ARMENAIN FACTS AND LIES ON GENOCIDE

The first quarter of 1900's brought painful years to Armenians lived in Anatolia under the dynasty of Ottoman Empire.The Emperor Abdulhamid established HAMIDIYE ALAYLARI (Hamidiye Army and School) to determinate Armenians.Although it's an historical FACT that Armenian massacre happened in those years,there are also Armenian LIES about the same historical event. My purpose is to present facts and lies with objective DOCUMENTS and findings by giving REASONS. The final purpose is for TURKISH-ARMENIAN FRIENDSHIP

FACT1: ARMENIANS WERE MASSACRED BY OTTOMAN EMPIRE

FACT2: TURKS WERE ALSO MASACRED BY ARMENIANS

EVIDENCE:1

"Turks wanted to keep Armenia weak in order to retain their hold on Eastern Anatolia which they had cleared of it's Armenian population throught the genocide of 1915"(Figes,1997)*1

"However,mass expulsion and even genocide began to make their appearence on the Southern margins of Europe during and after World War I ,as the Turks set about the mass extirpation of the Armenians in 1915.. (Hobsbawm,1990)*2

"...At the turn of the year-1913- the Turks began their land war by a campaign in the Caucasus Mountain,directed as much against the Armenians as against the Russians"(Stokesbury,1981).*3

"Under cover of World War I the Turkish authotories undertook to put into effect a previously prepared program to solve the Armenian Question by removing the Armenians from the whole of Asia Minor. Although theexact procedure varied and the number of Armenians affected is disputed,there is no doubt,contrary to Turkish denials,that an Armenian Holocaust took place.While many Armenians survived with the help of Turks and Kurds,for the overwhelming bulk of the population massacre and deportation were total.The men were shot at the outset and most of the starving deportees died on route,having been driven through barren mountains in summer,brutalized by their drivers,and savaged by attacking tribesmen"(Howard,H.N.,1995)*4.

"...attempts to effect reforms resulted only in a series of Turkish and Russian massacres of the Armenian populace.In 1915, during World War I,the Ottoman government ordered about 1,750,000 Armenians deported to Syria and Mesopotamia.Some 600.000 died in the desert en route" (The New Encyclopedia Britannica,1997).*5

EVIDENCE:2

Armenian Genocide of 2.5 Million Muslim People

_The Jewish Times_ June 21, 1990

_An appropriate analogy with the Jewish Holocaust might be the
 systematic extermination of the entire Muslim population of 
 the independent republic of Armenia 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._


A. Lalayan, _Revolutsionniy Vostok (Revolutionary East)_ 
             No: 2-3, Moscow, 1936.
            -One of the architects of the Armenian genocide 
             of 2.5 million Muslim people_


 _I killed Muslims by every means possible. Yet it is 
  sometimes a pity to waste bullets for this. The best 
  way is to gather all of these dogs and throw them into  
  wells and then fill the wells with big and heavy stones, 
  as I did. I gathered all of the women, men and children, 
  threw big stones down on top of them. They must never live 
  on this earth._


 Leonard Ramsden Hartill, _Men Are Like That_ The Bobbs-Merrill 
                           Company, Indianapolis (1926). 
_Memoirs of an Armenian officer who participated in the Armenian
 genocide of 2.5 million Muslim people_


_Foreword:_

_For example, we were camped one night in a half-ruined Tartar 
 mosque, the most habitable building of a destroyed village, near 
 the border of Persia and Russian Armenia. During the course of 
 evening I asked Ohanus if he could tell me anything of the history 
 of the village and the cause of its destruction. In his matter of 
 fact way he replied, Yes, I assisted in its sack and destruction, 
 and witnessed the slaying of those whose bones you saw to-day 
 scattered among its ruins._

p. 218 (first and second paragraphs)

_We Armenians did not spare the Muslims. If persisted in, the 
 slaughtering of Tartars, the looting, and the rape and massacre 
 of the helpless become commonplace actions expected and accepted 
 as a matter of course.

 I have been on the scenes of massacres where the dead lay on the 
 ground, in numbers, like the fallen leaves in a forest. Muslims 
 had been as helpless and as defenseless as sheep. They had not died 
 as soldiers die in the heat of battle, fired with ardor and courage, 
 with weapons in their hands, and exchanging blow for blow. They had 
 died as the helpless must, with their hearts and brains bursting 
 with horror worse than death itself._


 Leonard Ramsden Hartill, _Men Are Like That_ The Bobbs-Merrill 
                           Company, Indianapolis (1926). 
_Memoirs of an Armenian officer who participated in the Armenian
 genocide of 2.5 million Muslim people_


p. 15 (second paragraph)

_The Tartars [Muslims] were, for the most part, poor. Some of them 
 lived in villages and cultivated small farms; many of them continued 
 in the way of life of their nomadic forefathers. They drove their 
 flocks and herds from valley to valley, from plain to mountain, and 
 from mountain to plain, following the pasturage as it changed with 
 the seasons. They ranged from the salt desert shores of the Caspian 
 Sea far into the mighty Caucasus Mountains. Even the village Tartars 
 are a primitive people, only semicivilized.

