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The Observations of An American…


While I was in Turkey last month, making a video of the historic Christian sites in Turkey, a country perhaps better known as “Asia Minor” in the bible, I could not help notice a great injustice that was being done our Turkish friends by some Armenian lobbyists. Now, I do not have a single drop of Turkish or Armenian blood in me -- I trace my heritage to 17th century Scottish settlers. I thought I would give the point of view of “pure" American on the subject of Turkish-Armenian reconciliation efforts underway.

My wife and I experienced a great adventure in Turkey during the past six weeks and whilst there I read several articles in the Turkish press relating to the "Armenian" movement seeking "reconciliation." I concluded that all that is a scam, engineered by Armenians, and my reasons are as follows.

Frankly, when one looks back through history, as I have been able to do, one must conclude the Armenians are at it again! When they can't win in the battlefield, they talk until they get what they want, a process of “verbal attrition” if you like.

The establishment of a "Turkish-Armenian Reconciliation Committee", or TARC for short, is yet another example of Armenians trying to talk their way into “getting something for nothing”. Consider these basic facts, as reported in the Turkish press, concerning the way TARC is to operate:

The Armenians will continue to work to…

(1) Get the United States government to recognize a genocide that they say took place in 1915 for which the Armenian claim the Turks are 100% guilty.

(2) Get the US State Department to work to support Armenian claims for reparations from the Turks.

(3) Convince the leaders of Turkish civil society that there was genocide as Armenians allege.

(4) Get the elite of Turkey to accept that admitting genocide allegations is in the Turks’ best interest.

(5) Educate the public at large in Turkey that there was genocide as the Armenians claim.

(6) Portray the Turkish government and its people as “not yet ready to behave according to the norms of modern, civilized nations", if the Turks don't do these things "

(7) Test the Turkish kids at school to verify that they believe there was genocide in 1915.

On the other hand, Ozdem Sanberk, a Turkish member of TARC, states: "The intent is not to find what the truth is, but to open new horizons for the future and enhance mutual understanding." Another Turkish member of TARC, Ilter Turkmen, says, "The commission's task is not to come to a historical judgment."

What this American observer sees, however, is totally different. First of all, "reconciliation" means there are two sides that need to come together. The Armenians have well stated their demands for the continuance of the reconciliation meetings. Now it is the Turks’ turn to say, and so far failed to say, what it is that the Armenians must do for ”reconciliation”. Here are my suggestions:

 What  the Armenians must do for ”reconciliation”:


(1) Since the Armenians boast of being the world's first Christian nation, they should prove their faith by taking the first step toward peace. A good beginning for them is to admit that the Armenians had worked for 30 years to overthrow the Ottomans prior to 1915.

(2) Armenians must admit they were disloyal to the Ottomans with whom they had lived in peace and prosperity for more than 500 years. They must admit that they joined forces with the Russians to take control of the Ottoman lands, so the Armenians could get some of the land, where the Armenians were not even a majority.

(3) Armenians must admit the Ottomans had the legal right to defend themselves and remove all Armenians because many of them were engaging in military acts to help the Russians behind the Ottoman army lines--same right the United States used to remove the Japanese-Americans from the west coast at the start of World War II.

(4) Armenians must admit that their people had engaged in massacres of Turks within the Russian side of the combat zones prior to and after 1915.

(5) Armenians must acknowledge that the Armenian dictator-government of 1918 started unprovoked wars with neighbors Georgia and Azerbaijan in a failed land grab attempt.

(6) Armenians must acknowledge that present day Turkey is open to all religions and all people enjoy religious freedom, in the best tradition of the Ottoman Empire in the last 7 centuries, and that there is no universal religious freedom in Armenia today. Compare the extremely low number of Muslim mosques left standing in Armenia with the huge number of Christian Churches still operational in Turkey, for example, and you will quickly get the idea that Armenians are very intolerant of other religions on their soil.

(7) Armenians must work to get the Armenian government to accept, respect, and support the rights of minorities, so that Muslims may enjoy the same rights as Christians in Armenia.

(8) Armenians must work to get Armenia to admit that Armenia has persecuted Muslims since entering World War I and that Armenia’s persecution of Muslims continues to this day.

