Greek Atrocities in Cyprus

MAKARIOS, Panayia, 4 September 1962:

Unless this small Turkish Community - forming a part of the Turkish race which has been the terrible enemy of Hellenism - is expelled from Cyprus, the duty of the heroes of EOKA can never be considered as terminated.

Source: Cyprus The Tale of An Island, A.H.Rizvi, p. 42

"Following the Greek Cypriot premeditated onslaught of 21 December, 1963, the Turkish Sectors all over Cyprus were completely besieged by Greeks; all telephonic, telegraphic and postal communications between these sectors were cut off and the Turkish Cypriot Community's contact with each other and with the outside world was thus prevented."

"Greek Cypriot armed elements broke into hundreds of Turkish homes and fired at the unarmed occupants with automatic weapons killing at random many Turks, including women, children and elderly persons (51 Turks were killed and 82 wounded). They also carried away as hostages more than 700 Turks, including women and children, whom they forced to walk bare-footed and in night-dresses across rough fields and river beds."

"A Turkish woman was seriously wounded and her four-month old baby was riddled with bullets from an automatic weapon fired by a Greek Cypriot mobile patrol which had ambushed the car in which the mother and her baby were travelling to the Turkish region. The baby died in her mother's arms. This wanton murder of a four-month-old baby, which shocked foreign observers as much as the Turkish Community, was not committed by irresponsible persons, but by members of the Greek Cypriot security forces. According to the mother's statement the Greek police patrol had chased their car and deliberately fired upon it."

Peter Moorhead reporting from the village of Skyloura, Cyprus. 
Date : 1 January, 1964.

IL GIARNO (Italy)

THEY ARE TURK-HUNTING, THEY WANT TO EXTERMINATE THEM.

Discussions start in London; in Cyprus terror continues. Right now we are witnessing the exodus of Turks from the villages. Thousands of people abandoning homes, land, herds; Greek Cypriot terrorism is relentless. This time, the rhetoric of the Hellenes and the bust of Plato do not suffice to cover up barbaric and ferocious behaviors.

Article by Giorgo Bocca, Correspondent of Il Giorno 
Date: 14 January 1964

DAILY HERALD (London)

AN APPALLING SIGHT

And when I came across the Turkish homes they were an appalling sight. Apart from the walls, they just did not exist. I doubt if a napalm bomb attack could have created more devastation. I counted 40 blackened brick and concrete shells that had once been homes. Each house had been deliberately fired by petrol. Under red tile roofs which had caved in, I found a twisted mass of bed springs, children's conts and cribs, and ankle deep grey ashes of what had once been chairs, tables and wardrobes.

In the neighbouring village of Ayios Vassilios, a mile away, I counted 16 wrecked and burned out homes. They were all Turkish Cypriot homes. From this village more than 100 Turkish Cypriots had also vanished.In neither village did I find a scrap of damage to any Greek Cypriot house.

Date: 1 January, 1964.

DAILY TELEGRAPH (London)

GRAVES OF 12 SHOT TURKISH CYPRIOTS FOUND IN CYPRUS VILLAGE

Silent crowds gathered tonight outside the Red Crescent hospital in the Turkish Sector of Nicosia, as the bodies of 9 Turkish Cypriots found crudely buried outside the village of Ayios Vassilios, 13 miles away, were brought to the hospital under the escort of the Parachute Regiment. Three more bodies, including one of a woman, were discovered nearby but could not be removed. Turkish Cypriots guarded by paratroops are still trying to locate the bodies of 20 more believed to have been buried on the same site.

Michael Moran:
An ex-EOKA thug, Sampson was briefly made President of Cyprus after the 1974 Greek coup which temporarily overthrew Makarios. He acquired ‘heroic’ status during the outbreak of intercommunal violence in December, 1963, when, as a commander of Greek ‘irregulars’, he devised the ingenious plan of using a bulldozer with raised excavator to lead an attack on the Turks. Sampson died in 2001 but even in the 1990s he still had a following among Greek Cypriots. Speaking at a ceremony held by the ‘Dighenis Association’ to celebrate the Greek and Greek Cypriot ‘national days’, Sampson declared himself adamantly against the idea of creating a federal Cyprus with the Turks. ‘We have to expel the Turks from this country’, he said in 1993. ‘I do not believe in lost territories. I do not give anyone the right to give away Hellenic lands. Cyprus was Hellenic and will remain Hellenic.’ (As reported in the Greek Cypriot newspaper Tharros, 29 March 1993). Unfortunately this kind of rhetoric, firmly rooted in the megali idea and related fantasies, still has the power to move significant numbers of people in the south of the island.

Armenian Atrocities in the Caucasus

Source: Justin McCarthy, Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922, The Darwin Press, 2nd Printing, 1996, pp. 208-218:

THE SOUTHERN CAUCASUS

The suffering of Armenians in the Caucasus during and immediately after World War I, particularly the suffering of Armenian refugees from Anatolia, is well-known and well-recorded. 141 Starvation and disease among them were great and mortality massive. The direct cause of mortality undoubtedly was the precipitous flight of Armenians from Ottoman armies at the end of the world war. To the toll of dead refugees must be added the deaths of Armenians caught by vengeful Ottoman soldiers or by Muslim villagers who had returned to their homes to find their Muslim brothers slaughtered. What is not generally known is the great suffering and loss of Turks and other Muslims of the region.

The history of Muslims in Caucasian Russia was closely tied to the political and military events that followed upon the Russian Revolution of 1917. The slaughter of Muslims within the borders of the Russian Empire began after the initial Ottoman invasion and defeat in the Kars region (1914-15). An example of the events was recorded in the district of Oltu (part of the Russian Empire since 1878). The Russians lost Oltu to the Ottomans in December of 1914, but soon retook it, in January of 1915. Attacks on Muslim villages followed, comparable to those occurring in eastern Anatolia. However, such slaughter was localized and generally kept in check by Russians in the borderlands. There is little evidence on the status of Muslims in Russian Transcaucasia in the quiet middle period of the war. They were surely more secure in 1916 than from 1917 to 1920.

In the spring of 1917, the Russian army was poised to complete its conquest of eastern Anatolia, ready to take Diyarbakir, Harput, and all the territories south to Iraq. However, the Russian February Revolution changed all campaign plans. Word of the revolution filtered through to the troops in Anatolia in spring, and no one, troops or officers, was willing to act before the new political situation was understood. Although Russian troops in Anatolia held on longer than those on the Russian western front, eventually they, too, began to desert en masse. After the Bolshevik Revolution (7 November 1917), there was no Russian army left. What remained were a few hundred Russian officers and the Caucasian troops, primarily Armenians. In theory, these were the troops of the newly founded Transcaucasian Federation, which included Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, but the three new republics soon separated and the soldiers became the army of the Armenian Republic.

The soldiers of the Armenian Republic and allied Armenian guerrilla bands faced an impossible prospect between 1917 and 1918. Without the Russians, the Armenians were militarily incapable of standing up to the Ottoman army. Moreover, the Armenians were forced to organize and protect a vast Armenian refugee migration from the Anatolian provinces. (After the events of the war, the Armenians of the regions of Anatolia previously conquered by Russia could rightfully expect deadly revenge from local Muslims and returning Muslim refugees.) Because of their weakened military state, the Armenians were forced to withdraw to Russian Armenia (the old Erivan Province) and surrounding areas. They resolved to ensure that at least one region would be Armenian -- ensured by massacring or forcing the migration of resident Muslims. To the west, a similar fate was to befall the Armenians of Azerbaijan, although to a far lesser degree. Refugees crossed the borders in both directions.

