks not to allow the Armenians, the only Christian nationality then still under Ottoman rule, likewise to emancipate, substantially contributed to a Final Solution decision, the implementation of which decision significantly coincided with the ruinous disintegration of the very Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I.

The truth is, the greater the freedoms granted the Armenians, under the Tanzimat period and particularly in 1909 (when the Armenians were more than "emancipated"; what is V. D. talking about? Likewise, Greeks and Assyrians were other Christians under Ottoman rule), the more the Armenians would aim at “terrorizing the Ottoman Government, thus contributing toward lowering the prestige of that regime and working toward its complete disintegration,” as Louise Nalbandian wrote about the Hunchaks. Armenia’s first prime minister, Hovhannes Katchaznouni, concurred in whitewashed fashion:

“...[T]he struggle begun decades ago against the Turkish government brought about the deportation or extermination of the Armenian people in Turkey and the desolation of Turkish Armenia. This was the terrible fact!”

In other words, the reason for Armenian suffering during “1915” had nothing to do with Turkish oppression, and everything to do with Armenians having fired the first shot, particularly during a war where the Ottomans were fighting for their nation's life. Now, while Katchaznouni may be excused for using terms such as “extermination” (he was addressing an audience of fellow terrorist Dashnaks) look at Dadrian’s choice of words: a “Final Solution.” As we have seen with the vast number of Armenians still in what was left of the empire after war’s end, no “Final Solution” could have been implemented. (If so, “zero” Armenians would have been left.) Yet the unscrupulous propagandist feels no compunction over making such a serious charge, particularly without offering factual evidence.

“Armenians were not going to be allowed to enjoy equal rights, equality having been declared anathema to Islam by the Ottoman Muslim hierarchy.”

What can one expect from such a dishonest author? In effect, Armenians were the masters of Ottoman society, allowed to prosper as never before in their history, and by enjoying an “internal autonomy” in this extremely tolerant society. They had it much worse under Russia, and for greater perspective, Muslims and other minorities in “enlightened” European nations often fared little better than slaves. But Dadrian decided here to address the wonderful tolerance of the Ottomans:

The rare instances of Armenians having been favored for appointments in the Ottoman government, bureaucracy and Civil List, and the royal household, were but exceptions to the rule. Some of them were token appointments, others were in default appointments given the then existing paucity of competent and/or trustworthy Turkish functionaries.

Isn’t that absolutely unbelievable, the depths this “foremost authority of the Armenian Genocide” will sink to? Sure, at a time when a Catholic could barely get elected dog catcher in the United States, an Armenian would be allowed to go near the top, such as the Foreign Minister in 1912-13... and this should be considered a “token” appointment? (Or an appointment made because Turks were not good enough? If Turks were such subhuman incompetents, how could the run-by-Turks empire have lasted for some six centuries?) Even Armenian terrorists, such as Garo Pastermadjian, were allowed to serve in the Ottoman government.

Why rely on Ottoman archival accounts to write history? Because they are the sort of solid data that is the basis of all good history. The Ottomans did not write propaganda for today's media. The reports of Ottoman soldiers and officials were not political documents or public relations exercises. They were secret internal reports in which responsible men relayed what they believed to be true to their government. They might sometimes have been mistaken, but they were never liars. There is no record of deliberate deception in Ottoman documents. Compare this to the dismal history of Armenian Nationalist deceptions: fake statistics on population, fake statements attributed to Mustafa Kemal, fake telegrams of Talat Pasa, fake reports in a Blue Book, misuse of court records and, worst of all, no mention of Turks who were killed by Armenians. (Dr. Justin McCarthy at the Turkish Grand National Assembly, March 24, 2005)

To obviate unnecessary arguments about questionable authenticity and “victor’s justice,” the discussion thus far has been deliberately kept free from any and all references to the court-martial proceedings of the Turkish Military Tribunal prosecuting the authors of the Armenian genocide in the 1919-1920 Armistice years. Despite the valiant efforts of the Young Turk party leaders to remove and destroy all incriminating evidence in this regard, inevitably an exiguous number of documents randomly survived these cleansing operations.

