Robert Fisk: You're talking nonsense, Mr Ambassador
20 May 2006
The Indepedent
By Robert Fisk
All the while, new diplomatic archives are opening to reveal the smell of death - Armenian death
A letter from the Turkish Ambassador to the Court of Saint James arrived for me a few days ago, one of those missives that send a shudder through the human soul. "You allege that an 'Armenian genocide' took place in Eastern Anatolia in 1915," His Excellency Mr Akin Alptuna told me. "I believe you have some misconceptions about those events ..."
Oh indeedy doody, I have. I am under the totally mistaken conception that one and a half million Armenians were cruelly and deliberately done to death by their Turkish Ottoman masters in 1915, that the men were shot and knifed while their womenfolk were raped and eviscerated and cremated and starved on death marches and their children butchered. I have met a few of the survivors - liars to a man and woman, if the Turkish ambassador to Britain is to be believed - and I have seen the photographs taken of the victims by a brave German photographer called Armen Wegner whose pictures must now, I suppose, be consigned to the waste bins. So must the archives of all those diplomats who courageously catalogued the mass murders inflicted upon Turkey's Christian population on the orders of the gang of nationalists who ran the Ottoman government in 1915.
The Indepedent
By Robert Fisk
All the while, new diplomatic archives are opening to reveal the smell of death - Armenian death
A letter from the Turkish Ambassador to the Court of Saint James arrived for me a few days ago, one of those missives that send a shudder through the human soul. "You allege that an 'Armenian genocide' took place in Eastern Anatolia in 1915," His Excellency Mr Akin Alptuna told me. "I believe you have some misconceptions about those events ..."
Oh indeedy doody, I have. I am under the totally mistaken conception that one and a half million Armenians were cruelly and deliberately done to death by their Turkish Ottoman masters in 1915, that the men were shot and knifed while their womenfolk were raped and eviscerated and cremated and starved on death marches and their children butchered. I have met a few of the survivors - liars to a man and woman, if the Turkish ambassador to Britain is to be believed - and I have seen the photographs taken of the victims by a brave German photographer called Armen Wegner whose pictures must now, I suppose, be consigned to the waste bins. So must the archives of all those diplomats who courageously catalogued the mass murders inflicted upon Turkey's Christian population on the orders of the gang of nationalists who ran the Ottoman government in 1915.
If this is the extent of the unabashed downright revision of history an educated Ambassador will go to, what hope is left? Do people not see that a once thriving ethnic Armenian community in Turkey is no more? It is for these kind of people that a law against denying the Armenian Genocide should be put in place. Shame on you, your Excellency the Turkish Ambassador, Mr Akin Alptuna.
Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.
posted by Vahe Balabanian at 11:12 AM
4 Comments:
The Independent, UK
June 1, 2006 Thursday
LETTER COLD-BLOODED ACT OF GENOCIDE
Sir: A regime in its death throes involved in the the First World War may or may not be an an extenuating circumstance in the genocide of the Armenians, but the same did not apply to the massacres of the Armenians in the 1890s.
They were carried out by the Turkish army, under the auspices of the then Sultan Abdul Hamid. Started by a trumpet blast in the morning, and ended by another in the afternoon to finish the soldiers' work for the day, the eventual death toll was 50,000 to 100,000 people.
Why the Turkish authorities persist in denying the overwhelming evidence for all these events is beyond me. Unlike the Ottoman Empire, modern Turkey is a democratic secular republic that could only be an asset to the EU Admission of the former regime's guilt must surely assist Turkey in gaining entry.
ANTHONY KAYE
BRISTOL
The Independent
June 1, 2006 Thursday
LETTER COLD-BLOODED ACT OF GENOCIDE
Sir: There was no desperation on the part of the Turks in their mass slaughter of Armenians in 1915-16 (letter, 27 May). The framer s of the policy of extermination were far from being on their last legs. The activist politicians of the party in power, the Committee of Union and Progress, carried it out decisively, with attentiveness and care. The policy itself was coldly contrived and brutally executed. All this is reported in the consular dispatches of neutral or pro-German countries.
Nor were Armenians killed only in security zones. Those living in the heart of the Ottoman Empire, far from war zones, were driven to their deaths or dumped in lakes. Across the whole of Anatolia -Turkey today - the Armenian population was exterminated. That was genocide, according to the 1948 definition.
CHRISTOPHER WALKER
LONDON W14
The Independent (London)
May 27, 2006 Saturday
First Edition
LETTERS TO EDITOR
Sir: My grandfather served with British forces in Turkey during the First World War, and if he were still alive he would undoubtedly have orroborated the assertion of Robert Fisk (and others) that a genocide did take place.
Unsurprisingly, he was greatly troubled by what he experienced during his time for the rest of his long life. However, despite the
memories of fierce, horrific combat and the loss of many brave comrades, it was encountering the many Armenian babies and small children who had been mercilessly bayoneted to death by Ottoman forces which haunted him more than anything else. He knew who was responsible, and he never forgave the Turkish forces for this
monstrous act.
PAUL NEWSOME
LONDON N8
Sir: Robert Fisk draws parallels between the Holocaust of the Second World War and the massacre and forced expulsion from eastern Turkey of the Armenians of 1915 (Opinion, 20 May). However, there are significant differences.
On the one hand, we are talking about a modern 20th century nation-state extensively planning and executing with industrial efficiency, the destruction of its law-abiding and peaceful Jewish citizens. On the other hand, we are talking about a backward and dysfunctional multi-ethnic empire on its last legs, resorting to a policy of forced expulsion of its Armenian subjects out of desperation, during a particularly difficult phase of a long struggle for survival against not only the upsurge of ethnic militant nationalism amongst its subjects but also the imperial ambitions of the western powers and Russia.
Its decision to expel the Armenians, despite its disastrous consequences, was mainly driven by security concerns in the Eastern Front rather than racist motives.
It may be tragic but true, however, that as this decision was implemented, some members of the Ottoman government and security forces, as well as local Muslim gangs, may have acted with feelings of revenge and hatred against the Armenians who they believed were stabbing the Ottomans in the back. In those days, ethnic and religious strife fuelled by the interventions of the imperialist powers was unfortunately a fact of life in Anatolia. Greek, Armenian and Muslim gangs were constantly perpetrating violence and cruelty against each other's communities.
Many modern Turks, whilst prepared to accept and acknowledge this tragedy and the responsibility of the Ottoman government in its creation, feel it is grossly unfair that such parallels between Nazi Germany and the dying days of the Ottoman Empire are drawn. There is also concern that the Armenian diaspora in the West has some irredentist motives that stretch far beyond the seemingly humane face given to its struggle.
This is why the term "genocide" is strongly resisted.
CHINAR YAZICI
EASTLEIGH, HAMPSHIRE
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