By 1919, the majority of Muslims who had resided in Erivan Guberniia (Province) had either died or had become refugees outside the boundaries of the Armenian Republic. These Muslims had not easily left their homes. Even though many had been expelled in the spring of 1918 (some as early as late 1914), some had returned to their homes several times in the hope that political events would become more settled. Upon each return, more Muslims were lost, and fewer of them remained to migrate yet again. Their farms were never returned to them. They were caught up in the last act of the great population exchange that had begun a century before. As Armenian refugees from Anatolia came into the Armenian Republic, they took the farms of the refugee Muslims. The Muslims in turn were either massacred or driven out to Anatolia or Azerbaijan. There were perhaps 150,000 surviving Muslim refugees from the Armenian Republic in September of 1919, and these were rapidly dying. Many of the survivors had in fact been forced to flee to whichever regions offered the most immediate refuge. These were often mountainous territories little able to sustain large numbers of refugees. For example, the survivors of 22 Muslim villages of Erivan Province fled to the plateaus of the Üçtepeler Mountains. It is not possible to trace the ultimate fate of these people, but it could not have been a happy one. The Muslims who had returned to their farms in the Novobayazit area were not heard from again. It was rumored that they were massacred. The few Muslims that survived within the Armenian Republic were often in worse shape than the refugees, and no hand was raised to help them. They had no food and no seed. Through numerous forced migrations they had lost everything.

In areas under the control of the Armenian government, the machinery of the state was brought to bear against Muslims. For instance, not only were taxes on Muslims arbitrarily raised beyond their ability to pay, but those who went to the Armenian gendarmerie to complain were never heard from again. When possible, Muslim villagers resisted, probably armed by the Ottomans. This was particularly true in Nahcivan (Nakhichevan) and in the area of the Russian Kars Province, where Muslim Turks were a majority. The resulting war in those regions added greatly to the casualties on both sides. Ottoman forces that invaded the Caucasus at the end of the war estimated that by May of 1918, 250 Muslim villages in the eastern Caucasus had been burnt down by Armenians.

Local Muslims in the Kars Province formed governmental bodies after the Ottoman defeat in World War I removed for a time the chance for protection afforded by Ottoman troops. These bodies made contact with the Turkish Nationalist forces that were organizing in northeastern Anatolia and provided the Nationalists with detailed lists of the destruction wrought in their region by the Armenian forces. One report from Kaǧzman, for example, listed more than 100 Muslim Turkish villages that had been destroyed by Armenians, along with estimates of the thousands who had been killed and the approximately 10,000 who were homeless.

The Ottoman Army Command in the east stated in May of 1918 that "the majority of the Muslim villages of Kars, Sarikamş, Erivan, Ahilkelek, and Kaǧzman have been destroyed by the Armenians." In their reports, they listed many villages by name (e.g., in one report, Tekueli, Haci Halil,Kalul, Harabe, Dagor, Milanli, Ketak, Alaca, Ilham, Dangal, Ararca, Mulabi, Morcahit, etc.) 151, or sometimes only stated the number of villages destroyed (e.g., "in April, 67 villages of Saragil District were razed to the ground").

Even the British, who were powerfully committed to the Armenian cause and the creation of an Armenian state, formally warned Armenians about massacres of Turks in "Armenia proper" and in Baku. They told the Armenians that they would lose world sympathy if such massacres went on.

KARS

Prior to the war, the city and province of Kars had been part of the Russian Empire. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, many of the Armenians of Kars Province had emigrated to the southern Caucasus, fleeing the Ottoman advance. Muslims who had earlier fled the province returned. The Muslims of Kars had unquestionably been a majority before the war. Upon the Ottoman defeat, they formed a Muslim National Council (the Shura) in Kars Province. The British, who began a de facto occupation of Kars on 19 April 1919, gave civil and military power in the province to the Armenians, because it was expected that Kars would become part of the new Armenian Republic; the Muslim majority was not consulted on this issue. Muslims were disarmed and their weapons given to Armenians, so that in effect the only armed forces in the province were Armenian bands and some Kurdish tribes.

TABLE 14. POPULATION OF KARS PROVINCE IN 1897, BY RELIGION

Religion Population Proportion
Orthodox 49,295 0.17
Armenian* 72,967 0.251
Roman Catholic 4,373 0.015
Other Christian 16,963 0.058
Jewish 1,204 0.004
Muslim 145,852 0.502
Total 290,654

* Gregorian and Armenian Catholic.
SOURCE: 1897 Russian Census.

Muslims began to be massacred even before the British had left Kars. On 19 April, the band of the Armenian "Karch Murat" dragged 7 Muslims from a train on the Kars line and killed them. Because the British were still present, a board of enquiry was set up and Karch Murat and his band convicted, but no one would or could arrest them. The crimes in Kars continued in this vein -plunder, robbery, devastation, and murder. In July 1919, the Armenian army began to attack and destroy the Muslim villages of the Karakurt-Sarikamş region with artillery and machine guns. The village of Büyük Şatak was destroyed and five Muslims were killed. Thirteen villages were devastated in the Saǧlık District, and 25 villages in the Horosan District. Large numbers of Muslim-owned sheep and cattle were confiscated.

The slaughter of Muslims in the Kars district was mostly contained in the agricultural areas of the province, the areas inhabited by Turkish speakers. Armenian bands plundered Turkish villages between Kars and Oltu and plundered Akqakale, Babirguend, and other towns and villages. Sixty Muslims of Kaǧzman were killed by Armenians, as were the Muslims of the village Puzant. The Turks of Iǧdir were either led away by armed bands or killed. Ali Riza, the Turkish governor of Kaǧzman, compiled a list of villages pillaged by Armenians after the Muslim National Assembly in Kars was dissolved: Digur 63; Kaǧzman 45; Karakorun 45; Sarikamş 46; and many more. Ali Riza also cited the names of the leaders of the Armenian bands -- 68 names in all. A formal Turkish Commission of Inquiry sent to the areas of Shuregel and Zarshat to investigate Armenian atrocities listed the houses destroyed in each village ("45 in Shurgel, 60 in Agnatch, 70 in Ilanli. . . ."). The crimes reported were sadly typical of what had been seen often in eastern Anatolia and the Caucasus -- villages pillaged and burned, flocks and belongings taken, rapes and murders. Nowhere on the Kars plain, or in the Erivan region to its north were Muslim villages safe. Individual murders and pillaging of Turks living on the plain by Armenians and sometimes Greeks were frequent. However, the mountainous areas of the province were defended by Kurdish tribes, who kept the Armenian forces from going too far beyond the plains and the cities. Kurds and Armenians fought what can only be called a blood feud -- each murdering any of the other who fell into their hands. Perhaps the only Western observer to actually see the situation, the British Colonel Rawlinson, reported that caravans of Muslim refugees were constantly leaving the Kars plain. He recorded reports of torture as well as murder, which he investigated and found to be accurate. Kars was also the scene of terrible suffering for Muslim refugees from Erivan Province and other areas designated as Armenian. Twenty-five thousand refugees from those areas were gathered in the Kars region in 1919. Many of these refugees were set upon by Armenian bands and soldiers in Kars province. Many were killed at Sarikamş after they had fled from Armenian massacres and destruction of their villages. In a letter to King George of England the president of the Muslim meclis (assembly) of Kars, Ibrahim, described the situation emotionally, portraying the Armenians as those "who completely destroyed and ruined more than 1,000 Mohammedan villages in the south west of the Caucasus [including the Kars region], who shed the blood of about 100,000 innocent Mohammedan women and children, and who have left neither honour nor property unspoiled and untouched."

