REFUTATION OF THE ARMENIAN RESOLUTION, ARTICLE BY ARTICLE-4
By Prof. Dr. Kemal CÝcek*
Today’s Zaman, Turkey
March 30 2007
(Article 13) Senate Resolution 359, dated May 11, 1920, stated in part,
"the testimony adduced at the hearings conducted by the sub-committee
of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations have clearly established
the truth of the reported massacres and other atrocities from which
the Armenian people have suffered."
Unfortunately, then as now, US politicians relied strictly on deceptive
Armenian propaganda and close their eyes to the other side of the
story in order not to alienate Armenian voters.
As a matter of fact there was a civil war in Anatolia and both sides
were involved in massacres, but historical documentation proves that
Armenians killed 500,000 Turks and Muslims in Anatolia between 1914
and 1920. During his term in Turkey as high commissioner, Admiral
Mark L. Bristol wrote on March 12, 1926, about the Armenian massacres
in the East, saying that "the extent of the excesses committed will
never be known."
He also noted this: "I have received reports from Americans who were
there at the time to the effect that the Christians cleared out the
Moslem population completely so that ‘there was not a living thing,
even a dog, a cat or a chicken left in the country.’
"Russians also reported that the Armenians had killed most of the
Muslims in the districts of Erzurum." (NARA 767.90g15).
Unfortunately, little scholarly attention has been paid to the
atrocities committed by the Armenians.
(Article 14) The resolution followed the April 13, 1920 report to the
Senate of the American Military Mission to Armenia led by General James
Harbord, that stated "[m]utilation, violation, torture, and death have
left their haunting memories in a hundred beautiful Armenian valleys,
and the traveler in that region is seldom free from the evidence of
this most colossal crime of all the ages."
Although Gen. Harbord was a pro-Armenian person, he listened to
Muslim villagers about the massacres perpetuated by the Armenian
bandit Andranik and changed the tone of his report. As a matter of
fact, in spite of all Armenian propaganda, Harbord argued that the
US must not overtake the mandate of Armenia without the whole of
Anatolia — Rumelia, Istanbul and Caucasia included — since Armenia
alone could not survive without a large amount of money and military
presence. This report seems to have played an important role in
changing the attitude of the congressmen to the creation of Armenia
under the American mandate.
(Article 15) As displayed in the United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum, Adolf Hitler, on ordering his military commanders to
attack Poland without provocation in 1939, dismissed objections by
saying "[who], after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the
Armenians?" and thus set the stage for the Holocaust.
To refer Adolf Hitler in the resolution (Article 15) is very
deceptive. Armenian historian Dr. Robert John, American historian
Heath Lowry and Turkish historian Turkkaya Ataov have proved that this
quote is false. That quote was not found in any speech delivered by
Hitler or filed in the documents of Nuremberg. The court had filed
two versions of Hitler’s speech to army commanders in August 22,
1939, from the German military records. These have the numbers of
US-29/786 PS and US-30/1014 PS and none of these files have this quote.
(Article 16) Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term "genocide" in 1944,
and who was the earliest proponent of the United Nations Convention
on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, invoked the Armenian
case as a definitive example of genocide in the 20th century.
When Rafael Lemkin defined the crime of genocide he might have used
this expression, but that does not prove anything. First of all,
Lemkin was not a historian and surely he read only the Armenian
version of the story. Since then, many valuable contributions have
been made about the details of the relocation of the Armenians, most
of which demonstrates that the relocation and settlements were not
in line with the definition of the term genocide.
(Article 17) The first resolution on genocide adopted by the United
Nations at Lemkin’s urging, the Dec. 11, 1946 United Nations General
Assembly Resolution 96(1) and the Untied Nations Convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of Genocide itself recognized the Armenian
Genocide as the type of crime the United Nations intended to prevent
and punish by codifying existing standards.
This is another false claim. The UN never recognized "the Armenian
Genocide." On the contrary, a sub-committee, which gathered in
1985, refused to receive the report of Mr. Whitaker in the light of
evidence against the genocide convention and that only "took note"
of the report.
(Article 18) In 1948, the United Nations War Crimes Commission
invoked the Armenian Genocide "precisely . . . one of the types of
acts which the modern term ‘crimes against humanity’ is intended to
cover" as a precedent for the Nuremberg tribunals.
This article of the resolution is based on wrong conception. First
of all, it should be stated that the suspects in the Nuremberg courts
were punished for crimes against humanity. In fact, the adverse of it
is not possible because the genocide convention was accepted in 1951.
(Article 19) The Commission stated that "[t]he provisions of Article
230 of the Peace Treaty of Sevres were obviously intended to cover,
in conformity with the Allied note of 1915 ….offenses that had been
committed on Turkish territory against persons of Turkish citizenship,
though of Armenian or Greek race. This article constitutes therefore a
precedent for Article 6c and 5c of the Nuremberg and Tokyo Charters,
and offers an example of one of the categories of ‘crimes against
humanity’ as understood by these enactments."
As explained in the previous article, Nuremberg courts were established
by the Allied states to punish the defeated governments for the crimes
committed in World War II. The lawsuits of those courts were not
"genocide lawsuits." Therefore, 6c and 5c articles of Tokyo agreement
can never be an example for the Armenian thesis.
(Article 20) House Joint Resolution 148, adopted on April 8, 1975,
resolved: "[t]hat April 24, 1975, is hereby designated as the ‘National
Day of Remembrance of Man’s Inhumanity to Man,’ and the President of
the United States is authorized and requested to issue a proclamation
calling upon the people of the United States to observe such day as a
day of remembrance for all the victims of genocide, especially those
of Armenian ancestry."
Unfortunately, as a result of that decision taken under the influence
of the Armenian propaganda, US presidents discriminate against
the victims of World War I by race and religion, and only speak
for Armenian losses on the Remembrance Day. It is not a civilized
attitude and I believe that one should not use the victims of the
wars for their political causes.
TO BE CONTINUED *Head of Black Sea Technical University, Faculty of
Arts & Sciences; Turkish Historical Association, Armenian Desk
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