(9) Armenians must guarantee that no TARC member has conflict of interest now or in the future. Case in point: New York Armenian attorney, Van Krikorian, a member of TARC, has made an issue of "conflict of interest." He states he has no business dealings with Turks or Turkey. Will attorney Krikorian pledge also, that he will not represent Armenian clients in attempting to get "reparations" from Turkey—or the Ottomans or anyone else?

(10) Armenians must work to get Armenia and the Armenian state approved sole church to admit they have supported terrorist activities, to pledge to stop such acts of terror.

(11) Armenians must work to get Armenia and the Armenian state approved sole church to say they are sorry for their overt and covert support for 30+ years for the Armenian terrorist groups like ASALA, JCAG, and others in their world wide attempts to murder Turkish diplomats.

(12) It seems to me, since the Armenian government made a long and emotional presentation to the Paris Peace Commission in 1919, in an effort to get “reparations" from the Ottomans, and the Peace Commission, after hearing all the evidence including systematic mass murder allegations, said "no" and gave them “zero”, the case was closed back in 1919. Armenians must admit this fact and state from the start that this issue was settled in 1919 and must not be brought up ever again.

Last time I looked, “reconciliation” is a two way street. It is only fair, therefore, that such points as I outlined above be a part of the TARC foundation and work. TARC cannot be a one-way street to benefit only the Armenians.

American Ambassador to Armenia Michael Lemmon, who has been playing a key role in the formation of business ties between Yerevan and Ankara, said TARC activities are encouraged by the United States, according to a news report in Turkish Daily News (September 18). With the experience of the last three years in Armenia, Lemmon told Turkish journalists, that “…nothing should be off the table for the unofficial gatherings between Turkey and Armenia…” which is all the more reason that my suggestions above also be put on the table.

Ambassador to Armenia Michael Lemmon also said in the same interview: ”I have been sincerely telling not only Armenia but also the diaspora that I don't agree with the spending of a lot of time for the approval of parliamentary resolutions on genocide. It is possible to form a dialogue between the people but this can be achieved through the efforts of the two sides. An outsider can only encourage or support this. But this is something to be achieved by the Turkish and the Armenian people."

When reminded that all talks between groups were being locked typically on the alleged genocide issue, Lemmon said that this issue should be handled by serious people, silently, without taking the issue to the public attention. But the same ambassador Lemmon, in a speech at ANI Conference, on April 22, 1999, had this to say very “publicly” and very loudly:

"... Allow me to speak bluntly, but I hope, constructively. Turkey's democratic evolution will not be complete until Turkey's scholars, politicians and even ordinary citizens understand and accept as illegitimate the events that turned the multiethnic Ottoman Empire, home of the so-called 'Loyal Millet' into the ostensibly mono-ethnic state we see today. But such understanding is difficult and simply not possible without dialogue in good faith among scholars of good faith. ..." 

The good ambassador forgets, or ignores which is just as bad, one simple fact:  Did the Ottomans choose to turn the 600+ years old, multi-religious, multi-ethnic empire to a nation-state one sunny afternoon, sipping tea at some wonderful tea garden in Istanbul, admiring the eternal beauty of the Bosphorus?  Did the British, the French, the Russians, even the United States have something to do with it?  What about the Italians, and the Greeks, and the Armenians, and the Arabs under Lawrence of Arabia?  Hint:  Look up World War I.   

This fact proves that the Armenian betrayed, organized armed groups, and ruthlessly slaughtered Turks, especially in the City of Van.

This is the kind of “selective reviewing” of facts related to an issue that makes international issues fester.  The good ambassador seems to approach this issue assuming the alleged genocide is a foregone conclusion.  That is why he reasons generously: “…Here is where I would differ with many who put so much time and effort into the adoption of statements by politicians and parliaments. The process that I have described will not, it seems to me, be best advanced by the issuing of public declarations and attempting to try contemporary Turks before the court of public opinion for the actions of their forefathers. Reconciliation cannot come about if one of the parties does not recognize that there is anything to feel responsibility for, much less remorse, and the other insists a priori on condemnation.  What is needed is a dialogue of civilizations, of peoples, perhaps best undertaken by scholars, that takes us on not just an historic, fact-finding journey, but also on a spiritual, transcendental path that allows us to comprehend, accept and proceed in an effort to build a future where such events never occur again."

Now I will give you some references which will prove, beyond a shadow of doubt — and believe me when I say this, because I am a former prosecutor and a retired judge — that the ambassador is wrong in concluding that the alleged genocide is a fact and the Armenians are wrong in insisting on their allegations be taken at face value.