Colonel Rawlinson came to the same conclusions regarding Armenian actions and intentions:

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 being under effective control, atrocities were constantly being committed, for which we [the British, who gave Kars to the Armenians] should with justice eventually be held to be morally responsible."

AZERBAIJAN, BAKU, AND ELIZAVETPOL

Baku felt the effect of the Russian Revolution of 1917 more quickly and more completely than other areas of the Caucasus. Workers in the oil industry and Armenians of the town were ripe for Bolshevik and Armenian nationalist revolutionary organization. Baku was thus ruled by an uneasy alliance of a Soviet revolutionary committee and Armenian Dashnaks. Such a combination worked against the Azeri Turks (or, in the Russian usage, Tatars) of the city, who were neither Armenian nor Bolshevik sympathizers. From 30 March to 1 April 1918, the Tatars were attacked. Almost half of the Muslim population of Baku was compelled to flee the city.

Between 8,000 and 12,000 Muslims were killed in Baku alone. On the night of 14 September 1918 as the Armenian forces had retreated from the city, local Muslims took their revenge and killed almost 9,000 Armenians. Turkish troops entered the city on 16 September, restored order, and protected the remaining Armesnians.

Armenian troops who entered territory claimed by the Azerbaijan Republic destroyed all Muslim villages in their path.

As Richard Hovannisian has written of one guerrilla leaders, Andranik:

The routes south were blocked by regular Turkish divisions. Backtracking, [the Armenian guerilla leader and general] Andranik then pushed over Nakhichevan into Zangezur, the southernmost uezd of the Elisavetpol guberniia. Remaining there for the duration of the world war, Andranik's forces crushed one Tatar village after another.

The Azerbaijani population was forced to feed and house, when they could, approximately 60,000 refugees who had fled into their territory by the end of 1919. Admiral Bristol, the American plenipotentiary in Istanbul, basing himself on the reports of the American representatives in the Caucasus, stated that the 60,000 refugees had come from 420 Muslim villages destroyed by the Armenians.

American intelligence operatives and diplomatic representatives reported the usual sequence in which Armenian troops attacked Turkish villagers, often killed them, and forced them to flee, in response to which the government of Azerbaijan was sometimes able to respond. The Armenian Prime Minister stated to H. V. Bryan, American Liaison Officer to the Allied High Commission in Armenia, that the Armenian army was busy surrounding Turkish villages and "starving them into submission." The attacks were partly due to the desire of the Armenians for more extensive and secure boundaries and access to the railroad running through primarily Turkish-inhabited lands, and partly due to traditional hatreds that had surfaced in 1905. Whatever the reason, the result was that Turks were forcibly removed from their villages or killed. In London, Curzon told an eminent Armenian delegation of the "foolish and indefensible conduct of their compatriots on north-eastern frontiers of Armenia." Curzon quoted to them lists of outrages committed, which showed the Armenians had been much the worse offenders.

ERIVAN AND NAHCIVAN

[Admiral Bristol] I know from reports of my own officers who served with General Dro that defenseless villages were bombarded and then occupied, and any inhabitants that had not run away were brutally killed, the village pillaged, and all the livestock confiscated, and then the village burned. This was carried out as a regular systematic getting-rid of the Moslems.

Before the war, the Muslims of Erivan Province constituted almost as large a population as the Armenians. They were among those of the Caucasus who most suffered. Evidence from Erivan, however, was fragmentary. Refugees brought out reports of villages burned and massacred, but few first-hand reports by others were available. The Ottoman or Turkish Nationalist armies never entered much of Erivan Province, so the Ottomans made few detailed reports on Erivan's Muslims. The Muslim Council of Kars compiled a list of destroyed Muslim villages in part of Erivan, probably from refugee reports, which detailed by name and mortality the villages destroyed by 1 October 1919 -- 91 villages destroyed in two districts alone. The Turkish government stated that 199 Muslim villages in the Armenian Republic had been destroyed, probably not much of an exaggeration. In March of 1920, the Republic officially protested the massacres in the Armenian Republic, listing by name the villages destroyed and estimating that the Armenian state "had devastated more than 300 villages and massacred the most part of the Mussulmans populating these villages." Even the Persian government, which was not given to complaint because it was largely under the control of occupying British soldiers, spoke out against the slaughter.

However, the most telling criticism came from Armenians, the Socialist-Revolutionary Party of the Armenian Republic:

To the President of the Parliament [of the Armenian Republic].

We beg you to announce to the Minister for Home Affairs the following demand: Is the Minister informed that during the last three weeks on the territory of the Armenian Republic within the boundaries of the Echmiadzin, Erivan and Sourmalin districts a series of Tatar villages, for instance Pashakend, Takiarli, Kouroukh-Giune, Oulalik of the Taishouroukh Society, Agveren, Dalelar, Pourpous, Alibek of the Arzakend Society, Djan-Fida, Kerim-Arch, Agdjar, Igdalou, Karkhoun, Kelani-Aroltkh of the Echmiadzin district as well as a series of other villages have been cleared of the Tatar population and have been exposed to robbery and massacre. That the local police not only did not prevent but even took part in these robberies and massacres, that these events left a very bad impression on the local population which is disgusted with these robberies and disorders and who wish to live in peace with their neighbors and request that the guilty be accordingly judged and punished as they are to this day left unpunished.

The Armenian Socialist Revolutionaries had complained of the massacres both in the Parliament and in their newspaper, The Revolutionary Banner.

Although, as might be expected, their evidence tended to lay blame solely on their political opponents, the Dashnak Party in power, their evidence completely supported the contentions of the Azerbaijan government.

The Nahcivan region, in the south of the Russian Erivan Province, had the misfortune to be the site of the main railroad line that connected Armenia to Iran and further east. The Armenian Republic decided not only that it must hold the railroad line, but that the line would never be secure as long as the region through which it passed was almost totally Turkish in population. Therefore, it was decided to rid the entire line of the railroad of adjacent and nearby Turkish villages, which were destroyed by Armenian regular troops. The Armenians attacked Muslim villages with artillery and machine guns, as they had earlier near Sarikamş. Armenian partisan bands assisted in the attacks on the Turkish villages. For example, a large Armenian band of perhaps 1,200 attacked the villages of Elmah (688 reported dead) and Aǧuşma (516 dead), among others in the Nahcivan region. The villagers were either killed or forced to flee to Azerbaijan or Turkey.

Admiral Bristol summarized the events and laid political blame for the tragedy:

The Armenian government, with its regular forces, attempted to clear the Tatars away from a railroad for twenty-seven miles and this has caused Tatar refugees to the extent of many thousands. This is similar to the Greek operations in the Vilayet of Aydin. It will also be noted that the British, in encouraging the Armenians, did not act according to the principles of humanity or self-determination. They were party to a plan to conquer another race and place the minority to govern a majority when they must have known full well that the minority was not capable of governing itself, not to mention providing government for the majority.

It was the Armenian attacks that actually cemented the resolve of the Azerbaijanis to form an army and defend the Turks. They eventually made a stand and held the Armenians, but not until the "twenty-seven miles" of villages had been lost.

TABLE 15. TURKS IN ERIVAN PROVINCE, 1914 AND 1926

270,000 "Turco-Tatars" in 1914*
89,000 in 1926
181,000 Lost (67%)

*Adjusted to postwar boundaries.
SOURCES: 1915 Russian Statistical Yearbook and 1926 U.S.S.R. Census.

