From: sera@zuma.UUCP (Serdar Argic)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish,talk.politics.mideast,talk.politics.soviet,soc.culture.greek,soc.culture.europe,soc.history,soc.culture.soviet
Followup-To: soc.culture.turkish
Subject: Sechrest's inability to distinguish between Turkiye and Soviet Armenia.
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 92 20:41:34 EST
Reply-To: sera@zuma.UUCP (Serdar Argic)
Distribution: world

In article <1992Dec14.045428.5282@zip.eecs.umich.edu> sechrest@dip.eecs.umich.edu (Stuart Sechrest) writes:

>WARNING: the following reviews source material continuously misrepresented by 
>Mr.Sendar Argic.  I feel that some readers may be interested in the actual
>material, rather than its political uses.  

Misrepresented? Your devotion to "revisionism" is worshipful.

>>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.

>Please get your numbers straight with your sources.  

Pardon me. One should wonder whether you are for real.

>You have stated that
>`` As for the numbers, I do have a copy of a demographic history on the 
>question of the numbers which was published by . . .  Prof. Justin McCarthy.''
>
>McCarthy, J., "Muslims and Minorities, The Population of Ottoman 
>     Anatolia and the End of the Empire," New York University Press, 
>     New York, 1983, pp. 133-144.

Your inability to distinguish between the Turkish Genocide in Eastern 
Anatolia (see McCarthy) and the Turkish Genocide in x-Soviet Armenia 
(see Hovannisian) is truly amazing. 

Source #1: McCarthy, J., "Muslims and Minorities, The Population of Ottoman 
           Anatolia and the End of the Empire," New York University Press, 
           New York, 1983, pp. 133-144.

Source #2: Hovannisian, Richard G., "Armenia on the Road to Independence,
           1918. University of California Press (Berkeley and Los Angeles),
           1967, p. 13.

>Please review the figures in the book, particularly Table 7.10.  You will
>find that the figure he gives for the population loss in the six eastern 
>provinces is 1,040,376, not 2.5 million.  

How quaint. How about Sivas? How about Trabzon? How about Adana? How about 
the entire Muslim population of x-Soviet Armenia?

Source: Hovannisian, Richard G.: Armenia on the Road to Independence, 1918.
University of California Press (Berkeley and Los Angeles), 1967, p. 13.

"The addition of the Kars and Batum oblasts to the Empire increased the
 area of Transcaucasia to over 130,000 square miles. The estimated population
 of the entire region in 1886 was 4,700,000, of whom 940,000 (20 percent) were
 Armenian, 1,200,000 (25 percent) Georgian, and 2,220,000 (45 percent) Moslem.
 Of the latter group, 1,140,000 were Tatars. Paradoxically, barely one-third
 of Transcaucasia's Armenians lived in the Erevan guberniia, where the 
 Christians constituted a majority in only three of the seven uezds. Erevan
 uezd, the administrative center of the province, had only 44,000 Armenians
 as compared to 68,000 Moslems. By the time of the Russian Census of 1897,
 however, the Armenians had established a scant majority, 53 percent, in the
 guberniia; it had risen by 1916 to 60 percent, or 670,000 of the 1,120,000
 inhabitants. This impressive change in the province's ethnic character 
 notwithstanding, there was, on the eve of the creation of the Armenian 
 Republic, a solid block of 370,000 Tartars who continued to dominate the 
 southern districts, from the outskirts of Ereven to the border of Persia." 
 (See also Map 1. Historic Armenia and Map 4. Administrative subdivisions of 
 Transcaucasia).

In 1920, '0' percent Turk. 

"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." 

                             Ohanus Appressian
                            "Men Are Like That"
                                   p. 202.


Source: "From Sardarapat to Sevres and Lausanne" by Avetis Aharonian. The 
Armenian Review, Vol. 16, No. 3-63, Autumn, Sep. 1963, pp. 47-57.

p. 52 (second paragraph).

"Your three chiefs, Dro, Hamazasp and Kulkhandanian are the ringleaders
 of the bands which have destroyed Tartar villages and have staged 
 massacres in Zangezour, Surmali, Etchmiadzin, and Zangibasar. This is
 intolerable. Look - and here he pointed to a file of official documents
 on the table - look at this, here in December are the reports of the last
 few months concerning ruined Tartar villages which my representative
 Wardrop has sent me. The official Tartar communique speaks of the
 destruction of 300 villages."


p. 54 (fifth paragraph).

"Yes, of course. I repeat, until this massacre of the Tartars is stopped
 and the three chiefs are not removed from your military leadership I
 hardly think we can supply you arms and ammunition."

"...it is the armed bands led by Dro, Hamazasp and Kulkhandanian who
 during the past months have raided and destroyed many Tartar villages in
 the regions of Surmali, Etchmiadzin, Zangezour, and Zangibasar. There are
 official charges of massacres."