Thank you, Vahakn Dadrian, for spelling out why the bread and butter of Dadrian’s genocide thesis, the 1919-20 kangaroo courts, are next to worthless. Although the fact that he dismisses the reasons of “questionable authenticity and ‘victor’s justice’” as “unnecessary” serves as a further testament to the man’s lack of honesty. If these do not constitute solid reasons as to why we should think twice before considering them, the British themselves would not have rejected their findings for their own Malta Tribunal process. He winds up the above with another convenient assertion, that the Young Turk party leaders tried to “remove and destroy all incriminating evidence,” without presenting the proof. Indeed, between the sparse time when the Armistice was signed and the British occupied the defeated nation (immediately appointing an Armenian in charge of the archives), the Ottoman leaders who were attempting to make a getaway were scrounging through thousands of documents, shredding the ones implicating them. (They must have made a beeline to the handy-dandy “genocide” section.)

Before being introduced as exhibits in the trials, each one of them was authenticated by competent Interior Ministry officials who appended the notation “it conforms to the original” to them.

Yet as Guenter Lewy succinctly and inarguably told us, “ few historians would take period officials at their word without verification." Remember, these were corrupt courts, set up for reasons of retribution from a dishonest successor government, and also because a gun was placed at their heads by the Allies. (As Dadrian himself instructed.) If a Nazi puppet court officer from Vichy France wrote “it conforms to the original,” who would accept this sort of validation at face value?

It is no accident that that the two foremost genocides of this century were consummated in the vortex of two global wars. Official German and Austrian documents clearly indicate that in broad outlines and in sketchy form there was a pre-war scheme to liquidate once and for all the Ottoman Armenian population at the first propitious moment.

One can’t compare a powerful Nazi Germany at the outset of WWII, with the luxury and means to act as an aggressor, with the bankrupt “Sick Man” fighting a desperate war of defense against superpowers bent on the nation’s extinction. If the Ottomans were of the mind to exterminate the Armenians, the welfare and existence of their nation would have demanded that they wait, and make use of their great national Armenian resource first. As victors, there would be time to get genocidal later. As losers, there would be no nation left, and the extermination of the Armenians would serve as a moot point. (As history has borne out, the Ottoman nation ultimately suffered an extinction, and if it weren't for one man, there may not have been a Turkey today.) Moreover, insofar as those documents from bigoted and/or ignorant Germans and Austrians opining on hearsay, “broad outlines and... sketchy form” can never serve as concrete evidence. We also possessed not long ago in “broad outlines and in sketchy form” the fact that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Here’s Dadrian’s own broad outline in regards to how his genocide got implemented:

1. Within 24 hours after signing on August 2, 1914 the secret Turko-German political and military alliance, the Turkish High Command ordered General Mobilization, as a result of which practically all able-bodied Armenian males in the 20-45 age categories were conscripted in the Turkish army. After having been used for a while as labor battalion soldiers, most of them were executed by Turkish officers and fellow soldiers.

Our "scholar" is making it sound as though Armenians were targeted exclusively for conscription when all Ottoman men were conscripted. These Armenians were trained and equipped as all Ottoman soldiers; every man was needed in the desperate fighting to come. As Dadrian well knows, Armenian soldiers were put to use in the fighting at the beginning phase of the war, as in Sarikamish. That is when the evidence of Armenian treachery kept getting reinforced; while some Armenians fought dutifully, there were too many who deserted, or sabotaged their side’s efforts. At this point the Armenian soldiers were disarmed, and placed in labor battalions. (In actuality, the decision to disarm Armenian soldiers had been made shortly before the war began in November 1914, but took several months to implement.) Note Dadrian is hoping to get away with the notion that they were placed in these labor battalions from the get-go. And while some Armenian soldiers were massacred (Dadrian is aware that in probably the most major example taking place in Sivas, Vehip Pasha tried and executed some of the perpetrators, actions disproving a government-sponsored extermination policy; Jemal Pasha also convicted and hanged two officers for a massacre near Urfa), there is no evidence to signify “most” were executed. Dadrian keeps confirming his missing morality when he makes such inflammatory statements without legitimate back-up.

