The Armenian massacres not only roused bitter hatred against the Turks throughout the world, but were used as the basis of war propaganda by the Allied press. Naturally no one mentioned the Turkish massacres. In a way I am glad of that, for the exploitation of a people's sufferings to further a political end is both cynical and inhuman, and in the end is even hurtful to the martyred people themselves — theirs ceases to be a human tragedy. No people in the world, after all, be they Turkish, Armenian, or Greek, can be indicted as a whole. There is no such thing as a guilty nation.

Halide Edib, "Turkey Faces West," 1930.

 Ms. Power's agenda-ridden scholarship deserves a good plucking. (Her book actually received a Pulitzer Prize, indicating a committee, no matter how honorable-seeming on the surface, is only as good as the people who comprise it. It's possible the people who gave her the votes were thinking, Ohhh! She is an angel, she comes out bravely against genocide. Did these people pick apart her partisan presentation? Obviously those on the committee, like the generally anti-Turkish William Safire, did not even care.)

This page is going to be not the normally in-depth kind that TAT readers may be familiar with, but a quickie. Samantha Power began her book with the Armenian matter, in a first chapter entitled, "Race Murder." Part of this chapter has been excerpted on her own page in the publisher's site, and we're just going to look at a few things. (ADDENDUM: Along the way, as copy of the book was acquired, resulting in a continuation of analysis. See link at page bottom.)

Let's start off with her chapter's title. Note how disgracefully righteous she is. The evil Nazi Turks decided to murder the Armenians, because the Armenians were strictly guilty of belonging to a certain race. Just like WWII's Jews were persecuted simply for being Jews. No consideration of all the history that had gone on in centuries past, as the Armenians' relative prosperity, the absence of racial hatred, the terror employed by the Armenians' revolutionary groups. A pooh-poohing of the Armenians' allying themselves with their dying Ottoman nation's enemies, a stipulation that the 1948 U.N. Convention on Genocide rejects in their definition for genocide. Since Samantha Power has decreed that the Armenians were the poor, innocent lambs and the Turks the big bad wolves, not a peep about the heinous slaughter committed by the Armenians, which perfectly fell in line with race extermination purposes. (I have still not read the chapter in its entirety, but I can write about her omission with near certainty. Unscrupulous genocide scholars are highly predictable creatures, their methods devoid of true scholarship.) The Armenians murdered hundreds of thousands of Ottomans who did not fit their own Christian-Armenian prototype, in their efforts to establish an ethnically Armenian state (today, according to the CIA Fact Book, Armenia is nearly 100% "pure"), but the lives of these people don't mean anything to our "human rights" champion, Samantha Power.

The special feature of voluntary actions is that the Dashnak Groups, under the leadership of bloodthirsty hmbapets (leaders of the Dashnaks like Andranik Pasha and Amazasp were called hmbapets, which is akin to murderer, plunderer, disobedient) have exhibited their heroism by mass murdering Turkish women, children, elderly and sick ones.

A. Lalayan, Soviet-Armenian historian, 1936

 It was national justice carried out in an international setting. Tehlirian had just murdered Mehmed Talaat, the former Turkish interior minister who had set out to rid Turkey of its Armenian "problem." In 1915 Talaat had presided over the killing by firing squad, bayoneting, bludgeoning, and starvation of nearly 1 million Armenians.

Really? Would this be the same Talat Pasha who was so very friendly with the Armenians? (See Guenter Lewy's The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide.) Would this be the same Talat who issued orders to safeguard Armenians and their properties? Yes, sometimes these orders were not followed; central control was weak. (Morgenthau himself has testified to that.) Talat attempted to halt the forced migration as early as August 1915, but locals had other ideas; Talat had to keep reissuing orders until 1916, when the resettlement program finally ended, or as Vahakn Dadrian put it, the genocide had all but run its course. (In the genocide industry, this relocation program is a synonym for "genocide.")

If the idea was extermination, why would the "genocide" have ended so soon? (And Power's figures are based on the propagandistic Armenian Patriarch's population count. The real pre-war population hovered around 1.5 million, and she and her pal Balakian agree one million survived. [See co-written Jan. 20, 2004 letter written to the New York Times, linked above; she "revised" her mortality figure here to "more than a million." ADDENDUM: Mea culpa. I realized later her "nearly one million" referred only to 1915. As you will read in "Part II," however, this wasn't much of a culpa; it turned out "more than one million" also referred to 1915, save for part of January 1916, when the difference between "nearly" and "more than" could not have taken place.] 1.5 million minus a million does not yield "nearly 1 million" as the mortality.)