 I can see now that we Armenians frankly despised the Tartars, and, 
 while holding a disproportionate share of the wealth of the country, 
 regarded and treated them as inferiors._


p. 20 (second paragraph)

_Our men armed themselves, gathered together and advanced on the 
 Tartar section of the village. There were no lights in the houses 
 and the doors were barred, for the Tartars suspected what as to 
 happen and were in great fear. Our men hammered on the doors, but 
 got no response; whereupon they smashed in the doors and began a 
 carnage that continued until the last Tartar was slain. Throughout 
 the hideous night, I cowered at home in terror, unable to shut my 
 ears to the piercing screams of the helpless victims and the loud 
 shouts of our men. By morning the work was finished._


 Leonard Ramsden Hartill, _Men Are Like That_ The Bobbs-Merrill 
                           Company, Indianapolis (1926). 
_Memoirs of an Armenian officer who participated in the Armenian
 genocide of 2.5 million Muslim people.

For more facts click here

ARMENIAN LIES

Turkish Government says that Armenians had helped in Russia which had been an enemy of Ottoman Empire.Armenians claim that they had helped to Turks in the war of Russian-Turk war in those years.Here comes some lies"

"The poverty-stricken Turkish peasents and nomadic Kurds regarded the relatively prosperous Armenian peasants as a standing insult and an inducement for plunder"(From an Armenian homepage).*6

"The Armenians were fighting the Russians with the Turks side by side,and there was no Armenian to stab from back except children and women"(Goekjian,V.K.).*7

REFUTE OF LIES ABOVE

Whatever the reason was,this massacre shouldn't have happened. However the reasons are neither to grasp Armenian prosperity nor wipe them out without reason. The reasons were the rise of Armenian Nationalism, and the collaboration of Armenians with Russians. Here what historians said.

"It can not be denied that in the first few months of the war, the majority of the Russian Armenians were driven by strong anti-Turkish feeling". (Hovannisian,?)"*8

""The growth of Armenian nationalism aroused the suspicion and wrath of Sultan Abdul-Hamid II.From 1876 to 1877 the Armenian quarter of Constantinople was burned and looted by Turkish soldiers and police...These butcheries were both a cause of and a response to the series of sporadic acts of terrorism visited upon Turkish officials by ARMENIAN TERRORIST GROUPS,led largely by intelectuals,who tought they could simultaneously terrorize the sultan into granting reforms and arouse the Europoean powers to intervene on behalf of Armenian Independence."(Aspaturian,V.V.)*9

"Growing nationalism on the part of Armenians provoked massacres by the Turks and confiscations by Russians"(The New Encyclopedia of Brittanica,1997).*5

"The Armenians in the eastern provinces,encouraged by Russia,began promoting Armenian territorial autonomy.As the movement grew,various political groups were organized, culminating in the formation of two revolutionary parties...When the Armenians in Sasun refused to pay the oppressive taxes ,Turkish troops and Kurdish tribesmen killed thousands of them and burned their villages in 1894.... ...In the hope of calling the attention of the European powers to their cause,the Armenian revolutionaries staged another demonstration two years later:They seized the Ottoman Bank in Istanbul.The repression of this action was again sanguinary;more than 50.000 Armenians were killed... ...Armenians from the Caucasus region formed volunteer battalions to help the Russian Army against Turks.Early in 1915 these battalions organized the recruiting of Turkish Armenians from behind the Turkish lines.In response,the Turkish government ordered the deportation of about 1,750.000 Armenians to Syria and Mesopotamia...(The New Encyclopedia of Brittanica,1997). *5

"The Armenians expected outside assistance in their efforts to break away from Ottoman misrule and were led to carry out a number of rash actions".(Howard,H.N.1995)*4

"FROM THE BRITISH DOCUMENTS

""...The day before yesterday I received information from the Armenian Gregorian Bishop here that fifty armed Armenian had crossed the frontier north of Bayazid..."(F.O.424/107,P.385,NO.212)

""Yesterday the government here discovered the Armenian Revolutionary Movement through intercepted documents...." (No.478,telegraphic dec.10,1882,4.30 p.m)

"Yet the Russians employ Armenians in the army and make many of them Generals,while the Turks will not trust them.But Armenians are more patriotic than the Turks tehmselves. His hope for the future would rather be if the Turks had to leave Europe,for then they would probably have to make their Empire in Asia a Turco-Armenian State... (F.O.424/162,P.120,NO.99/I).

