About 1915 and Some Legends
On 29 April an article devoted to the "Armenian
Question" was published, the title of which was "Are we ready to
face our history?" The article spoke with a sincerity rarely shown in
Turkey about the necessity of assessing history and turning the issue into an
object of open discussion. Even this viewpoint alone deserves saluting the
author of the article. But there were some glitches in the writing. In that
article too many subjects, familiar as being the Turkish official thesis,
were offered as information, which are such tall stories that they have no
relation whatsoever with the truth. The reality is that a number of
individuals, as well as bodies founded with the purpose of proving the
Turkish viewpoint, continuously create tall stories and lies. Even people
like Ayse Hur, who think very seriously about this issue, often accept those
tall stories as reality, and by repeating them contribute to the fact that
the tall story gets transformed, little by little, into "information
reflecting the truth." About this subject, we need to clearly
distinguish the tall stories and lies from the true information. I would now
like to address two of those tall stories:
1) Ayse Hur writes "up to the Mondros
Armistice, 1397 persons were given various sentences; more than half of them
were sentenced to death for the crime of harming Armenians." This
information, which is simply a tall story, appeared for the first time in the
Kamuran Gürün's book "The Armenian File," as far as I know.
Thereafter, it was continuously used by others, too, as credible information.
Nobody thought about asking the following question: who were these 1397
persons who were put on trial and/or sentenced to death?
Gürün provides no name, nor any document, but
mentions -- as a reference -- the files of the cypher room of the Ottoman
period Interior Ministry. Those files were kept secret from researchers for a
long time. Only civil servants like Gürün or S. Soy, who were given the
responsibility of creating a "tall story," were able to read them,
and when those files were opened, those who wanted to read them were either
expelled from the archives, or permission to access them was not provided
under the pretext that the files were still being worked on, or that their
subject had no relation with those files. Today those files are open, and one
can read them by overcoming certain difficulties.
And the information contained in those files is the
exact opposite of what Gürün claims. There is no proof of the fact that a
number of persons were put on trial or that they were executed for having
mistreated Armenians. As for those sued, they were not people who committed
crimes against Armenians, but rather those who appropriated the possession of
Armenians. The Ittihadists launched an inquiry against certain civil servants
who had plundered possessions, since they wanted to take advantage of those
possessions for certain purposes.
THE PROGRAM OF ITTIHADISTS
A number of documents show that Ittihadists used
Armenian possessions for the following purposes:
1) To cope with the costs of the war (certain
buildings were assigned to the military; the output of factories were
assigned to meet the needs of soldiers).
2) To create Turkish middle-classes.
3) To get Muslim immigrants to settle down (for this
purpose to expropriate seized houses).
4) To sell Armenian possessions, so as to cope with
the cost of the deportation of Armenians with the income resulting from the
sales of the possessions.
In these files, there are tens of documents about
this subject, but there isn't even a single document about those persons who
were sued for the crime of mistreating Armenians. The documents show us that
the Ittihadists used Armenian possessions in accordance with a very well
prepared plan, for certain purposes, and for this reason they put the
plunderers on trial.
Besides these trials there is also a second tall
story: according to this tall story, compensations for their possessions were
paid to the Armenians at the places where they had been sent. Various
decisions were made at various times by the authorities about the abandoned
possessions of Armenians. Among these, the most important ones were the
circular dated 10 June 1915 and the temporary law adopted in September.
According to these circulars, the possession of Armenians would be sold and
the compensations would be paid to them in their new places. However, there
is not a single document about this in the Ottoman Archives. Therefore, the
allegation that those who mistreated Armenians were sued and sentenced to
death is not correct, much like the allegation that compensations for the
seized possessions of Armenians were paid to them is not correct. These are
simply lies, intentionally created by a lie-machine, in order to confuse
people.
2) Ayse Hur writes in her article that Protestants
and Catholics living in Western provinces were not deported. In reality,
there are two different tall stories about this issue. The first is that
Armenians were not deported from Western provinces; whereas, the second is
that Catholics and Protestants were not subjected to deportation. About this,
there is no need for foreign sources, even the State Archives disprove the
two above-mentioned tall stories in a book published in 1995. It is said in
this book that Armenians were deported from Adana, Ankara, Aydin, Bolu,
Bitlis, Bursa, Canik, Çanakkale, Diyarbakir, Edirne, Eskishehir, Erzurum,
Izmit, Kastamonu, Kayseri, Karahisar, Konya, Kütahya, Elazig, Maras, Nigde,
Samsun, Sivas, Trabzon, and Van. In reality, those are incomplete, too. But,
even this shows the deportation was carried out on the whole territory of
Anatolia. At the head of these tall stories is the one in which it is claimed
that there was no deportation from Izmir and Istanbul; whereas, the records
of the Interior Ministry indicate that there were deportations from Istanbul
and Izmir, too. Let's hope that the existing documents will one day be
published.
TALAAT PASHA'S TELEGRAM
Now as for that tall story, according to which
Catholics and Protestants were not deported, it is true that there were a
number of telegrams sent regarding this subject in order that the local
responsible authorities could prevent such deportations. But the first
message sent was already dated 4 August 1915. That is, it was sent 3 months
after the deportations. The first document about Catholic Armenians was sent
by Talaat Pasha. The telegram stated that the deportation of Catholic
Armenians should not take place. A similar telegram was sent on 15 October
about Protestant Armenians. There, too, the following was said: those
Protestant Armenians who haven't been deported yet, shall not be deported
anymore. As inferred from both telegrams, Armenian Catholic and Protestants
had already been deported prior to that date. Now in telegrams sent on 18
September 1915 from Kayseri, Eskishehir, Diyarbakir, and Nigde, governors
replied that all the Armenians in their respective regions had been deported
and that none remained.
From many documents, we understand that those
telegrams of Talaat Pasha were sent "merely for the sake of doing
it". Later, verbal instructions were sent to the same governors so that
they would not take those telegrams seriously. But even the above-mentioned
documents alone are sufficient to show that the claim that Catholics and
Protestants had not been deported is a tall story.
Let's hope that, this painful page of the history
accepted in the international public opinion as the Armenian Genocide and
that among us it is recalled only as the "Armenian Question", stop
being for us a topic on the agenda only in the month of April, and that it
shall be the object of a general serious discussion rid of legends, because
he who doesn't face his own past, cannot build his future.
Taner Akcam
From:Radikal Date:
Sun, 11 May 2003
Published in the Sunday supplement of the Turkish daily "Radikal".
Translated by ./Anna K. Piranian
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