It makes no sense whatsoever. As long as three years after the war ended, in 1921, nearly half of the pre-war Armenian population was still sticking around what was left of the Ottoman Empire, according to no less a source than the Armenian Patriarch himself. (In the co-written Times letter, Power agreed the Armenians were instead "permanently exiled." Not if such a large number remained while the Allies were occupying the devastated nation, and not when all were allowed to return in the next few years. If Armenians decided not to stick around, especially with prosperous Christian nations widely opening their doors, it was the Armenians' choice. How awfully dishonest of Samantha Power.)

And, sorry, "starvation" does not count as a "murdering technique," when the whole country was starving to death. Morgenthau wrote in his Story book that thousands of Turks were dying daily of starvation. Consul Leslie Davis had written (The Slaughterhouse Province, p. 38) that bread was almost unobtainable even before the war started. Even Turkish soldiers were dropping like flies of malnutrition (by the "thousands," according to one trial witness for the defense of Tehlirian, Liman von Sanders). It's not ethical to make a charge of a high crime based on speculation.

Samantha Power has absolutely no proof that Talat acted as a Hitler, especially when the real evidence points exactly to the contrary. Even the British could find no evidence during their "Nuremberg" process of the Malta Tribunal (1919-21); they had to let every imprisoned Turk go free. (And not for reasons Power's deceptive genocide industry tells us, like British POWs, war weariness, and whatever else they can think of. The one and only reason was, the British could find no genuine evidence.)

Yet Samantha Power has no compunction with pointing an accusatory finger at a man who must be designated as innocent, as he has yet to be proven guilty. A lawyer (or law student) as Samantha Power should have at least some familiarity with that little legal rule of thumb. What kind of morality does this woman have, this "human rights" champion, to accuse a man of a crime (and such a high crime) when she has no proof?

In January 1915, in remarks reported by the New York Times, Talaat said that there was no room for Christians in Turkey and that their supporters should advise them to clear out.

So this is what she is using as "evidence." Reportage from the biased New York Times. It's inspiring to see such an example of Pulitzer Prize winning "scholarship," folks. Let's get to the bottom of these "admissions of guilt" by way of a primary genocide guru, Morgenthau.

 Let's hold off on what this New York Times article said and concentrate on the reasoning of Prof. McCarthy. Knowing of the intense anti-Turkish bias in America, Talat was not going to be foolish enough to tell a potentially hostile American reporter (or any other "outsider," as in this case; read on) that the Christians were basically done for. In order to support her dishonest thesis, Power is ready to accept the truth of the Times article without question, not even considering that the reporter could have been just as inventive as Power, regarding the words put into Tehlirian's mouth as the Armenian assassin opened fire.

But why don't we get to the bottom of Power's "source"? Here we go, from "SAYS TURKS ADVISE CHRISTIANS TO FLEE," The New York Times, January 11, 1915:

 ATHENS, Jan. 9, (Dispatch to The London Daily Telegraph.) --- A man arriving from Constantinople who is in a position to know the facts has given me a mass of information concerning the present condition of affairs in the Turkish capital.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the reporter was based in Athens, Greece, surely what might be called "objective territory" in regards to matters Turkish. And the Times reporter  appears to have used an altogether different newspaper's source, which in turn is already an anonymous phantom, whom we are asked to believe is in "a position to know."

And the relevant passage is below:

To the Greek Patriarchate, who was sent to Talaat Pasha to remonstrate against the excesses committed by the organs of his Ministry, he unequivocally replied that there was no room for Christians in Turkey and that best the Patriarchate could do for his flock would be to advise them to clear out of the country and make room for Moslem refugees.

So we're talking about the hearsay of a phantom source, one additional step removed from the New York Times (as it appears to have originally been a London newspaper's story) repeating the hearsay of the Greek Patriarchate, whom we know would never sink to the level of propaganda, or would be interested in showing the Turks as monsters.

A professional historian can also not overlook the mass manipulation of newspaper "genocide" coverage by the British war propaganda division, also operating on U.S. soil, in addition to missionary organizations. For example: "...[G]etting (American) journalists drunk was an essential part of the operation. We do not know how many stories (Wellington House) planted, or who was paid what."

It is truly astounding that Samantha Power is offering the above as "historical proof." Words simply cannot describe her shamelessness. 

In her biography, we learn that Power served as a journalist for a period of time, writing for newspapers such as the Armenian mouthpiece, The Boston Globe. It would be interesting to dissect Power's journalistic ethics in articles she has written, if the above serves as her standards for truth.

