Letters Blog May 03, 2008 7
by Prof.Dr. Turkkaya Ataov (Emeritus of international relations)
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VICKEN Babkenian (Armenia’s angels’’, Opinion, 25/4) states that “at the time the Australian troops landed at Gallipoli another event of historical importance was taking place in Turkey’’.
It’s true that a tragedy occurred in Turkey then, but in a way much different than the one stressed by Babkenian.
British authors Stephen Pope and Elizabeth-Anne Wheal, in their joint military classic Dictionary of the First World War, state that between 1 and 1.5 million Armenians were living in Turkey in 1914, that the Armenian nationalists ``slaughtered an estimated 120,000 non-Armenians while the Turkish Army was preoccupied with mobilisation’’, that ``2500 rebels took (the city of) Van in April 1915 and proclaimed a provisional government’’, and that armed Armenians ``resumed control in late 1917 killing perhaps another 50,000 non-Armenians’’.
The commanders of the Armenians, such as Armen Garo Pasdermadjian, confess in their published memoirs that they bore arms, organised large forces and fought against the Turks in several fronts. The title of Pasdermadjian’s book proudly asserts thatArmenian participation was ``A Leading Factor in the Winning of the War’’ by the Allies.
Published documents prove, beyond reasonable doubt, that Armenians committed violent assaults, armed terrorism, destruction, rape, assassinations and wholesale murder of various Muslim groups. Such misdeeds were condemned as contrary to the rules of war even by the Tsarist Russian and French officers who had provided them with uniforms,weapons and all kinds of support.
Many Armenian, British, US, French, Russian and Turkish sources indicate that the Armenians were not as helpless,
unprotected, un-armed and non-belligerent as mainstream opinion claims them to have been.
Turkkaya Ataov
Professor emeritus of international relations
Ankara University, Turkey
Copyright 2007 News Limited. All times AEST (GMT +10).
http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/letters/index.php/theaustralian/comments/armenians_were_belligerents
Vicken Babkenian
April 25, 2008
AT the same time as Australian troops landed at Gallipoli on April 25, 1915, another event of historical importance was taking place in Turkey: the Armenian genocide. The Gallipoli landing took place one day after the mass arrest of Armenian leaders in Istanbul, which is known as the beginning of the genocide. "Who, after all, remembers the annihilation of the Armenians?" were Adolf Hitler's famous words before he embarked on his heinous crime of the Holocaust.
One group who remember the Armenians are a handful of Australians who were at the forefront of the relief effort, yet their stories have been largely hidden. Not one Australian historian has devoted any attention to these remarkable Australians, who have been forgotten along with the "forgotten genocide". For example, Edith Glanville from Haberfield, Sydney, lost her son Leigh, from the 1st Battalion, who died in battle at Gallipoli. Thus began her extraordinary journey with the Armenian people.
Glanville was the first woman justice of the peace in NSW and founded both the Quota and Soroptimist clubs in Australia. Most notably she was honorary secretary of the Armenian Relief Fund of NSW from 1922, and became a driving force in raising more than $100,000 worth of supplies (about $19 million in today's value) within months. Other members of the relief fund included Charles Lloyd Jones, the first chairman of the ABC; and Oscar Lines, the general manager of the Bank of NSW. Glanville was so concerned about the plight of the Armenians that she ended up adopting an Armenian orphan. Former Menzies cabinet minister and British high commissioner Thomas White was a prisoner of war during World War I in Turkey. As a witness to the Armenian genocide, he later returned home and joined the Armenian relief effort. Another prominent Australian, the Rev J.E.Cresswell from Adelaide's Congregational Church (now the Uniting Church), was national secretary of the Armenian Relief Fund of Australasia in the 1920s. Witnessing the plight of Armenian refugees in Syria in 1923, Cresswell said: "Over 6000 are here. The sights within these caves are beyond words. No words seem adequate to describe the misery that must be the portion of these poor people." He oversaw relief programs from port to destination, including setting up an Australian-funded orphanage for 1700 children who survived the genocide in Antelias, Lebanon. That site is now one of the holiest for Armenians, the Catholicosate of Cilicia. In 1918, Sydney mayor James Joynton Smith set up the Armenian Relief Fund, which included prominent philanthropists and business people such as the Griffith brothers, one of the largest suppliers of tea and coffee in Australia, and the Elliot brothers, one of the nation's biggest pharmaceutical groups. This fund, with the help of many Sydneysiders, raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to help the Armenians, all when Australians were already sacrificing so much during World War I.