This fact proves that Armenians did take part in a war with well organized, armed, and trained Armenian armies and that the bloody "Armenian war effort" was deliberately, shamelessly, and unfairly disguised as "genocide"

In a letter to Times of London, dated January 30, 1919, signed by, Boghos Nubar, the head of the Armenian National Delegation to the Paris Peace Conference, held by the victors of the WWI, to divvy up the spoils and the loot of the war, the Armenian leader begs the allied powers to reward the Armenians for their "service".  In a most damning documents, perhaps of the whole era, here is what he says and I quote directly from the letter published:    "…The Armenians have been, since the beginning of the war, de facto belligerents - since they fought alongside the Allies on all fronts - in Palestine and Syria, where the Armenian volunteers, recruited by the Armenian National Delegation at the request of the French government, made up more than half of the French contingent. In the Caucasus, where, without mentioning the 150,000 Armenians in the Imperial Russian Army, more than 40,000 of their volunteers offered resistance to the Turkish Armies."    

This fact proves that the Armenian betrayed, organized armed groups, and ruthlessly slaughtered Turks, especially in the City of Van.   Even anti-Turkish, anti-Muslim Henry Morgenthau, Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in 1915-1916, whom the Armenians love to quote, says in his otherwise very anti-Turkish book, Ambassador Morgenthau's Story, Doubleday, Page & Co., Garden City, New York (1918), page 301:  "...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..."  

Armenians can't fool all the people all the time.

 

This one reveals the other side of the “my grandmother told me” stories so widely publicized in the West.  On Armenian atrocities victimizing Turks of Erzerum, consider this fact:  Rafael de Nogales, A Venezuelan adventurer who joined the Ottoman army to fight in WWI and later became a Venezuelan general says in his book Four Years Beneath the Crescent, (translated from Spanish by Muna Lee from the original Spanish version: Quatro Anos Bajo La Media Luna), Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, London, 1926, page 45, and I quote: "...After hostilities had actually commenced, the Deputy to the Assembly for Erzerum, Garo Pasdermadjian, passed over with almost all the Armenian troops and officers of the Third Army to the Russians; to return with them soon after, burning hamlets and mercilessly putting to the knife all of the peaceful Mussulman villagers that fell into their hands."  

If you think everything you know, everything you heard from the Armenians is right, therefore everything you know must be right, think again.  Look at this reference on Armenian distortions, propaganda, and misrepresentations.  George M. Lamsa, a missionary well known for his research on Christianity, says on page 133 of his book The Secret of the Near East, The Ideal Press, Philadelphia (1923), and I quote:   "...In some towns containing ten Armenian houses and thirty Turkish houses, it was reported that 40,000 people were killed, about 10,000 women were taken to the harem, and thousands of children left destitute; and the city university destroyed, and the bishop killed.  It is a well-known fact that even in the last war the native Christians, despite the Turkish cautions, armed themselves and fought on the side of the Allies.  In these conflicts, they were not idle, but they were well supplied with artillery, machine guns and inflicted heavy losses on their enemies…" 

And if you think Armenians were sucked into a war they did not want and that the “poor starving Armenians” as we were led to believe, were victims of an alleged genocide, think again. Armenians planned every step of their heinous crimes.  Here is the proof of Armenian plans to ethnically cleanse all Turks.  William L. (Langer), Professor of History, Harvard, in his book The Diplomacy of Imperialism 1890-1902, Alfred a. Knopf, New York (1935), Volume I, page 157, says the following: "…One of the revolutionaries told Dr. Hamlin, the founder of Robert College, that the Hentchak (i.e. Armenian) bands would watch their opportunities to kill Turks and Koords, set fire to their villages, and then make their escape into the mountains. The enraged Moslems will then rise, and fall upon the defenseless Armenians and slaughter them with such barbarity that Russia will enter in the name of humanity and Christian civilization and take possession…”

Armenians can't fool all the people all the time. What Armenians allege as genocide was in fact a bloody civil war, started by Armenians, at a time of weakness of the Ottoman Empire, when the latter was fighting a world war (WWI) for nothing less than its survival.

Recent court decision in Switzerland where the Swiss Court cleared Turks who disputed genocide, show that there are two sides to every story, Armenian genocide allegation included.

