POCKET GUIDE

Sources of information on alleged Armenian claims of Genocide Against The Turks.
In order to reach truth and to unwind racist bias, read below works and commentaries, including those by neutral scholars and directors,

Find out what Armenian Premier Senin Ovanes Kacaznuni said in 1923 Dashnak Party Conference in Bucharest-Romania, about Armenian treachery. Available from iletisim@kaynakyayinlari.com ISBN 975-343-438-3 or from TPK enquiries@tpk.org.uk
You may peruse http://www.tallarmeniantale.com/, by author Holdwater & http://www.eraren.org/bilgibankasi/en/index.htm The “Armenian Research” FoundationRead on internet www.tallarmeniantale.com/c-f-dixon-BOOK.htm, written by a British officer in 1916 – the portrayal of Anatolian Armenian character

Examine Guenter Lewy's "The Armenian Massacres in Turkey, A Disputed Genocide" ISBN-13:978-0-87480-849-0 available on Amazon.com (Jewish author from USA) Salahi Sonyel's "The Turco-Armenian Imbroglio" ISBN-0-9504886-6-6, available at Cyprus Turkish Association 0207 437 4940 kibristc@btconnect.com (Cypriot Turk author) films to watch are: "The Armenian Revolt 1894-1920" documentary DVD by Third Coast Films, P.O. Box 664, Clarion, PA 16214, USA, info@thirdcoastfilms.com (by an American Director) This is a MUST !! &"Sari Gelin' documentary DVD through http://www.sarigelinbelgeseli.com/ info@sarigelinbelgeseli.com (maybe available on eBay) (by a Turkish Director)have a look at http://www.armenians-1915.blogspot.com/ by Turkish Armenians (including free downloadable books and automatic translation of site text into several languages), Read Prof. Turkkaya Ataov's WHAT HAPPENED TO OTTOMAN ARMENIANS?
ISBN 1=4243=1004-0 (obtainable from ssaya@superonline.com), (Turkish author)"MYTH OF TERROR' by late Erich Feigl (1986) Zeitgeschichte/Bucherdienst Austria (Austrian Author) which contains the signatures of 63 foreign Academics refuting the Armenian claims

http://www.tallarmeniantale.com/terrorism-breakdown.htm
for Armenian terrorism against Turks.. why Armenians are not talking about their terrorists? an interesting read (in 3 languages) of memoirs of a Russian Officer on Armenians at http://www.tsk.mil.tr/ermeni_sorunu/kitap.htm (click on the book for downloading) or access it and others at http://www.tsk.mil.tr/eng/ermeni_sorunu_salonu/armenianissues_index.htm (from Turkish Military archives reputed to be richest on this issue)There are also several powerful books on this subject by the American author Justin McCarthy http://homepages.cae.wisc.edu/~dwilson/Armenia/mccarthy.html

The TURKS ARE READY, WILLING AND ABLE TO FACE THE ARMENIANS AT A PUBLIC INQUIRY FOR THE SAKE OF TRUTH. WHAT ARE THEY AFRAID OF?
The Turkish Government wants an independent International historical commission to thoroughly research the background but the Armenians are refusing to participate!. Do ask them why..! If truth scares them, then let it be.

--------------------------------------------------------------
Comments by neutral Scholars and Outcomes of Trials

The Middle East Journal 61.2 (Spring 2007): p348(2).

The Armenian Rebellion at Van, by Justin McCarthy, Esat Arslan, Cemalettin Takiran, and Omer Turan. Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press, 2006. vii + 266 pages. 11 Maps. Notes. Appends. to p. 285. Bibl. to p. 291. Index to p. 296. $25.

Reviewed by Edward J. Erickson

This timely book follows and complements recent work by Donald Bloxham [The Great Game of Genocide, reviewed in The Middle East Journal (MEJ), Vol. 60, No. 1 (Winter 2006)] and Guenter Lewy [The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide, reviewed in MEJ, Vol. 60, No. 2 (Spring 2006)]. Both Bloxham and Lewy contend that there was an actual Armenian rebellion in 1915, which was encouraged and aided by the Allies, and aimed at the establishment of an Armenian state. Moreover, Bloxham asserts that ill-timed active collaboration with the Allies by Armenian nationalist leaders led their people into a disastrous confrontation with the Ottomans. The Armenian Rebellion at Van supports these contentions by showcasing them with a fascinating case study of the well-known uprising in Van, the eastern Anatolian city and province, in the spring of 1915.

