About this blog


I plan to collect historical documents and articles by various authors in this blog, usually without comments. Opinions expressed within the articles belong to the authors and do not always coincide with those of mine.

Sunday, December 27, 2015

Cemal Kutay on the Armenian Conflict

Source: Cemal Kutay, "Ottoman Empire: How Kazim Karabekir Defeated the Armenian Army?" vol. II., Belge Yayinlari, Istanbul, 1983, p. 188.

"The atrocities and massacres which have been committed for a long time against the Muslim population within the Armenian Republic have been confirmed with very accurate information, and the observations made by Rawlinson, the British representative in Erzurum, have confirmed that these atrocities are being committed by the Armenians. The United States delegation of General Harbord has seen the thousands of refugees who came to take refuge with Kazim Karabekir's soldiers, hungry and miserable, their children and wives, their properties destroyed, and the delegation was a witness to the cruelties. Many Muslim villages have been destroyed by the soldiers of Armenian troops armed with cannons and machine guns before the eyes of Karabekir's troops and the people. When it was hoped that this operation would end, unfortunately since the beginning of February the cruelties inflicted on the Muslim population of the region of Shuraghel, Akpazar, Zarshad, and Childir have increased. According to documented information, 28 Muslim villages have been destroyed in the aforementioned region, more than 2,000 people have been slaughtered, many possessions and livestock have been seized, young Muslim women have been taken to Kars and Gumru, thousands of women and children who were able to flee their villages were beaten, raped and massacred in the mountains, and this aggression against the properties, lives, chastity and honour of the Muslims continued. It was the responsibility of the Armenian Government that the cruelties and massacres be stopped in order to alleviate the tensions of Muslim public opinion due to the atrocities committed by the Armenians, that the possessions taken from the Muslims be returned and that indemnities be paid, that the properties, lives, and honour of the Muslims be protected."

Source: C. Kutay, "Ottoman Empire," vol. II., Belge Yayinlari, Istanbul, 1983, p. 189.

Kazim Karabekir Pasha (telegram to Mustafa Kemal Pasha - on 28 March):

"The information is documented. The Armenians, who were very much confused during the recent victories which put an end to the survival of the Denikin Army in the Caucasus, have engaged in surprise attacks against the Muslims in the areas of Ordubad, Nahjivan, and Vedibasar since March 19th. These Armenian attacks have been repelled in these three Muslim areas, determined to defend their rights and honour with much courage and sacrifice...The Muslims in the area of Vedibasar have defeated the enemy of superior strength who attempted to attack them without any reason, and took as war booty four machine guns and other weapons. Later, they followed the defeated Armenians up to the mountain 7-8 km to the east of the city of Revan,...The Muslim forces which demonstrated their determination as they stayed one night on this mountain and cut the barbed wire with daggers and knives, returned victorious to their area."

Saturday, December 26, 2015

The Turkish-Armenian dispute: Who has something to hide?

MAXIME GAUIN

Published: October 14, 2014

In the context of the Perinçek v. Switzerland case, and of the forthcoming centennial of 1915, Turkey will be, once again, pressured to "face history." However, who can contest the fact that contemporary history should be written after free studies in the relevant archives? The Ottoman and Turkish archives (prior to 1938) have been open since 1989 and the ease of access greatly increased over the last 15 years. Supporters of the "Armenian genocide" have worked in the Ottoman archives since 1991, including Ara Sarafian, Hilmar Kaiser, Garabet Moumdjian and Taner Akçam.

On the other hand, the only scholar who does not endorse the Armenian nationalist narrative and who tried to work in the National Archives of Armenia, Yektan Türkyılmaz, was arrested without reason and eventually expelled. About 10 years ago, Stefano Trinchese, a professor of history at Chieti University in Italy wrote a letter to the archives of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) in Watertown, a suburb of Boston in the U.S. His demand of access to documents was left unanswered. Nothing has changed until now. In August, I was in the U.S. to work in various archives. I had sent an email to the head of the ARF Archives Institute about three weeks before my arrival in Boston – he did not answer. I re-sent the email, without any success. I wrote twice to Dickran Kaligian, an Armenian-American historian affiliated with the ARF, but he did not answer. Eventually, I called, but nobody responded. This is hardly a surprise – if you consult the official web site of the ARF Archives iInstitute, you cannot find any information for researchers such as the time and days of opening. Regardless, this was not my first bad experience with Armenian archives. I tried twice to work in the Nubarian Library in Paris, which is not affiliated with the ARF, but the first time the curator said that he would be out of France when I would be here, and the second time he simply did not reply to my emails. Cumulated, all these facts are already illuminating on Armenian archives.

However, and even more strikingly, scholars who challenge the "Armenian genocide" label are not alone in facing a closed door to Armenian documents as Ara Sarafian noticed. The personal papers collected by the Zoryan Institute in the U.S. and the archives of the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem are open only to a very small number of "partisan" authors who can as a result, affirm whatever they want without taking the risk of being contested. In short, who can seriously pretend to defend "the truth" and hide his own archives?

The reasons for this closing of Armenian archives are not hard to find. Some will be provided here. Gradually, thanks to the work of historians like Michael Reynolds, who is not exactly a supporter of the Young Turks, it appears how Russian officers were concerned by the war crimes of Armenian volunteers as early as autumn 1914. Even less known, however, are the similar concerns of French officers from 1918 to 1920. In July 1920, a pogrom was perpetrated in Adana against the Muslim population who fled en masse. Colonel Édouard Brémond, who was a friend of the Armenian people all his life, ordered systematic hangings of Armenian criminals without trial to put end to the crisis. In addition, the Armenians and Assyrians who had slaughtered the whole population of a village close to Adana were put on trial. All were sentenced by the French military tribunal. Five of them were sentenced to death and four to life terms of hard labor. It took one month to curb the worst aspects of the Armenian violence and two more months to restore tranquility. After the return of calm and Muslims to Adana, Tommy Martin, head of the police of Adana, unequivocally concluded after a careful investigation that the riots in the summer of 1920 were planned and executed by Armenian nationalists, especially the Social Democratic Hunchakian Party, to practice ethnic cleansing and to reform Cilician Armenia. As a result, several Armenian leaders and agitators were expelled from Cilicia by the French administration. The Armenian Legion, established in 1916 by an agreement between the French government and Armenian nationalists, was disbanded in the summer of 1920 because of its recurrent "evil spirit" in the words of the French cabinet.

These events were not isolated. As observed by the French navy's intelligence service, there was a triple movement in the spring and summer of 1920: Greek offensives from the west, Armenian attacks from the south and other Armenian attacks in the Caucasus. This is corroborated by the fact that the expulsions and massacres of Azeris were led in the Caucasus by Archbishop Moushegh Seropian, who had previously been sentenced in absentia by the French martial court of Adana to 10 years of hard labor and 20 years in exile for conspiring for terrorism in April 1920. Correspondingly, the French high commissioner in Tbilisi, Damien de Martel, wrote that in June 1920 only 36,000 "Tatars" (Azeris) had been expelled from south of the Yerevan region and 4,000 others including women and children had been killed. Damien de Martel concluded, in diplomatic language: "It did not seem unnecessary to report these details, which show that this is not always 'the same ones who are massacred.' " Some politicians should remember, or rather learn, these remarks, which are indeed "not unnecessary."

