Cemal Kutay on the Armenian Conflict

Source: Cemal Kutay, "Ottoman Empire: How Kazim Karabekir Defeated the Armenian Army?" vol. II., Belge Yayinlari, Istanbul, 1983, p. 188.

"The atrocities and massacres which have been committed for a long time against the Muslim population within the Armenian Republic have been confirmed with very accurate information, and the observations made by Rawlinson, the British representative in Erzurum, have confirmed that these atrocities are being committed by the Armenians. The United States delegation of General Harbord has seen the thousands of refugees who came to take refuge with Kazim Karabekir's soldiers, hungry and miserable, their children and wives, their properties destroyed, and the delegation was a witness to the cruelties. Many Muslim villages have been destroyed by the soldiers of Armenian troops armed with cannons and machine guns before the eyes of Karabekir's troops and the people. When it was hoped that this operation would end, unfortunately since the beginning of February the cruelties inflicted on the Muslim population of the region of Shuraghel, Akpazar, Zarshad, and Childir have increased. According to documented information, 28 Muslim villages have been destroyed in the aforementioned region, more than 2,000 people have been slaughtered, many possessions and livestock have been seized, young Muslim women have been taken to Kars and Gumru, thousands of women and children who were able to flee their villages were beaten, raped and massacred in the mountains, and this aggression against the properties, lives, chastity and honour of the Muslims continued. It was the responsibility of the Armenian Government that the cruelties and massacres be stopped in order to alleviate the tensions of Muslim public opinion due to the atrocities committed by the Armenians, that the possessions taken from the Muslims be returned and that indemnities be paid, that the properties, lives, and honour of the Muslims be protected."

Source: C. Kutay, "Ottoman Empire," vol. II., Belge Yayinlari, Istanbul, 1983, p. 189.

Kazim Karabekir Pasha (telegram to Mustafa Kemal Pasha - on 28 March):

"The information is documented. The Armenians, who were very much confused during the recent victories which put an end to the survival of the Denikin Army in the Caucasus, have engaged in surprise attacks against the Muslims in the areas of Ordubad, Nahjivan, and Vedibasar since March 19th. These Armenian attacks have been repelled in these three Muslim areas, determined to defend their rights and honour with much courage and sacrifice...The Muslims in the area of Vedibasar have defeated the enemy of superior strength who attempted to attack them without any reason, and took as war booty four machine guns and other weapons. Later, they followed the defeated Armenians up to the mountain 7-8 km to the east of the city of Revan,...The Muslim forces which demonstrated their determination as they stayed one night on this mountain and cut the barbed wire with daggers and knives, returned victorious to their area."

The Turkish-Armenian dispute: Who has something to hide?

MAXIME GAUIN

Published: October 14, 2014

In the context of the Perinçek v. Switzerland case, and of the forthcoming centennial of 1915, Turkey will be, once again, pressured to "face history." However, who can contest the fact that contemporary history should be written after free studies in the relevant archives? The Ottoman and Turkish archives (prior to 1938) have been open since 1989 and the ease of access greatly increased over the last 15 years. Supporters of the "Armenian genocide" have worked in the Ottoman archives since 1991, including Ara Sarafian, Hilmar Kaiser, Garabet Moumdjian and Taner Akçam.

On the other hand, the only scholar who does not endorse the Armenian nationalist narrative and who tried to work in the National Archives of Armenia, Yektan Türkyılmaz, was arrested without reason and eventually expelled. About 10 years ago, Stefano Trinchese, a professor of history at Chieti University in Italy wrote a letter to the archives of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) in Watertown, a suburb of Boston in the U.S. His demand of access to documents was left unanswered. Nothing has changed until now. In August, I was in the U.S. to work in various archives. I had sent an email to the head of the ARF Archives Institute about three weeks before my arrival in Boston – he did not answer. I re-sent the email, without any success. I wrote twice to Dickran Kaligian, an Armenian-American historian affiliated with the ARF, but he did not answer. Eventually, I called, but nobody responded. This is hardly a surprise – if you consult the official web site of the ARF Archives iInstitute, you cannot find any information for researchers such as the time and days of opening. Regardless, this was not my first bad experience with Armenian archives. I tried twice to work in the Nubarian Library in Paris, which is not affiliated with the ARF, but the first time the curator said that he would be out of France when I would be here, and the second time he simply did not reply to my emails. Cumulated, all these facts are already illuminating on Armenian archives.

