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I plan to collect historical documents and articles by various authors in this blog, usually without comments.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.

Friday, March 20, 2015

The Muslim Holocaust

Somebody asked me the following question during a discussion on the Armenian problem:

"When all is said and done, where'd they [Armenians] all go? Disappeared?"

This was my answer, written spontaneously without too much attention to grammer or style:

That will be a fair and good question if asked together with the following questions:

1. What happened to Muslims in Armenia? (All dead or forced to flee for their lives)
2. What happened to 3 million Muslim civilians in Anatolia? (All dead)
3. What happened to the Jews in Eastern Anatolia? (Almost all killed by Armenians, some were able to escape)

Remember what I wrote before:

"3 million Muslim people in Anatolia and more than 400,000 Muslims in the Caucasus were killed between 1914-1922. These are low estimates (i.e. scholars like Prof. Kemal Karpat give much higher estimates) of Muslim mortality and do not include the deaths of soldiers in battles. .. Note also that what is Armenia today didn't have an Armenian majority as late as the end of 19th Century. Wonder what happened to all the Muslims living there?"

I also wrote the following elsewhere:

"The Armenian mortality is estimated to be between 200,000 and 600,000 by most experts. Prof. Justin McCarthy gives the higher figure, i.e. 600,000."

The Muslim villagers were unable to protect themselves because young Muslim males had been conscripted. Only very old and very young males and women and children were left. Armenian bands, however, were made up of young males who had never been drafted, were deserters from the Ottoman army, or who had come from the Caucasus. As a result, Armenian bands were able to massacre large numbers of Muslims without significant resistance. To be able to understand the chronology of massacre and counter-massacre in the region, it should be noted that Armenian revolutionary activities started well before any orders of relocation of Armenians were given. The Armenian revolts and attacks in Van (described below), Zeytun, Muş, Reşadiye, Gevaş, and other cities and towns all began before the Ottoman order of relocation (26 May 1915). By May of 1915, the Armenian genocide squads had already started their attacks on the Muslim population. This is openly admitted by the Armenian guerrilla leader Armen Garo (in "Why Armenia Should be Free," Boston, 1918, pp. 23-26).

Armenians in the war zone (in the East) were relocated away from the war zone. A significant fraction survived and their descendents are either in Armenia or among the "Armenian diaspora" living in the USA, Europe, and elsewhere. Some of those being deported in 1915 were massacred by Kurdish tribes for vengeance (remember, Armenians killed more than 600,000 Kurds starting in 1914). Some of them died of starvation and diseases. A lot of Armenians died in massacres and counter-massacres with local Muslim civilians. Many Armenians (armed men) died in battles with the Ottoman government or the Kurdish tribes. The total sum of these deaths is the 600,000 mentioned above.

As one American historian put it, "The Armenians were not the only civilians forced to leave their homes. Muslims of Eastern Anatolia were forced out just as surely as were Armenians. The deportations ordered by the Ottoman government may have looked more official, but the deportations forced by the Russians and the Armenian bands were just as real. In fact, the worst forced migrations in the East were those caused by pillage and massacre, not by official actions of the Ottoman government, and the survival rate was far worse... The Ottomans at least made attempts to protect many Armenians from the hatred of local Muslims and from Kurdish raids. Laws were passed ordering protective measures for the Armenian deportees. Ottoman civilian and military officials tried and punished (including executions) more than a thousand of those who had persecuted the Armenians. On the other hand, the Russian government and the Armenian revolutionaries were completely ruthless in forcing the migration of Muslims. No Russians or Armenians were tried for their crimes against Muslims."

Having said all these, I'll add this: It is obscene to talk about Armenian losses exclusively, by ignoring the extermination of almost 3.5 million Muslims in Anatolia and in the Caucasus. Apart from ignorance, the only explanation I can find for this attitude is racism, anti-Turkish bigotry and prejudice.

MUSLIM LOSSES IN EAST ANATOLIA

Van 194,167
Bitlis 169,248
Erzurum 248,695
Diyarbakir 158,043
Mamuretulaziz 89,310
Sivas 186,413
Haleb 50,838 (for the portion Haleb remaining in Turkey)
Adana 42,511
Trabzon 49,907

The total is about 1,190,000 and this number represents a low estimate.


Let us now take a brief look at the Muslim Holocaust in so-called Armenia:

MUSLIM HOLOCAUST IN ARMENIA

Muslim mortality in the Caucasus 1914-1921: 410,000
Muslim refugees from the Caucasus 1914-1921: 270,000

How and why?

Source: Rachel A. Bortnick, "The Jewish Times", June 21, 1990:

"A more appropriate analogy with the Jewish Holocaust might be the systematic extermination of the entire Muslim population of the independent republic of Armenia (which lasted from 1918 to 1920), which consisted of at least 30-40 percent of the population of that republic. The memoirs of an Armenian army officer who participated in and eye-witnessed these atrocities was published in the U.S. in 1926 with the title 'Men Are Like That.' Other references abound."

Source: "Men Are Like That" by Leonard Ramsden Hartill. The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indianapolis (1926). (Memoirs of an Armenian officer who observed the Armenian genocide of the Muslims), p. 202:

"This war quickly developed into one of extermination. Horrible things happened, things that words can neither describe nor make you understand. The memory of scenes I witnessed and of incidents in which I participated still makes me feel sick. But war is always horrible, for it liberates all the fear and hate and deviltry that are in men...We now proceeded to solve the Tartar problem in Armenia. We closed the roads and mountain passes that might serve as ways of escape for the Tartars, and then proceeded in the work of extermination. Our troops surrounded village after village. Little resistance was offered. Our artillery knocked the huts into heaps of stones and dust, and when the villages became untenable and the inhabitants fled from them into the fields, bullets and bayonets completed the work. Some of the Tartars escaped, of course. They found refuge in the mountains, or succeeded in crossing the border into Turkey. The rest were killed. And so it is that the whole length of the border-land of Russian Armenia from Nakhitchevan to Akhalkalaki, from the hot plains of Ararat to the cold mountain plateaus of the north, is dotted with the mute mournful ruins of Tartar villages. They are quiet now, those villages, except for the howling of wolves and jackals that visit them to paw over the scattered bones of the dead."

Armenian massacres of Muslims in Kars:

Colonel Rawlinson:

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."

Armenian massacres of Muslims in Azerbaijan, Baku, Elizavetpol:

Richard Hovannisian (Armenian zealot/historian):

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. 

Armenian massacres of Muslims in Erivan and Nahcivan:

Admiral Bristol:

I know from reports of my own officers who served with [Armenian general] 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. 

From 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.

An American officer, Robert Dunn, reflects on Dro's handiwork ('World Alive, A Personal Story,' Crown Publishers, New York, 1956, pg. 361.):

"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."



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