"(The Ottoman State) has used its right to defend its existence against Armenian organisations that had fomented and incited disorders and rebellions at the instigation of the Russians by relying on Russian arms."

Leo (Arakel Babakhanian), Armenian historian, Turkahai Heghopokhutian Kaghaparapanoutiunu (The Ideology of the Turkish Armenian Revolution), published in Armenian,1934, Paris.)

"Official proclamations," like this one from June 1915, cropped up around town:

Our Armenian fellow countrymen, ... because ... they have ... attempted to destroy the peace and security of the Ottoman state, ... have to be sent away to places which have been prepared in the interior ... and a literal obedience to the following orders, in a categorical manner, is accordingly enjoined upon all Ottomans:

With the exception of the sick, all Armenians are obliged to leave within five days from the date of this proclamation ...
Although they are free to carry with them on their journey the articles of their movable property which they desire, they are forbidden to sell their land and their extra effects, or to leave them here and there with other people ...

The conditions varied depending on different localities. The average notice appears to have been about a week. That was generally better than what WWII era Japanese-Americans got. As the penultimate link will demonstrate, missionary Henry Riggs' "Days of Tragedy in Armenia," painted a different form of evil upon the Turks, by keeping the Armenians on edge with unpredictable notices, so that they may sell their goods at the worst prices. So now which propaganda do we believe? That's a tough call, but the point is the Armenians were certainly not "forbidden" to sell their goods. Other sources confirm this. (They were taken dreadful advantage of, to be sure, but Power is exercising — once again — terrible scholarship by making a statement with no basis in fact. What she is getting at, especially with the idea that Armenians were even forbidden to store their goods with trusted friends, is that all of their wealth would need to be left alone, to be stolen.) (ADDENDUM, 8-06: The diary of Hrant Sarian reports the people were first allowed to sell their possessions, and the sales later became prohibited. The July 25th entry reveals no problem in the storing of goods with friends.)

Did you catch the part about the "sick," by the way? Why would the sick have been exempted, if the idea was extermination?

The Young Turks — Talaat; Enver Pasha, the minister of war; and Djemal Pasha, the minister of public works — justified the wholesale deportation of the Armenians by claiming that it was necessary to suppress Armenian revolts.

If there were no revolts, there would have been no "deportation"; simple as that. Even the first prime minister of Armenia agreed.

Jemal Pasha says in his memoirs he had nothing to do with the "deportation." If he was off to govern Syria and Palestine by then, we would need to believe him. It's not like he could have been consulted by telephone, to participate in the multiple meetings that must have taken place to arrive at this difficult decision. Now Samantha Power is correct in that Jemal felt the resettlement was justified because of the Armenian revolts. (He was joined in that opinion by no less than Morgenthau's boss, U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing [in 1916]; even some Armenian historians, as the one above, have agreed with the same. ADDENDUM, 10-06: Borian is another, back in 1929.) But she is making it sound as though Jemal Pasha bore responsibility for the decision. Armenian propaganda tells us it was these three who were responsible for establishing an extermination program. Power is adding to the demonization of a man who did much in his power to save Armenians. Is this the kind of "scholarship" one would expect from a Pulitzer Prize winning book? (By the way, before going south to govern Syria, Jemal was the Minister of the Navy, not "public works.")

As for Enver, here are the beginnings of his views, leading to the relocation decision. Initially, he was truly for "deportation," to kick the Armenians out of the country, forcing them through the hazardous front lines of war, just like the Russians had been doing with their innocent Muslims. Ironically, the CUP leaders chose what Prof. Lewy described as a "relatively humane" process; such doesn't matter to ethically-challenged "human rights" champions as Samantha Power. She will cry "murder" in any event, with no regard for factual evidence.

In June 1915 Erzindjan, the hometown of Talaat's eventual assassin, was emptied. Soghomon Tehlirian, then nineteen, marched in a column of some 20,000 people, with his mother and siblings — two sisters of fifteen and sixteen, another of twenty-six who carried a two-and-a-half-year-old child, and two brothers of twenty-two and twenty-six. The journey was harrowing. The gendarmes said to be protecting the convoy first dragged Tehlirian's sisters off behind the bushes to rape them. Next he watched a man split his twenty-two-year-old brother's head open with an ax. Finally, the soldiers shot his mother and struck Tehlirian unconscious with a blow to the head. He was left for dead and awoke hours later in a field of corpses. He spotted the mangled body of a sister and the shattered skull of his brother. His other relatives had disappeared. He guessed he was the sole survivor of the caravan.

Let's say it loud and clear:

Silly Samantha Power is an idiot.