2. About the same time, the War Ministry in close cooperation with the supreme directorate of the Young Turk party, the so-called Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), restructured and refurbished the notorious Special Organization, the Teshkilati Mahsusa, as the main instrument of the planned mass murder. Thousands of bloodthirsty criminals were released from the main prisons of the Empire over extended periods of time. After a week’s training on the campgrounds of the War Ministry, they were deployed in the interior of Turkey for massacre duty. In the words of a Turkish military intelligence officer at the time on duty in the Ottoman General Headquarters, “they perpetrated the greatest crimes against the Armenians.”2

The Special Organization (S. O.) is Vahakn Dadrian’s invented “Gestapo Fall Guy.” The S. O. was a military special operations unit, “dealing with both Arab separatism and Western imperialism” (Philip Stoddard), and they had plenty to worry about on their hands than to pay attention to killing Armenians. The great manpower shortage was the reason why convicts were recruited, so that secondary duties as guarding Armenians would not be performed by the professional soldiers, desperately needed at multiple fronts. Making use of convict manpower is historically not an uncommon practice for many nations. (Remember “The Dirty Dozen”? The idea was inspired by convict usage by the USA during WWII.) These convicts were used as gendarmes, but not for the sensitive duties required by the S.O.; this unit played no role in the relocations. Dadrian’s footnote is Ahmet Refik, [Two Committees, Two Massacres. 1994, p. 27), where the “Turkish military intelligence officer” (Elsewhere, Dadrian gave Refik the job of “deportation official”) is unscrupulously made into an “inside genocide man” as much as possible, so that we won’t question the selective quote provided by Dadrian, the one about, “they perpetrated the greatest crimes against the Armenians.”

Yet the translation in Dadrian’s “The Armenian Genocide: an interpretation” (America and the Armenian genocide of 1915, p. 93) was as follows: "These felons who were released from the prisons committed the greatest crimes during the Armenian horrors."

Let’s go to Dadrian’s essay against Guenter Lewy that appeared in Jihad Watch, where Dadrian wrote that Refik “singled out the brigands, the 'chettes' of the Special Organization who, he said 'committed the greatest crimes,' (en buyuk cinayetteri) during that genocide.” Now the blame falls on the “chettes,” which are partisan, criminal gangs. (Or, as Moss and Gilliam wrote in 1923’s “The Turkish Myth”: “roving bands about as lawless as the mobs in parts of the American South, and about as out-of-hand politically as the banditti who infest parts of Italy and Spain.” When there were massacres, it was these lawless, renegade forces that committed them.)

While essentially offering the same meaning, the translations offered are so different, one's trust in Dadrian to relay further information becomes more eroded. Only a reading of Altinay's book will determine whether he was laying blame on the convicts or the "chettes." Regardless of whether V. D. is making things up, we know he is leaving things out. Refik Altinay witnessed the most despicable crimes of mass murder perpetrated by Armenians (that would be the second committee and massacres that forms his book’s title), and "...fresh corpses lying about in the streets and deep in the wells covered with blood not yet dried were those of the poor Turks killed by Armenians” was just one of the things he wrote in this very book, regarding the invisible victims of this equation.



From Karabekir's book, "Armenian Cruelties"; Ahmet Refik must be the man in the middle of the two others identified by arrows (added by Holdwater), likely "Dr. Weiss (German)," and "Doctor Stein (Austrian)." They are observing wells filled with Muslim bodies, recording (during April-May 1918) the devastation left behind by the retreating Armenians.

3. Between this period and the initiation of the deportations and massacres in April 1915, the provincial Armenian population had been subjected to a constant barrage of provocative acts involving rape, plunder and murder. As attested to by German consuls on duty in the interior of Turkey, segments of the Armenian population as early as November 1914 had been challenged to resist, and even to retaliate to provide pretexts to the Turks for leveling against the Armenians in general pre-planned charges of rebellion... German Ambassador Wangenheim... transmitted to Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg a report of Captain Dr. Paul Schwarz, his consul at Erzurum. Detailing the provocations of the brigands... the consul spoke of the acute alarm of “the Armenian population of Erzurum, especially the rural population.”3 ...(referring) to these provocations as “harbingers of new massacres” ... Another consul, Scheubner-Richter... likewise reported to Berlin on “the excesses and severe harassment” of the targeted Armenians by the Turkish authorities, but especially by the Special Organization cadres, the so-called chetes.4 Major General Otto von Lossow... declared, “Wherever possible, the Armenians are being aroused, provoked in the hope of thereby securing a pretext for new assaults on them” ...5 (In the footnotes, the first report is dated December 1914, no date is provided for the second, and the third is August 5, 1918.)

