April 25, 2005
The Tufts Daily
U.S. Diplomat’s account of Armenian Genocide easily forgotten
by Harout Semerdjian
Some of the worst crimes in history have taken place under the guise
of war. During the Second World War, much of the Jewish population of
Europe fell victim to Nazi genocide. Several decades preceding the
Holocaust, as World War I was unfolding, another genocide was taking
place that effectively removed an entire population from their
historical homeland of three millennia. Now, Turkey needs to
acknowledge the Armenian genocide in order to gain better world
standing.
Leslie A. Davis, the U.S. Consul posted to the remote town of Harput,
Turkey in 1915, wrote in a diplomatic dispatch dated July 24 of that
year, “I do not believe there has ever been a massacre in the history
of the world so general and thorough as that which is now being
perpetrated in this region.”
Consul Davis was referring to the Armenians, a vulnerable minority
population in the collapsing Turkish Ottoman Empire. When in 1944,
Holocaust survivor Dr. Raphael Lemkin coined the word genocide, he
clearly cited the Turkish massacre of Armenians as a prime example of
such a crime. Except for the first post-WWI Turkish government under
Damad Ferid Pasha, successive leaders of Turkey, the legal heir to the
Ottoman Empire, have vehemently denied the veracity of the
genocide. Among other reasons, this stance can be attributed to the
probability of legal consequences that may include reparations and
territorial concessions in its eastern provinces that the Armenians
inhabited prior to their annihilation and deportation.
With global developments after WWI and with Cold War political
affairs, Turkey’s importance to the West became crucial in light of
Soviet ideological and expansionist policies. As a result, consecutive
U.S. governments have been careful not to label the 1915 killings as
genocide in accordance with their strategic interests in Turkey.
Ironically, American diplomats and missionaries posted in Turkey in
those years like Davis were among the most vocal decriers of the
Armenian massacres. While the word “genocide” was not in existence at
that time, American Ambassador Henry Morgenthau labeled the events
“murder of a nation,” and Consul Davis called it a “general massacre”
upon personally visiting massacre grounds.
In one of his diplomatic dispatches, Davis declared: “the plan was to
destroy the Armenian race as a race, but the methods used have been
more cold-blooded and barbarous, if not more effective, than I had
first supposed.”
While the political war over terminology ensues, the extent and
suffering of the Armenians in 1915 remains clouded by political
posturing. Yet for those who seek it, the evidence speaks for
itself. Out of somewhere between 1.5 and 2 million Armenians living in
Ottoman Turkey prior to 1915, virtually none remained in the
countryside by the time the Republic of Turkey was founded in 1923.
The plan to deport and massacre the Armenians was highly systematic
and organized: all Armenian intellectuals were rounded up and
executed, as were all able-bodied Armenian men, including those in the
Ottoman army. This was followed by a well-organized and executed plan
to remove the remainder of the Armenian population – the women,
children and elderly – village by village, town by town, by marching
them off into the deserts. In some regions such as Bitlis and Mush,
deportation was not an option. Armenians were outright massacred or
burned alive in their villages, while others were drowned en masse in
the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and in the Black Sea.
Upon visiting Lake Golcuk (modern Lake Hazar) and witnessing the
thousands of massacred Armenians along its shores, Davis labeled this
part of Turkey “the Slaughterhouse Province.” He wrote, “The order
[to] officially and nominally exile the Armenians from these Vilayets
[Provinces] may mislead the outside world for a time, but the measure
is nothing but a massacre of the most atrocious nature. The shooting
and killing of people a few hours after their departure from here is
barbarous and shows that the real intention of the government is not
to exile them but to kill them.”
It is reprehensible to dismiss such powerful evidence of the Armenian
Genocide put forth by our own American diplomats, including Consul
Leslie Davis. Today the Cold War era is over and new global
developments have changed the world order. France, Belgium and
Switzerland became firsts to recognize the Armenian Genocide as a
result of a revision of their Cold War strategies.
Recognition by the U.S. government will pave the way for Turkey’s
eventual admittance of this great crime, which will help bring about
lasting peace and security in the Caucasus. It is important that the
Republic of Turkey take serious and bold measures to come to terms
with its Ottoman past concerning the immense human and material loss
of its Armenian population during the final years of the empire.
Such a step would embolden Turkey’s EU efforts and place the country
one step closer to the European family of nations as well as to the
modern values they uphold. The country will hence set a serious
foundation for reconciliation, peace and cooperation with its Armenian
neighbor and with the Armenian diaspora, a product and permanent
reminder of the Armenian Genocide.
Harout Semerdjian is a MALD Candidate at the Fletcher School of Law &
Diplomacy.