It is a great disappointment to see that our Congress and our Government in Washington year after year dwell on the subject of the controversial and alleged Armenian Genocide, and holding the Republic of Turkey responsible for it. Our taxpayers’ contributions are being wasted in fruitless debates in our political arena at the expense of our national interests in the Near East. Our politicians are not historians but it is a great sadness to note that our politicians succumb to the pressures of certain lobbyist elements to accept their distorted historical events of Anatolia pertaining to the period of 1915-1916. If you must decide on this matter then I need to ask you to investigate this matter in an unbiased manner.
Please allow me to give certain undeniable historical facts to shed some light on this matter. Once these points become apparent, it will also become clear that the allegations do not have basis. However, it should be noted that no one can deny the fact that countless Armenians have suffered during the Great War (1914-1918). Yet, at the same time even greater number of Turks suffered casualties during this ugly war. All ethnic groups died for similar causes; Armenians were not an exception. The debate of specific cause for their losses is another subject matter that cannot be covered herein at this moment. Nonetheless, with this letter I will attempt to illustrate that the claims of the Armenian lobbyists are false in regards to the alleged Armenian genocide matter.
In the first part of this letter, I need to expose the historical falsehood for the alleged Armenian genocide; and this falsehood will show that the claims cannot be true based on historical information.
As you may know, the entire Armenian allegation of genocide is based on the information brought to the West by Morgenthau, the US Ambassador to Istanbul during 1915-1916. Yet, clearly Ambassador Morgenthau has admitted in his own book “Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story (1918)” that the information that he gathered came to him without investigation from his Armenian aides who worked for the goals of the Armenian Diaspora, which was scheming against the Ottoman Empire to create an independent state on the Turkish real estate. Thus, with this first fact (source of information) the credibility of this information is questionable. It should be noted that to this date there is no proven motive for the Ottoman State to commit such alleged crime as claimed by the Armenian Diaspora.
It is a fact that the greatest pillar of the alleged Armenian genocide is formed by the works of Historian Arnold Toynbee and former British Ambassador Lord Bryce who collectively utilized Morgenthau’s information for the interests of the British government which was engaged in a war against the defendant, the Ottoman Empire. It is not a secret that the British Foreign Office benefited from the services of these two British figures by having them produce two Blue Books (”The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire” and “The Murderous Tyranny of the Turks”), which became the blueprints for the alleged Armenian genocide. However, these books were not written in a scientific manner with vigorous research to sustain the claims against the Turks but instead its information was purely based on the hearsay for political and propaganda purposes. Indeed, the foundation of the Armenian genocide claim, which is primarily based on these Blue Books, has been shattered long ago, back in 1926 when the original author of the Blue Books Arnold Toynbee himself has confessed in his 1926 book “The Western Question” that the information and the allegations that he brought forward in the Foreign Office books were actually written for propaganda purposes! Hence, since such confession exists from the original author of the alleged Armenian massacres (genocide), the credibility of such allegations was again destroyed.
Is it not a fact that British Prime Minister Tony Blair has upset the Armenian Diaspora and the officials of the Republic of Armenia by saying that there was no Armenian genocide? Subsequently, The British Ambassador to Yerevan was sent back in protest. This was a significant event. At the time, Britain was the superpower in control of the Great War and had the necessary information to judge whether the alleged Armenian massacres happened or not, and if they did, Britain was in a position to determine whether they happened in a premeditated fashion. Indeed, about 140 Ottoman officials were gathered after the war and taken to the Mediterranean island of Malta where they were tried by the British officials for alleged war crimes against British military personnel and the Armenians. Ultimately, British could not find any information to implicate these detainees or the Ottoman government for the alleged war crimes. Therefore, all of these Malta prisoners were released and sent back to Istanbul. Interestingly, of all the allied nations of the Great War, the primary player, Great Britain to this date has not recognized the alleged Armenian genocide as a true event since it was a great ploy against the Ottoman Turks for war propaganda purposes. Indeed, this was already admitted decades ago by the wartime Foreign Office employee Arnold Toynbee.
In this second part of the letter, I need to demonstrate the number of the casualties are significantly inflated in order to attract the sympathy of the Western world.
The Armenian Diaspora has repeatedly claimed that the Ottoman Armenians suffered 1.5 millions deaths. If the official contemporary Ottoman census illustrated that there were a total of 1,294,851 Armenians in the empire, how could there have been 1.5 million dead at the end of the war? Both the British Blue Book data of 1912 and the French Yellow Book placed pre-Great War Armenian count within the Ottoman Empire between 1 million and 1.4 million. Hence, if the European data supported the Ottoman census, then how could there have been more dead people than the people who actually existed? If these claims are true, how can there be many Armenians still existing today in the Middle East and elsewhere in the Western world.