They should be remembered even more since two of the main perpetrators of the ethnic cleansing against Azeris in the Caucasus were Drastamat Kanayan, also known as Dro, who was later an officer in the Nazi army and Garegin Nzhdeh, who collaborated with Axis powers and the Soviets. Armenian apologists try to trivialize the alliance between the Armenian Revolutionary Federation and the Third Reich as simply opportunistic. It was not. At a time around 1922 when Hitler was a completely obscure politician, the ARF was already obsessed by the idea of the "Aryan race." In the 1920s, the ARF tried to create an "Aryan confederation" in the name of "Aryan fraternity" with nationalist Kurds in the Xoybun organization and also with Iran – see the works of Jordi Tejel Gorgas on Kurdish nationalism from 1925 to 1946. About at the same time, in 1928, the ARF began its rapprochement with Fascist Italy, whose ideologues eventually acknowledged the proximity between Mussolini's fascism and the doctrine of the ARF. It went so far that the ARF proposed to recruit volunteers for the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1936 as well as ways to ease the effect of the economic sanctions dictated by the League of Nations. On this rapprochement read the illuminating publications of Beatrice Penati and G. Mamoulia. Obviously, for these Armenian nationalists, Hitler was the perfect combination of fascism and "Aryan fraternity." It must also be noted that several editorials published in official newspapers of the ARF in the 1930s, especially Hairenik and the U.S. Hairenik Weekly, expressed an extremely virulent anti-Semitism that was for decades not only verbal. For example, the Jewish community of Van was entirely annihilated by the Armenians of the Russian army during the World War I, as observed by the historian Justin McCarthy.

After the defeat of the Third Reich, Nzhdeh was arrested by the Soviets and died in prison in 1955. However, Dro escaped and eventually fled to the U.S. In 2007, the CIA released part of its documents on him in the archival series on Nazi and Japanese war criminals. I read and photographed this file in the National Archives at College Park, Virginia, discovering interesting facts. First of all, there were strong Soviet efforts to capture Dro. Marshal Georgy Zhukov, military governor of the Soviet Occupation Zone in Germany, asked his head to the Americans. So, how did he escape? The CIA documents show that Dro became, as early as 1945, an agent of the U.S. military intelligence service and that he worked for the CIA after it was established where he worked until his death in 1956. In spite of having been a perpetrator of ethnic cleansing, a Nazi war criminal – each time for ideological reasons – and a CIA agent – to save his life, this time – Dro and Nzhdeh are revered both in Armenia and by the Armenian diaspora. It is not difficult to imagine why the ARF does not want to open its archives on them. I do not think that most Turks are afraid of the truth. They simply want the whole truth honestly and scientifically examined.

* MA in History from Paris-Sorbonne University

Sunday, December 13, 2015

Quotes about the Armenian General Dro

Source: Admiral Bristol

"I know from reports of my own officers who served with General Dro that defenseless villages were bombarded and then occupied, and any inhabitants that had not run away were brutally killed, the village pillaged, and all the livestock confiscated, and then the village burned. This was carried out as a regular systematic getting-rid of the Moslems." 

Source: Arye Gut, Jewish Journal, April 25, 2015:

"One should mention the remarks of acclaimed scholar Moses Bekker, who said that it was Rimma Varzhapetyan (the so-called head of the Jewish community in Armenia) who saw no wrong-doing with the textbook and mass media glorification of antisemetic activists, such as Dramastamat Kanaya --  the fascist general  “Dro.” During World War II, general Dro personally took part in the annihilation of thousands of Jews. In her works, Ms. Varzhapetyan states that the current leadership of Armenia needs this “fighter” for the freedom of Armenia, thus employing the image of an ardent anti-Semite and fascist as a symbol for justifying Armenian expansionism and cultivating hatred amongst the younger generation. One must ask if, despite being Jewish herself, Ms. Varzhapetyan is ready to justify the murderous acts of Nazi criminals only because they are Armenians?
History seems to have forgotten the cruelty of the 20,000-strong Armenian legion that participated in the Wehrmacht in the WW II. Nationalist Commander Dro led the Armenian legion to fulfill its mission: to persecute and annihilate Jews via death marches. In his book “Death Tango,” the late Azerbaijani historian Rovshan Mustafayev presented evidence of Armenian involvement in the genocide of Jews, particularly a report from Sonderkommando “Dromedar” about operations in Western Crimea. “From November 16 to December 15, 1941, some 17,645 Jews, 2,504 Karaims, 824 Gypsies and 212 partisans were executed. Simferopol, Eupatorium, Alushta, Karasubazar, Kerch, Feodosia and other regions of Western Crimea were cleaned of Jews,” Rovshan Mustafayev notes in his book. Austrian historian Erich Feigl wrote that in December, 1942, Dro visited Himmler. “Dro had a practice of killing without any compassion, and this strongly impressed Himmler.”
What causes great concern today are the many media and the cultural spaces of Russia and by extention Armenian that provide a channel to present fascists as national heroes, including Dro, as well as Garegin Nzhdeh, an Armenian hero and Nazi collaborationist. Said the Ambassador of the Republic of Armenia (published December 17, 2014), the “Outstanding hero of our people Garegin Nzhdeh believed that ‘the main law of life is a struggle as a method of self-perfection of personality, society and state. This struggle is manifested in the striving for progress of the country and nation.’”
Sadly, there are successors to General Dro and Garegin Nzhdeh: incumbent Armenian president Serzh Sargsyan and Minister Seyran Ohanyan. These men led a bloody massacre of civilians in the Azerbaijani town of Khojaly in the late 20th century."

Source: "World Alive, A Personal Story" by Robert Dunn. Crown Publishers, Inc., New York (1952)

p. 354.

"At morning tea, Dro and his officers spread out a map of this whole high region called the Karabakh. Deep in tactics, they spoke Russian, but I got their contempt for Allied 'neutral' zones and their distrust of promises made by tribal chiefs. A campaign shaped; more raids on Moslem villages."

p. 358.

"It will be three hours to take," Dro told me. We'd close in on three sides.
"The men on foot will not shoot, but use only the bayonets," Merrimanov said, jabbing a rifle in dumbshow.
"That is for morale," Dro put in. "We must keep the Moslems in terror that our cruelty beats theirs."
"Soldiers or civilians?" I asked.
"There is no difference," said Dro. "All are armed, in uniform or not."
"But the women and children?"
"Will fly with the others as best they may."

pp. 360-361.

"The ridges circled a wide expanse, its floors still. Hundreds of feet down, the fog held, solid as cotton flock. 'Djul lies under that,' said Dro, pointing. 'Our men also attack from the other sides.'

Then, 'Whee-ee!' - his whistle lined up all at the rock edge. Bayonets clicked upon carbines. Over plunged Archo, his black haunches rippling; then followed the staff, the horde - nose to tail, bellies taking the spur. Armenia in action seemed more like a pageant than war, even though I heard our Utica brass roar.

As I watched from the height, it took ages for Djul to show clear. A tsing of machine-gun fire took over from the thumping batteries; cattle lowed, dogs barked, invisible, while I ate a hunk of cheese and drank from a snow puddle. Mist at last folded upward as men shouted, at first heard faintly. Then came a shrill wailing.

Now among the cloud-streaks rose darker wisps - smoke. Red glimmered about house walls of stone or wattle, into dry weeds on roofs. A mosque stood in clump of trees, thick and green. Through crooked alleys on fire, horsemen were galloping after figures both mounted and on foot.