The best evidence on the massacres and forced deportations of the Muslims of Erivan comes from population statistics taken before and after the wars. Table 15 presents figures for the population of Turks (called "Turco-Tatars" in the Russian statistics) in Erivan before and after the wars. All Muslims are not included in the table, because the 1926 U.S.S.R. census did not give population by religion, and Muslim ethnic groups other than Turks were not specifically listed in the 1914 figures. The non-Turkish Muslims in Erivan can be assumed to have suffered as badly as did the Turks.

From the beginning of the First World War until the first postwar census, two-thirds of the Muslims had disappeared from Erivan Province. Many of these were refugees and many of them died. Erivan Province, which had begun as a majority Muslim province in the 1820s, had only a small Muslim minority at the beginning of the 1920s.

The Beginning of Turkish-Armenian Conflicts

Source: Justin McCarthy, Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922, The Darwin Press, 2nd Printing, 1996, p. 31:

THE 1820s

The century-long struggle between Muslims and Armenians began in earnest in the Russo-Persian and Russo-Turkish wars of 1827-29. The basic features of that long battle were all seen in those first wars -- Russian invasion of Ottoman territory, Armenians siding with the invader, great Muslim mortality, forced migration of Muslims and a de facto population exchange of Muslims and Armenians.

In the 1827-29 wars in the east, a massive population exchange began, sparked by Russian expulsion of Muslims of the Erivan region. George Bournoutian has made use of Persian and Russian sources to estimate the population change in the Khanate of Erivan due to Russian conquest. He concludes that approximately 26,000 (30 percent) of the Muslims of the khanate either died or emigrated, based on a Russian population survey. Bournoutian further states that 45,000 Armenians had newly arrived in Erivan by 1832, "but it was not until the last quarter of the nineteenth century -- after the Russo-Turkish Wars of 1855-56 and 1877-78 brought more Armenians in from the Ottoman Empire -- that the Armenians established a solid majority in the region." Thus an Armenian majority came to pass in what today is the republic of Armenia, a majority prepared by the Russians. Erivan, approximately the area of the present Armenian Republic, was until 1827 an Iranian province with a Muslim (primarily Turkish) majority. The destruction or forced migration of the Muslim population allowed the Russians to repopulate the region with Armenians from Iran and the Ottoman Empire.

Ambassador Morgenthau's Racism and Facts

Let us expose an undisputed racist diplomat's real face. In his book, "Ambassador Morgenthau's Story"[1], he described the Turks as "bullies and cowards, dull-witted and lazy," etc. Armenians, on the other hand, were superior - he described them as "Aryans," who "regarded themselves not as Asiatics, but as Europeans." His analysis of supposed Turkish reasons for killing Armenians was a study in the pathology of racism: Morgenthau declared that the Turks planned to kill the Armenian men, then take their women and have children by them. Their reason, according to Morgenthau, was the betterment of the Turkish race: "These Armenian girls represented a high type of womanhood and the Young Turks, in their crude, intuitive way, recognized that the mingling of their blood with the Turkish population would exert a eugenic influence on the whole." No scholar has ever found any Turkish belief in the Racial Superiority of the Armenians, but racist Morgenthau chose to project his own beliefs on the Turks. It is fairly easy to see why he found no evil in Armenians, but much evil in Turks.

Racist Morgenthau, and others like him, spread their beliefs among the American populace in books, lectures, and newspaper articles. Their testimony was welcomed by the clergy, who were gathering support against the Turks.

[1] "Ambassador Morgenthau's Story," Garden City, New York, 1918, pages 275, 288, 291, and 337.

Now, let us see what an American soldier, U.S. Ambassador Bristol, had to say on the false Armenian reports.

Rear Admiral Marc L. Bristol served in Turkey during the period of 1919-1928, first as the Commander of U.S. Naval detachment in Turkey, and finally as the first U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Turkey. Letter, dated March 28, 1921 from Admiral Bristol to James Barton D.D., Secretary of the Foreign Department of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and Dr. Barton's reply, dated May 6, 1921 are instructive in demonstrating how a man like Morgenthau, and indeed the entire Christian West, would develop anti-Turkish attitudes under an incessant barrage of anti-Turkish propaganda. Let's examine them.

Admiral Bristol writes:

"I see that reports are being freely circulated in the United States that the Turks massacred thousands of Armenians in the Caucasus. Such reports are repeated so many times it makes my blood boil. The Near East Relief have the reports from Yarrow and our own American people which show absolutely that such Armenian reports are absolutely false."

"In addition to the reports from our own American Relief workers that were in Kars and Alexandrople, and reports from my own intelligence Officer and know that the Armenian reports are not true."

"I was surprised to see Dr. McCallum send through a report along this line from Constantinople. When I called attention to that report, it was stated that it came from Armenians but the telegram did not state this, nor did it state that Armenian reports were not confirmed by our own reports."

Dr. Barton replies:

"With reference to the false reports that come through reporting massacres of the Armenians by the Turks, there is no one who can deprecate this more than I do."

"There is a brilliant young Armenian, a graduate of Yale University, by the name of Cardashian.... He is constantly reporting atrocities which never occurred and giving endless misinformation with regard to the situation in Armenia and in Turkey."

Addendum: Norman Daniel, a prominent scholar of American philanthropy in the Middle East, stated the following:

While such publicity helped to raise money, it did not contribute to an understanding of the problems of the area. … It exploited the religious differences between the Turks and the Armenians without disclosing that during much of the nineteenth century the Christian subjects of Turkey had enjoyed a degree of religious freedom that was not accorded to dissenters from the established faith in some of the more enlightened kingdoms of Europe. It overlooked the existence of an active Armenian revolutionary party and left unmentioned the doubts entertained by the Ottoman government as to the loyalty of the Armenians. It failed to point out that many of the Armenians had lived in a theater of war or that Moslem Turks were also suffering. … (*)

(*) Norman Daniel, American Philanthropy in the Near East. 1820–1960 (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1970), 161. See also "Americans Investigating Anatolia" by Dr. Brian Johnson.

The Armenians helped the Russians by keeping Ottoman soldiers from the front

Source: Justin McCarthy, Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922, The Darwin Press, 2nd Printing, 1996, pp. 192-193:

There is no documentary evidence that Russian authorities orchestrated the initial Armenian attacks. There was no need for them to do so and the Armenians could be safely trusted to disrupt Ottoman territories on their own. The Russians, however, did all they could to facilitate the Armenian uprising, including seizing the weapons of Muslims in occupied territories and distributing them to local Armenians. Those with the most to benefit from Armenian actions against the Ottomans were the Russians. The activities of Armenian units and armed Armenian villagers allowed the Russians to free men who might have been needed in Anatolia and the Caucasus and to send them to the Russian western front.

Regarding normal military actions, the Anatolian Armenian units were most valuable behind the Ottoman lines, cutting telegraph lines and engaging in other "commando" attacks. They also served as advance units of the Russian army in its 1916 campaign. The Armenians, however, were far more valuable to the Russians by keeping Ottoman soldiers from the front. This was particularly true in regions such as Van, Zeytun, and Musa Daǧi, where major insurrections kept thousands of Ottoman soldiers occupied. With eastern Anatolia in a state of insurrection, the Ottomans were forced to keep many soldiers far behind the lines to protect the population. These soldiers were thus removed from the battles with the Russians. The Russians thus not only gained Armenian fighters for their side, but kept Ottoman soldiers from the front - a valuable pair of assets [69].