Even prime minister Billy Hughes promised that free freight would be provided by commonwealth steamers for any contribution to the fund. These are just some of the hundreds of Australian stories of generosity, hope and moral decency that have been unearthed. In the words of Robert Manne: "In world history there is an intimate connection between the Dardanelles campaign and the Armenian genocide." So, as we reflect on the sacrifices of brave Australians who landed on those distant shores, let's also remember those Australians who lost loved ones and, through the kindness of their hearts, were able to save others. Vicken Babkenian is director of the Australian Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.' http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23594423-21147,00.html
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED in 1915 TURKS WHO HAD THE MASS KİLLİNGS THAN ANY OTHERS...
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07 DECEMBER 2006
1262) Prof. Dr. Türkkaya Ataöv’s talk at the Edinburgh City Council (English Original)
Edinburgh, UK, 23 November 2006
Prof. Dr. Türkkaya Ataöv, well-known professor of international relations and Turkey’s prominent expert on the Armenian issue, addressed, on 22 November 2006, a packed audience of more than 150 listeners, including H.E. Mr. Rauf Denktaş, the former President of the TRNC (KKTC), in the conference hall of London University’s SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies), also spoke at the Edinburgh City Council the next day, He also offered a long interview to a Turkish radio network in London. . .
Prof. Ataöv, who had prepared an 11-page statement, was later informed that he was expected to talk in Edinburgh for only 15 minutes, utilized the written text for purposes of distribution at the SOAS and the City Council meetings. But he was told, during the flight to Edinburgh that he would be given only 10 minutes. He learned from the usher at the very entrance to the City Council building that he would finally be given 5 minutes, instead. Revising his talk several times to fit into the continuously altered time limits, Prof. Ataöv over-reached the limits, however and took even a longer time to reply the three questions put to him by Counselor Jerry Dawe, who spoke on behalf of the Scottish Liberal Democrat group. The lady was actually the spokesperson of entrenched Armenian views, with total disregard and ignorance of Turkish and other Western publications, documentation and opinions.
The following is the text of Prof. Ataöv’s talk, which was acclaimed by some Scotsmen as a brilliant presentation:
“The academic world may be appalled if a British political body agrees to sit as if it is a chamber of historians or a bench of judges, and ventures to decide on a very controversial issue, still debated, not only between the Armenians and Turks, but also within these two groups, as well as among various Western scholars. A political body, no matter how representative, will do justice to methodology in history-writing by recommending the creation of joint commissions of experts in history and related disciplines, to weigh all evidence and conflicting interpretations, and reach a consensus, at least on some essentials.
“Back in the 1950s, French and German experts sat together, singled out most of the misrepresentations, exaggerations, forgeries and falsifications, and sometimes outright lies, and decided to remove them from the textbooks and future discussions and printed material.
“Those who attempt to challenge an off-balanced approach are frequently labeled as ‘deniers’, as if to revise a traditional interpretation is scholarly impossible. Scholarship is like a building that requires perpetual repair. All theories should be checked for correctness. A joint commission can function authoritatively in the performance of such a task.
“Let us not aspire to attain practical results by inducing representative regional or national bodies to pass premature judgments, even sometimes leading to imprisonments and fines for statements questioning entrenched opinions.
“By the way, the so-called Morgenthau source, printed over and over again, and often referred to as reliable, is only the collective product of the U.S. Ambassador (who did not know any one of the local tongues, not even French – the diplomatic language of the time), and therefore, entirely relied on the slanted information readily provided by his two Armenian advisors/translators (Messrs. Andonian and Shmavonian), the racist but crucial alterations and additions by none other than the U.S. Secretary of State Lansing, and the revising of the popular ghost-writer Hendrick, who was never in Turkey but collected 40% of the royalties throughout. Please, consult Prof. Heath W.Lowry’s criticism of the Morgenthau book.
