Court decree

By means of studies of archives in America, England and Geneva (United Nations Geneva Archives C.1424/483 7921/25899), it has been established that between 1914 -1920 a total of 648,000 Armenians emigrated to Russia, Iran, the USA, Australia, India, Argentina, France and other countries; that 200,000 soldiers of Allied countries died while fighting against the Ottomans; and that the Armenians who remained in Ottoman lands or came back were 644,900 as of 1918 (Ermeni Tehciri, Yusuf Halacoğlu, Babıali Kültür Yayıncılığı, Istanbul, 2007, pp. 108-109). It is also known that 120,000 Armenians emigrated to Greece immediately after the expulsion of Greek forces from Anatolia in 1922. The number of Armenians who lived in Anatolia and who returned where they had been living before the treaty of Sevres is mentioned as 644,900 in American archival documents (Sürgünden Soykırıma Ermeni İddiaları, Prof. Yusuf Halacoğlu, p. 101). This number corresponds to the numbers provided by the Armenian Patriarchate. It is known that as of 3rd February 1916, 500,000 Armenians had reached Syria (Sürgünden Soykırıma, Prof. Yusuf Halacoğlu, p. 101). “During the second half of 1915 and in 1916, all the refugees who had survived the massacre at Van, Eleşkirt, and, Basen, tens and hundreds of thousands of people, came to the Armenian counties of Russia. These refugees were dying of hunger before my very eyes. We were helpless to save the lives of these good people; we decided that the reason for this was the treacherous policies of the Russian government. Clearly, our volunteer forces were trying to take Van and Muş as soon as possible.” This quotation clearly proves that the Armenians of Eastern Anatolia created armed units that fought the Ottoman Armies (Ovanes Kaçaznuni, Ermenistanın İlk Başbakanı, Taşnak Partisinin Yapacağı Bir Şey Yok, report submitted to the party conference of 1923, translated by Arif Acaloğlu, Kaynak Yayınları, 2006, pp. 34-37).

The famous Harbord report quotes a letter written by Boghos Nubar on 11th December 1918 and sent to the French Foreign Ministry, in which it was stated that there were 40,000 Armenian refugees from Anatolia in Iran and 250,000 in the Caucasus, and that help was requested.

Attempts are being made to calculate the number of Muslim Ottoman citizens who had to emigrate, and their casualties. How many Turks were massacred in Eastern Anatolia during the Armenian and Russian occupation? Western countries have not felt the need to carry out detailed investigations on this matter. Following the Russian Revolution of 17th February, Russian armies retreated from Eastern Anatolia. If this revolution had not occurred, the number of dead would never have been calculated, because there are no historic records taking into account the non-Western dead.

On 4th March 1919, the Ottoman government of Grand Vizier Damat Ferit Pasha had Mustafa Pasha, who was from Diyarbakır, establish a special court. This special court, which has come to be known as the Nemrut Mustafa Pasha Court Martial, sentenced to death on 8th April Kemal Bey, who was the sub-governor (kaymakam) of Boğazlıyan, for his role in the deportation. Special courts were established in many parts of the country. 1397 people were tried in these courts. Some of the people who committed crimes during the Armenian deportation were sentenced to various punishments, including death.

General James Harbord, who was officially appointed by the U.S. government to carry out studies of Turkey and the Middle East, arrived in Istanbul on 2nd September 1919. On 20th September 1919, he was in Sivas where he asked Atatürk his opinion of a mandated administration for Turkey. From 25th October onwards he was in Erzurum, in the Caucasus and in Syria for investigations. In Hasankale in Erzurum province he wrote reports about Armenians having burned Turks’ houses with their inhabitants in them. In England Lord Curzon spoke in the Commons about the massacres carried out by Armenians. Had it not been for this report, the Turks being held in Malta might have been convicted on 8th February 1921 in the English court. As it happened, Armenian claims were not accepted by the court in Malta.

On 16th March 1920, British forces occupied Istanbul. They established a special court on the island of Malta. As of the end of 1920, there were 118 people being held by this court. 55 were being held on the basis of accusations related to the deportation. 17 of the deportation suspects were being tried for having allowed these events to happen. On 8th February 1921, the English Crown prosecutor stated that there was no proof; later, on 13th July 1921, these prisoners were declared to be war prisoners, subject to an exchange with prisoners held by the Ottoman State.

Aram Andonian’s book about documents related to the massacre of Armenians was written in 1920 in Paris. If the contents of this book had not been false, they would have brought about the conviction of the Ottoman authorities sent to Malta after being apprehended by Armenians when General Alleby [sic] entered Aleppo, because the English court in Malta issued its sentence a year later. In the cable sent on 22nd April 1920 by the English High Commission in Istanbul to the English Foreign Office, those whose arrest was proposed included, in addition to those sent to Malta, Mustafa Kemal Pasha, Ali Fuat Pasha, Kazım Karabekir Pasha, Abdulkerim Pasha, Nihat Pasha, Hasan Rıza Pasha, Ahmet İzzet Pasha, İsmail Fazıl Pasha, Cafer Tayyar Bey, Selahattin Adil Bey, and İsmet Bey (Bilal Şimşir, Malta Sürgünleri, Istanbul, 1976. And see the English Foreign Office Public Record Office document number [FO] 371/5090/9632).

The Armenians organized attempts against Atatürk, İsmet Pasha in Lausanne, and the Turkish Delegation at the UN in 1945 in San Francisco (Tuncay Özkan, Yaraya Tuz Bastım, Istanbul, 2007, pp. 472-473).

Wars are a terrible gamble, during which there is an enormous amount of destruction, death and betrayal, and which have an indefinite end both for the instigators and those continuing the war. Since every war that is not a war of necessity is tantamount to murder, the great Atatürk decreed the principle of “Peace at Home, Peace in the World” to be the main aim of the Republic of Turkey. By signing the Treaty of Gümrü with Armenia, then governed by the Dashnak Party, on 2nd December 1920; the Treaty of Moscow with Russia on 16th March 1921; and the Treaty of Kars with Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia on 13th October 1921, the wars in Eastern Anatolia were officially ended and peace was introduced.

The facts that in 1914 an Ottoman army was destroyed when its soldiers froze to death in Sarıkamış; that because of the general mobilization most Turkish males were fighting at Gallipoli, in the Balkans, and in the deserts of Arabia, with the result that villages had been depopulated; that Russian and Armenian troops were occupying the area; that because of its deep valleys and insurmountable mountains Eastern Anatolia could not, under the conditions then existing, be controlled by the state; and that all important passes were under the control of Armenian bands, prove clearly that the Turkish nation is not responsible for these events.

An evaluation of the claims of genocide from a legal perspective: the concept of genocide was introduced to international law as a result of the fact that 60 million people perished during the Second World War. This concept, which was created to express a concept different than war, brings to mind an intention to exterminate and totally destroy a certain group of people.

When we analyze all the events in history from the point of view of this concept, will we have to consider Allied bombings of German cities during the Second World War as genocide? Will the mass deaths resulting from earthquakes caused by fault lines being hit by nuclear explosions carried out in the depths of the ocean be considered scientific genocide? There are cases when many deaths occur predictably, even though there is no war.