More importantly, though, look what the British Embassy in Ankara, Turkey, said in a press release dated July 23, 2001:

"...The British Government of the day and successive British Governments viewed the massacres of 1915-1916 as an appalling tragedy. We understand the strength of feeling on this issue given the loss of life on both sides.  But we do not believe the evidence demonstrates that the events should be classified as "genocide", which has a specific meaning under the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide.

Responding to a parliamentary question in February, the then Foreign and Commonwealth Office minister Baroness Scotland told the House of Lords "The Government, in line with previous British Governments, have judged the evidence not to be sufficiently unequivocal to persuade us that these events should be categorised as genocide as defined by the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide as defined by the 1948 UN Convention on genocide, a convention which is in any event not retrospective in application. The interpretation of events in Eastern Anatolia in 1915-1916 is still the subject of genuine debate amongst historians
..."

Is not this selective morality?

 

What the British are saying is nothing less than remarkable, for at least 2 reasons:

 1.  There was loss of life on both sides.   How come then the Turkish suffering is always ignored and never even once acknowledged by the Armenians and their sympathizers like Ambassador Lemmon?  Is not this religious/ethnic discrimination based on hatred?  Is not this selective morality?  Is not it an insult to the silent memory of million of Turkish dead who cannot rise and defend themselves in Swiss court rooms or TARC meetings against shameless Armenian allegations?

 2.  Events should not be classified as "genocide".   The term "genocide" was coined in 1948, some 33 years after the event, drawing from the terrible experience of Jewish Holocaust in Nazi Germany, and it is neither retroactive nor applicable to the Turkish-Armenian civil war.   Armenians know this full well, which is why they do not dare sue Turkey in the international court.  Such courts need hard facts and evidence, not hype or propaganda.

The British occupied Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, for four years (1918-1922) after winning WWI.  They had complete access to all Ottoman documents and scanned them diligently to find the "smoking gun" or anything remotely similar to use in courts of law.  The British found nothing and they had to let the Ottoman leaders, who had been detained on the Island of Malta awaiting trials, go free.  That should have been the end of that.

But, then you are dealing with some hate merchants here, who are so used to begging, crying, and getting something for nothing, who have kept the lucrative propaganda machine pumping "poor, starving Armenians" stories in the Christian world, unopposed by any Muslim, of course!  Unsuspecting Christians, in the belief that they were helping their persecuted brethren showered Armenians with money, thus financed the reverse: the Armenian war of aggression against Turks, during WW1 and Azerbaijanis in the 1990s.  This despicable scenario goes on even today.  But with fast and unlimited circulation of knowledge, thanks to press, TV, and Internet, Armenian lies are being exposed one by one.

Armenian deliberate misrepresentations were bought lock, stock, and barrel

 

The truth is plain, simple, and sad. Armenians, enjoying the highest living standards under Turkish rule since Seljuk Empire (10-13th Century) and then Ottoman Empire (13-20th Century) for close to a millennia, who were even bestowed with the honor of "the most loyal nation" by the Sultan in the multi-religious, multi-ethnic Ottoman Empire, resorted to violence and aggression between 1890-1922 in order to overthrow Turkish rule and establish Armenia on lands that always had a Muslim majority. Propaganda, agitation, and terror, in that order, were used to provoke the Turks into a retaliation, which, according to Armenian plans, would trigger a military intervention by the Christian allies (mostly Britain, France, Russia).

Once the allies won, Armenians reasoned, then they would turn the eastern parts of the land over to the Armenians. Armenian atrocities and Muslim victims were largely ignored by Western sources (Christian diplomats, missionaries, news reporters, military agents, etc.). Armenian para-military hoodlums (Armenian Revolutionary Federation and Hunchaks) cold bloodedly slaughtered countless Muslims, until regular Armenian armies under various uniforms (deserters in Ottoman, volunteers in Russian and French) took over this gory task enthusiastically. When the Allies did win the war in 1918, Armenians wanted their reward: reparations and land from the Ottoman Empire. Neither came!

The French and the British did not even so much as give the Armenians a place at the Paris peace conference, which started in January of 1919. They were not sold on the Armenian claims. The civil war cost Turks and Armenians dearly. Turkish suffering fell on deaf ears, while Armenian suffering was blown out of proportion with "my grandmother told me" stories. Armenians played the "Christian" card to the hilt, because they rightly figured that they were simply unopposed in church circles. No Muslim would go to a church to oppose the Armenian tall tales. As a result, Armenian deliberate misrepresentations were bought lock, stock,
and barrel.

