From: sera@zuma.UUCP (Serdar Argic)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.mideast,soc.culture.jewish,talk.politics.soviet,soc.history
Followup-To: soc.culture.turkish
Subject: Re: Jesus: Would he support the Turks or Armenians?
Date: Mon, 04 Jan 93 20:07:46 EST
Reply-To: sera@zuma.UUCP (Serdar Argic)
Distribution: world

In article <9212150438.AA16358@aplpy.jhuapl.edu>  levene@aplpy.jhuapl.edu (Robert A. Levene)  writes:

>Do you think Jesus would have believed the Muslim Turks 
>who claim that there was no Armenian genocide?

Well, apparently we have another historical revisionist to contend with. 
Now, where shall I begin?

 "In Soviet Armenia today there no longer exists a single Turkish soul.
  It is in our power to tear away the veil of illusion that some of us
  create for ourselves. It certainly is possible to severe the artificial
  life-support system of an imagined 'ethnic purity' that some of us
  falsely trust as the only structure that can support their heart beats 
  in this alien land."

            (Sahak Melkonian - 1920 - "Preserving the Armenian purity") 

 "The crime of systematic cleansing by mass killing and extermination 
  of the Muslim population in the Soviet Republic of Armenia, Karabag, 
  Bosnia and Herzegovina is an 'Islamic Holocaust' comparable to the 
  extermination of 2.5 million Muslims by the Armenian Government 
  during the WWI and of over 6 million European Jews during the WWII."
                  (Tovfik Kasimov - Azeri Leader - September 25, 1992)
                 
 "Today's ethnic cleansing policies by the Serbian dictatorship against
  Croatians and Muslims of Yugoslavia, as well as the Soviet Republic
  of Armenia's against the Muslim population of neighboring Azerbaijan,
  are really no different in their aspirations than the genocide 
  perpetrated by the Armenian Government 78 years ago against the
  Turkish and Kurdish Muslims and Sephardic Jews living in these
  lands."         (Cebbar Leygara - Kurdish Leader - October 13, 1992)


You should indeed be happy to know that you rekindled a huge discussion on
distortions propagated by several of your contemporaries. If you feel 
that you can simply act as an Armenian governmental crony in this forum 
you will be sadly mistaken and duly embarrassed. This is not a lecture to 
another historical revisionist and a genocide apologist, 'Levene,' but 
a fact. I will dissect article-by-article, paragraph-by-paragraph, 
line-by-line, lie-by-lie, revision-by-revision, written by those on this 
net, who plan to 'prove' that the Armenian genocide of 2.5 million Turks 
and Kurds is nothing less than a classic un-redressed genocide. Armenian 
government got away with the genocide of 2.5 million Turkish men, women 
and children and is enjoying the fruits of that genocide. You, and those 
like you, will not get away with the genocide's cover-up.

During the First World War and the ensuing years - 1914-1920, 
the Armenian Dictatorship through a premeditated and systematic 
genocide, tried to complete its centuries-old policy of 
annihilation against the Turks and Kurds by savagely murdering 
2.5 million Muslims and deporting the rest from their 1,000 year 
homeland.

The attempt at genocide is justly regarded as the first instance
of Genocide in the 20th Century acted upon an entire people.
This event is incontrovertibly proven by historians, government
and international political leaders, such as U.S. Ambassador Mark 
Bristol, William Langer, Ambassador Layard, James Barton, Stanford 
Shaw, Arthur Chester, John Dewey, Robert Dunn, Papazian, Nalbandian, 
Ohanus Appressian, Jorge Blanco Villalta, General Nikolayef, General 
Bolkovitinof, General Prjevalski, General Odiselidze, Meguerditche, 
Kazimir, Motayef, Twerdokhlebof, General Hamelin, Rawlinson, Avetis
Aharonian, Dr. Stephan Eshnanie, Varandian, General Bronsart, Arfa,
Dr. Hamlin, Boghos Nubar, Sarkis Atamian, Katchaznouni, Rachel 
Bortnick, Halide Edip, McCarthy, W. B. Allen, Paul Muratoff and many 
others.
J. C. Hurewitz, Professor of Government Emeritus, Former Director of
the Middle East Institute (1971-1984), Columbia University.
Bernard Lewis, Cleveland E. Dodge Professor of Near Eastern History,
Princeton University.
Halil Inalcik, University Professor of Ottoman History & Member of
the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, University of Chicago.
Peter Golden, Professor of History, Rutgers University, Newark.
Stanford Shaw, Professor of History, University of California at
Los Angeles.
Thomas Naff, Professor of History & Director, Middle East Research
Institute, University of Pennsylvania.
Ronald Jennings, Associate Professor of History & Asian Studies,
University of Illinois.
Howard Reed, Professor of History, University of Connecticut.
Dankwart Rustow, Distinguished University Professor of Political
Science, City University Graduate School, New York.
John Woods, Associate Professor of Middle Eastern History, 
University of Chicago.
John Masson Smith, Jr., Professor of History, University of
California at Berkeley.
Alan Fisher, Professor of History, Michigan State University.
Avigdor Levy, Professor of History, Brandeis University.
Andreas G. E. Bodrogligetti, Professor of History, University of California
at Los Angeles.
Kathleen Burrill, Associate Professor of Turkish Studies, Columbia University.
Roderic Davison, Professor of History, George Washington University.
Walter Denny, Professor of History, University of Massachusetts.
Caesar Farah, Professor of History, University of Minnesota.
Tom Goodrich, Professor of History, Indiana University of Pennsylvania.
Tibor Halasi-Kun, Professor Emeritus of Turkish Studies, Columbia University.
Justin McCarthy, Professor of History, University of Louisville.
Jon Mandaville, Professor of History, Portland State University (Oregon).
Robert Olson, Professor of History, University of Kentucky.
Madeline Zilfi, Professor of History, University of Maryland.
James Stewart-Robinson, Professor of Turkish Studies, University of Michigan.
.......so the list goes on and on and on.....

