In your article on March 9th, 2009, titled “Nearly a Million Genocide Victims, Covered in a Cloak of Amnesia “, you write:
“This argument is rejected by most scholars, who believe that the small number of Armenian rebels were not a serious threat to the Ottoman Empire, and that the policy was more the product of the perception that the Armenians, non-Muslims and therefore considered untrustworthy, were a problem population.”
I and the Turkish community I represent would be intrigued to learn who these “most” scholars are, and what this “small” number of Armenian rebels constitute? To rectify your statements I would like to refer to this document which includes evidence put forth by British, French and Armenian sources. These documents corroborate that “small number of Armenian rebels” you write in your article, was an organized army of at least 200,000.
You also make assumptions with no ground about what Bardakci’s numbers of missing people represent. The documents in Bardakci’s book don’t signify how many Armenians died. It cannot be assumed that this number does not include the relocated Armenian families. Some of these people died, but streching the truth is not worthy of reputable historians.
This is a highly disputed issue, which has no room for insensitive statements with no evidence. I urge you, on behalf on the Turkish community I represent, to reveal the sources of your statements and further investigate the documents I have sent before you ignore the facts they present, as a responsible journalist would do. Here is a detailed explanation of the documents.
In the first page, you will see the cover page of a book, published by British “Pen and Sword Military Classics”, which writes that in Armenian nationalists slaughtered 120,000 non-Armenians in 1914, and another 50,000 in 1917.
In the second page, you will see the document by an Armeno-American source, printed in the United States in 1926, which acknowledges more than 200,0000 Armenians fought against the Turks in the Russian Army. They also fought agains the Turks in the British Army.
For further evidence of Armenian armed forces fighting against Ottomans behind the war lines you can refer to the other pages in the document. There are excerpts from four Armenian books, including pictures, military achievements, and brief biographical information of several known Armenian army officials. It’s stated in these books how the Armenian’s affected the outcome of the WW1 by siding with the Allies, namely the Russians, British and French. (See pages 3. 21 and 22).
“Most scholars” – using your words – dispute the credibility of the Armenian sources. Please take a look at pages 25, 26 and 27. These are articles written by the same author (Veronique Brocard) in 3 consecutive years, and the number of Armenians perished during WW1 are given as 1 million, 1.5 million and 2.5 million in each article. Obviously these numbers are made up, and when no one confronts the source or the author, these numbers are accepted as facts. Sometimes journalists tend to distort the truth, please do not be one of them.
Thank you,
Sincerely,
Naile Berna Kovuk
TACA Grassroots
Chicago, IL