However, and even more strikingly, scholars who challenge the "Armenian genocide" label are not alone in facing a closed door to Armenian documents as Ara Sarafian noticed. The personal papers collected by the Zoryan Institute in the U.S. and the archives of the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem are open only to a very small number of "partisan" authors who can as a result, affirm whatever they want without taking the risk of being contested. In short, who can seriously pretend to defend "the truth" and hide his own archives?

The reasons for this closing of Armenian archives are not hard to find. Some will be provided here. Gradually, thanks to the work of historians like Michael Reynolds, who is not exactly a supporter of the Young Turks, it appears how Russian officers were concerned by the war crimes of Armenian volunteers as early as autumn 1914. Even less known, however, are the similar concerns of French officers from 1918 to 1920. In July 1920, a pogrom was perpetrated in Adana against the Muslim population who fled en masse. Colonel Édouard Brémond, who was a friend of the Armenian people all his life, ordered systematic hangings of Armenian criminals without trial to put end to the crisis. In addition, the Armenians and Assyrians who had slaughtered the whole population of a village close to Adana were put on trial. All were sentenced by the French military tribunal. Five of them were sentenced to death and four to life terms of hard labor. It took one month to curb the worst aspects of the Armenian violence and two more months to restore tranquility. After the return of calm and Muslims to Adana, Tommy Martin, head of the police of Adana, unequivocally concluded after a careful investigation that the riots in the summer of 1920 were planned and executed by Armenian nationalists, especially the Social Democratic Hunchakian Party, to practice ethnic cleansing and to reform Cilician Armenia. As a result, several Armenian leaders and agitators were expelled from Cilicia by the French administration. The Armenian Legion, established in 1916 by an agreement between the French government and Armenian nationalists, was disbanded in the summer of 1920 because of its recurrent "evil spirit" in the words of the French cabinet.

These events were not isolated. As observed by the French navy's intelligence service, there was a triple movement in the spring and summer of 1920: Greek offensives from the west, Armenian attacks from the south and other Armenian attacks in the Caucasus. This is corroborated by the fact that the expulsions and massacres of Azeris were led in the Caucasus by Archbishop Moushegh Seropian, who had previously been sentenced in absentia by the French martial court of Adana to 10 years of hard labor and 20 years in exile for conspiring for terrorism in April 1920. Correspondingly, the French high commissioner in Tbilisi, Damien de Martel, wrote that in June 1920 only 36,000 "Tatars" (Azeris) had been expelled from south of the Yerevan region and 4,000 others including women and children had been killed. Damien de Martel concluded, in diplomatic language: "It did not seem unnecessary to report these details, which show that this is not always 'the same ones who are massacred.' " Some politicians should remember, or rather learn, these remarks, which are indeed "not unnecessary."

They should be remembered even more since two of the main perpetrators of the ethnic cleansing against Azeris in the Caucasus were Drastamat Kanayan, also known as Dro, who was later an officer in the Nazi army and Garegin Nzhdeh, who collaborated with Axis powers and the Soviets. Armenian apologists try to trivialize the alliance between the Armenian Revolutionary Federation and the Third Reich as simply opportunistic. It was not. At a time around 1922 when Hitler was a completely obscure politician, the ARF was already obsessed by the idea of the "Aryan race." In the 1920s, the ARF tried to create an "Aryan confederation" in the name of "Aryan fraternity" with nationalist Kurds in the Xoybun organization and also with Iran – see the works of Jordi Tejel Gorgas on Kurdish nationalism from 1925 to 1946. About at the same time, in 1928, the ARF began its rapprochement with Fascist Italy, whose ideologues eventually acknowledged the proximity between Mussolini's fascism and the doctrine of the ARF. It went so far that the ARF proposed to recruit volunteers for the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1936 as well as ways to ease the effect of the economic sanctions dictated by the League of Nations. On this rapprochement read the illuminating publications of Beatrice Penati and G. Mamoulia. Obviously, for these Armenian nationalists, Hitler was the perfect combination of fascism and "Aryan fraternity." It must also be noted that several editorials published in official newspapers of the ARF in the 1930s, especially Hairenik and the U.S. Hairenik Weekly, expressed an extremely virulent anti-Semitism that was for decades not only verbal. For example, the Jewish community of Van was entirely annihilated by the Armenians of the Russian army during the World War I, as observed by the historian Justin McCarthy.

