by Muriel Mirak-Weissbach
7 September 2009
Global Research
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15088
The Historical Record
There can be no doubt in my mind that what was perpetrated against the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in 1915-1916 was genocide. Both my parents, who came from villages near Arabkir in eastern Anatolia, were orphaned. Their parents and family members were taken out in groups of men, women, and children, and shot, while others were killed in the course of deportations. First-hand reports by victims, like my parents, have contributed to compiling the oral history of the developments. Those who doubt the versions of such victims can peruse the accounts of unbiased eye-witnesses, like German pastor and humanitarian Johannes Lepsius, who issued the first documented account of the genocide in 1916, in his Report on the Situation of the Armenian People in Turkey. Lepsius, who had responded to the Hamidian massacres of Armenians in the 1890s by establishing a Deutsch-Orient Mission in Urfa, learned back in Germany of the new massacres by the Young Turks, and travelled to Constantinople in 1915, in hopes of going farther inland to help those Armenians threatened. He was prevented from doing this by Interior Minister Mehmed Talaat, and had to content himself with collecting first-hand accounts of the massacres from Armenian refugees and foreign missionaries who arrived in the capital. Lepsiuss account of the genocide was the first systematic work, but not the only one; Jakob Kuenzler, a Swiss doctor and humanitarian who went to work with Lepsius in Urfa, chronicled his experiences. Henry Morgenthau, U.S. Ambassador to the Sublime Porte (1913-1916), documented the massacres and cited personal discussions with Young Turk leaders who declared that they were intent on eliminating the Armenians.(3)
[3. Jakob Kuenzler, In the Land of Blood and Tears: Experiences in Mesopotamia During the World War (1914-1918), Armenian Cultural Foundation, Arlington, Massachusetts, 2007. Henry Morgenthau] Ambassador Morgenthaus Story, Doubleday, Page & Company, 1918.
In the course of World War I, culminating in 1915-1916, the Turks succeeded in killing up to 1.5 million Armenians, either by executions or deportations. But it was not the Turks who were responsible. In fact, thousands of Armenian orphans, like my parents, were saved by Turkish families who intervened at the risk of their lives. So, it was not the Turkish people who were responsible. It was a very specific political-military organization.
The genocide was carried out on three levels. On the ground level were the Special Operations, groups of gangsters, brigands, freed prisoners, and Kurds, who had been given orders to round up and kill Armenians. On the next level was the Executive Committee of Three, which the Young Turk leadership had put together, to map out, schedule, plan, and organize deportations. On the top level was the Committee of Union and Progress (Young Turk) leadership, made up of the triumvirate that emerged in 1913 coup: Talaat Pasha, Interior Minister, Enver Pasha, Minister of War, and Djemel Pasha, Military Governor of Constantinople and Minister of the Navy.
It was this apparatus that was politically and materially responsible for the genocide of 1915. By 1911, the CUP had abandoned earlier ideological commitments to pan-Islamism in favor of pan-Turkism, the idea that all peoples of Turkic languages belonged together in an entity which should become an entity stretching across Eurasia. This pan-Turkic ideology fuelled the military thrust against the Armenians.
After the capitulation of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, the Young Turk leaders conveniently managed to flee and seek refuge abroad. Thus, in 1919, when, under international pressure, a trial was opened in Turkey to try the former CUP leaders for organizing the massacre and destruction of the Armenians, the leading defendants had found refuge abroad. They were tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. But, since they had managed to escape, they could not be executed; instead, under an informal agreement among the Great Powers (England and Russia), information about the whereabouts of the Young Turk fugitives was made available to Armenian terrorists, who proceeded to gun them down one by one. Those who survived this round of executions were inculpated later for having plotted against the founder of the Turkish Republic, Ataturk, and were duly executed. Thus, all the material perpetrators and leading witnesses of the genocide were allowed to flee and/or were killed. Whatever they knew about the influence of foreign powers in the genocide went with them to the grave.
Although the 1919 trials attest to the fact that specific Young Turk leaders were responsible and not the Turks--, the role of outside players was not dealt with there. Yet, the tragedy cannot be viewed as a Turkish phenomenon. It was, after all, the British who nurtured the Young Turks and their Masonic and Zionists colleagues in Saloniki prior to the 1908 seizure of power; it was the British who supported the Young Turks early pan-Islamist and pan-Turkic delusions, as a battering ram against the Russian empire. Most important, it was Britain which manipulated events leading into World War I, and, quickly abandoning the pan-Islamic/Turkic thrust, mounted an Arab rebellion against the Ottoman Empire, intent on breaking it up and reorganizing it into puppet states, according to the 1916 Sykes-Picot treaty with imperial co-partner France.