(Assuming she reported the above with belief. If she wrote these words knowing them to be untrue, we would have to think of another word to describe her, but this word would be far less complimentary.)

Soghoman Tehlirian was nowhere near this caravan. He was likely busy killing innocent Turks, with Antranik. The Dashnak hit man completely made up his story, to tug at the heartstrings of bigoted Christians.

We need no other source than a partisan article on the assassin that appeared in The Armenian Review (Nov. 1960); it answers a lot of questions, if one reads between the propagandistic lines.

It sounds like the only people from Tehlirian's immediate family who got killed were his mother and one brother.

The trial transcripts are very revealing, as well. Tehlirian's own defense attorney, Werthauer, confirmed that "The defendant stated today that, except for his brother’s body, he did not see the corpses of any of his relatives." That means no "mangled body of a sister." As far as can be determined, Tehlirian had three brothers, but apparently no sisters. Of course, just because Tehlirian swore under oath to have seen one dead brother, that didn't mean it was true. (Two reasons: [1] Tehlirian was not present during his mother's relocation. [2] Tehlirian was a liar.)

(Tehlirian hailed from Erzurum. Power tells us above that his hometown, Erzincan, "was emptied." If emptied, then where did the Armenians come from in the next couple of years to take control and perform such misdeeds as these? Here's a more comprehensive backdrop.)

It is truly despicable that Samantha Power is offering the word of a lying Dashnak terrorist and murderer, as her source. It's simply unbelievable that she would ask us to take his word for his claims.

To our "human rights" champion, the murderous Tehlirian (whose portrait is lovingly displayed in her book) is actually a hero. Evidently, Power approves of the assassination. (She must have worshipped Charles Bronson from the "Death Wish" films, and also identified with "Batman.") "National justice" is what our little lawyer called it.

In the simulated photo above, Soghoman Tehlirian (left) shakes
hands with his "boss," the man who largely operated the Dashnaks'
hit squad, NEMESIS: Karekin "Armen Garo" Pastermadjian. Isn't it ironic
that Samantha Power assigned the role of poor, innocent victim to such
a ruthless and professional killer?

Tidbits on Tehlirian

"He was born on April 2, 1987. [sic]" That would be 1897. The Pulitzer Prize winning Power once again got her facts wrong, by writing he was nineteen in 1915.

"His Armenian Protestant parents, Khacadoor and Hnazant, had given Tehlirian three older brothers — Misak [sic?], Setrag, and Avedis." (Translation: No sisters.)

"By the time (Tehlirian graduated from high school in 'Erzinga'), his father and uncles had followed their business interests to Serbia and established subsidiaries there. His brothers Misak [sic?] and Setrag had joined their father, and Avedis was studying mediciine in Beirut. Tehlirian, in 1913, went to Serbia to join his father and brothers for a brief while..." (If they were running these subsidiaries far from home in 1913, the odds are they did not come running back to "Erzinga" — evidently the Armenian word for Erzincan — one short year later, when the war began. These family members were not part of the caravan, especially Missak.)

"His beloved mother, brother Avedis, and relatives in Erzinga were destroyed." (There's the confirmation. We are indirectly being told the father and two other brothers, the rest of his immediate family, were not present.)

"He maneuvered his way into the infantry under the command of General Antranig, And to his surprise here he discovered... his brother Missak, who had also answered the call to battle." (This other Tehlirian traitor confirms the family was not "wiped out.")

"With the victorious regiment, he entered the immortal Armenian city of Van, and then went on to Bitlis and Moush. He participated in all the campaigns under Antranig's command until the Russian defection from the war..." (We learn: [1] Tehlirian could not have been in Erzincan in 1915 because [2] Tehlirian was busy slaughtering defenseless Turks and that [3] the murderer was a liar in the classic Dashnak tradition.)

He will enter 'Erzinga' serving as an irregular under the "incomparable guerilla bands of Mourad of Sebastia," and others. This is when he "viewed the remains of his home and town. "His mother, his brother, his relatives.... all had been massacred." (A confirmation that Tehlirian was not back in his home town until late in the war or after the war.)

Soghoman Tehlirian, Armenian Review, written by Sarkis Atamian, Aut. Nov. 1960, pp. 40-41. The article was a four part series. In the next issue:

In Berlin, "When she [Miss Leola] asked him about his country and family. 'I have no country,' Tehlirian replied." (From Part II, 1961, p. 14.) (A confirmation that some in his family were still alive; the sob story about his family getting wiped out is totally bogus.)

The two members of his family who died, the mother and brother Avedis... how do we know they were "massacred"?