'Tartarski!' shouted the gunner by me. Others pantomimed them in escape over the rocks, while one twisted a bronze shell-nose, loaded, and yanked breech-cord, firing again and again. Shots wasted, I thought, when by afternoon I looked in vain for fallen branch or body. But these shots and the white bursts of shrapnel in the gullies drowned the women's cries.

At length all shooting petered out. I got on my horse and rode down toward Djul. It burned still but little flame showed now. The way was steep and tough, through dense scrub. Finally on flatter ground I came out suddenly, through alders, on smoldering houses. Across trampled wheat my brothers-in-arms were leading off animals, several calves and a lamb."

"Corpses came next, the first a pretty child with straight black hair, large eyes. She looked about twelve years old. She lay in some stubble where meal lay scattered from the sack she'd been toting. The bayonet had gone through her back, I judged, for blood around was scant. Between the breasts one clot, too small for a bullet wound, crusted her homespun dress.

The next was a boy of ten or less, in rawhide jacket and knee-pants. He lay face down in the path by several huts. One arm reached out to the pewter bowl he'd carried, now upset upon its dough. Steel had jabbed just below his neck, into the spine.

There were grownups, too, I saw as I led the sorrel around... Djul was empty of the living till I looked up to see beside me Dro's German-speaking colonel. He said all Tartars who had not escaped were dead."


p. 361 (seventh paragraph) and p. 362 (first paragraph).

'The most are inside houses. Come you and look.'

'No, dammit! My stomach isn't-'
'One is a Turkish officer in uniform. Him you must see.'
"We were under those trees by the mosque, in an open space....
'I don't believe you," I said, but followed to a nail-studded door. The man pushed it ajar, then spurred away, leaving me to check on the corpse. I thought I should, this charge was so constant, so gritted my teeth and went inside.

The place was cool but reeked of sodden ashes, and was dark at first, for its stone walls had only window slits. Rags strewed the mud floor around an iron tripod over embers that vented their smoke through roof beams black with soot. All looked bare and empty, but in an inner room flies buzzed. As the door swung shut behind me I saw they came from a man's body lying face up, naked but for its grimy turban. He was about fifty years old by what was left of his face - a rifle butt had bashed an eye. The one left slanted, as with Tartars rather than with Turks. Any uniform once on him was gone, so I'd no proof which he was, and quickly went out, gagging at the mess of his slashed genitals."

p. 363 (first paragraph).

'How many people lived there?'
'Oh, about eight hundred.' He yawned.
'Did you see any Turk officers?'
'No, sir. I was in at dawn. All were Tartar civilians in mufti.'

"The lieutenant dozed off, then I, but in the small hours a voice woke me - Dro's. He stood in the starlight bawling out an officer. Anyone keelhauled so long and furiously I'd never heard. Then abruptly Dro broke into laughter, quick and simple as child's. Both were a cover for his sense of guilt, I thought, or hoped. For somehow, despite my boast of irreligion, Christian massacring 'infidels' was more horrible than the reverse would have been.

From daybreak on, Armenian villagers poured in from miles around..... The women plundered happily, chattering like ravens as they picked over the carcass of Djul. They hauled out every hovel's chattels, the last scrap of food or cloth, and staggered away, packing pots, saddlebags, looms, even spinning-wheels.

'Thank you for a lot, Dro,' I said to him back in camp. 'But now I must leave.' ... We shook hands, the captain said 'A bientot, mon camarade.' And for hours the old Molokan scout and I plodded north across parching plains. Like Lot's wife I looked back once to see smoke bathing all, doubtless in a sack of other Moslem villages up to the line of snow that was Iran.'"


Source: "From Sardarapat to Sevres and Lausanne" by Avetis Aharonian. The Armenian Review, Vol. 16, No. 3-63, Autumn, Sep. 1963, pp. 47-57.

p. 52 (second paragraph).

"Your three chiefs, Dro, Hamazasp and Kulkhandanian are the ringleaders of the bands which have destroyed Tartar villages and have staged massacres in Zangezour, Surmali, Etchmiadzin, and Zangibasar. This is intolerable. Look - and here he pointed to a file of official documents on the table - look at this, here in December are the reports of the last few months concerning ruined Tartar villages which my representative Wardrop has sent me. The official Tartar communique speaks of the destruction of 300 villages."

p. 54 (fifth paragraph).

"Yes, of course. I repeat, until this massacre of the Tartars is stopped and the three chiefs are not removed from your military leadership I hardly think we can supply you arms and ammunition."

"...it is the armed bands led by Dro, Hamazasp and Kulkhandanian who during the past months have raided and destroyed many Tartar villages in the regions of Surmali, Etchmiadzin, Zangezour, and Zangibasar. There are official charges of massacres."

Thursday, November 26, 2015

Turkey: Forgotten Ally in a Forgotten War

The Turkish intervention in Korea was unique in its timeliness and urgency. The 5,000-man Turkish brigade arrived in October 1950 as U.S. forces, then acting as part of a United Nations coalition, were struggling to survive a powerful Communist Chinese offensive. The following month, the brigade managed to halt an onslaught of six Chinese divisions around Kunu-ri. After the brigade helped stabilize the front, the Commander of the UN Coalition Forces, General Douglas MacArthur, said, "the Turks are the hero of heroes. There is no impossibility for the Turkish Brigade."

As the war went on, Turkish soldiers continued to bravely aid UN forces, earning recognition from General Walton H. Walker, commander of the U.S. 8th Army, and President Harry Truman, who awarded the Turkish brigade a Presidential Unit Citation. The prestigious award, given to units of the U.S. Armed Forces and allied countries for extraordinary heroism against an armed enemy, recognized the Turkish brigade's efforts to save the U.S. 2nd Division from total annihilation, losing 717 men in the process.

Turkey ultimately became the fourth largest military contributor to the UN effort, with a total of 15,000 Turkish troops serving in Korea at various times during the war. The camaraderie on the battlefield led to deep relations between American and Turkish soldiers. After they arrived in Korea, the Turkish troops were trained and equipped by the U.S. Army, giving soldiers and officers several opportunities to strengthen their personal and professional ties.

The late Congressman John P. Murtha once noted how the Turkish intervention "gave hope to a demoralized American nation." Marking the 50th anniversary of the Korean War in 2000, Murtha recalled how Turkish soldiers, after having run out of ammunition, affixed bayonets to their rifles and continued fighting in hand-to-hand combat.

Ankara's brave decision to send troops to Korea in late 1950 also proved pivotal in securing Turkey's entry into NATO the following year. When the alliance was formed in April 1949, Turkey was not invited to join. Washington was reluctant to commit to defend distant Turkey, and had also rejected Turkish proposals for a bilateral alliance or a unilateral U.S. security guarantee. NATO's western European members did not want to risk diluting American economic aid and other assistance they were receiving.

Although some Turkish leaders wanted to pursue a more neutral foreign policy following NATO's snub, Turkish policymakers continued to pursue NATO membership, believing the alliance offered Turkey the optimal western anchor. Turkey's key contribution to the Korean conflict then made it impossible for the allies to turn down Ankara's renewed membership campaign. In September 1951, Turkey, along with Greece, had received a formal invitation to join the alliance.

Turkey has since made major contributions to NATO. During the Cold War, Turkey helped constrain the Soviet Navy in the Mediterranean, provided one of the largest armies in Europe and hosted key NATO military facilities. More recently, Turkish soldiers have contributed to NATO-backed missions in the former Yugoslavia and Libya.

