From: dbd@urartu.sdpa.org (David Davidian)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish,talk.politics.mideast,soc.culture.greek,soc.history
Subject: An Armenian Response to a Turkish Claim of a "Fake Genocide"
Summary: Addressing the scourge of historical revisionism
Date: 14 Aug 92 05:00:11 GMT
Organization: S.D.P.A. Center for Regional Studies

In article <xVb-X3-@engin.umich.edu> tayfuna@engin.umich.edu (Tayfun Akin)
claims:

[TA]  The following letter is my answer to the letters  printed 
[TA] in the Michigan Daily, the student newspaper of The University of
[TA] Michigan.

Another fool in the service of Turkish Historic Revision! YOU have allowed us 
to reach such a conclusion having posted the following pile of horse crap!

[TA]                 GENOCIDE ALLEGATIONS BASED ON FORGERIES
[TA]
[TA]                              By Tayfun AKIN
[TA]
[TA]        A number of letters by Armenians have been printed in the Daily
[TA] following a full page ad commemorating April 24, 1915 as Armenians
[TA] Martyrs' Day. They were angry at the Daily's refusal to print the term
[TA] "genocide." They refer to elderly Armenians' experiences and to 
[TA] telegrams allegedly written by Ottoman Minister of the Interior, Talaat
[TA] Pasha, as historical proof of the "genocide" charge (they usually
[TA] refer to the Ottoman Government as the Turkish Government to draw a
[TA] parallel with the current republic of Turkey). Furthermore, they call
[TA] any study challenging their interpretations of the events that took 
[TA] place in Eastern Anatolia during World War I "anti-Armenian Turkish-
[TA] governmental generated propaganda."

[...Turkish genocide apology excised...]

	+--------------------------------------------------------+
        | Exposing the Self-Refuting Turkish Historical Society  |
        |                                                        |
	| Addressing Turkish Historical Revision Claims that the |
        | "Orders for the Extermination of the Armenians" are    |
        |  Forgeries".                                           |
        |                                                        |
        +--------------------------------------------------------+

Let's watch the Turkish Historical Society refute itself, while demonstrating
how one can prove anything written in Ottoman Turkish, Arabic or Persian is a 
"forgery" !!!

The following paragraph ALONE renders the claims of the Turkish Historical 
Society fully self-refuted.

Get a copy of _Milli Mucadele_ 1919-1922_, Vol 2 by Kazim Ozalp, Turk Tarih 
Kurumu Basimevi, Ankara, 1972. Refer to pages 1-211. These pages contain many 
of the Official Turkish governmental documents related to Greek-Turkish 
battles, published in Ottoman Turkish, the same script used in the Naim-
Andonian telegrams called forgeries by the Turkish Historical Society.

Next perform the same test as is indicated by the two "Turkish Scholars" 
from the Turkish Historical Society on the above mentioned text. One will find
everything in _Milli Mucadele_ would be a forgery. In fact, every piece of 
handwritten Ottoman Turkish, Arabic and Persian subjected to such test comes 
up a forgery. Try it and see how the Turkish Historical Society refutes 
itself!!!

  ---THE FOLLOWING IS A SUMMARY OF THE TURKISH HISTORICAL SOCIETY CLAIM---

1.	In discussing Abduladad Nuri's cipher (March 7, 1916), or rather the
printed facsimile if its text, the authors [Turkish Historical Society] 
contend that no Ottoman government office would deign to use "such a species
of paper", "resembling...paper used for calligraphy lessons in French schools"

2. In disputing Naim's access to ciphers, they maintain, "It is utterly 
improbable that such highly secret documents would have been kept for three 
years without being destroyed"

3. Referring to the February 18 and March 25 letters, they argue that the
texts betray ignorance of the Ottoman language and that "no Turk, then, or 
now" would commit such errors of grammar and syntax.

4. They indicate irregularities in the use of cryptographic numbers found in
some of the ciphers, explaining that code keys were frequently changed during
the war, according to General Staff archive data.

5. Having juxtaposed Abdul Halik's signature with two others documents, which
the authors [Turkish Historical Society] claim bear "the real signature" of
the governor, they conclude that the signatures, and hence the documents
(Nov. 18,1915 and Dec. 12, 1915) are "false".

[for item 1, see Orel and Yuca, _Ermenilerce Talat Pasa'ya Atfedilen 
Telgraflarin Icyuzu_, Ankara, 1983, page 60; item 2, page 130; item 3, pages 
34-35; item 4, page 66; item 5, pagse 44-45, 46-47]

---THE FOLLOWING IS AN ARMENIAN RESPONSE TO THE TURKISH HISTORICAL SOCIETY--

All these items have a central relevance and significance, needing to be 
addressed point by point:

1. The details of the printed facsimile of the given document are not easy to
determine from printed pages. Moreover, one needs to be reminded of the very
acute shortage of paper in wartime Turkey, which depended almost entirely for
supplies on its equally hard-pressed ally Germany. All sorts of improvisatory
measures affecting even telegraphic communications were in force. This fact 
is confirmed by none other source than an official serving in the same central
office that supervised the deportations from Istanbul, and by Naim himself.
Another official, who later became Interior Minister, reveals in his memoirs
that even in peacetime Talaat Pasha used "ordinary paper" and didn't bother 
to put the required seal on it when recommending the official's dismissal to 
the Grand Vizier. [1]

