When one is interested in the events of 1915 – and those leading up to them – which are called the “Armenian Genocide” by some, there are a couple of must read books that deny the thesis that what happened constitutes genocide. Most of these books are written by historians.“The Ottoman Peoples and the End of Empire” by Professor Justin is an example of such a must read book for those who study this subject (either professionally or as an extra, out of interest), “The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey” by Prof. Guenter Lewy is another one.
Now, I have found yet another book that all those interested in this subject – even those who support the genocide thesis – should have in their possession: “The Genocide of Truth” by Sükrü Server Aya, published by the Istanbul Commerce University.
That this is a must read and must have book about this rather complicated subject, like the other books mentioned above, does not mean that you can compare this book in most other ways to those other, high quality works. First of all, Aya is not a historian, nor does he pretend to be one. He is a Turk who got interested in this subject and the Armenian allegations, who decided to study it himself as to find out what happened (whether they are right or not) and who, after many years of extensive research, came to the conclusion that there is no such thing as an ‘Armenian Genocide’ and that most Armenian activists purposefully deceive the public by lying about what truly happened almost 100 years ago.
Another major difference is that the other books, especially the one by Prof. McCarthy, almost read like a novel. They are meant to entertain and inform at the same time; they are clearly written by men who are used to write a lot and who are used to explaining historic events to a big, perhaps uninformed but interested public. Their books are written in a way that appeals to a big public. They cover a complicated subject in such a way that the reader can read the book in one day nonetheless and be informed. Of course it has to be pointed out that Anglo-Saxon intellectuals are famous for this style; academics of most other countries have a more boring writing style.
That is, however, not the case with Aya. His style is not boring, but it does not read like a novel either; that is mostly due to the fact that this book is not meant as an introductory or entertaining work. Rather, “The Genocide of Truth” is meant as a big collection of a wide variety of sources, much like an encyclopedia (it has 702 pages for instance). It is meant to explain the issue based on many (also foreign) documents and to show the reader that the no-genocide thesis is based on not just one or two important documents, but on thousands, perhaps even tens of thousands. It is not meant as a novel; the idea of Aya is that the reader can pick up the book whenever he wants to, and can start reading wherever he wants to. You can first read chapter one, and then chapter seven, next you can go back to chapter two and you will not be confused.
This is due to the lay-out of the book. Aya has divided the issue of the ‘genocide’ into several sub-issues. He starts off, for instance, by taking a look at the historical background of the ‘genocide,’ the division of the Ottoman Empire into ‘Millets’ (religious groups) and, then, he takes a look at the situation before, say, 1890; the Armenians and Ottomans had, Aya shows by using a wide variety of documents, a great relationship for hundreds of years. They were rightfully called the “loyal” people by the Ottoman rulers. The Armenians were Christians, yes, but they were loyal, and treated well. They were well off, and had political power, especially after the Ottomans started reforming their country.
Next, Aya takes a look at the missionaries who were active in the Ottoman Empire. This chapter, the fifth, is one of the best in the entire book. The sources Aya relies on are extensive – it’s hard to imagine that he missed any sources and documents that deal with the role (especially) American missionaries played in spreading a feeling of Christian superiority among the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire and of nationalism (as in glorification of the own ‘nation’ – people). Furthermore, what makes this chapter so valuable – in the opinion of someone who has read a lot of books on this subject and who plans to read even more in the coming weeks, months and years – is that he explores a subject, or sub-subject actually, that has been ignored or not researched enough by authors of most other books on the events leading up to 1915. Yes, they often point out that missionaries played a vital role in transforming the ‘loyal millet’ into the ‘rebellious millet,’ but they mostly do so in one or two paragraphs. Aya does not; he takes the time to explain the situation and to explain the role these missionaries played; he actually spends 32 pages to it.
This chapter alone makes “The Genocide of Truth” a must read.
At the very start of the chapter Aya explains to the reader why it is so important to take a look at the missionaries, at how trustworthy they were, at the role they played, etc.: “nearly all information concerning alleged cruelties was reported by the missionaries to the American Board or Relief organizations and the US, British and other embassies.” Much information that was used in the West to stir up an anti-Turkish sentiment, a sentiment that is still alive and well, was provided by these missionaries who were more than Christians trying to convert people; they were also political animals, as Aya explains, who tried to help Christian peoples by turning them from subjects into rulers; even when they were the minority (as they were just about everywhere in the Empire at that time).
