Guenter Lewy, 2005. Publisher The University of Utah Press
The literature is voluminous on what Armenians call the first genocide of the twentieth century and what most Turks refer to as an instance of intercommunal warfare and a wartime relocation. Yet despite the great outpouring of writing, an acrimonious debate over what actually happened almost one hundred years ago continues unabated. The highly charged historical dispute burdens relations between Turkey and Armenia and increases tensions in a volatile region. It also crops up periodically in other parts of the world when members of the Armenian diaspora push for recognition of the Armenian genocide by their respective parliaments and the Turkish government threatens retaliation. 'Vestnik Kavkaza' publishes chapters from the book of Guenter Lewy "The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: a Disputed Genocide", revealing the essence of the issue.
The key issue in this quarrel, it should be stressed at the outset, is not the extent of Armenian suffering, but rather the question of specific intent: that is, whether the Young Turk regime during the First World War intentionally organized the massacres that took place. Both sides agree that large numbers of Christians perished and that the deportation of the Armenian community was accompanied by many excesses. Several hundred thousand men, women, and children were forced from their homes with hardly any notice; and during a harrowing trek over mountains and through deserts uncounted multitudes died of starvation and disease or were murdered. To the victims it makes no difference whether they met their death as the result of a carefully planned scheme of annihilation, as the consequence of a panicky reaction to a misjudged threat, or for any other reason. It does make a difference for the accuracy of the historical record, not to mention the future of Turkish-Armenian relations.
The situation today is highly polarized and is characterized by two distinct and rigidly adhered to historiographies. The Armenian version maintains that the Armenians were the innocent victims of an unprovoked act of genocide by the Ottoman government. Large numbers of Western scholars have embraced this position. The Turkish version, put forth by the Turkish government and a few historians, argues that the mass deportation of the Armenians was a necessary response to a full-scale Armenian rebellion, carried out with the support of Russia and Britain, and that the large number of deaths - the "so-called massacres" - occurred as a result of famine and disease or as a consequence of a civil war within a global war. Both sides make their case by simplifying a complex historical reality and by ignoring crucial evidence that would yield a more nuanced picture. Professional historians in both camps copy uncritically from previous works when a reinvestigation of the sources is called for. Both parties use heavy-handed tactics to advance their cause and silence a full debate of the issues. The Turkish government has applied diplomatic pressure and threats; the Armenians have accused all those who do not call the massacres a case of genocide of seeking to appease the Turkish government. In 1994 the well-known Middle East scholar Bernard Lewis was taken to court in France and charged by the plaintiff with causing "grievous prejudice to truthful memory" because he denied the accusation of genocide.
This book subjects the rich historical evidence available to the test of consistency and (as much as the state of knowledge allows) attempts to sort out the validity of the rival arguments. Unlike most of those who have written on the subject of the Armenian massacres and who are partisans of one side or the other, I have no special ax to grind. My purpose is not to put forth yet another one-sided account of the deportations and mass-killings; still less am I in a position to propose a conclusive resolution of the controversies that have raged for so long. Important Turkish documents have disappeared, so that even a person who knows Turkish and can read it in its old script most likely would not be able to write a definitive history of these occurrences. My aim has been to deal with this emotionladen subject without political preconceptions and to carry out a critical analysis of the two historiographies. Time and again, it will be seen, authors on both sides have engaged in highly questionable tactics of persuasion that include willful mistranslations, citing important documents out of context, or simply ignoring the historical setting altogether. After this uninviting task of "cleaning out the stables" (the results of which probably will please neither side), I attempt a historical reconstruction of the events in question—to show what can be known as established fact, what must be considered unknown as of today, and what will probably have to remain unknowable. My hope is that such an undertaking will clarify and advance our understanding of these fateful occurrences and perhaps also help build bridges between the two rival camps.