The authors begin with three chapters detailing the geographic, economic, and demographic setting of Van province, with attention to the origins and politics of the Armenian committees, especially those of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (the ARF or Dashnaks). Chapter four examines the rebellion of 1896. Chapter five, titled the "Development of the Revolution, 1897-1908," outlines the growth of an armed Armenian movement by examining its leadership, tactics, arms smuggling, and Russian connections. Chapter six, on the period 1908-1912, briefly covers the deteriorating relations between the Young Turks and the ARF, while chapter seven covers the events preceding the outbreak of war.

The heart of the book, chapter eight, is a detailed examination, at the tactical level, of what happened at Van in late March and April 1915. Using previously unavailable documents from the Ottoman military archives in Ankara, the authors offer a picture of a carefully planned and executed rebellion that was sponsored by and closely coordinated with the Russians, who launched an offensive aimed at seizing the city. The concluding two chapters explain the destruction of both the Armenian and Muslim communities in the province and present an analysis of why the Ottomans failed to suppress the rebels.
So why read another book about the Armenians'? This book represents a massive revision of what is known in the West about the Van uprising. Of particular importance is a well-developed exposition of Armenian leadership, organizational architecture, professionalism in military training, innovative tactics, and weaponry that is integrated into an explanation of how the battles were fought. The authors assert that the rebels were not simply city residents reacting in self-defense but were instead well led, tightly organized, and dangerous. They present a convincing argument based on new archival information. The maps are unusually clear and include (for the first time) small-scale municipal maps of the city of Van as it existed in 1915. The book is a gold mine of new and detailed information.

This reviewer found the overall tone of the book to be unusual in its fair treatment of the Armenians by Turkish scholars. Professor McCarthy and his Turkish co-authors present the Armenians as able practitioners of the art of insurgency and note that the Armenian leader "Aram Manukian must be counted as one of the geniuses of guerrilla warfare" (p. 258). Moreover, they conclude that the Armenian insurrections were instrumental in crippling the Ottoman strategic position in Anatolia, and they also reinforce Bloxham's assertion that the Armenians were badly let down by their Russian allies. Unfortunately, there are minor factual errors in the text. For example, Ottoman casualties at Sankaml are overstated by 100% (p. 179) while the cited Turkish source (Turk Harbi) actually gives much lower numbers. The authors erroneously give the date of a critical order from Enver Pasha on security precautions as September 25, 1914 (p. 190), when the correct date is February 25, 1915. Incorrect information is given on the composition of the First Expeditionary Force (p. 210) that includes flawed British estimates of non-existent bis divisions. There is also a lack of clarity and completeness in citing the Turkish archives; the authors rarely detail what the document is. Instead, they choose to list only its archival call number. However, these are small issues in what is otherwise a very valuable contribution to the field.
Specialists and interested readers alike will understand and appreciate this book. It is clearly written, and establishes an important corrective to the extant Western historiography. While it will certainly irritate the global Armenian lobby, this reviewer would encourage those seeking a balanced and informed understanding of these events to read The Armenian Rebellion at Van. It is well worth the price and highly recommended.