The reality is that the Armenians were prepared with secret caches of arms and ammunition stored throughout the empire, ready to strike as soon as their nation was at their weakest, as the Hunchak charter spelled out. (“The most opportune time to institute the general rebellion for carrying out the immediate objectives was when Turkey was engaged in war.” Nalbandian, 1963) Days after war broke out, Armenians stirred trouble in Van (see New York Times link below) and soon eruptions would break out throughout many areas of the empire (consult pp. 196-200 of Gurun’s “The Armenian File,” 1985, for a sampling of internal Ottoman telegram communications, reporting upon many different villages; here’s a few for the Van area, and one for Sivas; as Dadrian instructed above, reports prepared for internal use would be looked upon “thusly as incontestable”), helped by the $13 million (in today’s money) that the Armenians received from Russia (“for the initial cost of arming and preparing the Turkish Armenians and to start riots within the country during the war,” as the Dashnak military minister put it during February 1915). Now what are these Christian-sympathizing German consuls reporting far from the spot, and mainly from the comfort of their offices, having derived their information from their Armenian assistants and who knows where else? The first one is telling us that the poor, innocent Armenians were “challenged to resist, and even to retaliate to provide pretexts to the Turks.” Is that really what was happening, or were the Armenians firing the planned first shot, as usual... as even The New York Times reported?

The third one's contention is especially ludicrous, and he (von Luslow) appears to be the only non-consul of the bunch (he should have known better, as the on-the-spot honest German officer pointed to above, and another will below). Assuming von Luslow was reporting on conditions in eastern Anatolia (Armenian propaganda tells us there were practically no other Armenians left in the rest of the empire, so for that and common sense reasons, it’s reasonable to assume as such), Armenians were in charge of good parts of this territory in 1918, committing the most devilish acts of mass murder, as their Russian allies recorded. So who was going to arouse the Armenians? The Armenians needed no help in being “aroused.”

Assuming Dadrian translated these passages responsibly, it is lamentable what this “foremost authority on the Armenian genocide” is doing. Thanks to the words of a few ignorant bigots, not in keeping with the historical reality, we are asked to believe crimes committed by Armenians were a “set-up” by the Turks!

(Not incidentally, Dadrian’s third footnote “5,” from 1918, and most likely the second and undated footnote “4” are irrelevant, as his notion pertained strictly to “Between this period [Aug. 1914] and the initiation of the deportations and massacres in April 1915.” Also not incidentally, every genocide-cheering Armenian has it tattooed on his or her forehead that the “genocide” began on April 24, 1915. Yet the “deportations and massacres” did not take place on April 24; the resettlement order was decided on in May 27, and implemented days later. The first sign of a relocation decision took place on May 2nd, as signs of Armenian treachery became too plentiful to ignore.)

"[T]he Armenians felt excessive pleasure at having killed such unfortunate people." — Raphael de Nogales

The third phase affected the multitudes of emaciated survivors of the exhausting and debilitating treks of deportation. In the deserts of Mesopotamia, in Ras-ul-Ain, Deir Zor and Shedadi in particular some 150,000 such survivors were slaughtered by Chechen and Kurdish tribes in the summer of 1916 on the order of Turkish authorities who were unpleasantly surprised by such a relatively high survival rate.

What is giving this “scholarly” goof the idea that these “Chechen and Kurdish tribes” were beholden to orders of the authorities? Some Kurdish tribes also revolted during these war years, and their unmanageability is a historically well-known phenomenon. I also wonder why Dadrian decided to give Chechens prominence, when they were far fewer in number than the Kurds, and the other groups of the, at times fanatically Muslim, Circassians and Arabs. (The credit for these four groups as the killers has been often given by Armenian survivors. Footnote 40 in Lewy’s “Resettlement” chapter — coming up — cites a French work by Raymond Kévorkian [“The Extermination of Ottoman-Armenian Deportees in the Concentration Camps of Syria-Mesopotamia”] and another by Kapikian [“Yeghernabadoum”].) The fact of the matter is, there is no evidence that the Kurds and the others were coerced or incited to act against Armenians. It was simply business as usual for the criminals in these tribes, where human life was deemed as cheap. (But that won’t stop Mr. Dadrian from making an unethically unsubstantiated statement such as “on the order of Turkish authorities.”