[69] Herbert Gibbons, admittedly a very pro-Armenian source, contended that the Armenian actions in Eastern Anatolia had resulted in the diversion of  "five Turkish divisions and 30,000 or more Turkish and Kurdish irregulars" from the war to put down the Armenian rebellion. This may be a gross exaggeration. Armen Garo asserted that the Armenian revolts in Anatolia, particularly the revolt and occupation of Van, saved the Russians from defeat by the Ottomans (Why Armenia Should Be Free, p. 22)

Armenian Atrocities in Bitlis

Source: Justin McCarthy, Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922, The Darwin Press, 2nd Printing, 1996, pp. 191-192:

The Armenians of Bitlis rose against the Ottomans in February of 1916, immediately before the Russian advance to the city. The massacres of Muslims began then and continued until the first Russian occupation. In the city itself, Muslim men, women, and children were hunted down and killed in the streets. Villages were destroyed and the inhabitants massacred by Armenian guerrilla bands operating behind Ottoman lines. Others were destroyed by Armenian and Cossack bands operating as advance units of the invading Russian army. Special care seems to have been taken to kill agents of the Ottoman government who were caught in the city. The few Muslims who escaped from destroyed villages found it impossible to describe whether their attackers were Armenians from the Caucasus or Armenians from Anatolia -- there seeming to have been no distinction made either among the Armenians and Russians or among the Muslims.

When the Ottoman government briefly retook Bitlis, it sent an investigation team to detail the destruction. Armenians had destroyed or burned the Central Mosque, the Great Mosque, and 13 others, and had converted the mosque of Hatuniye into a stable. Three dervish convents were destroyed, four religious colleges, four holy tombs, along with schools, baths, and other buildings. The city's major public buildings, including police, gendarmerie, municipality, and provincial administrative buildings, were destroyed. All major bridges were torn down. The major commercial and military warehouses and depots were burnt. In short, almost everything of religious, civil, or military importance, along with most Muslim private houses, was destroyed.

THE COUNTRYSIDE

In February of 1915, Armenians in the Bitlis and Van vilâyets began to attack Muslim villagers. Among numerous others, for example, they attacked the villages of Kayali (Mardin Sancaǧi), raping young women and killing villagers in the streets. They took prisoners from the village and killed them on the road, and did the same to a large number of refugees who were fleeing the area. Ottoman officials found 19 bodies in the ruins of the village of Avran in Bitlis Vilâyeti. The two villages of Merkehu and Iștucu in Van Vilâyeti reported the following statistics, which were probably typical of villages in the region:

Killed in the village of Merkehu: 41 men, 14 women
Killed after having been raped: 4 women
Killed in the village of Istucu: 7 men, 4 women
Raped, but left alive: 5 women
Wounded: 3 men, 2 women

Armenians in rural districts of Van Vilâyeti, such as Karçekan and Gevaș, revolted in December. All over eastern Anatolia, gendarmes were attacked by Armenian villagers and organized bands. Telegraph lines were cut, and Muslim villagers were terrorized.

Armenian Atrocities in Van

Source: Justin McCarthy, Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922, The Darwin Press, 2nd Printing, 1996, pp. 188-191:

In March 1915, rebellion broke out in Van Vilâyeti. Armenian revolutionary forces gathered and organized. Armenian villagers then infiltrated the city of Van. Armenian villagers attacked Muslim villages and, in turn, Kurdish tribes attacked Armenian villages. On 20 April, Armenians in Van began to fire at police stations and Muslim residences. Armenian revolutionaries had secreted enough weapons in the town and surrounding villages to stage their revolution, and the Ottomans estimated that up to 4,000 Armenian fighters had entered the city. As the Armenians advanced and defeated Ottoman security forces, they burned the Muslim quarter and killed the Muslims who fell into their hands. By 14 April, the city was completely in Armenian hands, although under siege from Ottoman troops who arrived after the city had fallen. The Armenians held out in the city until Russian troops from the Caucasus could arrive, forcing an Ottoman retreat on 17 May. (The Ottomans regained what was left of Van on 22 July 1915, but it was lost again to the Russians the next month.) The massacre of Muslims in Van and neighboring villages continued. With few exceptions, the only Muslims who survived were those who managed to flee, primarily those who fled with the Ottoman army. The dead included wounded and ill Ottoman soldiers who had come to Van to recover. Zeve, Mollah Kasim, Șeyh Kara, Șeyh Ayne, Zorayad Pakes, Hidir, Amuk, Ayans, Veranduz, Haravil, Deir, Zivana, Karkar, and many other villages not identified by name were destroyed.

In Van, the first to be singled out for assassination seem to have been Ottoman civic and religious leaders and their families. This follows a pattern seen in the Balkans -- killing first those who might have organized opposition -- and indicates a degree of planning. However, the Muslims of Van were effectively destroyed long before they could have organized any resistance, and the hideous tortures inflicted on the notables could only have been the product of intense hatred. Everything Islamic in Van was destroyed. With the exception of three antique buildings, all the mosques were burned or torn down. The entire Muslim quarter was destroyed. When the Armenian work and the battle between Ottomans and Armenians were finished, Van more resembled an ancient ruin than a city. (In the entire old city of Van only a handful of buildings remained.)

When the Ottomans evacuated Van, many of those who had been able to flee were set upon by Armenian bands on the roads. Approximately 400 from one group were killed between Erçis and Adilcevaz. Armenians also killed three hundred Jews who tried to escape toward Hakkâri. Other refugees found their way blocked by Armenian bands and armed Armenian villagers, who attacked all Muslims passing by.

The stories told by Muslim villagers were all much the same. When the Armenians attacked Muslims' own villages or nearby villages, Muslims fled with whatever movable property they could carry. On the road, Armenian bands first robbed them, then raped many of the women and killed many of the men. Usually, but not always, a number of women and young children were killed as well. The surviving villagers were then left to travel to safety if they could, without food or adequate clothing. The villagers were unable to defend themselves either in their homes or on the road because most young Muslim males had been conscripted. Only very old and very young males and women were left. Armenian bands, however, were made up of young males who had never been drafted, were deserters from the Ottoman army, or who had come from the Caucasus.

The following are excerpts from some of the depositions given by refugees from Van Vilâyeti who found asylum in Mamuretülaziz:

[Abdi and Reșid Molla] After the evacuation of Gevaș and Van, a mixed detachment of Cossacks and Armenians 500 men strong, guided by the Armenians Hadjo, Kechiche-Serkis, Onnik, Mako, Parso of the village of Tab, assaulted the village of Karhar in Gevaș. They directed their fire at the houses, massacring men and infants and defiling the women so badly that many among them died. Only a few dozen villagers escaped with great difficulty.

[Yusuf Kenan and Abdul Hakim] On August 5 of last year [ 1915] a band composed of Russians and of Armenians of Gevaș and Çatak attacked Mukus. Those who were able to save themselves fled, leaving all their goods. The women, the elderly, and the children who were not able to flee were all massacred. One could distinguish among the band Krikor of the village of Pare; the schoolmaster Karabet, Vahan, and Artin of the village of Kinekai, Kevork of Mukus, Minto Sempat, Hayastan [sic], the blacksmith Naro, Katchik, Mouhik Dikran and Bedros. These bandits mainly attacked women, heinously defiling them. 