The above is not made up by some Turkish people who try to defend their country against allegations of a brutal crime. Aya can back his case up by using many documents. He quotes them at length, so that the reader cannot but come to the conclusion that, indeed, missionaries in the Ottoman Empire may not have been as peaceful and innocent as most Christians and Westerners would like to believe.
Aya quotes, for instance, from Salahi Sonyel’s work “The Great War & The Great Tragedy of Anatolia.” This work summarizes the role of the missionaries perfectly: “Christian minorities played an important role in efforts to dismember the Ottoman Empire. Their aims and ambitions, if fully realized, would involved the dissolution and disappearance of the Empire, to be replaced by puppet Christian states subservient to their patrons, the major Powers.”
There were reasons why missionaries and Christians in general wanted to destroy the Ottoman Empire. “While on a missionary trip to the Choctaw Indians, North American missionary William Goodell came up with the idea of re-conquering the Holay Land for Christianity. At that time, the Holy Land was entirely under Ottoman rule. This new Crusade – for that is exactly how the undertaking was seen – began with a series of reconnaissance tours, planned in an almost military fashion. The American missionaries spared no personal sacrifice the course of these tours,” Aya quotes from Erich Feigl’s “A Myth of Terror.”
One of those merry Westerners, the author explains, was Lord Bryce. If one wants to know what kind of person Bryce was, one merely has to take a look at “Britain & The Armenian Question 1915-23” by Akaby Nassibian. Aya quotes: “Bryce stressed that many Armenians had entered the civil or military service in Russia and some had risen to posts of dignity. He quoted the example of Loris Melikov, the commander of the invading Russian army in Asia in 1877… Bryce believed that the Turkish government ‘deserves to die’.”
Slowly but surely, American missionary schools were transformed into centers for rebellion and anti-Ottoman and anti-Moslem sentiment. The Ottomans knew that the missionaries and Christian churches were used to spread a message of rebellion and war, but there was not much they could do about it; it had agreed with Western powers that Christian missionaries could not be prosecuted for any crimes. As Aya explains, these missionaries used their invulnerability to the fullest.
Take a look, for instance, at this: “First the Catholic missionaries, then the Protestants had begun a campaign of indoctrination among the Gregorians which created many problems. … The Catholics in Turkey were protected by France and Austria; the Protestants mainly by Britain and the US, and the Orthodox by Russia. All these Powers aimed at increasing their influence in the Ottoman Empire, ostensibly in order to protect their protégés, but actually in order to promote their own interests. The Armenians were thus divided by the agents of the major Powers for their ulterior motives. Russia was using the Gregorian Armenians to descend to the warm waters of the Mediterranean and cut off the British route to India; hence it was pressing the Catholicos of Etchmiadzin to stop the progress of the ‘heresy’ of reforms and to clear the empire of it; Britain was using the Protestant and Gregorian Armenians to preserve its lifeline to India by containing Russia restricting French influence; and France was making use of the Catholic.”
Unlike what the reader may think, Aya does not just use sources that agree with him; in fact, Aya quotes from many works written by Westerners who defend the Armenians and the genocide thesis. What he accomplishes by this is that one quickly realizes just how incredibly biased the Western, Christian world was back then, and how biased it probably still is. Turkish Moslem suffering is ignored, Armenian suffering is exaggerated. Armenian Christians have rights, Turkish Moslems do not. Armenian Christian lives matter, Turkish Moslem lives do not.
After these initial ‘leading up to’ chapters, Aya skips to the changes in the Ottoman Empire, and the increasing tensions between Armenians and Turks. Aya shows, again by using a variety of sources, most of which either objective of pro-Armenian, that Armenians started rebelling against the Moslem rulers and killing Moslems on a grand scale behind the frontlines. Furthermore, the author shows also by using Armenian sources, Armenians joined the allies, and especially the Russians. They crossed the border and started fighting for the Russians. When the troops entered Ottoman soil, the Armenian soldiers started wiping out the local Moslem population. Officers of the Great Powers reported about the atrocities committed by Armenians, this is also before the Ottoman government gave the order to relocate the Armenians of Eastern Anatolia, and complained about them. Many of them were disgusted with the conduct of the Armenians who hated the Moslem Turks with such a passion, that not even one of them was safe.