Source: Richard Weitz, July 27, 2012

http://www.realclearworld.com/articles/2012/07/27/turkey_the_forgotten_ally_in_the_forgotten_war_100157.html

Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Arye Gut: Armenia immortalizes fascists, anti-Semites who participated in the Holocaust

Armenia immortalizes fascists, anti-Semites who participated in the Holocaust

by Arye Gut

http://www.jewishjournal.com/opinion/article/armenia_immortalizes_fascists_anti_semites_who_participated_in_the_holocaus

A few days ago, former Armenian Prime Minister Hrant Bagratyan submitted a draft resolution recognizing the Holocaust in the country`s legislative body. However, when further explaining his move, he told the media: “Some say that we should not recognize the Holocaust unless Israel recognizes the genocide of Armenians.” This is just one bit of vivid evidence of the fact that anti-Semitism in Armenia exists at a state level.
Although the entire world community recognized the Holocaust as genocide of European Jewry right after the Nuremberg Trials, Armenia is reluctant to do so 70 years later. In Europe alone, German fascism annihilated six million Jews only because they were Jews; in contrast, Armenians became victims of the policy of Tsarist Russia, which promised to establish a state for them in the territory of the Ottoman Empire.
The end of Soviet rule removed constraint and anti-Semitic attacks in Armenia rose dramatically. That, and Armenia`s ongoing economic collapse, drove the Jews of Armenia to flee the country. In addition, the cultural violence has continued: Anti-Semitic books and TV programs are presented to the Armenian public and the Holocaust memorial in the capital of Yerevan is repeatedly defaced. Of course, many countries have suffered such unfortunate incidents -- the product of an ignorant populace. Nevertheless, in Armenia such views even have been espoused by mainstream politicians and media personalities.
One should mention the remarks of acclaimed scholar Moses Bekker, who said that it was Rimma Varzhapetyan (the so-called head of the Jewish community in Armenia) who saw no wrong-doing with the textbook and mass media glorification of antisemetic activists, such as Dramastamat Kanaya --  the fascist general  “Dro.” During World War II, general Dro personally took part in the annihilation of thousands of Jews. In her works, Ms. Varzhapetyan states that the current leadership of Armenia needs this “fighter” for the freedom of Armenia, thus employing the image of an ardent anti-Semite and fascist as a symbol for justifying Armenian expansionism and cultivating hatred amongst the younger generation. One must ask if, despite being Jewish herself, Ms. Varzhapetyan is ready to justify the murderous acts of Nazi criminals only because they are Armenians?
History seems to have forgotten the cruelty of the 20,000-strong Armenian legion that participated in the Wehrmacht in the WW II. Nationalist Commander Dro led the Armenian legion to fulfill its mission: to persecute and annihilate Jews via death marches. In his book “Death Tango,” the late Azerbaijani historian Rovshan Mustafayev presented evidence of Armenian involvement in the genocide of Jews, particularly a report from Sonderkommando “Dromedar” about operations in Western Crimea. “From November 16 to December 15, 1941, some 17,645 Jews, 2,504 Karaims, 824 Gypsies and 212 partisans were executed. Simferopol, Eupatorium, Alushta, Karasubazar, Kerch, Feodosia and other regions of Western Crimea were cleaned of Jews,” Rovshan Mustafayev notes in his book. Austrian historian Erich Feigl wrote that in December, 1942, Dro visited Himmler. “Dro had a practice of killing without any compassion, and this strongly impressed Himmler.”
What causes great concern today are the many media and the cultural spaces of Russia and by extention Armenian that provide a channel to present fascists as national heroes, including Dro, as well as Garegin Nzhdeh, an Armenian hero and Nazi collaborationist. Said the Ambassador of the Republic of Armenia (published December 17, 2014), the “Outstanding hero of our people Garegin Nzhdeh believed that ‘the main law of life is a struggle as a method of self-perfection of personality, society and state. This struggle is manifested in the striving for progress of the country and nation.’”
Sadly, there are successors to General Dro and Garegin Nzhdeh: incumbent Armenian president Serzh Sargsyan and Minister Seyran Ohanyan. These men led a bloody massacre of civilians in the Azerbaijani town of Khojaly in the late 20th century.
Suffice it to remember Serzh Sargsyan`s words: “before Khojaly, the Azerbaijanis thought that the Armenians were people who could not raise their hand against the civilian population. We were able to break that stereotype.” This bloody act of genocide, which was committed with incredible barbarism, is one of the horrible tragedies of the late 20th century. As a result, 613 people were killed, 487 wounded, and 1,275 civilians (including elders, children and women) were taken hostage and subjected to unprecedented torture and brutality. This tragedy is an act of evil against all of humanity.
The government of Armenia is doing almost nothing to prevent the growing anti-Semitism in the country. Several hundred Jews who now remain in Armenia will continue to suffer unless Armenia quits its policy of limited nationalism and stops blaming foreigners for their own economic and political problems.
Gut is an expert on international affairs, based in Israel
Source: Jewish Journal, April 25, 2015

Monday, April 20, 2015

Taner Akçam and Arnold Toynbee

Taner Akçam was a leftist revolutionist who advocated violence and who was imprisoned for terrorist activities. Akçam escaped from jail and later reintroduced himself as a "scholar," focusing on the Armenian "Genocide" as his bread-and-butter. His mentor was Vahakn Dadrian, and the way was mysteriously paved for Akçam to become a perpetual "visiting professor" in the USA. One of Akçam's sources of financing is the prominent Cafesjian Foundation. If Akçam were to begin reporting true history that is critical of the Armenians, it would very likely be the quickest way to kiss this foundation money good-bye.

Arnold Toynbee confessed in a later work, The Western Question in Greece and Turkey (1922, p. 50), that the “Blue Book” was a piece of war propaganda.

Source: Tall Armenian Tale

Friday, April 17, 2015

What Happened During 1915-1919

For a good summary of what happened in eastern Anatolia between 1914 and 1919, I recommend the following videos in youtube:

Prof Justin McCarthy, Melbourne Symposium: "What Happened During 1915-1919?"

Prof. Justin McCarthy's speech at the Federal Parliament in Canberra - Part1.

Prof. Justin McCarthy's speech at the Federal Parliament in Canberra - Part2.

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Armenians and Jews as Victims: Any Similarities?

Here is an outline written by Mr. HBM a long time ago:

1. Jews did not establish Jewish armies behind German lines to backstab Germans and to establish a Jewish State on German soil.

Armenians did establish Armenian armies behind Ottoman lines to backstab Muslims and to establish an Armenian State on Ottoman soil.

2. Jews did not organize and carry out a general slaughter of the local Christian population in Hamburg. 

Armenians did organize and carry out a general slaughter of the local Muslim population in Van.

3. Jews did not kill more than 600,000 of another minority in Germany.

Armenians did kill more than 600,000 Kurds in Eastern Anatolia.

4. Jews did not attack Germans and committed outrages against the Christians.

Armenians did attack Ottomans and committed outrages against the Muslims. 

5. Jews did not massacre Christians in Germany.

Armenians did massacre Muslims in the Ottoman Empire.

6. Jews did not rob and destroy homes of Germans. 

Armenians did rob and destroy homes of Muslims.

7. Jews did not exterminate the entire Christian minority under their control.

Armenians did exterminate the entire Muslim minority under their control.