[Ali son of Halid and Salih, of Serir] All the inhabitants of the Armenian villages of Surtenin, Varshekans, Mezrea, and Pars attacked the village of Serir early in the morning. Of 60 men, not 15 remain. The rest were killed, the women taken away, and the houses pillaged.

[Behloul son of Saad and Mahmud son of Kutas, notables of the village of Sukan] The village of Sukan had a population of 680 souls. The Russo-Armenians invaded the village one night. No one was able to stop them, because the Muslim population was not armed. The executioners set fire to the houses and a number of women and children perished under the sabres of the Cossacks and the daggers of the revolutionaries. At dawn they assembled the survivors of the previous night. The girls and young women were taken off in an unknown direction. At noon they set on fire the place where the villagers were interned. Only 21 miraculously escaped the carnage. [A list of those recognized among the Armenian attackers followed.]

[Șeyh Enver and Molla Reșid, religious notables of Alan] When they were told that 100 cavalry and a strong detachment of infantry were approaching the village, the population fled. But the inhabitants of the Armenian villages of Belo, Tankas, Azerkoh, and Peronz barred their way and assaulted the women. The Russian detachment had entered the village and the houses were in flames. Those who were little able to walk, such as the old, the sick, and children were mercilessly massacred. The Cossacks flung themselves on anyone who tried to escape. Only a very few managed to evade the butchery.

As seen above, Muslim villagers identified Cossacks as riding with the Armenian bands as they pillaged and massacred in villages. However, it is difficult to tell if the particular bands mentioned were, in fact, advance units of the Russian army, which used Armenian guides and Armenian bands as "shock troops," or whether Cossacks were operating behind Ottoman lines with the Armenian bands. In either case, the Cossacks do seem to have participated in at least some of the massacres of Muslim villagers and refugees.

At the same time as the Van uprising, Armenians in villages of the Pervari region gathered together in revolt and battled Ottoman gendarmes for three days. Muslim males of nearby villages were killed and young women abducted.

Hitler on the Armenian Question

"There is NO historical basis for attributing such a quote to Hitler." - Professor Heath W. Lowry

"Politically, "Hitler" is a magic word that conjures up an all too true image of undisputed evil. He is quoted on the Armenian Question for polemic and political purpose, to tie the Turks to Hitler's evil. In the modern world nothing defames so well as associating your enemies with Hitler. This is all absurdity, but it is potent absurdity that convinces those who know nothing of the facts. It is also a deliberate distortion of history." - Professor Justin McCarthy

Baden-Baden, W. Germany - Dr. Robert John, a historian and political analyst of Armenian descent from New York City, declared here that a commonly used quotation of an alleged statement by Adolf Hitler concerning the Armenian massacres was a forgery and should not be used. - The Armenian Reporter, Vol. XVII, NO. 40, August 2, 1984.

The Muslim Holocaust

Somebody asked me the following question during a discussion on the Armenian problem:

"When all is said and done, where'd they [Armenians] all go? Disappeared?"

This was my answer, written spontaneously without too much attention to grammer or style:

That will be a fair and good question if asked together with the following questions:

1. What happened to Muslims in Armenia? (All dead or forced to flee for their lives)
2. What happened to 3 million Muslim civilians in Anatolia? (All dead)
3. What happened to the Jews in Eastern Anatolia? (Almost all killed by Armenians, some were able to escape)

Remember what I wrote before:

"3 million Muslim people in Anatolia and more than 400,000 Muslims in the Caucasus were killed between 1914-1922. These are low estimates (i.e. scholars like Prof. Kemal Karpat give much higher estimates) of Muslim mortality and do not include the deaths of soldiers in battles. .. Note also that what is Armenia today didn't have an Armenian majority as late as the end of 19th Century. Wonder what happened to all the Muslims living there?"

I also wrote the following elsewhere:

"The Armenian mortality is estimated to be between 200,000 and 600,000 by most experts. Prof. Justin McCarthy gives the higher figure, i.e. 600,000."

The Muslim villagers were unable to protect themselves because young Muslim males had been conscripted. Only very old and very young males and women and children were left. Armenian bands, however, were made up of young males who had never been drafted, were deserters from the Ottoman army, or who had come from the Caucasus. As a result, Armenian bands were able to massacre large numbers of Muslims without significant resistance. To be able to understand the chronology of massacre and counter-massacre in the region, it should be noted that Armenian revolutionary activities started well before any orders of relocation of Armenians were given. The Armenian revolts and attacks in Van (described below), Zeytun, Muş, Reşadiye, Gevaş, and other cities and towns all began before the Ottoman order of relocation (26 May 1915). By May of 1915, the Armenian genocide squads had already started their attacks on the Muslim population. This is openly admitted by the Armenian guerrilla leader Armen Garo (in "Why Armenia Should be Free," Boston, 1918, pp. 23-26).

Armenians in the war zone (in the East) were relocated away from the war zone. A significant fraction survived and their descendents are either in Armenia or among the "Armenian diaspora" living in the USA, Europe, and elsewhere. Some of those being deported in 1915 were massacred by Kurdish tribes for vengeance (remember, Armenians killed more than 600,000 Kurds starting in 1914). Some of them died of starvation and diseases. A lot of Armenians died in massacres and counter-massacres with local Muslim civilians. Many Armenians (armed men) died in battles with the Ottoman government or the Kurdish tribes. The total sum of these deaths is the 600,000 mentioned above.

As one American historian put it, "The Armenians were not the only civilians forced to leave their homes. Muslims of Eastern Anatolia were forced out just as surely as were Armenians. The deportations ordered by the Ottoman government may have looked more official, but the deportations forced by the Russians and the Armenian bands were just as real. In fact, the worst forced migrations in the East were those caused by pillage and massacre, not by official actions of the Ottoman government, and the survival rate was far worse... The Ottomans at least made attempts to protect many Armenians from the hatred of local Muslims and from Kurdish raids. Laws were passed ordering protective measures for the Armenian deportees. Ottoman civilian and military officials tried and punished (including executions) more than a thousand of those who had persecuted the Armenians. On the other hand, the Russian government and the Armenian revolutionaries were completely ruthless in forcing the migration of Muslims. No Russians or Armenians were tried for their crimes against Muslims."

Having said all these, I'll add this: It is obscene to talk about Armenian losses exclusively, by ignoring the extermination of almost 3.5 million Muslims in Anatolia and in the Caucasus. Apart from ignorance, the only explanation I can find for this attitude is racism, anti-Turkish bigotry and prejudice.

MUSLIM LOSSES IN EAST ANATOLIA

Van 194,167
Bitlis 169,248
Erzurum 248,695
Diyarbakir 158,043
Mamuretulaziz 89,310
Sivas 186,413
Haleb 50,838 (for the portion Haleb remaining in Turkey)
Adana 42,511
Trabzon 49,907

The total is about 1,190,000 and this number represents a low estimate.

Let us now take a brief look at the Muslim Holocaust in so-called Armenia:

MUSLIM HOLOCAUST IN ARMENIA

Muslim mortality in the Caucasus 1914-1921: 410,000
Muslim refugees from the Caucasus 1914-1921: 270,000

How and why?

Source: Rachel A. Bortnick, "The Jewish Times", June 21, 1990:

"A more appropriate analogy with the Jewish Holocaust might be the systematic extermination of the entire Muslim population of the independent republic of Armenia (which lasted from 1918 to 1920), which consisted of at least 30-40 percent of the population of that republic. The memoirs of an Armenian army officer who participated in and eye-witnessed these atrocities was published in the U.S. in 1926 with the title 'Men Are Like That.' Other references abound."