They also, Aya shows, started rebelling on a massive scale behind the lines. They took over entire cities and villages, all in an attempt to occupy the Ottoman soldiers; the more soldiers had to fight against the Armenians at home, the less of them could fight against the Russians in an attempt to stop them from progressing and conquering Anatolia. These Armenian terrorists, because that is what they were, were supported financially, spiritually and materially by the Great Powers who supported the Christian minorities who fought against the majority of Moslems.
“Ammunition was scarce,” Aya quotes from “The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey” by Guenter Lewy, “but Prof. Menassian Effendi, Head of the National School and graduate of Yale’s Sheffield School of Science, cleverly transformed such chemicals as were at hand and manufactured smokeless and black powder, while mechanics turned brass cartridge shells. The Armenian laboratories were soon issuing 2000 cartridges daily, besides hand grenades… Women and children carried ammunition and food and water… After a three-hour fight, the Turks retreated, leaving 35 dead on the field.”
“Art. 6 of the program of the Hunchak Party stated: ‘The time for the general revolution (Armenia) will be when a foreign power attacks Turkey externally. The party shall revolts internally.’ In due time this program of course became known to the Turkish Government and during World War I, the Young Turks used the clause to justify the deportation of the Armenians… In order to achieve these aims ‘by means of the revolution,’ revolutionary bands were ‘to arm the people,’ wage ‘an incessant fight against the [Turkish] Government’ and ‘wreck and loot government institutions.’”
Armenians often talk about how the Turks started fighting against them in the 1890s, resulting in massive Armenian deaths, but they often forget to mention the inconvenient truth that the Armenians themselves started fighting before the Turks did anything; the Turks, as Aya shows, defended themselves. They were not aggressors, they were defenders. Case in point: “For example, the 1894 troubles in Sassun were preceded by Armenian attacks on the Bekhran and Zadian tribes, which resulted in armed battles between the Armenian revolutionaries and Kurdish tribesmen.”
“For example,” Aya goes on to quote, “an eloquent defender of the revolution explained to Cyrus Hamlin, the founder of Robert College in Constantinople, how Hunchak bands would use European sympathy for Armenian suffering to bring about European intervention. They would ‘watch their opportunity to kill Turks and Kurds, set fire to their villages, and then make their escape into the mountains. The enraged Moslems will then rise, and fail upon the defenseless Armenians and slaughter them with such barbarity that Russia will enter in the name of humanity and Christian civilization and take possession.’ When the horrified missionary denounced this scheme as immoral, he was told: ‘It appears so to you, no doubt; but we Armenians have determined to be free. Europe listened to the Bulgarian horrors and made Bulgaria free. She will listen to our cry when it goes up in shrieks and blood of millions of women and children’.”
The author also quotes Western newspapers from the time; the New York Times reported back then, for instance, that “a massacre at Zeitoun” had taken place during which Armenian “insurgents killed all Turkish soldiers in town except two.” Later, in 1909, which is six years before the Ottoman government ordered the deportation or relocation of Armenians, it was reported that “the leader of the Armenian community of Adana, Archbishop Museg, had urged his people to acquire arms.”
What Aya shows in this particular chapter is that, when we talk about the events of 1915, we also have to talk about the events leading up to the relocations. This chapter documents a side of the story that has been ignored in the West for more than 90 years, even though there are documents enough that proof that Armenians committed horrendous atrocities against (innocent) Moslem Turks, all in an attempt to cleanse the lands from them so that they, the Armenians, could have a nation-state of their own.
Next, Aya spends time to the relocations. Nowadays, Armenians claim that nearly 1.5 million of their ancestors died during these relocations and, they say, that happened because the ‘relocations’ were an attempt to wipe out the Armenian population of Anatolia. As Aya shows, there is however a minor problem with the aforementioned; firstly, it is quite unlikely that 1.5 million Armenians died, simply because the population statistics of the Ottomans shows that there were only between 1.5 and 2 million Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire at that time. As other documents show, many of them, more than half, survived the war and settled in the newly founded Armenia or other (especially Western) countries. If 1.3 million Armenians survived and settled in those countries, it is literally impossible to say that 1.5 others died. Either they were modern-day Jesus Christs – who rose up after being killed and then migrated –, that the Ottoman population statistics were way off, or Armenian activists are using false numbers. Aya proves, that the latter is most likely the case, also because the Ottomans taxes Christians more than Moslems; less Christians meant less money.