8. Jews did not traitorously turned German cities over to the Russian invader.

Armenians did traitorously turned Ottoman cities over to the Russian invader.

9. Jews did not raise an army of one hundred and fifty thousand men to fight a civil war.

Armenians did raise an army of one hundred and fifty thousand men to fight a civil war.

10. Jews did not burn thousands of German villages.

Armenians did burn thousands of Muslim villages.

11. Jews did not exterminate Germans in those villages.

Armenians did exterminate Muslims in those villages.

12. Jews did not murder Germans in six major German cities.

Armenians did murder Muslims in six major Ottoman cities.

13. Jews did not set up clandestine revolutionary organizations to liberate and possess a Jewish State.

Armenians did set up clandestine revolutionary organizations to liberate and possess an Armenian State.

14. Jews did not declare war against Germans.

Armenians did declare war against the Ottoman Empire.

Monday, April 13, 2015

Niles and Sutherland Report: Armenian Atrocities in Eastern Anatolia

I personally know several people from Van (one of them was a revered teacher of mine) whose families were victims of Armenian atrocities. I have also talked to several people from Erzurum and Erzincan who have first hand information about these events from their grandparents, relatives, and neighbors. Of course, personal knowledge and conviction such as mine do not constitute "proof" for others; so we quote expert historians and verifiable documents. The following was published by Prof. McCarthy.

[Captain Emory Niles and Mr. Arthur Sutherland were Americans ordered by the United States Government (in 1919) to investigate the situation in eastern Anatolia. Their report was to be used as the basis for granting relief aid to the Armenians by the American Committee for Near East Relief. The following are two excerpts from their report.]

"In this entire region [from Bitlis through Van to Bayazit] we were informed that the damage and destruction had been done by the Armenians, who, after the Russians retired, remained in occupation of the country and who, when the Turkish army advanced, destroyed everything belonging to the Musulmans. Moreover, the Armenians are accused of having committed murder, rape, arson and horrible atrocities of every description upon the Musulman population. At first we were most incredulous of these stories, but we finally came to believe them, since the testimony was absolutely unanimous and was corroborated by material evidence. For instance, the only quarters left at all intact in the cities of Bitlis and Van are the Armenian quarters, as was evidenced by churches and inscriptions on the houses, while the Musulman quarters were completely destroyed. Villages said to have been Armenian were still standing whereas Musulman villages were completely destroyed."

"In this region [Bayazit-Erzurum] the racial situation is intensely aggravated by the proximity to the frontier of Armenia, from which refugees are coming with stories of massacres, cruelty and atrocities carried on by the Armenian Government, Army and people against the Musulman population. .. Here also the Armenians before retiring ruined villages, carried out massacres, and perpetrated every kind of atrocity upon the Musulman population and the doings of the Armenians just over the frontier keep alive and active the hatred of the Armenians, a hatred that seems to be at least smoldering in the region of Van. That there are disorders and crimes in Armenia is confirmed by refugees from Armenia in all parts of the region and by a British officer at Erzerum."

Note: The entire report can be found (as a pdf file) in the web.

Saturday, April 11, 2015

A Nation of Haters

Here is a passage from a news article in Los Angeles Times:

"Now recite that poem I taught you," Tello Petrosyan instructs her daughter. The child steps out of her mother's embrace, raises her head, puts her hands in her pockets and, with a face grave beyond her years, begins:

"It's better that I be a dog or a cat, than a Turkish Barbarian . . . "

The poem promises that "when the Armenian wind blows, it will not leave a single Turk standing in Armenian land."

Edna's father asks again about the Azerbaijanis. She says: "They are killing Armenians again, they are torturing them."

Having said that, she looks to her father, Souren Petrosyan, 33, and finds approval in his smiling brown eyes. "You may go now," he says, and Edna races up the stairs to join the party.

Source: Los Angeles Times, Feb. 9. 1990

The following are statements by various Armenians in Yahoo news comment sections and elsewhere in the web:

"Turkish people are comparable to wild pigs. They look, act and smell like wild swine and all Turks should die painfully." - Richard

"Turks are like Cancer you can only get rid of by nuking them." - Ararat

"Hopefully one day soon the entire world will turn on TURKEY and put those terrible Turks out of their misery. I want to see their dead shadows on their walls." - cat

"we will CLEAN Anatolia from the turkish presence once and for all in many years to come. Artsakh (former Karabagh) is just a starter." - rouben mel

"I despise Turkey. I despise Islam. If that makes me a hater, sign me up." - paul

"Someday soon, the Armenian Empire will once again span from sea to shining sea; from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean Sea. Turkish will be relegated to a forgotten language, statues of Ataturk will be replaced by monuments to Gregory The Illuminator,..." - no whining

"an Armenian girl will prefer to befriend a dog over a Turk" - george

The only good Kurd is a deceased one. - Tina

"Hey Turk, I would love to nail you to a cross to crucify you and the rest of you're race of sick demented savage animals." - Carol Chicky

"Turks are just cockroaches with two legs and ugly faces." Ken K

Thursday, April 2, 2015

If the fifteenth century Turks had not been tolerant...

Prof. Justin McCarthy, "The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922," The Darwin Press, New Jersey, 2nd Printing, 1996, p. 13:

"...expelling Turks and other Muslims was a principle that was to be followed by Bulgarians, Russians, and Armenians. It was the misfortune of the Muslim communities of the Balkans, Anatolia, and the Caucasus that they lay in the path of the new nationalisms. .. Their sufferings were ironic, because, had the Turks in their days of power been nationalists of the Greek sort, it would have been the Christians who were driven out, leaving lands that were purely Muslim Turkish. Instead, the Ottomans suffered the Christians to remain. They had often treated the Christians well, often poorly, but they had allowed them to exist and to keep their languages, traditions, and religions. They were right to do so, but if the fifteenth century Turks had not been tolerant, nineteenth-century Turks might have survived in their homes."

Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Greek Atrocities in Cyprus

MAKARIOS, Panayia, 4 September 1962:

Unless this small Turkish Community - forming a part of the Turkish race which has been the terrible enemy of Hellenism - is expelled from Cyprus, the duty of the heroes of EOKA can never be considered as terminated.

Source: Cyprus The Tale of An Island, A.H.Rizvi, p. 42

"Following the Greek Cypriot premeditated onslaught of 21 December, 1963, the Turkish Sectors all over Cyprus were completely besieged by Greeks; all telephonic, telegraphic and postal communications between these sectors were cut off and the Turkish Cypriot Community's contact with each other and with the outside world was thus prevented."

"Greek Cypriot armed elements broke into hundreds of Turkish homes and fired at the unarmed occupants with automatic weapons killing at random many Turks, including women, children and elderly persons (51 Turks were killed and 82 wounded). They also carried away as hostages more than 700 Turks, including women and children, whom they forced to walk bare-footed and in night-dresses across rough fields and river beds."


"A Turkish woman was seriously wounded and her four-month old baby was riddled with bullets from an automatic weapon fired by a Greek Cypriot mobile patrol which had ambushed the car in which the mother and her baby were travelling to the Turkish region. The baby died in her mother's arms. This wanton murder of a four-month-old baby, which shocked foreign observers as much as the Turkish Community, was not committed by irresponsible persons, but by members of the Greek Cypriot security forces. According to the mother's statement the Greek police patrol had chased their car and deliberately fired upon it."