Lt. Col. Edward J. Erickson, USA (Retired), International Research Associates, LLC
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The following are excerpts from a review essay by Masaki Kakiszaki, University of Utah, on a newly released book by Guenter Lewy, titled “The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide” University of Florida Press, 2005. The full review is published in Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies, Spring 2007.
Ethnic Cleansing or Genocide?
by Masaki Kakiszaki, University of Utah,
The full review is published in Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies, Spring 2007.
Guenter Lewy’s The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide has unleashed debate in the United States as well as in different countries such as Canada, France, Germany, and Turkey. In the United States, Lewy’s articles expressing skepticism about historiographies constructed by both Armenian and Turkish historians about the Armenian genocide appeared in Middle East Quarterly and Commentary; in subsequent issues, these journals published several letters to the editors from readers, mostly Armenians, who objected to Lewy’s thesis. (…) It is important to examine Lewy’s argument in order to understand the reasons for Armenian scholastic anger against the book. The attacks on the book demonstrate how an inquiry into the tragic events of the First World War can be removed from historical context and elevated to mythological level, a process that, in turn, prevents any rational exchange between the two sides.
(…) Lewy’s purpose is to evaluate the consistency and validity of the ongoing debate over the evidence for the Armenian massacres in Ottoman Turkey. The literature that pertains to the fate of the Armenian population during the First World War involves two narratives. On the one hand, Armenian scholars present this tragedy as the first genocidal event of the twentieth century. They argue that the Armenian massacre was a product of the Ottoman government’s special intent to deport and exterminate the entire Armenian population in the empire. On the other hand, Turks contend that this event was an outcome of Armenian collaboration with the Russians, inter-communal warfare in eastern Turkey, and the harsh economic and social conditions of war (such as food shortages and the spread of diseases).
(…) This book tackles the question not of the scale of Armenian suffering but of ‘the premeditation thesis.’ Although there are wide discrepancies with regard to the total number of victims, at least both camps acknowledge that hundreds and thousands of Armenians lost their lives during the deportation. Thus, Lewy focuses on the dispute over the cause of Armenian massacres by inspecting the way in which Armenians and Turks have offered contradictory or competing accounts (…) He concludes that an Ottoman intent to organize the annihilation of Armenians cannot be determined with the evidence that so far has become available to scholars. Thus, he rejects the term ‘genocide’ to describe the mass killing of Armenians, while admitting the indirect responsibility of the Ottoman local government officials for the loss of life of a large number of Armenians.
(…) He criticizes the manner in which Armenian authors rely on the consequences of the Armenian deportation to prove that the Young Turk leaders had prior plans for total destruction of the Armenian population. He argues that ‘objective results are not the same as subjective intent’. Furthermore, Lewy claims that the Armenian side ignores the multiplicity of cases in the tragedy by playing down the roles of starvation and disease, which afflicted not only the Armenian deportees but also Muslim Turks. Lewy also finds problems in the Turkish version of the stories
(…) As Lewy points out, ‘Both Turks and Armenians have accused each other of horrible crimes while at the same time denying or minimizing the misdeeds committed by their own forces’. The Turkish side tends to dodge the responsibility of atrocities against Armenians by shifting the blame from the Ottoman government to ‘the civil war cause.’ On the other hand, Armenian authors ignore the Armenian revolutionary movements’ relationship with Russia and the threat this relationship posed to the Ottoman government.
(…) Lewy’s book aims to clarify the gap in our knowledge of the Armenian suffering. Lewy ‘reconstructs’ a history of this tragedy by strictly distinguishing the confirmed facts from the mere assertions of historians who fail to support their claims with substantive evidence. In this process he attempts to determine how the government decided on the deportation plan, how it was implemented in different regions and cities, who were responsible for the massacres, and how many people died. The chapters in this section reveal the diversity in the levels of Armenian suffering and the variation of the degree of implementing the deportation. This picture seems to imply that the deportation of the Armenian population was not carried out in a systematic or well-organized manner, which would be necessary for the purpose of total destruction of the Armenian community.
(…) In terms of the number of victims, different authors have generated different estimations. It is also difficult to determine the precise death toll because we have neither an exact figure for the prewar Armenian population nor an accurate count for the number of survivors. It also is impossible to distinguish the number killed by Turks and Kurds and those who perished due to starvation and disease. After a critical examination of the Armenian and Turkish historiographies, Lewy proposes an alternative explanation. He argues that ‘it was possible for the country to suffer an incredibly high death toll without a premeditated plan of annihilation’ for several reasons. First, the Ottoman government, despite its willingness, failed to arrange an orderly process of relocation of Armenians because of its institutional ineptness. The systematic and organized relocation of tens of thousands of Armenians proved beyond the ability of the Ottoman government. Food shortages and epidemic diseases which the authorities could not prevent or control exacerbated the environment for Armenians during the course of the deportation. Additionally, the government could not provide adequate protective measures for the Armenian deportees from hostile Kurds, Circassians and others. According to Lewy, these severe conditions and the inability of the Ottoman government to provide protection resulted in the high death toll of the Armenians. Thus, while he concedes that the government bears responsibility to a certain extent for the outcome, he emphasizes that it is the government’s ineptness rather than a premeditated plan to exterminate the Armenians that caused the Armenian tragedy.
