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1995, Volume 1, No.2, pages 34-38

PART II. OPINIONS

THE MASSACRE OF THE ARMENIAN PEOPLE 

     The modern civilization has known no ordeals in its history like it was in the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. The ruling gang in the Sultan's Turkey encouraged by young Turks nationalistic movement organized a sweeping massacre of over half a million Armenians and turned the whole western territory of Armenia into a complete desert.

     This cruelty from the nationalistic party of young Turks ('Ittikhadve Terrakki') was a culminating point in the policy of physical destruction of Armenians in Turkey. As a matter of fact, this policy was initiated by the tyrannical Sultan Abdoul Hammid in the last quarter of the 19th century .It is known that about 300,000 residents were murdered in 1890s. Some more 40,000 people perished in the town of Adana and in the provinces of Kilikia somewhere around 1909.

     The terrible ordeal that the Armenian people faced back in Turkey was one of the cruelest episodes in the whole history of mankind.

     But why this was the ill fate for one of the most ancient and most cultural nations in the world? And what was the cause of mass killing of Armenians in the Osman Empire?

     Armenians in the west of the country suffered very much from the Turkish tyranny, which was manifested in oppression and submission on the part of local feudal barons. Oppression was exerted in the most cruel and disgusting manners. The cruelty of Sultans and Pashas was not surpassed in the years. The situation for the Armenians was the hardest in view of many threats like persecution and massacre in the end.

     The documents found in the German, British, and American archives revealed many facts of unprecedented extermination of the Armenian nation. According to the Russian general M. Litukhin who traveled in the West Armenia in 1854 to 1855, "I saw people with cut-off nose or ears. It was mainly done by act of violence and obviously on the arbitrary judgment from a local baron or any other authority".1

The Armenian patriotic committee in Europe called all major foreign ministers to consider the Turkish policy in the Western Armenia. The Turkish rules "made a plan to destroy the whole nation, and this plan is under way indeed for people are dying and the economy is being ruined. The Turkish government has been operating this way since the approval of point 61 of the Berlin treatise".2

     The American ambassador in Constantinople Mr. Thompson wrote to his British counterpart Clare Ford on the 13th of March "having read the messages from our counselor in Marzvan Mr. Juillet, I am more certain to think that the Christian population of this region is in a very difficult situation ".3

The Armenian issue was inevitably resulted from the intolerable social and national oppression aggravated by violence and even killings. This issue was used all along by major world powers in their diplomatic game. Meantime the population of the Western Armenia was trying to organize opposition to support their elementary rights to normal living and even to a life itself. Wherever they could they embarked on self - defense and liberation movement which is always an indisputable right and obligation of every oppressed nation.

     Unfortunately the military machine of feudal Turkey knew only one way out of the conflict through massacre and physical destruction of a little nation inside a metropolitan country .The Turks acted mercilessly making their way into the Armenian-inhabited territory with the fire and the sword. The Turkish feudal barons and the new bourgeoisie alike who were already drawn on the pan Turkish expansion in the world largely encouraged this sort of tactics.

Soon after the Berlin congress in 1878 the Sultan Abdoul Hammid along with his high advisors cynically said, "The destruction of the people will kill the Armenian issue".

The Hammid merciless policy against Armenians was fully carried out in 1890s. The people in Sassun, Constantinople, Trape, zund, Erzrum, Marash, Sebastia, Erznk, Van, Bagesh, Harberd, Oiarbekir and others were massacred. The Turks repeated this operation in the following year as well. Tens of thousand people were killed and hundreds of towns and villages were demolished. The whole region was devastated over two years indeed.

     The Hammid bloodshed policy for the Armenian people was largely handed down to his successors, young Turks leaders who came to power in 1908. They even got that far beyond the blood that was shed before. They were planning to enslave Slavs, Armenians, Jews, Greeks and other nations found on the territory of the Ottoman Empire. They seemed far more persistent than Abdul Harnmid.