Peter Moorhead reporting from the village of Skyloura, Cyprus. 
Date : 1 January, 1964.

IL GIARNO (Italy)

THEY ARE TURK-HUNTING, THEY WANT TO EXTERMINATE THEM.

Discussions start in London; in Cyprus terror continues. Right now we are witnessing the exodus of Turks from the villages. Thousands of people abandoning homes, land, herds; Greek Cypriot terrorism is relentless. This time, the rhetoric of the Hellenes and the bust of Plato do not suffice to cover up barbaric and ferocious behaviors.

Article by Giorgo Bocca, Correspondent of Il Giorno 
Date: 14 January 1964

DAILY HERALD (London)

AN APPALLING SIGHT

And when I came across the Turkish homes they were an appalling sight. Apart from the walls, they just did not exist. I doubt if a napalm bomb attack could have created more devastation. I counted 40 blackened brick and concrete shells that had once been homes. Each house had been deliberately fired by petrol. Under red tile roofs which had caved in, I found a twisted mass of bed springs, children's conts and cribs, and ankle deep grey ashes of what had once been chairs, tables and wardrobes.

In the neighbouring village of Ayios Vassilios, a mile away, I counted 16 wrecked and burned out homes. They were all Turkish Cypriot homes. From this village more than 100 Turkish Cypriots had also vanished.In neither village did I find a scrap of damage to any Greek Cypriot house.

Date: 1 January, 1964.

DAILY TELEGRAPH (London)

GRAVES OF 12 SHOT TURKISH CYPRIOTS FOUND IN CYPRUS VILLAGE

Silent crowds gathered tonight outside the Red Crescent hospital in the Turkish Sector of Nicosia, as the bodies of 9 Turkish Cypriots found crudely buried outside the village of Ayios Vassilios, 13 miles away, were brought to the hospital under the escort of the Parachute Regiment. Three more bodies, including one of a woman, were discovered nearby but could not be removed. Turkish Cypriots guarded by paratroops are still trying to locate the bodies of 20 more believed to have been buried on the same site.

Michael Moran:
An ex-EOKA thug, Sampson was briefly made President of Cyprus after the 1974 Greek coup which temporarily overthrew Makarios. He acquired ‘heroic’ status during the outbreak of intercommunal violence in December, 1963, when, as a commander of Greek ‘irregulars’, he devised the ingenious plan of using a bulldozer with raised excavator to lead an attack on the Turks. Sampson died in 2001 but even in the 1990s he still had a following among Greek Cypriots. Speaking at a ceremony held by the ‘Dighenis Association’ to celebrate the Greek and Greek Cypriot ‘national days’, Sampson declared himself adamantly against the idea of creating a federal Cyprus with the Turks. ‘We have to expel the Turks from this country’, he said in 1993. ‘I do not believe in lost territories. I do not give anyone the right to give away Hellenic lands. Cyprus was Hellenic and will remain Hellenic.’ (As reported in the Greek Cypriot newspaper Tharros, 29 March 1993). Unfortunately this kind of rhetoric, firmly rooted in the megali idea and related fantasies, still has the power to move significant numbers of people in the south of the island.

Saturday, March 28, 2015

Armenian Atrocities in the Caucasus

Source: Justin McCarthy, Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922, The Darwin Press, 2nd Printing, 1996, pp. 208-218:

THE SOUTHERN CAUCASUS

The suffering of Armenians in the Caucasus during and immediately after World War I, particularly the suffering of Armenian refugees from Anatolia, is well-known and well-recorded. 141 Starvation and disease among them were great and mortality massive. The direct cause of mortality undoubtedly was the precipitous flight of Armenians from Ottoman armies at the end of the world war. To the toll of dead refugees must be added the deaths of Armenians caught by vengeful Ottoman soldiers or by Muslim villagers who had returned to their homes to find their Muslim brothers slaughtered. What is not generally known is the great suffering and loss of Turks and other Muslims of the region.

The history of Muslims in Caucasian Russia was closely tied to the political and military events that followed upon the Russian Revolution of 1917. The slaughter of Muslims within the borders of the Russian Empire began after the initial Ottoman invasion and defeat in the Kars region (1914-15). An example of the events was recorded in the district of Oltu (part of the Russian Empire since 1878). The Russians lost Oltu to the Ottomans in December of 1914, but soon retook it, in January of 1915. Attacks on Muslim villages followed, comparable to those occurring in eastern Anatolia. However, such slaughter was localized and generally kept in check by Russians in the borderlands. There is little evidence on the status of Muslims in Russian Transcaucasia in the quiet middle period of the war. They were surely more secure in 1916 than from 1917 to 1920.

In the spring of 1917, the Russian army was poised to complete its conquest of eastern Anatolia, ready to take Diyarbakir, Harput, and all the territories south to Iraq. However, the Russian February Revolution changed all campaign plans. Word of the revolution filtered through to the troops in Anatolia in spring, and no one, troops or officers, was willing to act before the new political situation was understood. Although Russian troops in Anatolia held on longer than those on the Russian western front, eventually they, too, began to desert en masse. After the Bolshevik Revolution (7 November 1917), there was no Russian army left. What remained were a few hundred Russian officers and the Caucasian troops, primarily Armenians. In theory, these were the troops of the newly founded Transcaucasian Federation, which included Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, but the three new republics soon separated and the soldiers became the army of the Armenian Republic.

The soldiers of the Armenian Republic and allied Armenian guerrilla bands faced an impossible prospect between 1917 and 1918. Without the Russians, the Armenians were militarily incapable of standing up to the Ottoman army. Moreover, the Armenians were forced to organize and protect a vast Armenian refugee migration from the Anatolian provinces. (After the events of the war, the Armenians of the regions of Anatolia previously conquered by Russia could rightfully expect deadly revenge from local Muslims and returning Muslim refugees.) Because of their weakened military state, the Armenians were forced to withdraw to Russian Armenia (the old Erivan Province) and surrounding areas. They resolved to ensure that at least one region would be Armenian -- ensured by massacring or forcing the migration of resident Muslims. To the west, a similar fate was to befall the Armenians of Azerbaijan, although to a far lesser degree. Refugees crossed the borders in both directions.

By 1919, the majority of Muslims who had resided in Erivan Guberniia (Province) had either died or had become refugees outside the boundaries of the Armenian Republic. These Muslims had not easily left their homes. Even though many had been expelled in the spring of 1918 (some as early as late 1914), some had returned to their homes several times in the hope that political events would become more settled. Upon each return, more Muslims were lost, and fewer of them remained to migrate yet again. Their farms were never returned to them. They were caught up in the last act of the great population exchange that had begun a century before. As Armenian refugees from Anatolia came into the Armenian Republic, they took the farms of the refugee Muslims. The Muslims in turn were either massacred or driven out to Anatolia or Azerbaijan. There were perhaps 150,000 surviving Muslim refugees from the Armenian Republic in September of 1919, and these were rapidly dying. Many of the survivors had in fact been forced to flee to whichever regions offered the most immediate refuge. These were often mountainous territories little able to sustain large numbers of refugees. For example, the survivors of 22 Muslim villages of Erivan Province fled to the plateaus of the Üçtepeler Mountains. It is not possible to trace the ultimate fate of these people, but it could not have been a happy one. The Muslims who had returned to their farms in the Novobayazit area were not heard from again. It was rumored that they were massacred. The few Muslims that survived within the Armenian Republic were often in worse shape than the refugees, and no hand was raised to help them. They had no food and no seed. Through numerous forced migrations they had lost everything.

