The Orders for the Turkish Extermination of the Armenians #17
    To the children of genocide: "Send them away into the Desert"

This is part of a continuing series of articles containing official Turkish 
wartime (WW1) governmental telegrams, in translation, entailing the orders 
for the extermination of the Armenian people in Turkey. Generally, these
telegrams were issued by the Turkish Minister of the Interior, Talaat Pasha,
for example, we have the following set regarding children:

	"To the Government of Aleppo.

	 November 5, 1915. We are informed that the little ones belonging to
	 the Armenians from Sivas, Mamuret-ul-Aziz, Diarbekir and Erzeroum
	 [hundreds of km distance from Aleppo] are adopted by certain Moslem
	 families and received as servants when they are left alone through
	 the death of their parents. We inform you that you are to collect
	 all such children in your province and send them to the places of
	 deportation, and also to give the necessary orders regarding this to
	 the people.

				Minister of the Interior,

						Talaat" [1]

	"To the Government of Aleppo.

	 September 21, 1915. There is no need for an orphanage. It is not the
	 time to give way to sentiment and feed the orphans, prolonging their
	 lives. Send them away to the desert and inform us.

				Minister of the Interior,
						Talaat" [2]

	"To the General Committee for settling and deportees.

	 November 26, 1915. There were more than four hundred children in the
	 orphanage. They will be added to the caravans and sent to their
	 places of exile.

	 				Abdullahad Nuri. [3]


	"To the Government of Aleppo.

	 January 15, 1916. We hear that certain orphanages which have been
	 opened receive also the children of the Armenians. Whether this is
	 done through the ignorance of our real purpose, or through contempt
	 of it, the Government will regard the feeding of such children or
	 any attempt to prolong their lives as an act entirely opposed to it
	 purpose, since it considers the survival of these children as
	 detrimental. I recommend that such children shall not be received
	 into the orphanages, and no attempts are to be made to establish
	 special orphanages for them.

				Minister of the Interior,

						Talaat." [4]

	"To the Government of Aleppo.


	 Collect and keep only those orphans who cannot remember the tortures
	 to which their parents have been subjected. Send the rest away with
	 the caravans.

				Minister of the Interior,

						Talaat" [5]

	"From the Ministry of the Interior to the Government of Aleppo.

	 At a time when there are thousands of Moslem refugees and the widows
	 of Shekid [fallen soldiers] are in need of food and protection, it is
	 not expedient to incur extra expenses by feeding the children left by
	 Armenians, who will serve no purpose except that of giving trouble
	 in the future. It is necessary that these children should be turned
	 out of your vilayet and sent with the caravans to the place of
	 deportation. Those that have been kept till now are also to be sent
	 away, in compliance with our previous orders, to Sivas.

				Minister of the Interior,

						Talaat" [6]

In 1926, Halide Edip (a pioneer Turkish nationalist) wrote in her memoirs
about a conversation with Talaat Pasha, verifying and "rationalizing" this
ultra-national fascist anti-Armenian mentality, the following:

	"I have the conviction that as long as a nation does the best for
	 its own interest, and succeeds, the world admires it and thinks
	 it moral. I am ready to die for what I have done, and I know I
	 shall die for it." [7]


These telegrams were entered as unquestioned evidence during the 1923 trial of
Talaat Pasha's, assassin, Soghomon Tehlerian. The Turkish government never
questioned these "death march orders" until 1986, during a time when the world
was again reminded of the genocide of the Armenians.

For reasons known to those who study the psychology of genocide denial, the
Turkish government and their supporters in crime deny that such orders were
ever issued, and further claim that these telegrams were forgeries based on a
study by S. Orel and S. Yuca of the Turkish Historical Society.

If one were to examine the sample "authentic text" provided in the Turkish 
Historical Society study and use their same forgery test on that sample, it 
too would be a forgery!. In fact, if any of the tests delineated by the 
Turkish Historical Society are performed an any piece of Ottoman Turkish or 
Persian/Arabic script, one finds that anything handwritten in such language is
a forgery. 

Today, the body of Talaat Pasha lies in a tomb on Liberty Hill, Istanbul,
Turkey, just next to the Yildiz University campus. The body of this genocide 
architect was returned to Turkey from Germany during WW2 when Turkey was in a 
heightened state of proto-fascism. Recently, this monument has served as a
focal point for anti-Armenianism in Turkey.

This monument represents the epitome of the Turkish government's pathological
denial of a clear historical event and is an insult to a people whose only
crime was to be born Armenian.

			- - - references - - -

[1] _The Memoirs of Naim Bey_, Aram Andonian, 1919, pages 59-60

[2] ibid, page 60

[3] ibid, page 60

[4] ibid, page 61

[5] ibid, page 61

[6] ibid, page 62

[7] _Memoirs of Halide Edip_, Halide Edip, The Century Press, New York (and
    London), 1926, page 387