After the defeat of the Third Reich, Nzhdeh was arrested by the Soviets and died in prison in 1955. However, Dro escaped and eventually fled to the U.S. In 2007, the CIA released part of its documents on him in the archival series on Nazi and Japanese war criminals. I read and photographed this file in the National Archives at College Park, Virginia, discovering interesting facts. First of all, there were strong Soviet efforts to capture Dro. Marshal Georgy Zhukov, military governor of the Soviet Occupation Zone in Germany, asked his head to the Americans. So, how did he escape? The CIA documents show that Dro became, as early as 1945, an agent of the U.S. military intelligence service and that he worked for the CIA after it was established where he worked until his death in 1956. In spite of having been a perpetrator of ethnic cleansing, a Nazi war criminal – each time for ideological reasons – and a CIA agent – to save his life, this time – Dro and Nzhdeh are revered both in Armenia and by the Armenian diaspora. It is not difficult to imagine why the ARF does not want to open its archives on them. I do not think that most Turks are afraid of the truth. They simply want the whole truth honestly and scientifically examined.

* MA in History from Paris-Sorbonne University

Quotes about the Armenian General Dro

Source: 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." 

Source: Arye Gut, Jewish Journal, April 25, 2015:

"One should mention the remarks of acclaimed scholar Moses Bekker, who said that it was Rimma Varzhapetyan (the so-called head of the Jewish community in Armenia) who saw no wrong-doing with the textbook and mass media glorification of antisemetic activists, such as Dramastamat Kanaya --  the fascist general  “Dro.” During World War II, general Dro personally took part in the annihilation of thousands of Jews. In her works, Ms. Varzhapetyan states that the current leadership of Armenia needs this “fighter” for the freedom of Armenia, thus employing the image of an ardent anti-Semite and fascist as a symbol for justifying Armenian expansionism and cultivating hatred amongst the younger generation. One must ask if, despite being Jewish herself, Ms. Varzhapetyan is ready to justify the murderous acts of Nazi criminals only because they are Armenians?

History seems to have forgotten the cruelty of the 20,000-strong Armenian legion that participated in the Wehrmacht in the WW II. Nationalist Commander Dro led the Armenian legion to fulfill its mission: to persecute and annihilate Jews via death marches. In his book “Death Tango,” the late Azerbaijani historian Rovshan Mustafayev presented evidence of Armenian involvement in the genocide of Jews, particularly a report from Sonderkommando “Dromedar” about operations in Western Crimea. “From November 16 to December 15, 1941, some 17,645 Jews, 2,504 Karaims, 824 Gypsies and 212 partisans were executed. Simferopol, Eupatorium, Alushta, Karasubazar, Kerch, Feodosia and other regions of Western Crimea were cleaned of Jews,” Rovshan Mustafayev notes in his book. Austrian historian Erich Feigl wrote that in December, 1942, Dro visited Himmler. “Dro had a practice of killing without any compassion, and this strongly impressed Himmler.”

What causes great concern today are the many media and the cultural spaces of Russia and by extention Armenian that provide a channel to present fascists as national heroes, including Dro, as well as Garegin Nzhdeh, an Armenian hero and Nazi collaborationist. Said the Ambassador of the Republic of Armenia (published December 17, 2014), the “Outstanding hero of our people Garegin Nzhdeh believed that ‘the main law of life is a struggle as a method of self-perfection of personality, society and state. This struggle is manifested in the striving for progress of the country and nation.’”

Sadly, there are successors to General Dro and Garegin Nzhdeh: incumbent Armenian president Serzh Sargsyan and Minister Seyran Ohanyan. These men led a bloody massacre of civilians in the Azerbaijani town of Khojaly in the late 20th century."

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

p. 354.

"At morning tea, Dro and his officers spread out a map of this whole high region called the Karabakh. Deep in tactics, they spoke Russian, but I got their contempt for Allied 'neutral' zones and their distrust of promises made by tribal chiefs. A campaign shaped; more raids on Moslem villages."

p. 358.

"It will be three hours to take," Dro told me. We'd close in on three sides.
"The men on foot will not shoot, but use only the bayonets," Merrimanov said, jabbing a rifle in dumbshow.
"That is for morale," Dro put in. "We must keep the Moslems in terror that our cruelty beats theirs."
"Soldiers or civilians?" I asked.
"There is no difference," said Dro. "All are armed, in uniform or not."
"But the women and children?"
"Will fly with the others as best they may."

pp. 360-361.

"The ridges circled a wide expanse, its floors still. Hundreds of feet down, the fog held, solid as cotton flock. 'Djul lies under that,' said Dro, pointing. 'Our men also attack from the other sides.'

Then, 'Whee-ee!' - his whistle lined up all at the rock edge. Bayonets clicked upon carbines. Over plunged Archo, his black haunches rippling; then followed the staff, the horde - nose to tail, bellies taking the spur. Armenia in action seemed more like a pageant than war, even though I heard our Utica brass roar.

