Volume 72, No. 5, February 4, 2006

Indeed, first genocide of the 20th century

By Charles Garo Ashjian

I would respond to the article by Guenter Lewy in the December, 2005 issue of Commentary, titled “The First Genocide of the Twentieth Century?” in the likely manner of a Jew, if told that the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto provided justification for the Holocaust perpetrated by Hitler and Nazi Germany—but the space provided for a letter is not really sufficient in length for either adequate substance or proper documentation.

Lewy broaches the topic by skeptically asking whether there was an actual “genocide” of the Armenian people. He seemingly commiserates and concedes, “No one, it should be stressed, disputes the extent of Armenian suffering at the hands of the Turks.” He states “reliable estimates put the number of deaths at more than 650,000...” Lewy further states that the “consensus” of the International Association of Genocide Scholars is that genocide was indeed perpetrated against the Armenians. Lewy, however, remains unconvinced herewith since “the Turks,” “Turkish apologists,” “and historians, including, most notably, Bernard Lewis...” share his conclusion or view on this issue. (Already I must interject my discomfort in using such words as “Turk” or “Turkish” herein for the same reason I think it improper to refer to Germans as perpetrators of the Holocaust. I am following Lewy’s textual choice so as to maintain some continuity with his presentation. I think it more proper to speak distinctively of genocidal Ottomans or Nazis out of respect for those others who refrained from participation in evil deeds. My quarrel is not with Turks or Germans and this is not an excessive nicety.)

Lewy states that “the crucial problem to be addressed is not the huge loss of life...but rather whether the Turkish government (sic) deliberately sought the deaths that we know to have occurred.” Using Lewy’s chosen figure of “more than 650,000” deaths, it would seem sufficient to merely state that it is not likely that, at least, 650,000 Armenians died by accident. Nevertheless, Lewy states that these deaths occurred despite the government’s sincere intentions to actually conduct orderly and humane deportations of the Armenians from Ottoman territories. This is incredible and Lewy, further, does not seem to recall that Armenians did not die only during deportations. Lewy also argues that this orderly and humane process was evidenced by the fact that “... Armenian deportees were allowed to purchase rail tickets and were thus spared at least some of the trials of the deportation process.” Does Lewy even remember that Hitler allowed Jews to purchase rail tickets to the extermination camps?

Lewy proceeds by stating that the “historical question at issue is premeditation—that is, whether the Turkish regime intentionally organized the annihilation of its Armenian minority.” This intent, according to Lewy, would constitute a necessary condition of the crime according to the Genocide Convention of 1948. Actually, the Genocide Convention can be considered as irrelevant in that it is not prescriptive but, rather, descriptive of the crime. The crime was there with or without the word or the Convention. There is an abundance of international law aside from or before the Genocide Convention which prohibits the elements of the crime. Herewith, recall that Rafael Lemkin, who coined the word “genocide” in view of the Holocaust also indicated that the fate of the Armenians in WW I came under the definition of the word as he attributed it.

Nevertheless, Lewy argues that one of the “problems bedeviling the Armenian side in this controversy is that no authentic documentary evidence exists to prove the culpability of the central government of Turkey for the massacre of 1915-16.” This is not correct and volumes have preceded Lewy to provide such evidence. During said years, the Armenian Genocide was perpetrated by the “Young Turk Party” (a.k.a. Committee for Union and Progress), which controlled the government of the Ottoman Empire. The leadership triumvirate of the government consisted of Enver Pasha, Talaat Pasha, and Jemal Pasha. Enver stated on May 19, 1916: “The Ottoman Empire should be cleaned up of the Armenians and the Lebanese. We have destroyed the former by the sword, we shall destroy the latter through starvation.” Talaat stated during June of 1915: “Turkey is taking advantage of the war in order to thoroughly liquidate its internal foes, i.e. the indigenous Christians, without being thereby disturbed by foreign intervention.” Jemal stated, upon viewing the deportations: “I am ashamed of my nation.” In later years, Mustafa “Ataturk” Kemal, founder of the modern Turkish Republic in 1923, in an interview published on August 1, 1926 in The Los Angeles Examiner, talking about the Young Turks stated: “These left-overs from the former Young Turk Party, who should have been made to account for the millions of our Christian subjects who were ruthlessly driven en masse, from their homes and massacred, have been restive under the Republican rule.” Recall, that all Christians within the crumbling and desperate Ottoman Empire were being forcibly converted, deported, or killed. He prefers to argue that this desperation should exonerate or extenuate the culpability of the genocidal Ottomans. Lewy remains oblivious to salient evidence and persists in arguing that there was no genocidal plan on the part of the Young Turks.

In 1919, Henry Morgenthau Sr., the U.S. Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, stated: “ When the Turkish authorities gave the orders for these deportations, they were merely giving the death warrant to a whole race; they understood this well, and, in their conversations with me, they made no particular attempt to conceal the fact ...”

What about the fate of the Jews under the Ottoman Empire during this same period? On September 14, 1915, The New York Times reported: “Turks admit that the Armenian persecution is the first step in a plan to get rid of Christians, and that Greeks will come next. Jews also are marked for slaughter or expulsion. American missionaries must also be driven out for Turkey henceforth is to be for Turks alone.” Those who do not believe everything they read in The New York Times should read Chapter 14 titled “Witness to the Armenian Massacre” in Mostly Morgenthaus by Henry Morgenthau III. He states that in Palestine, Arab nationalism was being encouraged by the Turks “in a manner calculated to arouse Arab hostility toward the Jews, as they had encouraged the Kurds to slaughter the Armenians.” The Jews had already been systematically disarmed, conscripted into the Turkish army, and then relegated to labor battalions, as with the Armenians, Greeks, and other minorities. The end of WW I saved the Jews.

(Also, hereat find testimony that even in February of 1914, Talaat had begun to formulate secret plans for the total liquidation of the Armenians.)

This conclusion is hardly unique. May decent and honest people triumph over madness and hasten the forthcoming of a global society enduringly built upon a foundation of peace, prosperity, and mutual respect.