"I have received reliable information thet during the past month Russian Armenians have been combining with the intention of entering Turkish territory in armed bands for the purpose of retailating upon the Kurdish population for the acts of pillage and murder inflicted by it upon Armenian Ottoman subjects.... About the 12th October eight Kurds were returning to their homes in this province from Kars,and were met and attacked by a large number of armed Russian Armenians,who killed five of their number.."(Turkey No.I(1890-91),pp.99-100,No.113/1)

I should add that the number of events triggered by Kurds upon Armenians outnumber those of Turks. The events triggered by Armenians,such as the examples above, are not few either. According to the British Documents, the unrest among people had been mostly done by Kurds.

Also, it should be pointed out that Armenian terrorists(ASALA) had murdered dozens of Turkish diplomats from 1970'S to 1980's

TURKISH-ARMENIAN FRIENDSHIP

Whatever the reason was this massacre shouldn't have happened because Turks and Armenians had lived in peace for hundreds of years. They were allowed to express their religious and cultural lives as other non-Muslim nations within the Ottoman empire. The friendship and similarity between Armenians and Turks are so much than you can think. Let's look at Armenian foods.

"Armenians enjoy such foods as barbecued SHISH KEBAB, bean salads,a thin bread called LAVASH,and DOLMA (cabbage or grape leaves stuffed with rice and meat) and TAN(a mixture of yogurt,water and salt)...". (Lubin,N.1996)*10

.

If you visit Turkey,you will see that everybody would eat SHISH KEBAB, LAVASH and DOLMA, TAN (We Turks call AYRAN) is the most consumed beverage in Turkey. The shared foods are much more than these listed here.

The final document below shows the real situation between Turks and Armenians before Russian involvement and conspiracy

"...In favour of the Armenians it is stated thet they have ever shown great attachment to the Ottoman Empire,and have never displayed any desire to rob or maltreat their Turkish fellow-citizens...". (F.O.424/106,PP.352-353 No.159/1)

Although evidences show that Armenians had betrayed to Turkish troops,and had been involved in cooperation with Russians, these massacres should not have happened whatever the reason was.

SHOULD THERE BE AN ARMENIAN GENOCIDE COMMEMORATE DAY?

Armenians have been pressing the American Government for an Armenian Genocide Commemorate day.Every attempt was refused by U.S.A Representatives and presidents.Should it be?The world history is full of genocides such as genocide of Timor People by muslims,genocide of Hutu's by Tutsi's in Rwanda,genocide of Turks by Arabs in 9cc. etc. Can we propose a Japanese Genocide by American Atom Bomb in 1945? Can we accept a genocide commemorate day of Native Indians by Americans? (It was a planned genocide by U.S. government by Massachussett Legislation) How meaningful to propose a genocide commemorate day while the bloods of Bosnians muslims are still warm? Moreover should Turks be accused of genocide?the murders of Armenians were Ottomans.Ottoman Empire was an Islamic Empire.There had been Armenians, Greek,Kurdish,even French pasha's and generals.Ottomans used to humiliate Turks in Anatolia.They'd never accepted themselves as Turk.Ottomans Army consisted of non-Turkic people since they saw Turks an inferior nation.

"Moreover, Today's modern Turkish Republic is a state established by Ataturk as an oppose to Ottoman empire, so this new state cannot be held responsible for whatever the Ottoman Empire did in the past. Can somebody hold you responsible for what your granfather did? Or would you accept to be prisoned because your Father killed somebody?

"On the Other hand, there are other sources which proves the Turkish people's massacre by the Armenians, however showing such documents will never help the global peace. Those murderers in both sides were not personally ourselves and remembering those sad days will kindle nothing more than animosity between these two nations. Let's make peace. Let's make friends. Being unkind towards each other had never solved the problem and will ever do so.

SOURCES 1-Figes,O.(1997).A People's Tragedy:A History of Russian Revoluition.Viking Penguin. 2-Stokesbury,J.L(1981).A Short History of World War I.New York: William Morrow and Company,Inc. 3-Hobsbawm,E.J.(1990).Nations and Nationalism since 1780:Programme,Myth, Reality.(2nd.ed.)New York:Cambridge University Press. 4-Howard,H.N(1995).Colliers Encyclopedia,vol,1,pp.662-669. 5-The New Encylopaedia,vol,1,pp.565-568. 6-? 7-Goekjian,V.K.(1984).The Turks Before the Court of History.New York: Rosekeer Press. 8-Hovannisian(?)? 9-Aspaturian9?)? 10-Lubin,N.(1996).The World Book Encyclopedia,vol.1,pp.718-719. Chicago:World Book,Inc. The British Documents are from 11-Foreign Office Archives,Confidential Print,Public Record Office,London. (cited as F.O.424).

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