As I watched from the height, it took ages for Djul to show clear. A tsing of machine-gun fire took over from the thumping batteries; cattle lowed, dogs barked, invisible, while I ate a hunk of cheese and drank from a snow puddle. Mist at last folded upward as men shouted, at first heard faintly. Then came a shrill wailing.

Now among the cloud-streaks rose darker wisps - smoke. Red glimmered about house walls of stone or wattle, into dry weeds on roofs. A mosque stood in clump of trees, thick and green. Through crooked alleys on fire, horsemen were galloping after figures both mounted and on foot.

'Tartarski!' shouted the gunner by me. Others pantomimed them in escape over the rocks, while one twisted a bronze shell-nose, loaded, and yanked breech-cord, firing again and again. Shots wasted, I thought, when by afternoon I looked in vain for fallen branch or body. But these shots and the white bursts of shrapnel in the gullies drowned the women's cries.

At length all shooting petered out. I got on my horse and rode down toward Djul. It burned still but little flame showed now. The way was steep and tough, through dense scrub. Finally on flatter ground I came out suddenly, through alders, on smoldering houses. Across trampled wheat my brothers-in-arms were leading off animals, several calves and a lamb."

"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."


p. 361 (seventh paragraph) and p. 362 (first paragraph).

'The most are inside houses. Come you and look.'

'No, dammit! My stomach isn't-'
'One is a Turkish officer in uniform. Him you must see.'
"We were under those trees by the mosque, in an open space....
'I don't believe you," I said, but followed to a nail-studded door. The man pushed it ajar, then spurred away, leaving me to check on the corpse. I thought I should, this charge was so constant, so gritted my teeth and went inside.

The place was cool but reeked of sodden ashes, and was dark at first, for its stone walls had only window slits. Rags strewed the mud floor around an iron tripod over embers that vented their smoke through roof beams black with soot. All looked bare and empty, but in an inner room flies buzzed. As the door swung shut behind me I saw they came from a man's body lying face up, naked but for its grimy turban. He was about fifty years old by what was left of his face - a rifle butt had bashed an eye. The one left slanted, as with Tartars rather than with Turks. Any uniform once on him was gone, so I'd no proof which he was, and quickly went out, gagging at the mess of his slashed genitals."

p. 363 (first paragraph).

'How many people lived there?'
'Oh, about eight hundred.' He yawned.
'Did you see any Turk officers?'
'No, sir. I was in at dawn. All were Tartar civilians in mufti.'

"The lieutenant dozed off, then I, but in the small hours a voice woke me - Dro's. He stood in the starlight bawling out an officer. Anyone keelhauled so long and furiously I'd never heard. Then abruptly Dro broke into laughter, quick and simple as child's. Both were a cover for his sense of guilt, I thought, or hoped. For somehow, despite my boast of irreligion, Christian massacring 'infidels' was more horrible than the reverse would have been.

From daybreak on, Armenian villagers poured in from miles around..... The women plundered happily, chattering like ravens as they picked over the carcass of Djul. They hauled out every hovel's chattels, the last scrap of food or cloth, and staggered away, packing pots, saddlebags, looms, even spinning-wheels.

'Thank you for a lot, Dro,' I said to him back in camp. 'But now I must leave.' ... We shook hands, the captain said 'A bientot, mon camarade.' And for hours the old Molokan scout and I plodded north across parching plains. Like Lot's wife I looked back once to see smoke bathing all, doubtless in a sack of other Moslem villages up to the line of snow that was Iran.'"

Source: "From Sardarapat to Sevres and Lausanne" by Avetis Aharonian. The Armenian Review, Vol. 16, No. 3-63, Autumn, Sep. 1963, pp. 47-57.

p. 52 (second paragraph).

"Your three chiefs, Dro, Hamazasp and Kulkhandanian are the ringleaders of the bands which have destroyed Tartar villages and have staged massacres in Zangezour, Surmali, Etchmiadzin, and Zangibasar. This is intolerable. Look - and here he pointed to a file of official documents on the table - look at this, here in December are the reports of the last few months concerning ruined Tartar villages which my representative Wardrop has sent me. The official Tartar communique speaks of the destruction of 300 villages."

p. 54 (fifth paragraph).

"Yes, of course. I repeat, until this massacre of the Tartars is stopped and the three chiefs are not removed from your military leadership I hardly think we can supply you arms and ammunition."

"...it is the armed bands led by Dro, Hamazasp and Kulkhandanian who during the past months have raided and destroyed many Tartar villages in the regions of Surmali, Etchmiadzin, Zangezour, and Zangibasar. There are official charges of massacres."