Source: "Men Are Like That" by Leonard Ramsden Hartill. The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indianapolis (1926). (Memoirs of an Armenian officer who observed the Armenian genocide of the Muslims), p. 202:

"This war quickly developed into one of extermination. Horrible things happened, things that words can neither describe nor make you understand. The memory of scenes I witnessed and of incidents in which I participated still makes me feel sick. But war is always horrible, for it liberates all the fear and hate and deviltry that are in men...We now proceeded to solve the Tartar problem in Armenia. We closed the roads and mountain passes that might serve as ways of escape for the Tartars, and then proceeded in the work of extermination. Our troops surrounded village after village. Little resistance was offered. Our artillery knocked the huts into heaps of stones and dust, and when the villages became untenable and the inhabitants fled from them into the fields, bullets and bayonets completed the work. Some of the Tartars escaped, of course. They found refuge in the mountains, or succeeded in crossing the border into Turkey. The rest were killed. And so it is that the whole length of the border-land of Russian Armenia from Nakhitchevan to Akhalkalaki, from the hot plains of Ararat to the cold mountain plateaus of the north, is dotted with the mute mournful ruins of Tartar villages. They are quiet now, those villages, except for the howling of wolves and jackals that visit them to paw over the scattered bones of the dead."

Armenian massacres of Muslims in Kars:

Colonel Rawlinson:

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 being under effective control, atrocities were constantly being committed, for which we [the British, who gave Kars to the Armenians] should with justice eventually be held to be morally responsible."

Armenian massacres of Muslims in Azerbaijan, Baku, Elizavetpol:

Richard Hovannisian (Armenian zealot/historian):

The routes south were blocked by regular Turkish divisions. Backtracking, [the Armenian guerilla leader and general] Andranik then pushed over Nakhichevan into Zangezur, the southernmost uezd of the Elisavetpol guberniia. Remaining there for the duration of the world war, Andranik's forces crushed one Tatar village after another. 

Armenian massacres of Muslims in Erivan and Nahcivan:

Admiral Bristol:

I know from reports of my own officers who served with [Armenian general] General Dro that defenseless villages were bombarded and then occupied, and any inhabitants that had not run away were brutally killed, the village pillaged, and all the livestock confiscated, and then the village burned. This was carried out as a regular systematic getting-rid of the Moslems. 

From the Socialist-Revolutionary Party of the Armenian Republic to the President of the Parliament of the Armenian Republic: 

We beg you to announce to the Minister for Home Affairs the following demand: Is the Minister informed that during the last three weeks on the territory of the Armenian Republic within the boundaries of the Echmiadzin, Erivan and Sourmalin districts a series of Tatar villages, for instance Pashakend, Takiarli, Kouroukh-Giune, Oulalik of the Taishouroukh Society, Agveren, Dalelar, Pourpous, Alibek of the Arzakend Society, Djan-Fida, Kerim-Arch, Agdjar, Igdalou, Karkhoun, Kelani-Aroltkh of the Echmiadzin district as well as a series of other villages have been cleared of the Tatar population and have been exposed to robbery and massacre. That the local police not only did not prevent but even took part in these robberies and massacres, that these events left a very bad impression on the local population which is disgusted with these robberies and disorders and who wish to live in peace with their neighbors and request that the guilty be accordingly judged and punished as they are to this day left unpunished.

An American officer, Robert Dunn, reflects on Dro's handiwork ('World Alive, A Personal Story,' Crown Publishers, New York, 1956, pg. 361.):

"Corpses came next, the first a pretty child with straight black hair, large eyes. She looked about twelve years old. She lay in some stubble where meal lay scattered from the sack she'd been toting. The bayonet had gone through her back, I judged, for blood around was scant. Between the breasts one clot, too small for a bullet wound, crusted her homespun dress.

The next was a boy of ten or less, in rawhide jacket and knee-pants. He lay face down in the path by several huts. One arm reached out to the pewter bowl he'd carried, now upset upon its dough. Steel had jabbed just below his neck, into the spine.

There were grownups, too, I saw as I led the sorrel around... Djul was empty of the living till I looked up to see beside me Dro's German-speaking colonel. He said all Tartars who had not escaped were dead."

Was Hitler a Kemalist?

Mahmut Esat Bozkurt (1892-1943) states:

"Zamanımızın bir Alman tarihçisi gerek nasyonal sosyalizmin, gerekse faşizmin Mustafa Kemal rejiminin çok az değiştirilmiş birer şeklinden başka bir şey olmadıklarını söylüyor. Çok doğrudur. Çok doğru bir görüştür." ("Atatürk İhtilali", M.E.Bozkurt, Kaynak Yayınları, Sayfa 88)

My translation:

"A German historian of our time states that both national socialism and fascism are nothing but slightly modified versions of the Mustafa Kemal [Ataturk] régime. This is very true. This is a very correct view."

Mahmut Esat Bozkurt was M. Kemal's "Minister of Justice."

Now, there is a new book titled "Atatürk in the Nazi Imagination" by Stefan Ihrig (2014). The book may not be a very credible scholarly work and therefore does not constitute a "scholarly reference," but it contains some interesting material. For example, the following passage from a short review of this book agrees with the statement by Mahmut Esat Bozkurt:

"Hitler later remarked that in the political aftermath of the Great War, Atatürk was his master, he and Mussolini his students. This was no fading fascination. As the Nazis struggled through the 1920s, Atatürk remained Hitler’s “star in the darkness,” his inspiration for remaking Germany along nationalist, secular, totalitarian, and ethnically exclusive lines."

On the other hand, Stefan Ihrig talks about "The Nazis' one-sided love affair with Atatürk and his Turkey..." in a later article titled "Erdogan's New Turkey: Goodbye Atatürk, Hello Atatürk." This is not entirely accurate, since the "love affair" was not completely one-sided; see Bozkurt's statement given above.

Murat Yazıcı

In the Morea shall no Turk be left

“Everywhere, as though at a preconcerted signal, the peasantry rose, and massacred all the Turks—men, women and children—on whom they could lay hands. In the Morea shall no Turk be left. Nor in the whole wide world. Thus rang the song which, from mouth to mouth, announced the beginning of a war of extermination... Within three weeks of the outbreak of the revolt, not a Muslim was left, save those who had succeeded in escaping into the towns.” 

W. Alison Phillips, in "The War of Greek Independence 1821 to 1833," New York, 1897, p. 48.

The Armenian Retreat

The worst Armenian massacres of Muslims and destruction of Muslim villages took place in two periods at the beginning and end of the First World War. The first period began with the entry of the Ottoman Empire into the war and the beginnings of organized Armenian rebellion against the Ottomans. It ended with the Russian conquest of eastern Anatolia in 1916. The second period began as the Russian army dissolved or retreated from eastern Anatolia and ended with the defeat of the Armenian armed forces who had taken the Russians' place in the field.

For the middle period of the war, the years of Russian occupation of eastern Anatolia, from the middle of 1916 to the middle of 1917, there is very little evidence of any kind. No Ottoman investigation committees such as the ones that investigated the early atrocities were present to record the events of the Russian occupation. Scattered reports indicate that major massacres of Muslims took place, particularly in Van and Bitlis vilâyets [75]. From the large number of Muslim refugees, it is obvious that conditions were awful, but not as bad as they would become after the Russian army collapsed in 1917.