One of the contributions of Lewy’s work is that he clarifies what we have learned as confirmed facts from both the Armenian and Turkish historians. Without leaning to either side, he accepts evidence and arguments that are substantiated by other sources. His neutrality becomes obvious in Part IV, which discusses the politicization of the controversy over the Armenian massacres. He argues that the Armenian side’s argument of the premeditation thesis lacks authentic documentary evidence and suffers from a logical fallacy. But he also criticizes the Turkish side for distorting the historical fact by translating the Armenian massacres into mere ‘excesses’ or ‘intercommunal warfare’.
(…) The personal memories of individual Turks and Armenians are not separable from the collective social memory of their communities because people can be confident about the accuracy of their remembrances only when their own memory is confirmed by others’ remembrances. The politicization of the Armenian massacres, then, facilitates the transmission of collective memories from generation to generation; Armenian campaigns for the recognition of the genocide and the airing of the Turkish government’s argument have functioned as mechanisms by which both Armenians and Turks are reminded of the past and their distinctive identities. The current rigid adherence of both sides to their historiographies thus is likely to lead to the deepening of the gap between them, not pave a way to closing this gap. For this reason, Lewy suggests that historians ought to keep the door of research open for further exploration of the Armenian massacres. Political confirmation of the Armenian massacres as historically established genocide, he argues, will deprive future historians of opportunities to start collaborative research for the advancement of common understanding grounded in historical facts rather than propaganda.
(…) Lewy knows that an attempt to put all the aspects of the Armenian massacres into a single picture as a whole ignores the variation of stories. In this tragedy, there is a diversity of experiences lived by each group of people. Therefore, Lewy adopts a method with which he constructs his own historiography by aggregating different local incidents and experiences. The Armenian and Turkish historians take the opposite approach. They look into the events from the pictures that they want to see. In this process, evidence and incidents that may disconfirm their theses are likely to be ignored in their analytic frameworks.
There is one point that I find unsatisfactory in Lewy’s book: he refrains from making his definition of genocide explicit while claiming that ‘the attempt to decide whether the Armenian massacres in Ottoman Turkey fit . . . definitions [of genocide] strikes me as of limited utility’ (…) However, this debate still is of substantive importance because parliaments in several countries have proclaimed this tragedy to be an instance of genocide. For example, in the fall of 2006 the French parliament adopted a bill that criminalizes the denial of the Armenian genocide. What is relevant to Lewy’s argument is that the politicians who vote on these resolutions are influenced exclusively by their ethnic Armenian constituents, and they rely only on an Armenian version of the history of 1915. The politicians are not without their own prejudices, and their determinations never can substitute for actual history. In the French parliament, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin argued that it is ‘not a good thing to legislate on issues of history and of memory,’ but his caution was ignored. These resolutions spotlight politics, not the truth, and are therefore debatable.
(…) The attack against Lewy’s book and the controversy created by Peter Balakian and others who share his views indicate the problem of academic freedom of speech with respect to events associated with the Turkish-Armenian conflicts. There are coordinated efforts by Armenian NGOs and scholars to silence and suppress different interpretations about the events of 1915. Simultaneously, free speech about the Armenian massacres also is denied in Turkey.
(…) In the final analysis, Lewy’s book indeed has become like dynamite to both sides by pointing out the shortcomings of both Turkish and Armenian scholarship and revealing the difficulty of objective debate on the Armenian tragedy. It is very unproductive for diaspora Armenians to turn the Armenian genocide thesis into a source of identity. The shift prevents contextualization of the events and turns them into mythological facts outside of any rational inquiry. Lewy tried to de-sacralize the Armenian thesis by subjecting it to rational inquiry. Lastly, it is also important to mention that Lewy’s book has been relatively favored in Turkey despite his criticism of Turkish historiography on the Armenian massacres and the failure of Turkish historians to challenge the official view endorsed by the state. Since its publication, the Turkish media has presented Lewy’s book as a new scholarly work that supports the Turkish explanation of the Armenian killings, but the media also has ignored Lewy’s disapproval of the Turkish historiography. It seems that the Turkish side is satisfied with Lewy’s conclusion that the Armenian killing cannot be confirmed as a genocide ‘as of now,’ even though he criticizes Turkish historiography. In other words, Lewy’ book once again has illuminated that both sides simply are concerned whether the Armenian massacre in 1915 was or was not a genocide, an issue which Lewy has problematized in his work.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BRITISH GOVERNMENT position vis-à-vis Armenian claims
“that the evidence is not sufficiently unequivocal to persuade us that these events should be categorised as Genocide as defined by the 1948 UN Convention on genocide”
Foreign & Commonwealth Office, London - dated the 22nd February, 2006
To date, there exists NO legally binding United Nations resolution or International Court judgement to support the Armenian claims. There exist recognition claims, which are NOT tried and tested at any International Court of Law. So far, the The Armenians have refused invitation for a legal trial of their claim!