     The leaders of the young Turks party had supported the ideas of freedom and democracy, fraternity and equality before they came to power. However they turned to a cruelest tyranny known ever before "When the young Turks came to Istanbul", as wrote Emile Doumergue, -"they brought along freedom of thought and even the French revolutionary songs, as they said". This show-off continued till the young Turks managed to enchant a few diplomats. After same time pan Islamism was replaced by pan Turkism, i.e. the cruelest form of nationalism that ever existed in the world".4

     This Cannibal policy was meant first of all for Armenians. In fact, the young Turkish leaders wanted to seize and annex the Caucasus and the Armenian people who were always Russian-oriented were in the way. Therefore the Turkish pal1y decided to destroy the Armenian people on their approach to Caucasus.

     In the archives there are many official documents, which tell of a top-secret conference of the young Turks leaders. They came out with a terrible decision to destroy" the Armenian people. There goes what Dr. Nazym Bei said at the conference, ". The Armenian people must be destroyed completely without a trace in our land at all. This is wartime now. We should not miss this brilliant chance. The powers would most probably stand up to oppose along with the world press media, but they all would be late and have to face the real fact of the conflict instead. However we must act bravely indeed to kill Armenians totally and everyone...I demand only Turks should stay and rule in this land.”5

     The other participants in the conference including the military minister Enver Pasha, minister of internal affairs Talaat-Pasha .et al, supported this commitment in the Cannibal spirit. They all agreed to conceive a plan to destroy Armenians. They implemented their plan during the First World War perfidiously and mercilessly.

     The Turkish government in their perfidious manner again under pretext of mobilization called up young Armenians to the military service. Soon they were disarmed and transformed to "workers battalions" and then were secretly executed in small groups. On the 24.th of April 1915 and afterwards several hundreds of west Armenian intellectuals were arrested and then murdered. Having finished with the majority of Armenian adult male population including many activists, the organizers of the massacre turned to slaughter women, children and old people. Partly they were murdered in their home places, partly they were forced out of their homes and scattered to be finished by special criminal gangs on the road. Those who reached the hot deserts of Mesopotamia perished in the starvation and disease, or were robbed and killed by the police and by hired bandits alike.

     In terms of the Armenian deportation the US ambassador for Turkey Mr. Henry Morgenthau said as ho reflected on the events, "The deportation then really meant robbery and destruction. That was anew method of massacre indeed. With the formal deportation the whole nation was sentenced to death. The Turkish authorities certainly were aware of this fact as they did not find it necessary to conceal it while they were conferring with me".6

     In his public speech during the trial in Berlin concerning the murder of Talaat-Pasha by the Armenian patriot Sogomon Teyleryan, l. Lepsius commented, "In his order Talaat-Pasha uses this phrase exactly, "Deportation means annihilation ". As I. Lepsius continued he stated that "It was officially announced that this deportation was a mere prevention. However some authoritative figures honestly said deportation would lead to destruction of Armenians in any case.”7 It is noteworthy that the German counselor in Erzerum Schoibner-Richter cabled to the German embassy in Constantinople on the 2nd of June 1915 that deportation of Armenians would "mean amass destruction".8

     The Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire was organized in very cruel forms. The cruelty of the young Turks leaders would be repeated in many ways by the Nazi regime during the Second World War. Therefore the Turkish butchers were in many ways the precursors of the fascist cutthroats.

     Mass killings of Armenians in the Ottoman Turkey initiated at the end of 1914 and spread nationwide in the spring of 1915 were continued in the following years as well. Killings spread over the West Armenia and all Armenian-inhabited territories in the Ottoman Empire. Thousands of villages and towns were bur'1ed down at the time.9

     The French publicist Henry Barbis who traveled in the West Armenia in 1916 wrote down in his notebook, "Whoever travels across the deserted Armenia now he cannot help but feel shattered at the view of these continuous ruins of death and devastation... In every canyon or gorge one can easily find someone's grave under the open skies. It's where deep inside those places only white bones could be seen scattered down the rocks and stones as the killers had not cared to bury them at all.