Let's briefly mention that Author Sarkis Atamian was propagandistically out of control, a man after Samantha Power's heart. Every Turk (and Armenians he designated as traitors) is a "fiend." He tells us Tehlirian was a sweetheart because he shot Talat only once, and did not keep pumping Talat's lifeless form with bullets, as Atamian probably would have loved to do himself. (The standards for humanitarianism among Dashnaks can be particularly bizarre. Here's another example, regarding Dro.) On p. 42 of the first chapter, Atamian intructs us, "Without justice, no moral comprehension is possible, and without morality, the human being is inconceivable," the idea of "morality" in this case is when a vigilante acts as judge, jury and executioner. Even if the victim only "appears" guilty without evidence, a striking example being the entirely innocent Said Halim Pasha, another Nemesis victim.

So when Atamian writes, "His mother, his brother, his relatives... all had been massacred... by the Turkish mobs, the soldiers and the gendarmerie" (p. 41), we know that would be good enough for Atamian's soul sister, Samantha Power. (You can go back up to read Power's embellishments; we have learned that Power's inventions or mindless faith in others' inventions, like Tehlirian being present, the sisters being raped, and that one sister's body was "mangled" have no basis in fact and it's horrifying that Power is perpetrating anti-Turkish hatred based upon lies.)

But what about the brother's head being split open by an ax? Assuming axes were standard issue for the gendarmes. In photos we have seen of gendarmes marching alongside the convoys, we see them carrying rifles. Anyone see axes? Would it make sense to carry heavy axes during a long march? (That is, among marches without ox carts, carrying supplies.) Of course not. But axe-murders are particularly gruesome. Whomever made up this part of the story obviously wanted to accentuate how "unspeakable" the Turks are, and Power is happily repeating such ugly hearsay in her bigoted book.

From the Armenian-translated trial testimony:

DISTRICT ATTORNEY — The defendant testified that the massacres took place just outside the city limits of Erzinga. I am informed that, after the caravan had gone quite a distance from Erzinga, armed Kurdish bandits attacked the caravan in a pass and even many Turkish gendarmes were killed trying to protect the caravan. Would the defendant please answer whether or not they were attacked by Kurdish bandits?

TEHLIRIAN — I was told that it was the Turkish gendarmes who opened fire on us.

Naturally, Tehlirian dumbly contradicted himself; since the basis of his perjury rested upon his being physically present, he wouldn't need to have been "told." But as we know, it's good enough for pro-Armenians to simply be "told," no matter how unreliable the source. To pro-Armenians such as Samantha Power, all she needs is to be "told" by unreliable sources such as Julia Pascal and Tehlirian himself, because truth is to be regarded as leprosy, to the pro-Armenian.

The real point is this, ladies and gentlemen. We can't verify the D.A.'s information either, but despite what omnipresent Armenian propaganda has brainwashed us with, there were gendarmes who acted dutifully and with honor. Yes, there were lowlifes among them, and yes, some were in cahoots with the Kurds and other bandits. But there were some who lost their lives defending Armenians, which in itself runs contrary to the idea of a planned "Final Solution." Since the D.A. was practically the sole voice of reason in this despicable 1921 Berlin kangaroo court, his information would be infinitely more reliable than the word of a Dashnak assassin and terrorist.

If Tehlirian's mother and brother were killed en route — and there's no proof of that either, as they could have died the way most relocated Armenians lost their lives after reaching their destinations, of famine/disease — the cause of death could well have been at the hands of lawless bands overwhelming the Ottoman guards trying to defend the Armenians. If that were the case, should not those as Samantha Power be particularly ashamed?

 
That concludes the brief excerpt from "A Problem From Hell" that HarperCollins featured on their web site. If the book were to be analyzed in its entirety (as her friend Balakian's "Tigris" book has been examined on TAT), no doubt this page would have been considerably longer. But even for a "quickie," just about everything Silly Samantha Power has written has nothing to do with historical accuracy. The bigoted Power has completely utilized propagandistic sources, proving herself to be quite the anti-scholar. A true scholar would have gone out of her way to have analyzed as much pertinent data as possible, before arriving at scientific, dispassionate conclusions. Note as example her Tehlirian reportage, from above. She didn't even bother to consult the trial transcript nor anything about Soghoman Tehlirian, that wasn't readily available through the easy resources of her genocide industry.

She actually couldn't have. Such a process would have gone against her mission. Her mission was to arrive at the conclusion first, and then find the evidence to affirm her conclusion... regardless of how tainted the evidence was. This is why Samantha Power is no scholar, genocide or otherwise.

What is she then? Those who rely almost entirely upon propaganda cannot be called by any other word, and we all know what that word is.