The Russian Revolution brought with it the wholesale desertion of Russian soldiers on the Anatolian front. Enlisted men and some officers simply left their units and walked home, stealing their sustenance (and anything else that was available) from villages as they passed. Russian authority in eastern Anatolia was replaced by the authority of Armenian soldiers and Armenian bands, at first nominally under the control of the Transcaucasian Federation, then as troops of the Armenian Republic. The area they ruled in Anatolia stretched from Erzincan in the east to the Persian border and north to Trabzon and the border of Russian Armenia.

Muslim villagers suffered from the depredations of the deserting Russian soldiers, but they suffered far worse from the Armenians who were left in charge. After the Russians departed, nothing held the Armenians in check. The events of the first period of the short Armenian rule were of a type seen all too often in that time -- murder of unarmed Muslim villagers, kidnapping of villagers, who were never seen again, destruction of Muslim markets, neighborhoods, and villages, and ubiquitous plundering and rape.

Armenian atrocities in the region between Erzincan and Kars went on for a relatively short time. Using units that had been held in reserve for such a purpose, the Ottoman government followed the Russian collapse with an attack on the occupied territories. Although they were relatively well-equipped with Russian supplies And weapons, the Armenians were outnumbered by the seasoned Ottoman troops. With the moral justification of the outrages being committed against Muslim villagers and townspeople, the Ottomans attacked. The Armenian forces fell back in disarray. It was obvious to them that their cause was at least temporarily lost and that Turks would reoccupy what the Armenians had claimed as Anatolian Armenia. They set about to ensure that the Ottomans would find little when they arrived. Only the rapid advance of the Ottoman army saved many of the Muslims. Those who could not be reached in time all too often perished.

The Ottomans and later the Turkish Nationalists and, in particular, Ottoman and Turkish Nationalist generals on the eastern front lodged complaints about the way Muslims were treated by the Armenians. The Turks had difficulty in finding who was in charge of Armenian troops and guerrillas. Complaints and lists of atrocities were usually sent first to the Russian commanders who were nominally in charge, later to the generals who theoretically commanded the forces of the Transcaucasian Federation. In fact, these were not the masters of the Armenians who were murdering Muslims. Understating the case, the general commanding the Ottoman Third Army in northeastern Anatolia, Vehib Pașa, wrote, "I have regularly informed the Russian Command of these atrocities and cruelties and I have gained the impression that the above authority seems to be failing in restoring order." Insofar as Armenian guerrillas in Anatolia answered to any master it was to the Armenian Republic, which was neither sympathetic toward Muslims nor had any intention to accede to Ottoman wishes.

Vehib Pașa received the reports of advance units that entered cities evacuated by Armenians, and he saw the evidence of Armenian atrocities with his own eyes.

In his report to his superiors in Istanbul he described the sad situation:

"All people old enough to use weapons were rounded up, taken to the Sarikamiş direction for road-building and were slaughtered. The remaining people were subject to cruelties and murder by Armenians following the withdrawal of the Russians and were partly annihilated, the corpses thrown into wells, burnt in houses, mutilated by bayonets, their abdomens ripped open in slaughterhouses, their lungs and livers torn out, girls and women hung up by their hair, after all kinds of devilish acts. The few people who were able to survive these cruelties, worse than those of the Spanish Inquisition, are in poverty, more dead than alive, horrified, some driven insane, about 1500 in Erzincan and 30,000 in Erzurum. The people are hungry and in poverty, for whatever they had has been taken away from them, their lands left uncultivated. The people have just been able to exist with some provisions found in stores left over from the Russians. The villages round Erzincan and Erzurum are in the worst condition. Some villages on the road have been levelled to the ground, leaving no stone on stone, the people completely massacred."

[75] A postwar British source stated that Armenians "massacred between three and four hundred thousand Kurdish people in the Van and Bitlis Districts," mostly the work of Armenians in the Russian Army ("Interview of Col. Wooley of the British Army, 12 September 1919," in U.S. 184.021/265). On atrocities against Muslims in the Erzurum Vilayeti during the Russian occupation, see Vehip to Acting Supreme Commander, 21 March 1916, Belgeler III, no. 169.

Source: Justin McCarthy, Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922, The Darwin Press, 2nd Printing, 1996, pp. 196-198.

THE COUNTRYSIDE

Villages naturally did not escape the Armenians. Captain Refik in Erzincan commented, "All the villages from Trabzon up to Erzincan are piles of debris." Perhaps this is an exaggeration, but it is indicative of the state of Muslim villages once the Armenian forces had passed. Christian villages had generally not been touched, which corresponds with evidence from American sources.

The worst destruction was among the villages on the Armenian line of retreat from Erzincan to Erzurum and from Trabzon to Erzurum; in the latter area, Greek guerrilla bands were also responsible for some of these events. According to Ottoman military reports, in the Erzincan region, Armenian guerrillas burnt 20 houses before they fled Yenilköy and murdered 35 people at Askale. Armenians escaping on the road from Hinis to Köprüköy killed any Muslims they encountered in the villages along the road. Food supplies were destroyed and four hundred Muslims were reported dead in the town and the surrounding villages of Mamahatun (Tercan). On their retreat, Armenian gangs swept quickly into Muslim villages they passed and killed whomever they could find. For example, the village of Tazegül was burned, by one gang and 30 villagers killed; the same thing occurred at Öreni in the same district. The Ottoman Interior Ministry also reported 36 Muslims murdered in Yusufeli, 150 in Ispir, and 85 in Köprüköy. In Badicivan, 200 were killed and 385 wounded.

The situation in the villages to the north of Erzincan was much the same as that in the east. These villages had suffered greatly from Armenian bands during the Russian occupation and suffered even more during the Armenian retreat. Not only were villages destroyed and villagers killed, but the livelihood of the survivors was destroyed as well. Their fruit trees, which would have taken many years to mature, were cut down.

In the regions through which the Armenian soldiers and guerrillas passed, very few Muslim villages survived intact. The villagers either escaped to the mountains or were slain. A reporter for Austrian newspapers who was on the scene, Dr. Stephan Eshnanie, reported that "All the villages from Trabzon to Erzincan and from Erzincan to Erzurum are destroyed. Corpses of Turks brutally and cruelly slain are everywhere. I am now in Erzurum, and what I see is terrible. Almost the whole city is destroyed. The smell of the corpses still fills the air. . . ."

Muslim refugees choked the roads on which they were often attacked and killed, the women abducted and goods seized. A list of Muslim villages destroyed by Armenians in the last months of World War I would be long, as would be the list of the massacred. Whole regions, especially areas along the lines of march of retreating Armenian soldiers, were destroyed. Villages were burnt and dynamited, their populations slaughtered. The methods of extermination differed. For example, Armenians killed 50 Muslims of the Erkinis village north of Erzurum. The rural town of Hasankale was burned to the ground, and those who could not flee were killed. In villages such as Sarlipazar, Akkilise, and İnesil, near Erzincan, Armenians slowly murdered the population over a long period. In others, such as Kukurtlu, where 300 were reportedly massacred, Armenians rode into town and massacred the Muslim inhabitants in one day.

As the Ottoman soldiers recaptured eastern Anatolia from the Armenians they encountered fearsome sights. They reported what they saw in detailed reports. For example: "The Armenians took approximately 50 Muslims from the Erkinis village north of Erzurum and killed them. . . . In the villages of Hasankale and vicinity the Muslims were murdered with bullets, axes, and knives. Maidens were abominably used, some taken away by the Armenians. . . ." After the Armenian retreat, much of eastern Anatolia was a graveyard.

Source: Justin McCarthy, Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922, The Darwin Press, 2nd Printing, 1996, pp. 201-202.