     In the places where Armenians used to flourish in their own homes could be seen only destruction and abandonment all around".10

     Amidst the perished many hundred thousand people were greatest west Armenian writers, poets and publicists like Grigor Zokhrab, Daniel Varuzhan, Siamanto, Sevak, Zardaryax and many other workers of science and art. The greatest Armenian composer Comitas who survived only by chance would go insane instead because of the deepest suffering he felt after the massacre.

     What is the total number of casualties? Under closer inspection it is obvious that in the time of Sultan Abdoul Hammid over 350,000 Armenians were murdered, while the young Turks politicians ordered 1.5 million people to be killed. Some 800,000 refugees were accommodated in the Caucasus, in the Arab East, in Greece, etc. If in 1870s about 3 million Armenians lived in the Western Armenia and Turkey, then in 1918 the number was only 200,000.

     It should be also said that the killing of Armenians in Turkey was continued afterwards as well. Therefore in 1919 to 1922 the Turkish military alongside some nationalistic gangs organized new mass persecution of Armenians in the East and West Armenia, in central provinces of Turkey, in Kilikia, the town of Izmir and other places, but unfortunately the world public at large did not know those tragic events.

     There are a great variety of special books on the genocide of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. Many famous historians, publicists, writers, workers of science and art in Russia, England, France, USA, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, etc. along with the eye witnesses of the terrible events including Armenians, Greeks, Arabs, Kurds and Turks all wrote on this unprecedented ordeal. An intensive re-coverage of the events happened to be in 1965 and 1975 when it was the fiftieth and sixtieth anniversary of the longest and cruelest massacre in the West Armenia in the year of 1915. In the works mentioned above both Abdoul Hammid, the young Turks leaders and their accomplices were cursed. It is noteworthy that the participants to the world peace congress in Helsinki in July 1965 unanimously condemned the genocide of Armenians as well. Today everyone who ever went to school or college should know of the greatest ordeal of the Armenian people.

     However it comes to put it mildly like a surprise when many Turkish officials or so- called intellectual workers of the nation today deny the fact of the genocide of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire.

The Turkish ruling circles, official and non-official historians and almost every publicist in the mass media have been trying to prove recently what never can be proved at all? I mean, they say there was no genocide of the Armenian people in the Ottoman Empire ever before. On the contrary, it was Armenians who allegedly organized persecution of Turks instead. The British, American and French archives as the Turkish officials declare should not be unbiased in their definition because those countries in fact were hostile to Turkey during the first World War anyway, therefore those archives cannot be considered consistent as they claim.

     All this campaign has been launched to put a curb upon the world powers and the UNO decision to recognize the genocide of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. Though this genocide happened in the time of the young Turks power the latter-day leaders of the nation still deny this (fact anyway. .In this case the Germany's act of humanity towards the Jewish people did not unfortunately set an example to the Turkish leaders.

     Today many political leaders even on a governmental level speak for the recognition of the genocide of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. In particular, the European parliament has adopted a resolution to condemn genocide in its all definitions.

     This year on the 14th of April the State Duma (Parliament) of the federal assembly of the Russian Federation adopted a resolution to condemn the genocide of the Armenian people in 1915 to 1922.

     The history of mankind had it in such a way that the worst disaster in the 2Oth century, I mean, mass deportation and extermination was to fall on the Armenians in Turkey. The West Armenia, which was the origin of the whole Armenian cultural and economic life through centuries, ceased to exist.

     The terrible ordeal of the Armenian people is a tragedy of the whole cultural world. Therefore despite the opposition of antagonists in different parts of the world this tragedy is recalled not only by Armenians but all good will people at large. I surmise this is not just the act of good remembrance of the people fallen by the Turkish sword. It is more important for all -- the nations today to draw a lesson to prevent this sort of ordeals in the future.

     There is no doubt that in case of connivance of the world community or even definite powers and what is worse predominance of mercenary considerations in the policy, the aggression against people and even nations might happen again.