REFUTATION OF THE ARMENIAN RESOLUTION ARTICLE BY ARTICLE-2
By Prof. Dr. Kemal CÝcek*
Today’s Zaman, Turkey
March 28 2007
(Article 4) The post-World War I Turkish Government indicted the top
leaders involved in the "organization and execution" of the Armenian
Genocide and in the "massacre and destruction of the Armenians."
Last year, Turkish-Americans staged demonstrations in front of the
United Nations to protest the French bill that banned denying the
so-called Armenian genocide.
The third article of the resolution asserts that the Ottoman Empire
tried those responsible for massacres and thereby implicitly accepted
criminal responsibility during the court-martials. Justin McCarthy,
a leading American expert on the Ottoman history, describes those
courts as "kangaroo courts" and recalls that they were established by
a corrupt administration which was eager for retribution. The British
High Commissioner S.A.G. Calthorphe wrote to London on Aug. 1, 1919,
that the "trials were proving to be a farce and injurious to our own
prestige and to that of the Turkish government" (FO 371/4174/118377).
According to Dr. Ferudun Ata, the author of a book titled "Deportation
Courts in Occupied Ýstanbul," the Ottoman government of the time had
established the court-martials to better its conditions in the Paris
Peace Conference and also to take revenge against the regime of the
"Young Turks."
The interrogations in the courts-martial were not duly conducted,
many witnesses were faked and only testified against the defendants.
For example, a certain Artolos, a shoemaker, who testified against
Maj. Tevfik during the trials in Yozgat, was brought to Ýstanbul and
was paid to speak against the defendant. According to Dr. Ata, he
later appeared before the court in another trial as a Muslim convert.
Dr. Ata’s book reveals many false witnesses like this. Those who spoke
in favor of the suspects were not brought to court. The chairmen of
the courts never charged those false witnesses, although they were
sometimes revealed in court. Dr. Ata also found that some false
witnesses, before bearing testimony at the court, had been trained
and instructed in the "Armenian-Greek Branch" established at the
offices of the British High Commissioner. What is most important
to note about the decisions of these courts is that the Court of
Appeal declared the verdicts null and void. Unfortunately, among
such cases was the verdict of Nusret Bey, who had been executed upon
his death sentence. Such facts about the nature of the post war
courts-martial become more meaningful when we read that the then
US high commissioner, Lewis Heck, reported on April 4, 1919 that
"many here regard executions as necessary concessions to Entente
rather than as punishment justly meted out to criminals," and that
"it is popularly believed that many of them are made from motives of
personal vengeance or at the instigation of the Entente authorities,
especially the British." (NARA 867.00/868; M 353, roll 7, fr. 448).
Lastly we should remember that England also arrested 144 outstanding
politicians of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) for crimes
against Armenians and took them to Malta for trial, but later released
all of the detainees without charge.
(Article 5) In a series of courts-martial, officials of the Young
Turks regime were tried and convicted, as charged, for organizing
and executing massacres against the Armenian people.
Besides the findings of Dr. Feridun Ata, historians like Justin
McCarthy and Gunter Lewy stated that post war courts-martial were a
travesty of justice, the findings of these courts were unreliable,
interrogations were not legal, the right of defense for the arrested
was denied and the presiding officer, when questioning the defendants,
often acted more like a prosecutor than like an impartial judge. As
Lewy stated, "The legal procedures of Ottoman military courts,
including those operating in 1919-20, suffered from serious
shortcomings when compared to Western standards of due process of
law." The court did not listen to any testimony during judgment and
the decisions were made by relying solely on false witnesses without
considering the answers of the defense.
(Article 6) The chief organizers of the Armenian Genocide, Minister
of War Enver, Minister of the Interior Talaat and Minister of the
Navy Jemal were all condemned to death for their crimes; however,
the verdicts of the courts were not enforced.
The courts-martial operating in the occupied Istanbul tried Enver,
Talat and Cemal and convicted them to capital punishment in absentia.
Yet, they were not found guilty of "organizing and performing massacres
against Armenians," as stated in the resolution, but they were found
guilty of political crimes for dragging the country into a terrible
war. The fact that the verdicts of the courts were not enforced has
nothing to do with ignorance or being indifferent to the suffering of
Armenians, but that the guilty parties had fled the country after the
war. Anyhow, the untold verity about these people is that they were
assassinated by a secret Armenian organization called "Nemesis" in the
countries where they sought refuge. Sadly, the Nemesis organization
also killed some statesmen like Sait Halim Pasha, Bahaeddin Takir and
Cemal Azmi without judgment although the courts found them innocent.
(Article 7) The Armenian Genocide and these domestic judicial failures
are documented with overwhelming evidence in the national archives of
Austria, France, Germany, Great Britain, Russia, the United States,
the Vatican and many other countries, and this vast body of evidence
attests to the same facts, the same events, and the same consequences.
This is also untrue. I have personally dug out the documents preserved
at the US National Archives and Research Foundation and found no
concrete evidence in the documents that can be qualified for use in
court. The documents in the archive contain reports by the consul
and the testimony of the missionaries who were biased toward the
Muslims and the Turks and reported information that they had not
witnessed, but rather heard through secondary sources. It can safely
be claimed that an overwhelming amount of these documents and reports
are based on hearsay. There are also large amount of documents, or
rather statements, from the Patriarchate and Taþnaksutyun political
propaganda offices. As a matter of fact, documents and reports from
the United States consuls had been examined by the officials "for
any mention of forty-five Malta detainees accused of outrages against
Armenians and other Christians" and found no information that could
"be employed in a court of law." Thus, one cannot help thinking that
this might be the reason why the proposal of the Turkish government
to set up an international committee of historians have so far been
refused by the Republic of Armenia.
TO BE CONTINUED
*Head of Black Sea Technical University, Faculty of Arts & Sciences;
Turkish Historical Association, Armenian Desk
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