From: sera@zuma.UUCP (Serdar Argic)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.mideast,talk.politics.soviet,soc.culture.greek,soc.culture.europe,soc.history,soc.culture.turkish
Followup-To: soc.culture.turkish
Subject: "Visserian of CONVEX.COM" as "ASALA/SDPA/ARF" Mouthpiece on Usenet.
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 93 21:40:52 EST
Reply-To: sera@zuma.UUCP (Serdar Argic)
Distribution: world

In article <visser.726869822@convex.convex.com> visser@convex.com (Lance Visser) writes:

>Muslim population losses (McCarthy's Tables 7.10 and 7.11)
>Province	Estimated	Estimated 	Proportion
>		1912 pop. 	pop. loss	lost
>				1912-1922
>---------       ----------     ----------       ----------
>Adana		   573,256	 42,511		    7%
>Ankara		 1,263,199	104,823		    8%
>Aydin		 1,734,179	333,230		   19%
>Biga		   165,508	 24,793		   15%
>Bitlis		   408,703	169,748		   42%
>Diyarbakir	   598,985	158,043		   26%
>Erzurum	   804,388	248,695		   31%
>Haleb		   562,197	 50,838		    9%
>Huedavendigar	 1,598,583	160,612		   10%
>Izmit		   271,751	 12,039		    4%
>Kastamonu	 1,305,279	224,679		   17%
>Konya		 1,542,331	418,442		   27%
>Mamuretuelaziz	   564,164	 89,310		   16%
>Sivas		 1,196,300	180,413		   15%
>Trabon		 1,178,655	 49,907		    4%
>Van		   313,322	194,167		   62%
>------------------------------------------------------------
>Total 		14,080,800    2,462,250		   18%

>Total for	 3,885,862    1,040,376            27%
>eastern provinces

Ditto. Now, how about Ankara? How about Haleb? How about Trabzon? How
about Konya? How about x-Soviet Armenia? How about... Typical genocide
apologist.

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."

+>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.

+>Between 1914 and 1920, 2.5 million Turks perished of butchery at the 
+>hands of the Armenians. The genocide involved not only the killing 
+>of innocents but their forcible deportation from the Russian Armenia. 
+>They were persecuted, banished, and slaughtered while much of Ottoman 
+>Army was engaged in World War I. The Genocide Treaty defines genocide 
+>as acting with a 'specific intent to destroy, in whole or in substantial 
+>part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.' History shows that 
+>the Armenian dictatorship intended to eradicate the Muslim population. 
+>2.5 million Turks and Kurds were exterminated by the Armenians. 
+>International diplomats in Ottoman Empire at the time - including Admiral 
+>Bristol - denounced the Armenian dictatorship's policy as a massacre of 
+>the Kurds, Turks, and Tartars. The blood-thirsty leaders of the Armenian 
+>dictatorship at the time personally involved in the extermination of the 
+>Muslims. The Turkish genocide museums in Turkiye honor those who died 
+>during the Turkish massacres perpetrated by the Armenians. 

>	This was not written by, nor would it be supported by Justin McCarthy.
>The above are YOUR WORDS and YOUR CONCLUSIONS.  Once again, I have posted
>material that shows your conclusions to be at odds with those of McCarthy.

Ovisserian. So you continue to lie there with your brain cells off. What 
is more, the activities of the Armenian revolutionaries seem to have been
efforts aimed at eradicating a race (the Turks) or aimed at carrying out a
one-sided feud, instead of being a struggle for liberation. From the outset,
the efforts of the Armenian revolutionaries within the Ottoman borders took
the form of terrorist and destructive actions aimed at mass murder, cruelty
and genocide, so that no other interpretation of them is possible. Armenian
activities started during the reign of Abdulhamid II as individual acts of
terror, and then developed into assassinations and surprise attacks. The element
of brute force in these activities increased steadily, culminating in mass
rebellions and widespread fighting during the First World War. Furthermore,
when the Ottoman army withdrew from Eastern Anatolia after the 1915 Sarikamis
defeat, Armenian revolutionaries initiated a series of cruelties in this area.
Although the Russians occupied Eastern Anatolia as an enemy, nevertheless they
were constrained by the rules of war. However, when they returned to their
country in 1917 after the Revolution, Armenian revolutionaries were unchecked
in this area for about a year until the Ottoman forces returned to Erzurum
in 1918. During this period, Armenian revolutionaries executed massacres on
the local people which is recorded in historical documents.[1]