2. However easy the destruction of secret documents at Istanbul might have 
been, this was not the case at distant Aleppo, apart from the fact that even 
at Istanbul the destruction was not complete. Not only was Aleppo not
considered in danger, but as late as autumn 1917 it became the site of the 
Headquarters of Army Group F (Yildirim), consisting of the 6th, 7th, and 8th 
Armies, under Falkenhayn, then Marshal Liman von Sanders. The army group's 
initial mission was to recapture Baghdad, but it was later diverted to
Palestine and Sinai fronts. The fate of that mission was sealed with the 
panicky relinquishment of Aleppo, which was about to be stormed by British-led
forces. There was neither anticipation nor enough time to destroy records.[2] 

Moreover, the German Consul at Aleppo, Walter Rossler, stated that Naim's
possession of the documents can be "entirely granted for as far as I knew the 
Turks [in Aleppo] never catalogued and attached their documents." [3]

3. This argument is hollow on three grounds. First, handwriting, as compared
with standardized printing, is intrinsically irregular in any language.
Focusing on minuscule variations in the positioning of signs on short or long
vowels, or on less-than-complete hooks attached to certain signs of the
Ottoman alphabet as a test of the authenticity of the writing is a dubious 
procedure. The Turkish Historical Society authors single out, for example, the
case of a dot for the consonant b that is off its mark by one-fifteenth to 
one-sixteenth of an inch to conclude that being non-Muslim and having no 
experience in writing the religious formula "besmele" (in the name of God, 
the Compassionate, the Merciful) Andonian bungled, giving away his identity. 

This argument is further vitiated by the two examples these authors [Turkish 
Historical Society] present as handwriting, authentic besmele formulas. A 
close inspection reveals, however, that there are MORE striking differences 
between these two examples offered by the authors [Turkish Historical Society]
than any differences that may be detected in the writing of that word on top 
of the documents supplied by Andonian on the one hand, and by the authors 
[Turkish Historical Society] on the other.

Second, as to no Turk being liable to distorting or usurping the language, the Turkish
Court Martial repudiated that notion when at the twelfth sitting of Yozgat
trial series it was forced to rephrase a sentence in an official document
because of "very ineptly used Turkish". A Turkish Interior Minister denounced
as "bad" the Turkish language of a 1912 Young Turk Congress. 

Finally, and most importantly, a Turkish historian (see _Izahli Osmanli Tarihi
Kronolojisi_, Istanbul. 1961, I.H. Danismend) found the writing of Talaat 
Pasha, who is the central figure in the material under review, as being an 
example of "bad" Turkish also. It involves a letter Talaat has sent Grand 
Vizier Izzet on the eve of his flight from Istanbul (November 2, 1918), in an 
attempt to justify that flight. [4]

4. The matter of changing code keys is related to a regular, structured 
communication system, not necessarily applicable to the ad hoc improvisations 
surrounding the deportations and massacres. These improvisations were not 
enacted by the General Staff, the author's reference point, but by the 
Interior Ministry, its subsidiary agencies, and the Special Organization [for
the extermination of the Armenians]. Moreover, "the chronic confusion in the 
archives of the Ottoman General Staff during the war" has been pointed out.[5]

5. This is the most critical issue raised thus far, calling for a substania-
tion not brought to bear by the critics of the disputed documents. Indeed, the
matter can hardly be settled on the basis of inspecting printed pages that
consist of reproductions, and in some cases of consecutive reproductions. The
determination of whether there are substantial differences in the two versions
of the signature in question is a much more complicated task than performed
by these critics; one may even dispute the existence of any important differ-
ences. Recognizing the critical import of this issue, the Armenian National
Union at Aleppo and Andonian employed more than one method to probe and verify
the authenticity of Abdulhalik's signatures.

- - -			End of Turkish Self-Refutation			- - -

[TA] I would like to conclude by stressing that my intention is not to 
[TA] offend anybody or to spread "Turkish governmental propaganda," rather to 
[TA] tell I and the majority of historians view the issue.

In other words, the world is flat!

			--- references ---

[1] Ahmed Resit, _Gorduklerim-Yaptiklarim_, (1890-1922), Istanbul, 1945, page
    117

[2] Wrote the diplomatic correspondent of the Daily Telegraph: "on the 
    lightening advance of Allenby's forces...time was lacking for so 
    complete an obliteration of the tragic archives while subordinates, who
    remained behind, sometimes retained possession of compromising documents.
    A Turkish official employed  in the local administration disclosed the
    series, mostly in cipher British FO 371/7874/5516, folder 139

[3] _Justicier du genocide armenien, le proces du Tehlerian_, Paris, 1981 
    pages 228 and 234

[4] Thirteen authenticated cipher telegrams were introduced as evidence on
    March 6, 1919, one of which, marked "secret", was from the Bogazliyan
    Gendarmery Chief informing his superiors at Kayseri that Armenians from 
    the area "were deported, namely destroyed".

[5] _The Ottoman Government and the Arabs, 1911 to 1918: A Preliminary Study
    of the Teskilati Mahsusa_, Phillp H. Stoddard, PhD, dissertation, 
    University of Michigan 1963.

For some of the unreferenced text refer to the International Journal of Middle
East Studies, Vol. 18, 1986 pg 311-360, "The Naim-Andonian Documents on the
World War I Destruction of Ottoman Armenians: The Anatomy of a Genocide".


-- 
David Davidian dbd@urartu.sdpa.org "It has been ever thus in all things, son, 
SDPA Center for Regional Studies    Whatever we thrash we give to the wind, 
P.O. Box 382761                     We too have been blown by the world's wind
Cambridge, MA 02238                 The chaff is gone but the grain remains." 
Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish,talk.politics.soviet