“Are the decision-makers in this august assembly familiar with all the pertinent sources? Not only Armenian, but also Turkish and Western ones? Or are they merely exposed to one-sided information? Can one indeed assert that my a-few-minutes summary of a summary of a summary of a challenging second view is enough for the proper functioning of the democratic procedure? I hope that the practice of democracy will not be confronted with an accomplished fact, a situation that your forefathers, even as the victors of World War One, avoided in the 1920s. Did not they search the Ottoman archives and also consult the U.S. Government for documents that could be used to indict all or any one of the 144 Ottoman leaders, all the way down from the Prime Minister (Said Halim Pasha), then imprisoned in the Crown Colony of Malta, but failed to find even a single document to support what they were looking for? Are we, or democracy itself, now confronted with the possibility of a generalized and politicized verdict – this time, even without a trial? Can a political body be the ultimate judge, without having studied, neither satisfactorily nor even a bit, the vast published materials of professors Stanford J. Shaw, Justin McCarthy, Heath W. Lowry, Guenther Levy, and others, or the war accounts of prominent Armenians, such as the independent Armenia’s first Prime Minister O. Katchaznouni, former Ottoman MP but later the commander of armed Armenian battalions General G. Pasdermadjian, pronouncements of others like General Antranik, and also Armenian analyses of their own belligerency made by Hacobian, Tourabian and Gurganian? Have you studied at least the works, reports or published books of your own countrymen, such as Captain Norman and man-of-letters Dixon-Johnson? They all differ radically, in terms of offering information, confessions or interpretations, from the traditionally dominant view. Dixon-Johnson’s fair treatment was published in the year 1916 when the British and the Turks were engaged in battle in no less than four fronts.
“But if one has not seen even the covers of these books, not even glanced over the many rolls of films, incorporating hundreds of reliable Ottoman documents, presented by us to the leading British research centers, associated institutes and government offices, can ultimate decision be rested only on one set of arguments?
“I am sure that will consult your conscience, your sense of fair play, in good will and accumulated wisdom, and decide that only groups of experts can have the required knowledge, documentation and mandate to pass balanced and much more dependable opinions. Let us pay our debt, not only to some Armenian views, but also to the Turkish ones, including the latter’s documentation, witnesses, and of course, the Turkish dead.
“Your guiding beacon will be whether or not your decision reflects ‘the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth’. Please, bear in mind that you yourselves will be judged in the future by your own judgment. So, help you God!
“I thank you for your attention.”
This was the end of Prof. Ataöv’s introductory talk, every word of which he pronounced.
Counselor Jerry Dawe, the spokesperson of the Scottish Liberal Democrat group, posed three questions to Prof. Ataöv, all asked and replied one by one. He inquired the speaker’s opinion (1) on the statement of the International Association of Genocide Studies, which asserted that this case was decided upon and subsequent research could not alter the verdict, (2) on the acceptance of several Ottoman parliamentarians and the Turkish courts, in the 1920s, of Turkey’s guilt, and (3) on the concurrence of the Germans and Austrians who had been then the allies of the Ottomans.
Prof. Ataöv’s improvisatory replies, for which there is no written record, were as long as his initial presentation. They were nevertheless cut short by the presiding Chairperson, presumably on the basis that the point was already “understood”. Having been made on the occasion and with no verbatim record, his comments may only be very much summarized here. He said that he does not know who these genocide spokesmen were but that he had met others, probably like them, who strikes him for their prejudiced opinions and their lack of requisite attention to documents that refuted their beliefs. He emphasized that the question was not what happened to some Armenian, and for that matter, to some Turkish or Muslim families, but what was the official policy of the Ottoman Government towards the Armenians. He added that the answer to this crucial question could be found in the Ottoman archives- just as the British position on any issue ought to be searched, first and foremost, in the archives of this country.
These genocide experts had not utilized the Ottoman archives. It is true that Germany and Austria were then Ottoman allies, he said, but this status would not qualify individuals to be objective narrators. Moreover, the well-known British ‘Blue Book’ quotes, he added, two German sources in that massive compendium but fails to quote another German source, called “Germania”, which states that the Armenians had killed 150,000 Muslims. He stated: “I made a proper reference to this German source in one of my recent books on the issue, printed in New York. I shall be glad to give you a copy, along with other publications, including that by Katchaznouni.” Of some statements in the Ottoman Parliament and the verdicts of the Istanbul court, Prof. Ataöv reminded that these pronouncements could not be judged apart from the heavy weight of the defeat of the country and the occupation of the capital, in fact the legislative and the court buildings being under the actual siege of bayoneted British soldiers. Therefore, such pronouncements could not be treated as concrete evidence.
Talking to Mrs. Dawe after the session, Prof. Ataöv invited her to a much longer debate on the subject, to which the counselor replied: “History is a slanted story, you know!” A Scottish by-stander remarked: “That’s exactly what she has been doing…”
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