For example, let us look at a report dated 21 March 1918 which the Commander
of the Third Army submitted when he entered Erzurum and Erzincan: "They were
completely and systematically destroyed and burned down by Armenians,
even the trees were cut down, and they are like a building entirely
consumed by fire in every sense of the word." As for the people who
had been living in Erzurum and Erzincan:

"Those who were capable of fighting were taken away at the very beginning
 with the excuse of forced labor in road construction, they were taken
 in the direction of Sarikamis and annihilated. When the Russian army
 withdrew, a part of the remaining people was destroyed in Armenian
 massacres and cruelties: they were thrown into wells, they were locked
 in houses and burned down, they were killed with bayonets and swords, in places
 selected as butchering spots, their bellies were torn open, their lungs
 were pulled out, and girls and women were hanged by their hair after
 being subjected to every conceivable abominable act. A very small part 
 of the people who were spared these abominations far worse than the
 cruelty of the inquisition resembled living dead and were suffering
 from temporary insanity because of the dire poverty they had lived
 in and because of the frightful experiences they had been subjected to.
 Including women and children, such persons discovered so far do not
 exceed one thousand five hundred in Erzincan and thirty thousand in
 Erzurum. All the fields in Erzincan and Erzurum are untilled, everything
 that the people had has been taken away from them, and we found them
 in a destitute situation. At the present time, the people are subsisting
 on some food they obtained, impelled by starvation, from Russian storages
 left behind after their occupation of this area."[2]
 
Foreign observers who witnessed the events, including Russian Officers
who did not desert their lines, submitted detailed reports proving the
genocide to Ottoman commanders who received them as prisoners of war.
What is most important is that they stated in their reports 'the 
massacres did not happen by chance but were planned.'[3]

At the end of the war, the German author Dr. Weiss, his Austrian colleague
Dr. Stein and his Turkish colleague Mr. Ahmet Vefik visited Trabzon, Kars,
Erzurum and Batum between April 17th and May 20th 1918 to record the
cruelties. Their writings not only show the scope of Armenian activities,
but also reveal their goal and true nature.[4]

[1] (The Ottoman State, the Ministry of War), "Islam Ahalinin Ducar Olduklari
    Mezalim Hakkinda Vesaike Mustenid Malumat," (Istanbul, 1918). The French
    version: "Documents Relatifs aux Atrocites Commises par les Armeniens sur
    la Population Musulmane," (Istanbul, 1919). In the Latin script: H. K.
    Turkozu, ed., "Osmanli ve Sovyet Belgeleriyle Ermeni Mezalimi," (Ankara,
    1982). In addition: Z. Basar, ed., "Ermenilerden Gorduklerimiz," (Ankara,
    1974) and, edited by the same author, "Ermeniler Hakkinda Makaleler -
    Derlemeler," (Ankara, 1978). "Askeri Tarih Belgeleri ...," Vol. 32, 83
    (December 1983), document numbered 1881.
[2] "Askeri Tarih Belgeleri ....," Vol. 31, 81 (December 1982), document
    numbered 1869.
[3] From Twerdo-Khlebof's report dated 29 April 1918; quoted in Ermeniler ...,
    Vol. 2, p. 275.
[4] A. R. (Altinay), "Iki Komite - Iki Kital," (Istanbul, 1919), and, "Kafkas
    Yollarinda Hatiralar ve Tahassusler" (Istanbul, 1919).

Serdar Argic

                           'We closed the roads and mountain passes that 
                            might serve as ways of escape for the Turks 
                            and then proceeded in the work of extermination.'
                                                       (Ohanus Appressian)
                           'In Soviet Armenia today there no longer exists 
                            a single Turkish soul.'    (Sahak Melkonian)


Newsgroups: talk.politics.mideast