From: cosar@ulysses.cs.umn.edu (Ahmet Cosar)
Subject: Armenian Terrorism: History as Poison and Antidote   (Part 2)
Organization: University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, CSci dept.
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 06:40:49 GMT

Source: Justin McCarthy "Armenian Terrorism: History as Poison and Antidote,"
        International Terrorism and the Drug Connection, Ankara, (Ankara
        University Press), 1984, pp.85-94.

                           ARMENIAN TERRORISM:
                     HISTORY AS POISON AND ANTlDOTE
                                Part 2

My researches have since demonstrated a number of facts that disprove the
usual contentions concernings Turks and Armenians. The facts were drawn from
statistics on Armenian population which were compiled by the Ottomans as part
of their population registration program. They were demographically consistent,
accurate data, collected by a government that needed to know Armenian numbers
for its own Intelligence. In no way were they politically or propagandistically
motivated, and when they were collected, before the war, the Ottoman government
did not expect that they would ever be used in arguments over an Armenian
problem. They were, in short, the type of population statistics gathered by
every government in the world. However, although the statistics have been
available for 70 years, they have remained unused. Politicians, terrorists,
and Armenian scholars have preferred their own guesses to accurate figures.
Their guesses, of course, have supported their contentions that millions of
Armenians had been killed or driven from Armenia. Real statistics show a far
different picture.

First, despite the presence of "Armenia" on nineteenth century maps and the
assertions of European politicians who had no way to know the truth, there was
no Armenia in the Ottoman Empire.

The area claimed as "Turkish Armenia" was commonly known as the Six Vilayets
Van, Bitlis, Mamuretulaziz, Diyarbakir, Sivas, and Erzurum. In 1912, there
were only 870,000 Armenians in the Six Vilayets. Armenians were less than
one-fifth of the population of the Six Vilayets as a whole. In some provinces
of the Six Vilayets, Muslims outnumbered Armenians six to one. Moreover,
Armenians were settled all over the Ottoman Empire, not simply in the East.
As many Armenians lived in the rest of the Ottoman Empire as in the Six
Vilayets. However, even if all the Armenians of the Empire had come together
to live in Eastern Anatolia, the Muslims would still have outnumbered them by
more than two to one. The impossibility of building a modern state with such
numbers is obvious.

Second, the alleged Genocide of the Armenians: Barring the latter-day
discovery of a personal diary, no one will ever be able to prove what Talaat
Pasa really intended for the Ottoman Armenians. We now know that, like the
infamous Hitler quote, the so-called extermination orders of Talaat Pasa were
forgeries. The only relevant Ottoman documents that have come to light
indicate a generally solicitous attitude toward deported Armenians. Yet
Muslims surely did kill Armenians during World War 1, and Armenians surely
died during the deportations. No matter how many Ottoman documents surface
showing benign Ottoman intentions toward Armenians, it is doubtful if Armenian
apologists will ever accept such documents as accurate. Numbers present more
indisputable evidence. They allow one to view the situation in Eastern
Anatolia during World War I without the blinders of ethnic identity.
Statistics have no millet.

The history of the events in Eastern Anatolia is no one-sided tale of massacre
and deportation. In April of 1915, the last act of the long Ottoman-Russian
wars began. Armenian leaders in the Ottoman Empire adopted two stances toward
the war: The Armenian "establishment" businessmen, churchmen, and educators
professed their neutrality, although they accepted conscription and other
unavoidable duties as citizens. Armenian revolutionary groups stepped up
their anti-Ottoman activities, including the stock-piling of arms in Eastern
Anatolian cities.  On the other side, far from professing neutrality,
Armenians in the Russian Empire supported the Czar and Armenians joined
Russian forces with the intention of taking Ottoman Armenia and uniting with
their brothers.

Both the Ottomans and the Russians cleared border areas of part of their
population in preparation for war. The Ottoman government, remembering
Armenian support for Russia in past wars, decided to remove Armenians from
potential war zones and communications centers. Whether or not hindsight and
modern morality tell us that the deportations were a mistake, no one can
seriously doubt that the Ottoman government had reason to distrust many of
the Armenians of Anatolia. Because of the assistance given by the Armenians
to invading Russian armies in 1828, 1854, and 1877, the Ottomans decided they
could not trust the Armenians, much as the United States, with much less
justification, decided they could not trust Americans of Japanese ancestry
in World War 1. A forced deportation of Armenians was begun. In areas in
which Ottoman authority was weak and in war zones, Armenians suffered
terribly. They were set upon by the Kurdish bandits and even by some Ottoman
government officials. Interestingly, the latter were often Muslims who
themselves had been exiled from the Russian Empire, their places taken by
Armenians in the Caucasus. In areas to the south where Ottoman authority was
strong, such incidents were few and the refugees arrived in Syria in relative
safety (as attested by the Armenians themselves).

Before the deportations had begun, the first Ottoman thrust into Russian
territory had failed and the Russians had begun a strong counter-attack. At
the back of the Ottoman army, Armenian revolutionaries seized and held the
city of Van, displacing thousands of Muslims, who became refugees. These were
soon joined by 800,000 fellow Muslims, refugees from areas taken by the
Russian army. By the time warfare ceased more than 400,000 Turks evicted from
the Caucasus had been added to the refugee numbers. The Muslim refugees were
persecuted by the same Kurdish bandits who attacked the Armenian refugees, and
they were killed by Armenian revolutionaries and Armenian volunteers from the
Caucasus. The fate of the Muslim and Armenian refugees was remarkably similar.
War, bandits, starvation, and disease killed Turks and Armenians
indiscriminately.


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   A.Cosar                                                                      ________________________________________________________________________                
Disc space -- the final frontier!                                               ________________________________________________________________________