Vahakn Dadrian did not like it when he was accused of sexual harassment. The charge was true, and he lost his tenured position as a university professor. But Dadrian still was not happy, and fought against the repercussions of his misdeed. Now imagine making such a charge on no evidence. Further imagine that the charge involves the worst crime of murder. That is what this unscrupulous man is indulging in.

He is actually telling us 150,000 Armenians were “slaughtered.” Where did he get this number from? What happened to the Armenians after they were resettled is an episode that is tackled by reliance on tainted sources. Even solid scholar Guenter Lewy, in his Herculean efforts to be fair (one reason likely being to lessen the odds for the brave scholar to be branded as “pro-Turk”; no matter what he did, he was going to be accused of such by the out-of-control genocide smearers), relied almost entirely on these tainted sources (Armenians, missionaries and consuls) for the “Resettlement” chapter of his book, The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide. What we can be certain of is that many resettled Armenians went through a horrible experience. What we can’t be certain of is that those who were deliberately killed were done away with on the orders of the Ottoman government. The best evidence is that the perpetrators were most often lawless “chettes,” or gangs.

Here are the numbers from this chapter, for the heck of it. Ras-ul-Ain, an apparent transit camp on the way to Zor that generally wound up being a kind of permanent residence, had 20,000 Armenians in Feb. 1916 (Consul Jesse Jackson), reduced to almost nothing by June of 1917. (Source: German missionary Bruno Eckart, one of Lepsius’ most “zealous and trusted co-workers”; Eckart felt the reason for the killings was greed.) Lewy agrees the cause for death of these Ras-ul-Ain-detained Armenians was murder. Meskene, another transit camp, had 55,000 dead by July’s end, 1916 (Consul Rossler). Rakka, a town by the Euphrates, and surroundings had 10,000 Armenians in Feb. 1916 (Consul Jesse Jackson), 6,000 in April 1917 (Swiss missionary Künzler) and 1,000 by December 1917 (“Friend of Lepsius” Consul Rossler; 2,500 were taken to Urfa in Dec. 1916 and another large group to do Urfa road work in the summer of 1917.) Der-el-Zor’s most authoritative figure appears to be 40,000 in March 1916 (Consul Rossler); larger figures might have been referring to the entire district and not the city. The original governor, Ali Suat Bey, treated the Armenians conscientiously, but things got worse when replaced by Zeki Bey in April 1916. Obeying the stipulation that Armenians were not to exceed 10% of the Muslim population, Zeki expulsed thousands with dire results. 15,000 were left by the end of August 1916 (Consul Rossler). The ending location in this chapter is Damascus, but this one doesn’t count, since Armenians were treated fairly by Jemal Pasha. It appears only 20,000 of 132,000 in southern Syria died (Maud Mandel review of Kévorkian’s book, The Armenian Forum, Autumn 1998).

It’s hardly scientific and excludes the other areas Dadrian mentioned (but also includes areas not mentioned), in addition to representing total figures (Dadrian limited his 150,000 only to the "summer of 1916"; when did his remainder of 1.5 million-1.2 million minus 150,000 die?), yet let’s add it up: 20,000 dead in Ras-ul-Ain, 55,000 in Meskene, let’s say 5,000 dead in Rakka, and 25,000 dead in Zor. This serves as the most generous estimate, assuming the difference between the numbers “before” and “after” meant all the Armenians were killed. (Of course, that was not the case; groups were sometimes moved out elsewhere, and no one can say with certainty what became of them.) Result: 105,000, a difference of 45,000 with Dadrian’s figure. (If we include the Damascus mortality, the difference is reduced to 25,000.) Let’s keep in mind Lewy’s figures were provided 100% by Armenian sympathizers. Additionally, let’s not forget most victims had died of famine and disease, and Dadrian was being his usual mean, dishonest self by telling us they had all been “slaughtered.”