Source: "Men Are Like That" by Leonard Ramsden Hartill. The Bobbs-Merrill
Company, Indianapolis (1926). (305 pages). 
(Memoirs of an Armenian officer who participated in the 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. 202 (first and second paragraphs).

"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 stone and dust and when the villages became untenable 
 and inhabitants fled from them into 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 borderland of Russian Armenia from Nakhitchevan to 
 Akhalkalaki from the hot plains of Ararat to the cold mountain 
 plateau of the North were dotted with mute mournful ruins of 
 Tartar villages. They are quiet now, those villages, except for 
 howling of wolves and jackals that visit them to paw over the 
 scattered bones of the dead." 

p. 15 (second paragraph).

"The Tartars 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."

"The old animosities between the conquered Mohammedan and the conqueror 
 Christian, heritages of generations of warfare and conflicting religions,
 have lost nothing of their old virulence; and at opportune times they find
 expression in pillage and merciless slaughter."

"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. The fact that the Russians looked down upon all
 Armenians in much the same way as Armenians regarded Tartars, far from proving
 a bond between ourselves and our racially different neighbors, intensified
 an attitude and conduct on our part that served only to exacerbate hostility.

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."

p. 109 (second paragraph).

"As things were, the members of the Dashnack Party were without administrative
 experience; consequently the government they instituted quickly proved itself
 incompetent to rule by legitimate means.

 The members of the government had been revolutionists working in secret and
 outside the law. When they became a legally instituted, recognized governing
 body with the destiny of Armenia in their hands, they proved incompetent to 
 do better than resume the terrorist tactics that had characterized their 
 fight against the Russian and Turkish Governments in their outlaw days.

 The outstanding feature of their rule, now that they were in power, was,
 as in the old days, trial and execution without hearing. A man evoking
 the displeasure of the government or of some official would be tried and
 condemned without arrest or preference of charges against him. The method 
 of execution was for a government 'mauserist' to walk up behind the
 condemned man in his home or on the street, place a pistol to the back
 of his head and blow out his brains. This simple way of getting rid of
 those who were undesirable in the view of the government and soon became
 a common way of paying debts."

p. 203 (first paragraph).

"A soldier succeeded in driving his bayonet through the Tartar. I saw the
 point of the weapon emerge through his back. ...Another soldier seized a rock 
 and pounded the Tartar's head with it... The Armenian who had bayoneted him
 sprang to his feet, wrested the weapon from the Tartar's body, and, raising
 it to his lips, licked it clean of blood, exclaiming in Russian, 'Slodkey!
 Slodkey!' (Sweet.)"

p. 203 (second paragraph).

"One evening I passed through what had been a Tartar village. Among the 
 ruins a fire was burning. I went to the fire and saw seated about
 it a group of soldiers. Among them were two Tartar girls, mere children.
 The girls were crouched on the ground, crying softly with suppressed
 sobs. Lying scattered over the ground were broken household utensils and
 other furnishings of Tartar peasant homes. There were also bodies of the
 dead."

p. 204 (first paragraph).

"I was soon asleep. In the night I was awakened by the persistent crying of
 a child. I arose and went to investigate. A full moon enabled me to make
 my way about and revealed to me all the wreck and litter of the tragedy
 that had been enacted. Guided by the child's crying, I entered the yard of
 a house, which I judged from its appearance must have been the home of a
 Turkish family. There in a corner of the yard I found a women dead. Her
 throat had been cut. Lying on her breast was a small child, a girl about a
 year old."

p. 118.