In areas under the control of the Armenian government, the machinery of the state was brought to bear against Muslims. For instance, not only were taxes on Muslims arbitrarily raised beyond their ability to pay, but those who went to the Armenian gendarmerie to complain were never heard from again. When possible, Muslim villagers resisted, probably armed by the Ottomans. This was particularly true in Nahcivan (Nakhichevan) and in the area of the Russian Kars Province, where Muslim Turks were a majority. The resulting war in those regions added greatly to the casualties on both sides. Ottoman forces that invaded the Caucasus at the end of the war estimated that by May of 1918, 250 Muslim villages in the eastern Caucasus had been burnt down by Armenians.

Local Muslims in the Kars Province formed governmental bodies after the Ottoman defeat in World War I removed for a time the chance for protection afforded by Ottoman troops. These bodies made contact with the Turkish Nationalist forces that were organizing in northeastern Anatolia and provided the Nationalists with detailed lists of the destruction wrought in their region by the Armenian forces. One report from Kaǧzman, for example, listed more than 100 Muslim Turkish villages that had been destroyed by Armenians, along with estimates of the thousands who had been killed and the approximately 10,000 who were homeless.

The Ottoman Army Command in the east stated in May of 1918 that "the majority of the Muslim villages of Kars, Sarikamş, Erivan, Ahilkelek, and Kaǧzman have been destroyed by the Armenians." In their reports, they listed many villages by name (e.g., in one report, Tekueli, Haci Halil,Kalul, Harabe, Dagor, Milanli, Ketak, Alaca, Ilham, Dangal, Ararca, Mulabi, Morcahit, etc.) 151, or sometimes only stated the number of villages destroyed (e.g., "in April, 67 villages of Saragil District were razed to the ground").

Even the British, who were powerfully committed to the Armenian cause and the creation of an Armenian state, formally warned Armenians about massacres of Turks in "Armenia proper" and in Baku. They told the Armenians that they would lose world sympathy if such massacres went on.

KARS

Prior to the war, the city and province of Kars had been part of the Russian Empire. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, many of the Armenians of Kars Province had emigrated to the southern Caucasus, fleeing the Ottoman advance. Muslims who had earlier fled the province returned. The Muslims of Kars had unquestionably been a majority before the war. Upon the Ottoman defeat, they formed a Muslim National Council (the Shura) in Kars Province. The British, who began a de facto occupation of Kars on 19 April 1919, gave civil and military power in the province to the Armenians, because it was expected that Kars would become part of the new Armenian Republic; the Muslim majority was not consulted on this issue. Muslims were disarmed and their weapons given to Armenians, so that in effect the only armed forces in the province were Armenian bands and some Kurdish tribes.

TABLE 14. POPULATION OF KARS PROVINCE IN 1897, BY RELIGION

Religion Population Proportion
Orthodox 49,295 0.17
Armenian* 72,967 0.251
Roman Catholic 4,373 0.015
Other Christian 16,963 0.058
Jewish 1,204 0.004
Muslim 145,852 0.502
Total 290,654

* Gregorian and Armenian Catholic.
SOURCE: 1897 Russian Census.

Muslims began to be massacred even before the British had left Kars. On 19 April, the band of the Armenian "Karch Murat" dragged 7 Muslims from a train on the Kars line and killed them. Because the British were still present, a board of enquiry was set up and Karch Murat and his band convicted, but no one would or could arrest them. The crimes in Kars continued in this vein -plunder, robbery, devastation, and murder. In July 1919, the Armenian army began to attack and destroy the Muslim villages of the Karakurt-Sarikamş region with artillery and machine guns. The village of Büyük Şatak was destroyed and five Muslims were killed. Thirteen villages were devastated in the Saǧlık District, and 25 villages in the Horosan District. Large numbers of Muslim-owned sheep and cattle were confiscated.

The slaughter of Muslims in the Kars district was mostly contained in the agricultural areas of the province, the areas inhabited by Turkish speakers. Armenian bands plundered Turkish villages between Kars and Oltu and plundered Akqakale, Babirguend, and other towns and villages. Sixty Muslims of Kaǧzman were killed by Armenians, as were the Muslims of the village Puzant. The Turks of Iǧdir were either led away by armed bands or killed. Ali Riza, the Turkish governor of Kaǧzman, compiled a list of villages pillaged by Armenians after the Muslim National Assembly in Kars was dissolved: Digur 63; Kaǧzman 45; Karakorun 45; Sarikamş 46; and many more. Ali Riza also cited the names of the leaders of the Armenian bands -- 68 names in all. A formal Turkish Commission of Inquiry sent to the areas of Shuregel and Zarshat to investigate Armenian atrocities listed the houses destroyed in each village ("45 in Shurgel, 60 in Agnatch, 70 in Ilanli. . . ."). The crimes reported were sadly typical of what had been seen often in eastern Anatolia and the Caucasus -- villages pillaged and burned, flocks and belongings taken, rapes and murders. Nowhere on the Kars plain, or in the Erivan region to its north were Muslim villages safe. Individual murders and pillaging of Turks living on the plain by Armenians and sometimes Greeks were frequent. However, the mountainous areas of the province were defended by Kurdish tribes, who kept the Armenian forces from going too far beyond the plains and the cities. Kurds and Armenians fought what can only be called a blood feud -- each murdering any of the other who fell into their hands. Perhaps the only Western observer to actually see the situation, the British Colonel Rawlinson, reported that caravans of Muslim refugees were constantly leaving the Kars plain. He recorded reports of torture as well as murder, which he investigated and found to be accurate. Kars was also the scene of terrible suffering for Muslim refugees from Erivan Province and other areas designated as Armenian. Twenty-five thousand refugees from those areas were gathered in the Kars region in 1919. Many of these refugees were set upon by Armenian bands and soldiers in Kars province. Many were killed at Sarikamş after they had fled from Armenian massacres and destruction of their villages. In a letter to King George of England the president of the Muslim meclis (assembly) of Kars, Ibrahim, described the situation emotionally, portraying the Armenians as those "who completely destroyed and ruined more than 1,000 Mohammedan villages in the south west of the Caucasus [including the Kars region], who shed the blood of about 100,000 innocent Mohammedan women and children, and who have left neither honour nor property unspoiled and untouched."

Colonel Rawlinson came to the same conclusions regarding Armenian actions and intentions:

I had received further very definite information of horrors that had been committed by the Armenian soldiery in Kars Plain, and as I had been able to judge of their want of discipline by their treatment of my own detached parties, I had wired to Tiflis from Zivin that "in the interests of humanity the Armenians should not be left in independent command of the Moslem population, as, their troops being without discipline and not being under effective control, atrocities were constantly being committed, for which we [the British, who gave Kars to the Armenians] should with justice eventually be held to be morally responsible."

AZERBAIJAN, BAKU, AND ELIZAVETPOL

Baku felt the effect of the Russian Revolution of 1917 more quickly and more completely than other areas of the Caucasus. Workers in the oil industry and Armenians of the town were ripe for Bolshevik and Armenian nationalist revolutionary organization. Baku was thus ruled by an uneasy alliance of a Soviet revolutionary committee and Armenian Dashnaks. Such a combination worked against the Azeri Turks (or, in the Russian usage, Tatars) of the city, who were neither Armenian nor Bolshevik sympathizers. From 30 March to 1 April 1918, the Tatars were attacked. Almost half of the Muslim population of Baku was compelled to flee the city.

