The Memoirs of Naim Bey

**''The Memoirs of Naim Bey: Turkish Official Documents Relating to the Deportation and the Massacres of Armenians** ()*, berisi *'telegram Talat Pasha*', adalah sebuah buku yang dipublikasi oleh penulis dan jurnalis [[Aram Andonian]] di tahun 1919. Awalnya disunting dalam [[bahasa Armenia]], Buku tersebut dipopulerkan ke seluruh dunia melalui edisi bahasa Inggris yang dipublikasikan oleh [[Hodder & Stoughton]] di [[London]]. Buku tersebut memuat beberapa dokumen ([[telegram]]) yang menjelaskan bukti konkrit bahwa [[Genosida Armenia|genosida armenia]] resmi diimplementasikan sebagai kebijakan dari [[Kesultanan Utsmaniyah]].

Edisi pertama dalam bahasa Inggris memuat pembuka oleh [[Viscount Gladstone]].

== Isi ==
Menurut Andonian, dokumen tersebut dikumpulkan oleh seorang pejabat Ottoman bernama Naim Bey, yang bekerja di Kantor Pengungsi di [[Aleppo]], dan diserahkan olehnya kepada Andonian. Setiap dokumen mempunyai tanda tangan [[Mehmed Talaat Pasha]], menteri dalam negeri yang kemudian menjadi [[Wazir Agung]] [[Kesultanan Utsmaniyah]]. Isi telegram tersebut *"dengan jelas menyatakan niatnya untuk memusnahkan semua orang Armenia, menguraikan rencana pemusnahan, menawarkan jaminan kekebalan bagi para pejabat, menyerukan sensor yang lebih ketat dan memberikan perhatian khusus kepada anak-anak di panti asuhan Armenia."* Telegram dibiarkan dalam bentuk kode dan ditulis dalam [[bahasa Turki Utsmaniyah]].

Gambaran keseluruhan yang muncul dari narasi-narasi ini menunjukkan adanya jaringan pemusnahan terhadap sebagian besar orang yang dideportasi. Hal ini sangat menegaskan fakta yang dikemukakan oleh sejarawan Inggris [[Arnold J. Toynbee]] ([[London School of Economics|LSE]], [[University of London]]) disebut sebagai "kejahatan besar yang menghancurkan Timur Dekat".

== Keaslian ==

In 1983, the [[Turkish Historical Association]] published a now discredited work titled "Ermenilerce Talat Pasa’ya Atfedilen Telgraflarin Gercek Yüzü" by Şinasi Orel and Süreyya Yuca. In the introduction to "The Talat Pasha Telegrams: Historical Fact or Armenian Fiction", its English-language edition published in 1985, Orel and Yuca wrote that the term "genocide" and the term "massacres" were being wrongly applied to characterize the [[Armenian genocide]] (which its authors describe as an Armenian "claim" and a "[[calumny]] directed against Turkey"), and that the documents contained within The Memoirs of Naim Bey were forgeries that had been, for more than 60 years, used as the basis for those charges of genocide and massacre.

The French historian [[Yves Ternon]] who convened at the 1984 [[Permanent Peoples' Tribunal]] contends that these telegrams however, *"were authenticated by experts…[but] they were sent back to Andonian in London and lost."*

Historian [[Vahakn N. Dadrian]] argued in 1986 that the points brought forth by Turkish historians are misleading and countered the discrepancies they raised.

Scottish historian [[Niall Ferguson]], professor of history at [[Harvard University]], senior research fellow of [[Jesus College, Oxford|Jesus College, University of Oxford]], and senior fellow of the [[Hoover Institution]], [[Stanford University]], and Richard Albrecht among others also point to the fact that the court did not question the authenticity of the telegrams in 1921–which, however, were not introduced as evidence in court–and that the British had also intercepted numerous telegrams which directly *"incriminated exchanges between Talaat and other Turkish officials"*, and that "one of the leading scientific experts, [[Vahakn N. Dadrian]], in 1986, verified the documents as authentic telegrams send out by [...] Talat Pasha". He adds:Historians [[Hans-Lukas Kieser]] and [[Margaret Lavinia Anderson]] wrote in 2019 that Dadrian's rebuttal to the charges of forgery "remains convincing".

Turkish historian [[Taner Akçam]] mentions similarities between the telegrams published by Andonian to extant Ottoman documents. In a book published in 2016, named “The Naim Efendi Memoirs and Talat Pasha Telegrams”, he states that the memoir and the telegrams are real. Akçam states that throughout his research he has discovered some serious new information and documents supporting his claim. Akçam summarizes them as following:

* There was, in fact, an Ottoman officer named Naim Efendi. The original Ottoman documents that prove this exist, and some of them are published in Akçam's book.
* There is a memoir that belongs to Naim Efendi. The microfiche copies of it, which he wrote in Ottoman in his own handwriting, are currently in Akçam’s possession. In his book he presents these pages as they are.
* The memoir is genuine and the information it provides is correct. It is possible to find documents in the Ottoman archives referring to the same events and people as the memoir does.
* Turkish historians Şinasi Orel and Süreyya Yuca stated that the use of lined paper in a telegram indicates that the document is a fake, because, according to them, the Ottoman bureaucracy did not use lined paper. Akçam presents evidence that during this particular time period the Ottoman bureaucracy did use lined paper and there are many documents in the Ottoman archives that show that the Internal Ministry’s numerous agencies were ordering lined paper.
* The telegrams that Naim Efendi sold to Andonian consist of two and three-digit codes. Orel and Yuca claim that during the war years the Ottoman government only used coding techniques that consisted of four and five-digit codes. Thus, they said, the telegrams were fake. Akçam presents evidence that during the war years the Ottoman government used numerical codes consisting of various different digit groupings to send orders via telegram. The texts he has discovered in the Ottoman archives used a series of two, three, four, and five-digit codes.

=== Revisionism ===

 and Süreyya Yuca claimed in their 1983 book *The Talât Pasha "telegrams": historical fact or Armenian fiction?* that Naim Bey did not exist, and his memoir and the telegrams were forgeries. According to Turkish historian [[Taner Akçam]], their claims "were some of the most important cornerstones of [[Armenian genocide denial|denying the events of 1915]]" and "the book became one of the most important instruments for the [[Anti-Armenianism|anti-Armenian hate discourse]]". Akçam wrote a book, *Killing Orders*, in order to debunk the claims of Orel and Yuca and prove that the telegrams were authentic. In 2017, Akçam was able to access one of the original telegrams, archived in Jerusalem, which inquired about Armenian liquidation and elimination.

[[Guenter Lewy]], a [[Political science|political scientist]] and [[Armenian genocide|genocide]] denier, also states that the telegrams form the "centerpiece" of "the case against the Turks", that the authenticity of the Naim-Andonian documents "will only be resolved through the discovery and publication of relevant Ottoman documents", and calls Orel and Yuca's work a "painstaking analysis of these documents" that makes "any use of them in a serious scholarly work unacceptable". About this position [[David Bruce MacDonald|David B. MacDonald]] wrote that Lewy is content to rely on the work of "Turkish deniers Şinasi Orel and Sureyya Yuca": "Lewy's conception of shaky pillars echoes the work of [[Holocaust denial|Holocaust deniers]], who also see Holocaust history resting on pillars... This is a dangerous proposition, because it assumes from the start that genocide scholarship rests on lies which can easily be disproved once a deeper examination of the historical 'truth' is undertaken".

Other opinions include Dutch professor [[Erik-Jan Zürcher]] (professor of Turkish studies at [[Leiden University]]) ; Zürcher does however point to many other corroborating documents supporting the Andonian Telegrams assertion of core involvement and premeditation of the killing by the central [[Committee of Union and Progress|CUP]] members. Scholars who share revisionist opinions about the Andonian documents include [[Bernard Lewis]] (Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at [[Princeton University]] and Genocide denier), who classifies the "Talat Pasha telegrams" among the "celebrated historical fabrications", on the same level than *The Protocols of the Elders of Zion*, [[Andrew Mango]] (a biographer of [[Mustafa Kemal Atatürk]]) who speaks of "telegrams dubiously attributed to the Ottoman wartime Minister of the Interior, Talat Pasha", Paul Dumont (Professor of [[Turkish studies]] at [[Strasbourg University]]) who stated in one of his books that "the authenticity of the alleged telegrams of Ottoman government, ordering the destruction of Armenians is today seriously contested", [[Norman Stone]] ([[Bilkent University]], [[Ankara]], Turkey), who calls the Naim-Andonian book "a forgery"; and by Gilles Veinstein, professor of Ottoman and Turkish history at [[Collège de France]], who considers the documents as "nothing but fakes".

== Edisi ==

* *The Memoirs of Naim Bey: Turkish Official Documents Relating to the Deportation and the Massacres of Armenians*, dikumpulkan oleh Aram Andonian, [[Hodder and Stoughton]], London, sekitar 1920
* *Documents sur les massacres arméniens*, Paris, 1920 (terjemahan tidak lengkap oleh M. S. David-Beg)
* *Մեծ Ոճիրը* (Kejahatan besar), edisi bahasa Armenia, [[Hairenik]], Boston, 1921

Note: Meskipun edisi Armenia diterbitkan setelah dua versi lainnya, sejarawan [[Vahakn Dadrian]] menyatakan bahwa teks berbahasa Armenia merupakan teks asli yang ditulis Aram Andonian pada tahun 1919. Mempertimbangkan penundaan penerbitannya membantu menjelaskan beberapa "kesalahan" yang diidentifikasi oleh beberapa penulis Turki dalam menentukan tanggal dokumen tersebut.

== Lihat juga ==

* [[Saksi dan kesaksian genosida Armenia]]
* [[Johannes Lepsius]]

== Referensi ==


== Bibliografi ==

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== Pranala luar ==

* *Enquête sur la négation d'un génocide''. An analysis of the Andonian telegrams 
* Primary Documents: Talaat Pasha's Alleged Official Orders Regarding the Armenian Massacres, March 1915-January 1916 - Translated versions of these telegrams
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