Source: "World Alive, A Personal Story" by Robert Dunn. Crown Publishers, 
Inc., New York (1952). 
(Memoirs of an American officer who witnessed the Armenian genocide of 2.5 
 million Muslim people)

p. 363 (first paragraph). 

 'How many people lived there?'
 'Oh, about eight hundred.' He yawned.
 'Did you see any Turk officers?'
 'No, sir. I was in at dawn. All were Tartar civilians in mufti.'

 "The lieutenant dozed off, then I, but in the small hours a voice woke me - 
 Dro's. He stood in the starlight bawling out an officer. Anyone keelhauled
 so long and furiously I'd never heard. Then abruptly Dro broke into 
 laughter, quick and simple as child's. Both were a cover for his sense
 of guilt, I thought, or hoped. For somehow, despite my boast of irreligion,
 Christian massacring 'infidels' was more horrible than the reverse would
 have been.

 From daybreak on, Armenian villagers poured in from miles around.....
 The women plundered happily, chattering like ravens as they picked over
 the carcass of Djul. They hauled out every hovel's chattels, the last scrap 
 of food or cloth, and staggered away, packing pots, saddlebags, looms, even
 spinning-wheels.

 'Thank you for a lot, Dro,' I said to him back in camp. 'But now I must leave.'
 ... We shook hands, the captain said 'A bientot, mon camarade.' And for hours
 the old Molokan scout and I plodded north across parching plains. Like Lot's
 wife I looked back once to see smoke bathing all, doubtless in a sack of
 other Moslem villages up to the line of snow that was Iran.'"

p. 354.

"At morning tea, Dro and his officers spread out a map of this whole
 high region called the Karabakh. Deep in tactics, they spoke Russian,
 but I got their contempt for Allied 'neutral' zones and their distrust
 of promises made by tribal chiefs. A campaign shaped; more raids on
 Moslem villages."

p. 358.

"It will be three hours to take," Dro told me. We'd close in on three
 sides.
"The men on foot will not shoot, but use only the bayonets," Merrimanov
said, jabbing a rifle in dumbshow.
"That is for morale," Dro put in. "We must keep the Moslems in terror that
 our cruelty beats theirs."
"Soldiers or civilians?" I asked.
"There is no difference," said Dro. "All are armed, in uniform or not."
"But the women and children?"
"Will fly with the others as best they may."

p. 360.

"The ridges circled a wide expanse, its floors still. Hundreds of feet down,
 the fog held, solid as cotton flock. 'Djul lies under that,' said Dro,
 pointing. 'Our men also attack from the other sides.'

 Then, 'Whee-ee!' - his whistle lined up all at the rock edge. Bayonets
 clicked upon carbines. Over plunged Archo, his black haunches rippling;
 then followed the staff, the horde - nose to tail, bellies taking the
 spur. Armenia in action seemed more like a pageant than war, even though 
 I heard our Utica brass roar.

 As I watched from the height, it took ages for Djul to show clear. A tsing
 of machine-gun fire took over from the thumping batteries; cattle lowed,
 dogs barked, invisible, while I ate a hunk of cheese and drank from a snow
 puddle. Mist at last folded upward as men shouted, at first heard faintly.
 The came a shrill wailing.

 Now among the cloud-streaks rose darker wisps - smoke. Red glimmered about
 house walls of stone or wattle, into dry weeds on roofs. A mosque stood in
 clump of trees, thick and green. Through crooked alleys on fire, horsemen
 were galloping after figures both mounted and on foot.

 'Tartarski!' shouted the gunner by me. Others pantomimed them in escape
 over the rocks, while one twisted a bronze shell-nose, loaded, and yanked
 breech-cord, firing again and again. Shots wasted, I thought, when by
 afternoon I looked in vain for fallen branch or body. But these shots and
 the white bursts of shrapnel in the gullies drowned the women's cries.

 At length all shooting petered out. I got on my horse and rode down toward
 Djul. It burned still but little flame showed now. The way was steep and 
 tough, through dense scrub. Finally on flatter ground I came out suddenly,
 through alders, on smoldering houses. Across trampled wheat my brothers-in-
 arms were leading off animals, several calves and a lamb."

p. 361 (fourth paragraph).

"Corpses came next, the first a pretty child with straight black hair, large
 eyes. She looked about twelve years old. She lay in some stubble where meal
 lay scattered from the sack she'd been toting. The bayonet had gone through
 her back, I judged, for blood around was scant. Between the breasts one clot,
 too small for a bullet wound, crusted her homespun dress.

 The next was a boy of ten or less, in rawhide jacket and knee-pants. He lay
 face down in the path by several huts. One arm reached out to the pewter 
 bowl he'd carried, now upset upon its dough. Steel had jabbed just below
 his neck, into the spine. 

 There were grownups, too, I saw as I led the sorrel around. Djul was empty
 of the living till I looked up to see beside me Dro's German-speaking colonel.
 He said all Tartars who had not escaped were dead."

                  (to be continued...)

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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