"Slowly the train of oxcarts lumbered along through the snow, the cart
 jolting and the loads swaying. Boys ran along the line of oxen, encouraging
 them with shrill Tartar cries, and belaboring the beasts with sticks. In the
 carts, the women, veiled as is the Tartar way, held children in their arms.
 Wrapped in blankets and huddled among the goods that burdened the carts they
 sought protection from the wind and cold. A few old men plodded along on foot.

 Across the road through the ravine a barrier had been thrown. The leading
 oxteam reached this barrier and halted. The gunmen and other ruffians 
 concealed among the rocks opened fire. Women and children leaped and
 scrambled from the carts, screamed, ran and sought vainly for safety.

 This massacre was not complete. The Armenian soldiers in the near-by 
 barracks, hearing the firing and the turmoil, hurried to the scene....
 That same day the abandoned Tartar quarter of Alexandropol was looted
 and completely destroyed."

p. 192.

"Great swarms of peasants who had come out of their hiding-places on the
 retreat of the Turks followed our army as it advanced.... They entered
 into the city with the army and immediately began plundering the stores
 that had been left by the Turks."

p. 193.

"Terrible vengeance was taken upon Tartars, Kurds and Turks. Their villages
 were destroyed and they themselves were slain or driven out of the country."

p. 195.

"The fanatical Dashnacks hated the Turks above all others and then in order
 of diminishing intensity: Tartars, Kurds and Russians." 

p. 218. (First and second paragraphs)

"Russian troops did terrible things in the Turkish villages...We Armenians 
 did not spare the Tartars....If persisted in, the slaughtering of prisoners, 
 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. They 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."

p. 133 (first paragraph)

"In this movement we took with us three thousand Turkish soldiers who
 had been captured by the Russians and left on our hands when the Russians
 abandoned the struggle. During our retreat to Karaklis two thousand of
 these poor devils were cruelly put to death. I was sickened by the
 brutality displayed, but could not make any effective protest. Some,
 mercifully, were shot. Many of them were burned to death. The method
 employed was to put a quantity of straw into a hut, and then after
 crowding the hut with Turks, set fire to the straw."

p. 19 (first paragraph)

"The Tartar section of the town no longer existed, except as a pile of
 ruins. It had been destroyed and its inhabitants slaughtered. The same 
 fate befell the Tartar section of Khankandi."

p. 22 (second paragraph)

"Many of our men had served in the Russian Army, and were trained soldiers.
 We Armenians were rich and possessed arms. Tartars had never received
 military training. They were poor, and possessed few arms beyond knives.
 ...Shortly after the killing of the Tartars in our village, the revolution
 in Russia was suppressed."

p. 97 (third paragraph)

"Within a few years, following the beginning of the movement, an invisible
 government of Armenians by Armenians had been established in Turkish 
 Armenia in armed opposition to the Turkish Government. This secret 
 government had its own courts and laws and an army of assassins called
 'Mauserists' (professional killers) to enforce its decrees."

p. 98 (first paragraph)

"The Dashnacks were in continual open rebellion against the Turkish 
 Government."

p. 98 (third paragraph)

"...the Dashnacks engineered a general revolt of Armenians in Turkish
 Armenia under the mistaken belief that European nations would intervene
 and secure independence for Turkish Armenia."

p. 99 (second paragraph)

"The Dashnacks were fanatics."           

p. 99 (third paragraph)

"The Dashnacks took advantage of this situation and extended their 
 revolutionary activities into the Russian province. They instituted 
 a campaign of terrorism and employed threats and force in securing
 contributions to the party funds from rich Armenians. A wealthy
 man would be assessed a stipulated sum. Refusal to pay brought upon
 him a sentence of death. 

 Every member of the party was pledged to carry out orders without 
 question. If a man were to be assassinated, lots might be drawn to
 select an executioner or the job might be assigned to one of the
 'mauserists' of the party."

p. 130 (first paragraph)

"...in moments of victory against Turks and Kurds or Tartars, they 
 [Armenians] have been remorseless in seeking vengeance."

p. 130 (third paragraph)

"The city was a scene of confusion and terror. During the early days of 
 the war, when the Russian troops invaded Turkey, large numbers of the 
 Turkish population abandoned their homes and fled before the Russian 
 advance."

p. 159 (second paragraph)

"I made a cannon, a huge gun to lift which required four men. I made balls
 for it. With my cannon the Armenians could knock down any of the Tartar
 houses and so they were able to drive the Tartars out."

p. 181 (first paragraph)

"The Tartar villages were in ruins."

p. 189 (third paragraph)

"The dead Tartar lay with his head in a pool of mud and blood, his 
 beard still setaceous and now crimsoned."

Serdar Argic

                     'This war quickly developed into one of extermination. 
                      We closed the roads and mountain passes that might 
                      serve as ways of escape for the Tartars [Turks] and 
                      then proceeded in the work of extermination.'
                                                       (Ohanus Appressian)

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