The answer is clear. The devious scheming of the dark circles is intended to distort the truth at all costs. This can even mean taking a risk of tarnishing the reputation of prominent information sources. For example, the 1910 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica has stated that the pre-war Armenian population of Ottoman Turkey was about 1.5 million but later the 1953 edition inflated this number to 2.5 million. This change was necessary to support the claim of 1.5 million dead by the Armenian Diaspora.
Meanwhile, one other important historical fact has been forgotten in these claims. Unlike its contemporary Western counterparts, the Ottoman Empire allowed fair representation of the minorities in its multinational parliament. In other words, according to the Ottoman Law every Ottoman millet would have had a proportinate representation within the empire’s parliament based on its population in the Ottoman domain. During the pre-war Ottoman Empire the total population was about 25 million. Since Armenians at the time had 14 seats in the parliament, or 5% of the seats, within the 25 million population they had about 1.2 million Ottoman Armenians.
Boghos Nubar Pasha himself, Armenian officer who fought against the Turks with the Russians declared that after the war there were 280,000 Armenians remaining in the Ottoman Empire while about 700,000 emigrated elsewhere. Hence, the Armenian casualties were about 300,000. Even these misguiding Blue Books written by Arnold Toynbee and supervised by Lord Bryce actually claimed that the number of casualties were about 800,000, much less than 1.5 million as claimed by the Armenian Diaspora.
In reality, during and after the war 275,000 Armenians were relocated to Arabic speaking lands of the Ottoman Empire (Lebanon and Egypt primarily), whereas 420,000 went to Russia, 180,000 to Europe and the United States. Only about 123,000 remained within Ottoman Turkey in the postwar era. The total of emigrants and relocated Armenians is about 1 million. Hence, if the pre-war head count was about 1.3 million then the war casualties were about 300,000 but not 1.5 million.
At the same time it should not be forgotten that the Turks lost 2.5 million while defending their home for their freedom against the European invaders including those who attacked them from their behind, the Armenians.
Finally, in the third part of my letter I have to present to you that the time period of such allegation is outrageously wrong. The Diaspora claims that the alleged genocide occurred during the period of 1915-1923.
Initially, the Diaspora’s claim was about the period of 1915-1918, during the actual World War I, a.k.a., the Great War. However, since the defendant Ottoman Empire is no longer existing in today’s world, the Diaspora has decided to pull in the Republic of Turkey as the defendant in the case of the alleged Armenian genocide. Thus, the period was changed to 1915-1923. Yet, even though there is ample data to prove that the alleged genocide did not occur during the original period of 1915-1918, the incorporation of the period 1918-1923 is equally absurd in the absence of undeniable proof to support such allegations. In fact, the future founder of the Republic of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk himself granted a peaceful return for all relocated Armenians during the Great War to their former homes in Anatolia. Indeed, following the defeat of the Armenians by the Turks, the articles 3 and 6 of the Gumru Treaty (December 2, 1920, a.k.a., the Treaty of Alexandropol) signed between the Government of Ankara and the Republic of Armenia has provided safe return guarantee for the relocated Armenians by the Turkish government. How can this be an act of genocide by a government, which generously allowed the safe return of Armenian people to their former homes?
In conclusion, a more thorough debate can be provided to refute the claims of the alleged Armenian genocide. This debate should not be done by the politicians but rather by historians. If US Congress and government truly want to resolve this issue then you should ask Armenians to open up their own archives as Turks did courageously. If Armenians have nothing to hide why do they not open their archives to historians and the public as Turkey did?
In this day of information, the days of punishing people with false information has passed. Sooner or later the truth will surface, and those who have supported fallacies will be remembered in the dark pages of the history. Our government should not be participating in the old nineteenth century mentality game of blaming the Turk without basis for crimes that have not been proven. Unfortunately, for the most part both our politicians and our media have been quick to try and execute the Turk without giving him or her an equal chance for defense. One cannot help but think that those who do this still have the old medieval bias against the Turk. Whether we accept it or not, in this day of “Clash of Civilizations” one can assume that there may still be a religious bias against the Turk.
Europe is guilty for pushing Turkey out of the Western circle by its bigotry against Turkey. The United States should not commit the same error. We pride ourselves in this country for giving every human being the same chance without regards to what race, ethnicity, or creed that they may belong. If we want to be a leader, a true leader in this world, then we need to act without bias, showing fair treatment to everyone.
I am asking for you to be fair and to make a careful decision on behalf of the American nation’s interests but not forgetting what the justice is about.
Respectfully yours,
Erol Yorulmazoglu, MD