Britains strategic enemy was Germany, which had developed far-reaching economic and military cooperation with the Ottoman Empire. Among the joint economic projects of strategic import was the ambitious Berlin-Baghdad railway, which London viewed as a threat to its position in the region. More fundamentally, Britain sought to prevent any continental partnership between economic powerhouse Germany and Russia. War against Germany and its Ottoman ally was the means to this end.
The Young Turks seized upon the outbreak of war to implement their final solution to the Armenian question, arguing that the Armenians were a fifth column of the Russians and had to be deported. Thus, the genocide was an integral part of the tragedy known as World War I, and those ultimately responsible were the Great Powers who unleashed the conflict. The Germans knew that the fifth column story was a lie, but they were allied with the Young Turks. That the Russians were not passionate about safeguarding Armenian national interests became clear in the aftermath of the war, when the Soviet Union quietly swallowed up the short-lived Armenian republic.
Facing the Truth
If the rapprochement between Armenia and Turkey is to yield anything more than formal protocols, this historical record has to be dealt with. A fitting precedent for such a process can be found in the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, which ended decades of religious conflict in Europe. The two extraordinary concepts on which that peace agreement rested were that, whatever atrocities had occurred on either side, they must be forgiven and forgotten; and that, to secure peace, each side must act in the interest and for the benefit of the other.
Translating this into the current context means that the Turkish side must concede that the genocide occurred; it is only after a historical fact has been acknowledged that the atrocities and their perpetrators can be forgiven, and forgotten. In this process it is crucial that the identity of those materially responsible be nailed down. Rejecting any and every misplaced notion of collective guilt, it must be underlined that it was a clearly identifiable group of political actors (the 1915 Young Turk leadership) and their created instruments (the Executive Committee of Three and the Special Operations) who were responsible. At the same time, one has to identify the higher levels of responsibility, to name the names of the geopolitical puppet masters in the Great Powers who were pulling the strings of the actors moving about on the stage they had set up. Such action is recommended not only to get the historical record straight, but also to inoculate the regional players against being used again as pawns in a geopolitical game.
Geostrategic Realities Today
Here it is useful to reflect on why the Turkish government has made its advances to Armenia. Although feelers had been put out earlier towards renewed contact between Ankara and Yerevan, the turning point came in the wake of the 2008 Georgian attack on South Ossetia and the prompt Russian military response. That brief war, whose outcome should have come as no surprise to anyone, redefined regional relations; Georgias role as a stable partner and transit land for oil and other commodities suddenly acquired a giant question mark, and adjacent Armenia emerged as a possible alternative route. It was then that Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan announced his courageous initiative for a Caucasian Stability and Cooperation Platform, which would include Turkey, Russia, Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. He stated bluntly that it was a question of prevent[ing] regional tension from turning into global turmoil.
Now, as the new protocols between Ankara and Yerevan underline, the two are taking new steps in the interest of the same key concepts, regional security and stability. Anyone skeptical of Turkeys concerns in this respect should consult a map. Turkey borders on Armenia and also on Georgia, whose government commemorated the first anniversary of the war with Russia with anything but reconciliatory tones. On the contrary, both sides hinted at the possibility of renewed strife. Then, at the beginning of September, it became known that Georgia had held several Turkish freight ships which wanted to unload in ports of Abkhazia, the autonomous republic which declared independence last year, recognized by Russia.
Turkey also shares a border with Syria and Iraq, two countries which have very recently squared off against each other after the Baghdad government accused Damascus of having harbored terrorists responsible for deadly attacks in August. The two governments broke off diplomatic relations, and the Turks quickly moved to mediate. Then there is the border to Iran, a country which, since the June presidential elections, has been undergoing internal political turmoil not seen since the 1979 revolution. Across the Black Sea, Turkey has its border to Russia. So the country is not exactly an island in a sea of tranquility.
The primary aim of the Turkish government in this setting is precisely to take steps, whatever they may be, to pursue security and stability for the region.
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