Between 8,000 and 12,000 Muslims were killed in Baku alone. On the night of 14 September 1918 as the Armenian forces had retreated from the city, local Muslims took their revenge and killed almost 9,000 Armenians. Turkish troops entered the city on 16 September, restored order, and protected the remaining Armesnians.

Armenian troops who entered territory claimed by the Azerbaijan Republic destroyed all Muslim villages in their path.

As Richard Hovannisian has written of one guerrilla leaders, Andranik:

The routes south were blocked by regular Turkish divisions. Backtracking, [the Armenian guerilla leader and general] Andranik then pushed over Nakhichevan into Zangezur, the southernmost uezd of the Elisavetpol guberniia. Remaining there for the duration of the world war, Andranik's forces crushed one Tatar village after another.

The Azerbaijani population was forced to feed and house, when they could, approximately 60,000 refugees who had fled into their territory by the end of 1919. Admiral Bristol, the American plenipotentiary in Istanbul, basing himself on the reports of the American representatives in the Caucasus, stated that the 60,000 refugees had come from 420 Muslim villages destroyed by the Armenians.

American intelligence operatives and diplomatic representatives reported the usual sequence in which Armenian troops attacked Turkish villagers, often killed them, and forced them to flee, in response to which the government of Azerbaijan was sometimes able to respond. The Armenian Prime Minister stated to H. V. Bryan, American Liaison Officer to the Allied High Commission in Armenia, that the Armenian army was busy surrounding Turkish villages and "starving them into submission." The attacks were partly due to the desire of the Armenians for more extensive and secure boundaries and access to the railroad running through primarily Turkish-inhabited lands, and partly due to traditional hatreds that had surfaced in 1905. Whatever the reason, the result was that Turks were forcibly removed from their villages or killed. In London, Curzon told an eminent Armenian delegation of the "foolish and indefensible conduct of their compatriots on north-eastern frontiers of Armenia." Curzon quoted to them lists of outrages committed, which showed the Armenians had been much the worse offenders.

ERIVAN AND NAHCIVAN

[Admiral Bristol] I know from reports of my own officers who served with General Dro that defenseless villages were bombarded and then occupied, and any inhabitants that had not run away were brutally killed, the village pillaged, and all the livestock confiscated, and then the village burned. This was carried out as a regular systematic getting-rid of the Moslems.

Before the war, the Muslims of Erivan Province constituted almost as large a population as the Armenians. They were among those of the Caucasus who most suffered. Evidence from Erivan, however, was fragmentary. Refugees brought out reports of villages burned and massacred, but few first-hand reports by others were available. The Ottoman or Turkish Nationalist armies never entered much of Erivan Province, so the Ottomans made few detailed reports on Erivan's Muslims. The Muslim Council of Kars compiled a list of destroyed Muslim villages in part of Erivan, probably from refugee reports, which detailed by name and mortality the villages destroyed by 1 October 1919 -- 91 villages destroyed in two districts alone. The Turkish government stated that 199 Muslim villages in the Armenian Republic had been destroyed, probably not much of an exaggeration. In March of 1920, the Republic officially protested the massacres in the Armenian Republic, listing by name the villages destroyed and estimating that the Armenian state "had devastated more than 300 villages and massacred the most part of the Mussulmans populating these villages." Even the Persian government, which was not given to complaint because it was largely under the control of occupying British soldiers, spoke out against the slaughter.

However, the most telling criticism came from Armenians, the Socialist-Revolutionary Party of the Armenian Republic:

To the President of the Parliament [of the Armenian Republic].

We beg you to announce to the Minister for Home Affairs the following demand: Is the Minister informed that during the last three weeks on the territory of the Armenian Republic within the boundaries of the Echmiadzin, Erivan and Sourmalin districts a series of Tatar villages, for instance Pashakend, Takiarli, Kouroukh-Giune, Oulalik of the Taishouroukh Society, Agveren, Dalelar, Pourpous, Alibek of the Arzakend Society, Djan-Fida, Kerim-Arch, Agdjar, Igdalou, Karkhoun, Kelani-Aroltkh of the Echmiadzin district as well as a series of other villages have been cleared of the Tatar population and have been exposed to robbery and massacre. That the local police not only did not prevent but even took part in these robberies and massacres, that these events left a very bad impression on the local population which is disgusted with these robberies and disorders and who wish to live in peace with their neighbors and request that the guilty be accordingly judged and punished as they are to this day left unpunished.

The Armenian Socialist Revolutionaries had complained of the massacres both in the Parliament and in their newspaper, The Revolutionary Banner.

Although, as might be expected, their evidence tended to lay blame solely on their political opponents, the Dashnak Party in power, their evidence completely supported the contentions of the Azerbaijan government.

The Nahcivan region, in the south of the Russian Erivan Province, had the misfortune to be the site of the main railroad line that connected Armenia to Iran and further east. The Armenian Republic decided not only that it must hold the railroad line, but that the line would never be secure as long as the region through which it passed was almost totally Turkish in population. Therefore, it was decided to rid the entire line of the railroad of adjacent and nearby Turkish villages, which were destroyed by Armenian regular troops. The Armenians attacked Muslim villages with artillery and machine guns, as they had earlier near Sarikamş. Armenian partisan bands assisted in the attacks on the Turkish villages. For example, a large Armenian band of perhaps 1,200 attacked the villages of Elmah (688 reported dead) and Aǧuşma (516 dead), among others in the Nahcivan region. The villagers were either killed or forced to flee to Azerbaijan or Turkey.

Admiral Bristol summarized the events and laid political blame for the tragedy:

The Armenian government, with its regular forces, attempted to clear the Tatars away from a railroad for twenty-seven miles and this has caused Tatar refugees to the extent of many thousands. This is similar to the Greek operations in the Vilayet of Aydin. It will also be noted that the British, in encouraging the Armenians, did not act according to the principles of humanity or self-determination. They were party to a plan to conquer another race and place the minority to govern a majority when they must have known full well that the minority was not capable of governing itself, not to mention providing government for the majority.

It was the Armenian attacks that actually cemented the resolve of the Azerbaijanis to form an army and defend the Turks. They eventually made a stand and held the Armenians, but not until the "twenty-seven miles" of villages had been lost.

TABLE 15. TURKS IN ERIVAN PROVINCE, 1914 AND 1926

270,000 "Turco-Tatars" in 1914*
89,000 in 1926
181,000 Lost (67%)

*Adjusted to postwar boundaries.
SOURCES: 1915 Russian Statistical Yearbook and 1926 U.S.S.R. Census.

The best evidence on the massacres and forced deportations of the Muslims of Erivan comes from population statistics taken before and after the wars. Table 15 presents figures for the population of Turks (called "Turco-Tatars" in the Russian statistics) in Erivan before and after the wars. All Muslims are not included in the table, because the 1926 U.S.S.R. census did not give population by religion, and Muslim ethnic groups other than Turks were not specifically listed in the 1914 figures. The non-Turkish Muslims in Erivan can be assumed to have suffered as badly as did the Turks.

From the beginning of the First World War until the first postwar census, two-thirds of the Muslims had disappeared from Erivan Province. Many of these were refugees and many of them died. Erivan Province, which had begun as a majority Muslim province in the 1820s, had only a small Muslim minority at the beginning of the 1920s.