What we can also be certain of is that the majority of resettled Armenians survived. If extermination was the plan, figuratively speaking, there is not a single Armenian under Ottoman control who would have been left alive. If “Turkish authorities... were unpleasantly surprised by such a relatively high survival rate” — that is, if they suddenly realized they had erred in their evil extermination plan — why would the “genocide” have “all but run its course” in 1916?

(ADDENDUM, 9-07: Please bear in mind that Dadrian's timetable for the "completion of the main part" of his genocide points to January-February of 1916.)

The ending paragraph of Lewy’s “Zor” section bears repeating:

A German officer, Ludwig Schraudenbach, who passed through Der-el-Zor in early 1917, reports hearing of horrible atrocities committed on the orders of Zeki Bey. Children were said to have been tied between wooden boards and set on fire. Schraudenbach’s account makes it clear that he heard of but did not see any of these outrages. Dadrian leaves out this important qualification and refers to these allegations as fact. (The original Schraudenbach source is provided, along with Dadrian’s: “German Responsibility in the Armenian Genocide...”, p. 195, n. 179)

Aside from serving as yet another corroboration of Dadrian’s fraudulent nature, what’s revealing about the above passage is that Armenian propaganda was so prevalent in German circles, even the military men could not help but be influenced by what they had heard. That went across the board for all Germans and Austrians. You’d think if Germany was so interested in protecting the reputation of their Ottoman allies, the overwhelming view would have been that the Turks were innocent. This was not the case, as we can see from this revealing example, helping us to better understand as to why Germans and Austrians were quick to believe pro-Armenian claims.

If the idea was for the “liquidation” to be seen through until the bitter end, Talat Pasha certainly would not have issued his order on August 29, 1915, instructing that there would be no further relocations. (“...[A]side from those who have already been transferred and relocated, no additional Armenians are to be removed.”) And he certainly would not have kept re-issuing the same order, since the locals kept disobeying. For example, in March 16, 1916, the order to the governors was: “Owing to administrative and military considerations it has been determined that from this time forward the transfer of Armenians will cease. It is ordered that from this time forward no Armenians, other than those already relocated, will be transferred for any reason.” Still disobeyed, Talat was forced to reissue a similar order on Oct. 24, 1916: “As the transfer of Armenians is revoked, it is no longer appropriate to dispatch convoys of Armenians who are to be transferred and relocated. Therefore, if investigations have determined that there are dangerous individuals who should be transferred, we are to be promptly notified of their names and total number.” As Guenter Lewy wrote in his The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide, where the foregoing has been referenced (pp. 205-207), :[T]he deportations for all practical purposes had finally come to an end, and there was even talk of an amnesty that would allow the deportees to return to their homes. (Source: Embassy minute, December 11, 1917, PA, Botsch. K/174 [fiche 7270])

ADDENDUM, July 2007:

Lewy's source for the Aug. 29, 1915 telegram is Orel and Yuca's The Talat Pasha 'Telegrams': Historical Fact or Armenian Fiction?, 1986, p. 129. This is the book that examines the Andonian forgeries. I have since looked at Armenians in Ottoman Documents (1915-1920), Directorate of Ottoman Archives, 1995, listing telegrams in chronological order, and there is no such telegram for August 29. There is one, however, for October 27, 1915, with the heading of "Halting the Deportation of Armenians." Its description: "Ciphered telegram from the Ministry of the Interior to various provinces and governors of sanjaks, regarding that Armenians, other than those who have been gathered in order to be sent to specific locations and who have set out on the road, not be sent." It's signed by Talat Pasha (BOA, DH. SFR, nr. 57/135).

ADDENDUM, September 2007:

I've gotten the picture that the English summaries in "Armenians in Ottoman Documents" are unreliable, they sometimes alter the meaning because they are not exact and are not full-text. The information from the Orel-Yuca book is as such:

Authentic Document No. LII
Ciphered telegram from the Ministry of the Interior to the Governors of the provinces of Hudavendigar [Bursa], Ankara, Konya, Adana, Aleppo, Sivas, Mamuretilaziz [Elazig], Diyarbakir and Erzurum; and to the Governors of the sanjaks of Izmit, Maraş, Urfa, Zor, Kütahya, Karesi [Balikesir], Nigde, K