Those are not the only lies and distortions used by Armenians. Aya has documented many others. One of them: the so-called Andonian documents. This letter was used by Armenians to back up their case that the Ottoman government planned to wipe out their Armenian subjects. Sadly for them, however, the documents are forgeries; obviously made by Armenian nationalists themselves. The British and other allies have always refused to use these documents in court, simply because they were not reliable; not even almost. As Aya shows, however, that did not prevent Armenians and their Western allies from using these documents as ‘proof’ in the public debate. After all, the public does not take a long and careful look at what is presented as ‘evidence.’ If you tell a story and say that the document you hold in your hand is written by Ottoman officials, most people will simply assume it to be true.
It is despicable but, as Aya shows in the 17th chapter “Proven Forgery to Distort History,” done for decades nonetheless. Another such documents is the Blue Book by Arnold Toynbee. Toynbee was a historian, and generally considered to be a very good one at that, so Armenians use this book to back up their claims. The only problem, and this is something they never mention, is that Toynbee did not write this document as a ‘historical academic work,’ but as propaganda designed to convince Westerners that the Great Powers had to fight against the Moslem Turks and ‘liberate’ their Christian fellow citizens. Aya shows that this document too, is unreliable.
And there are many more forgeries and unreliable documents used by Armenians and their allies which Aya debunks by using a great many sources. The famous Hitler quote for instance (“Only thus shall we gain the living space [lebensraum] which we need. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”), is shown by Aya to be a forgery, a fake. Hitler never said it; one ‘witness’ said Hitler had said it, but the allied did not include this in their evidence, simply because it was not credible. Hitler allegedly said it during a speech, but all the other transcripts, etc. of the speech do not mention this sentence. Why then has it been included? Because Armenians and their allies have always tried to use everything, everything that ever happened, to their own advantage to further their cause. It is a fake quote, everyone with the least of knowledge about this subject knows it, but Armenian nationalists still lie about it and try to convince Westerners to recognize their ‘genocide’ by using it as ‘evidence.’ As Aya shows, this is part of their propaganda campaign against modern day Turkey.
After that, Aya takes a look at the role epidemics played in the ‘destruction of the Ottoman Armenians,’ and he takes a look at what important Armenian leaders had to say about the First World War, the events of 1915, etc. As Aya shows, these individuals knew better than to blame the Ottomans; they blamed themselves for the misery that had fallen upon their fellow Armenians. They thought they could beat the Turkish Moslems, but they lost. They thought they could kill innocent Moslem lives and get away with it because the West would do whatever necessary to protect them, but the Turks were stronger than most expected and not quite willing to give their homeland to a people who had always been a (small) minority.
“The Genocide of Truth” does a great job convincing the reader that what happened was no genocide. The lies, forgeries and distortions used against Turks have been effective over the years, but “The Genocide of Truth” uses so many documents that the reader cannot come to another conclusion that the Turks have been done a great wrong. The question the reader will ask himself immediately after finishing this book is ‘how come Armenian nationalists are still so successful?’ The author deals with that question in “The Success of Armenian Lobbies and Diaspora” (chapter 24). Again by using a wide variety of documents, Aya shows why it is that Armenians have dominated this debate; they started influencing public opinion decades ago, they were given support from religious leaders in the West, and they were Christians and had, as such, public opinion automatically in favor of them. This is a great injustice, but that is how it is. Armenians have been active for decades, and are willing to spend a lot of money to convince governments to recognize the ‘genocide’ so that their Armenia can finally accomplish what it wanted to accomplish back in 1915: ridding Anatolia of Turkish Moslems (ethnic cleansing), after which the lands can be annexed by Armenia.
As said earlier on in this review, Aya’s work is not a quick and easy read, but it is a must have nonetheless. It is filled with information all those interested in this subject need; not just those who disagree with the genocide thesis. The wide variety of sources used makes up for the weaknesses of the book (such as style). It cannot be called a masterpiece, but it most certainly is one of the best collections of documents and excerpts ever presented on this subject. The author did himself and the larger public a tremendous service by compiling it and getting it published.
In what’s evidence that Aya understands the value of the Internet he has decided to put his book online; it’s not just available in hardcover (such as the one I have), you can also get it for free as an e-book here. Be sure to read the speech he delivered for the launch of his book.
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