Malta Military trials, and subsequent acquittal of the 144 Ottoman Officers on alleged Armenian Genocide
Quoting from British Ambassador, Sir A Geddes in Washington to Lord Curzon in London.. upon searching for evidence against captive Ottoman officers in American Governmental and private archives – 13th July 1921
" I have the honour to inform Your Lordship that a member of my staff visited the State Department yesterday, the 12th instant, in regard to the Turks who are at present being detained at Malta with a view to a trial... He was permitted to see a selection of reports from United States Consuls on the subject of the atrocities committed in Armenia during the recent war, the reports judged by the State Department to be the most useful for the purposes of His Majesty's Government being chosen from among several hundreds. I regret to inform Your Lordship that there was nothing therein which could be used as evidence against the Turks who are being detained for trial at Malta. The reports seems.. made mention of only two names of the Turkish officials in question... and in these cases were confined to personal opinions of those officials on the part of the writer, no concrete facts being given which could constitute satisfactory incriminating evidence. I have the honour to add that officials of the Department of State expressed the wish, in the course of conversation, that no information supplied by them in this connection should be employed in the court of law. Having regard to this stipulation and the fact that the reports in the possession of the Department of State do not appear in any case to contain evidence against these Turks which would be useful even for the purpose of corroborating information already in possession of His Majesty's Government, I fear that nothing is to be hoped from addressing any further enquiries to the United States Government in this matter." Nor did the British archives offer any tangible evidence, thus the acquittal of the wrongly accused.
2007 – Armenian claims still stand unproven at any International Court or at the United Nations, but machinations leading to unfair propaganda, racist denigration of Turks and backdoor recognition attempts are still alive. Furthermore, these unproven Armenian claims are currently used as a convenient leverage against Turkey by whomever and whenever opportune!
And these are for further thought and a public debate ! Contrary to their claims, 200,000 Armenian traitors of circa 1915 were well armed by outside powers and that’s how Armenians rebelled and murdered 524,000 innocent Turks circa 1915 .. ask them why, but if you feel they are rather economical with truth, let us tell you how!
The Azeri Jewish leaders cited research saying that some 3,000 Mountain Jews, along with tens of thousands of Azeris, were murdered in 1918 by the Armenian bandits and nationalists in the region of Guba .. how long is that soul destroying Armenian nationalist hatred against anything ‘Turk’ is going to last?

What would you have said if 200,000 traitors armed by Nazis in the middle of WW2 rebelled, committed high treason, razed British cities and towns and murdered 524,000 innocent British men, women and children in cold blood? How the British Government may have reacted to beginnings of an intended British Genocide?

By the way, there were the Armenian Nazi Brigade/s during WW2 numbering some 80,000+ armed men .. what do you think they did to the innocent peoples of Caucasuses?

Neither The UNITED NATIONS nor The INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE/HR accept Armenian claims. Why there has never been a trial of these claims?

SO, HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED WHAT REALLY LIES BEHIND THE ALLEGED ARMENIAN GENOCIDE CLAIMS?