The Turkish government has issued collections of pertinent documents in translation, but the material from Western sources outweighs the available Turkish records (translated and untranslated), if not in quantity then in importance. The reports of American, German, and Austrian consular officials who were on the spot in Anatolia and Mesopotamia have been preserved, and many of them have written memoirs that draw on their personal observations. American, German, and Swiss missionaries who witnessed the tragic events have written detailed accounts. We have a large memoir literature composed by Armenian survivors and their descendants. Also of interest are the published recollections by members of the large German military mission who held important positions of command in the Turkish army. The availability of these highly informative sources in Western languages means that even scholars like me who do not read Turkish can do meaningful work on this subject. Indeed, a requirement that only persons fluent in the Turkish language be considered competent to write on this topic would disqualify most Armenians, who also do not know Turkish.
I had the opportunity to immerse myself in the rich holdings of the archive of the German Foreign Ministry in Berlin, the Public Record Office in London, and the National Archives in Washington. All of these sources yielded some findings that I believe are new. More importantly, many of the documents cited by Turkish and Armenian authors and their respective supporters, when looked at in their original version and proper context, yielded a picture often sharply at variance with the conclusions drawn from them by the contending protagonists. Both Turkish and Armenian authors, it turns out, have used these materials in a highly selective manner, quoting only those points that fitted into their scheme of interpretation and ignoring what Max Weber called "inconvenient facts." Both the Turkish and the Armenian sides, in the words of the Turkish historian Selim Deringil, "have plundered history"; and, as if the reality of what happened was not terrible enough, they have produced horror stories favorable to their respective positions.
While working on this book, I sometimes had the feeling that I was a detective working on an unsolved crime. Clues to the perpetrators of gruesome massacres lay hidden in dusty old books
and journals. I experienced the surprise and amazement of finding still another footnote that did not substantiate what the author in question claimed for it. It was fascinating to find corroboration for hunches in unexpected places, which made it possible to firm up conclusions. 1 hope that my readers too, while following the unfolding argument of this work, will share some of the satisfaction I experienced in finally coming up with an interpretation of these calamitous events that is supported by the preponderance of the evidence and is plausible. I may not have solved the crime in all of its complicated aspects, but I hope to have thrown some significant new light on it.
In the interest of a treatment in depth, I have limited the scope of this study to the events of 1915-16, which by all accounts took the greatest toll of lives and lie at the core of the controversy between Turks and Armenians. I make only brief references to the fighting between Turks and Russian Armenian units in 1917-18 and to what Armenian historians call the "Kemalist aggression against Armenia" in the wake of the Treaty of Sevres of August 10, 1920. These topics raise important but different questions that deserve treatment in their own right. I also quite intentionally have not discussed each and every allegation, no matter how farfetched, made by Turkish and Armenian authors in their long-standing war of words. To do so would have required a tome of many hundreds of pages. Moreover, it would have resulted in a work of gossip rather than history that no serious person would have been interested in and willing to read. Finally, I have endeavored to avoid becoming entangled in problems of definition and nomenclature. For example, the question of what constitutes genocide-whether according to the Genocide Convention approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 9, 1948, or in terms of other rival definitions-is often far from simple; and the attempt to decide whether the Armenian massacres in Ottoman Turkey fit all, some, or none of these definitions strikes me as of limited utility. I have therefore concentrated on what appears to me 10 to be the far more important task of clarifying what happened, how it happened, and why it happened. The issue of the appropriate label to be attached to these occurrences is relevant for the ongoing polemics between Turks and Armenians. It is of secondary importance at best for historical inquiry, because the use of legal nomenclature does not add any material facts important for the history of these events.
As those familiar with the field of Middle Eastern studies know, English transliterations of Turkish and Armenian words have produced great variations in the spelling of places and personal names. As much as possible I have resorted to the most common styles; I have not changed the spelling in quotations, though I have omitted most diacritical marks. The difference between the Ottoman or Julian calendar and the European or Gregorian calendar (twelve days in the nineteenth century and thirteen days in the twentieth century) presented another problem. In most cases I have used the dates given in the sources utilized The few instances where the interpretation of an event depends on the precise date have been noted in the text.
I would like to express my thanks to the archivists and librarians here and abroad, who have aided me in my research, as well as to those who have translated some important Turkish materials for me. I also acknowledge with gratitude a grant from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). As it is customary to note, none of these institutions and individuals are responsible for the opinions and conclusions reached in this work, which remain my personal responsibility.
To be continued