Armenians also tried alternative routes to realize their impossible dreams. Among them are international terrorism (1922-2001) including in recent years 100 attacks worldwide which left 70 diplomats and innocent bystanders dead mostly in Europe and USA; media and politics; and hate monuments.

All of these could easily be interwoven. Assassinate a Turk; media will come; world will hear your story; collect money; erect monument; and then repeat the whole cycle. The more biased the coverage, the more political power. Normally, such an intense struggle over such a long period should have succeeded, but it didn't. The reason was, the fact that the Armenians were fighting against the truth! No one can fool all the people all the time. Armenians fought against the truth, but instead of reparations and land, all they got was "selective morality" in pockets of communities where Armenians live.

Reconciliation can only emerge if both sides are honest, fair, and just.




Sam Weems
Former Prosecutor, Retired Judge, and a Christian Scholar

 

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THE PURPOSE OF TALL ARMENIAN TALE (TAT)
...Is to expose the mythological “Armenian genocide,” from the years 1915-16. A wartime tragedy involving the losses of so many has been turned into a politicized story of “exclusive victimhood,” and because of the prevailing prejudice against Turks, along with Turkish indifference, those in the world, particularly in the West, have been quick to accept these terribly defamatory claims involving the worst crime against humanity. Few stop to investigate below the surface that those regarded as the innocent victims, the Armenians, while seeking to establish an independent state, have been the ones to commit systematic ethnic cleansing against those who did not fit into their racial/religious ideal: Muslims, Jews, and even fellow Armenians who had converted to Islam. Criminals as Dro, Antranik, Keri, Armen Garo and Soghoman Tehlirian (the assassin of Talat Pasha, one of the three Young Turk leaders, along with Enver and Jemal) contributed toward the deaths (via massacres, atrocities, and forced deportation) of countless innocents, numbering over half a million. What determines genocide is not the number of casualties or the cruelty of the persecutions, but the intent to destroy a group, the members of which are guilty of nothing beyond being members of that group. The Armenians suffered their fate of resettlement not for their ethnicity, having co-existed and prospered in the Ottoman Empire for centuries, but because they rebelled against their dying Ottoman nation during WWI (World War I); a rebellion that even their leaders of the period, such as Boghos Nubar and Hovhannes Katchaznouni, have admitted. Yet the hypocritical world rarely bothers to look beneath the surface, not only because of anti-Turkish prejudice, but because of Armenian wealth and intimidation tactics. As a result, these libelous lies, sometimes belonging in the category of “genocide studies,” have become part of the school curricula of many regions. Armenian scholars such as Vahakn Dadrian, Peter Balakian, Richard Hovannisian, Dennis Papazian and Levon Marashlian have been known to dishonestly present only one side of their story, as long as their genocide becomes affirmed. They have enlisted the help of "genocide scholars," such as Roger Smith, Robert Melson, Samantha Power, and Israel Charny… and particularly  those of Turkish extraction, such as Taner Akcam and Fatma Muge Gocek, who justify their alliance with those who actively work to harm the interests of their native country, with the claim that such efforts will help make Turkey more" democratic." On the other side of this coin are genuine scholars who consider all the relevant data, as true scholars have a duty to do, such as Justin McCarthy, Bernard Lewis, Heath Lowry, Erich Feigl and Guenter Lewy. The unscrupulous genocide industry, not having the facts on its side, makes a practice of attacking the messenger instead of the message, vilifying these professors as “deniers” and "agents of the Turkish government." The truth means so little to the pro-genocide believers, some even resort to the forgeries of the Naim-Andonian telegrams or sources  based on false evidence, as Franz Werfel’s The Forty Days of Musa Dagh. Naturally, there is no end to the hearsay "evidence" of the prejudiced pro-Christian people from the period, including missionaries and Near East Relief representatives, Arnold Toynbee, Lord Bryce, Lloyd George, Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, and so many others. When the rare Westerner opted to look at the issues objectively, such as Admirals Mark Bristol and Colby Chester, they were quick to be branded as “Turcophiles” by the propagandists. The sad thing is, even those who don’t consider themselves as bigots are quick to accept the deceptive claims of Armenian propaganda, because deep down people feel the Turks are natural killers and during times when Turks were victims, they do not rate as equal and deserving human beings. This is the main reason why the myth of this genocide has become the common wisdom.