From: sera@zuma.UUCP (Serdar Argic)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish,talk.politics.mideast,talk.politics.soviet,soc.culture.greek,soc.culture.europe,soc.history
Followup-To: soc.culture.turkish,talk.politics.soviet,soc.history
Subject: "visser" boggles the mind, doesn't "it"?
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 92 22:37:24 EDT
Reply-To: sera@zuma.UUCP (Serdar Argic)
Distribution: world

In article <visser.716529252@convex.convex.com> visser@convex.com (Lance Visser) writes:

>	Note the title "Documents".  What these statements consist of
>is remanicences of turkish officers from the turkish military archives.

So you lie there with your earphones on.

Source: Bristol Papers, General Correspondence: Container #32 - Bristol
to Bradley Letter of September 14, 1920.

"I have it from absolute first-hand information that the Armenians in 
 the Caucasus attacked Tartar (Turkish) villages that are utterly 
 defenseless and bombarded these villages with artillery and they murder
 the inhabitants, pillage the village and often burn the village."

Source: W. E. D. Allen and Paul Muratoff, "Caucasian Battlefields," 
Cambridge University Press, 1953, p. 481.

"As the Armenians found support among the Reds (who regarded the Tartars
 as a counter-revolutionary elements) the fighting soon became a massacre
 of the Tartar population." 

Source: General Bronsart wrote as follows in an article in the July 24, 
1921 issue of the newspaper "Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung:"

"Since all the Moslems capable of bearing arms were in the Turkish Army,
 it was easy to organize a terrible massacre by the Armenians against
 defenseless people, because the Armenians were not only attacking the
 sides and rear of the Eastern Army paralyzed at the front by the 
 Russians, but were attacking the Moslem folk in the region as well."

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)

From "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. 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."

Source: "World Alive, A Personal Story" by Robert Dunn. Crown Publishers, 
Inc., New York (1952), 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."

Source: "Adventures in the Near East, 1918-1922" by A. Rawlinson,
Jonathan Cape, 30 Bedford Square, London, 1934 (First published 1923) 
(287 pages).

p. 184 (second paragraph)

 "...I had received further very definite information of horrors that
  had been committed by the Armenian soldiery in Kars Plain, and as 
  I had been able to judge of their want of discipline by their treatment 
  of my own detached parties, I had wired to Tiflis from Zivin that
  'in the interests of humanity the Armenians should not be left in   
  independent command of the Moslem population, as, their troops being
  without discipline and not under effective control, atrocities were
  constantly being committed, for which we should with justice 
  eventually be held to be morally responsible'."

p. 177 (third paragraph)

 "...Armenian troops, who, having pillaged and destroyed all the
  Moslem villages in the plain...."

 "Caravans of refugees were in the meanwhile constantly arriving from the
  plain, from which the whole Moslem population was fleeing with as much of
  their personal property as they could transport, seeking to obtain security
  and protection..."

p. 178 (first paragraph)

 "...in those Moslem villages in the plain below which had been searched for
  arms by the Armenians everything had been taken under the cloak of such
  search, and not only had many Moslems been killed, but horrible tortures 
  had been inflicted in the endeavour to obtain information as to where
  valuables had been hidden, of which the Armenians were aware of the existence,
  although they had been unable to find them."

p. 179 (first paragraph)

 "Shortly afterwards the head of the miserable column appeared. There were
  in all about 200 persons, mostly old men and women and children, with a
  few ox-carts, ponies, and donkeys, carrying all their worldly possessions,
  except a few sheep that they were driving before them. Their leader
  interviewed Bekir Bey, and was told to keep farther on into the hills,
  where he would be able to cross the frontier into Turkey unmolested by
  his enemies."

p. 181 (first paragraph)

"...the Armenians from the plain were attacking the Kurdish line with 
 artillery, with probably a large force in support."

p. 175 (first paragraph)

"The arrival of this British brigade was followed by the announcement
 that Kars Province had been allotted by the Supreme Council of the
 Allies to the Armenians, and that announcement having been made, the
 British troops were then completely withdrawn, and Armenian occupation
 commenced. Hence all the trouble; for the Armenians at once commenced
 the wholesale robbery and persecution of the Muslem population on the
 pretext that it was necessary forcibly to deprive them of their arms.
 In the portion of the province which lies in the plains they were able
 to carry out their purpose, and the manner in which this was done will
 be referred to in due course.

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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