The Thirty-Year Genocide

by Benny Morris

  researchers today will find almost no documentation incriminating Ottoman

  Turkish leaders in the ethnic cleansings between 1894 and 1924. Similarly,

  the many volumes of state documents covering these years, which the Turkish

  government has published over the past few de cades, contain almost no di-

  rect evidence of Turkish culpability.

  While much has been whitewashed, a good deal was never archived in the

  first place. Knowing that they were ordering or engaged in criminal activity,

  Introduction

  the po liti cal leaders in Constantinople and in the provinces, often in real time, ordered all copies of tele grams destroyed after reading. Sometimes they

  transmitted instructions orally, to avoid leaving paper trails, or used euphe-

  misms to camouflage their intentions and deeds. The same, apparently, is

  true of reports going up the chain of command, from local officials and com-

  manders to Constantinople.6

  A scholar relying only, or principally, on Turkish state archives and

  published Turkish official volumes will inevitably produce highly distorted

  history of Turkish- Christian relations from the beginning of the Hamidian

  period, in 1876, until the end of the ethnic cleansing in 1924. Countless

  Turkish and “pro- Turkish” historians have done just that.

  How do we know that the Ottoman and Turkish archives have been

  purged of incriminating materials? There are some clear indications. First,

  hundreds of large- scale massacres were committed throughout the period we

  have studied. This is no longer a matter of opinion, and even those who claim

  that there was no deliberate and or ga nized genocide do not question that many

  massacres took place. Yet in all the accessible archival and published docu-

  mentation on the events of 1914–1916, there are just a handful of mentions

  of “improper treatment.” In the only such accessible Turkish document openly

  admitting a massacre by the Ottoman side, a cabinet minister berates a gov-

  ernor for also murdering non- Armenians, in contravention of his orders.

  Second, se nior officials resisting orders to deport and massacre were re-

  called, punished, and replaced. Several were executed. There is hardly any

  mention of this in the accessible correspondence. Occasionally, the archival

  purge was insufficiently thorough, and one or two letters from recalcitrant gov-

  ernors have surfaced. But the government’s responses and reactions are al-

  ways missing.

  Third, there is almost no mention of the actions of the Special Organ ization

  (Teşkilat- ı mahsusa), whose operatives played a prominent role in the destruc-

  tion of the Armenians. Even if, as some critics argue, the Special Organ ization

  was not, as a body, part of the extermination pro cess, the absence of Special

  Organ ization operatives and activities from the accessible documentation

  attests to the archival cleansing.

  Fourth, according to external materials, CUP stalwarts and Special

  Organ ization executives such as Dr. Bahaettin Şakır and Dr. Selanikli Mehmet

  Introduction

  Nȃzım (Nȃzım Bey) orchestrated massacres, and provincial party secretaries

  played key roles. Their powers often exceeded those of governors and mili-

  tary commanders. The archives and officially published documentation con-

  tain almost no correspondence from these CUP members and provincial

  secretaries.

  Fifth, in the brief, largely inconclusive postwar trials conducted by the

  Ottoman government under Allied tutelage, a substantial number of tele-

  grams were presented as evidence of massacres and murderous intent. Many

  of these documents have dis appeared. Historians who pres ent the official

  Turkish narrative argue that the documents were fakes.

  Fi nally, the fact that Turkey has always barred researchers from viewing

  1914–1924 materials in the Ankara military archive strongly suggests that the

  state is hiding something.

  Akçam offers the most comprehensive description of Turkish archival

  manipulation and obfuscation.7 At the end of World War I, Talât Pasha

  hurriedly gathered and burned every government document related to the

  Armenian genocide that he could find. So did the new grand vizier, Ahmet

  İzzet Pasha.8 Members of the CUP Central Committee, including Nȃzım, did

  the same for relevant CUP documentation. Purges of documentation con-

  tinued in stages, long after the establishment of the republic. The archives

  were opened to foreign researchers in the 1980s, but only after government

  agents would have had a chance to locate any remaining incriminating mate-

  rial and ensure it would not be seen. Even as researchers were first gaining

  entry, it was well known that a group of retired diplomats and military officers

  had privileged access, which they could have used to destroy evidence.9 On

  the basis of information provided by other researchers, we believe that a final

  purge was conducted more recently, during the digitization of the archives.

  Readers today initially have access only to digitized documents.

  But the main reason not to trust the Turkish archives is that reliable sources

  contradict them. Masses of 1894–1924 German, Austro- Hungarian, British,

  American, and French documents, produced by diplomats and consular

  officials working in Turkey and available in Western archives, as well as the

  papers of dozens of Western missionaries who worked in Turkey during

  those years, tell a completely diff er ent story from the one purveyed in official, accessible Turkish papers and in Turkish nationalist narratives.

  Introduction

  For de cades, Turkish apologists and their supporters have dismissed this

  Western documentation as tendentious and even specious, the invention of

  prejudiced Christians aiming to vilify blameless Muslims. As seen from Con-

  stantinople, Britain, France, and the United States were allied against the Turks during the First World War, so their official documents must have been anti-Turkish propaganda. The Christian missionaries, most of them Americans,

  were deemed even worse. They were intimately connected to the Armenians

  and had themselves fomented anti- Turkish and anti- Muslim sentiment among

  Christians. How could they be expected to produce unprejudiced accounts

  of Turkish, Armenian, and Greek actions and thinking during the de cades

  when Turks and Christians were busy “fighting each other”? (Turks have long,

  and falsely, characterized the events of this thirty- year period as mutual blood-

  letting and warfare rather than as genocide.)

  This dismissal of American, British, and French documentation is highly

  problematic. For one thing, it wrongly presumes that foreign diplomatic

  opinion toward Turkey was uniform. There were many foreign diplomats in the

  Ottoman Empire—in 1905, the British alone had twenty- nine consulates—

  and they were not all of one mind. Most British, French, and American

  diplomats and consuls pres ent during 1894–1924 prob ably did see the local

  Christians as persecuted underdogs, but others were neutral. Still others— most prominently High Commissioner Mark Bristol, the top U.S. representative in

  Turkey during August 1919–1927— favored the Turks and dismissed Greeks

  and Armenia
ns as pusillanimous and inferior races. Bristol was not alone in

  harboring such sentiments.

  Moreover, while many Western diplomats and officers may have shared,

  and even displayed, pro- Christian sympathies, almost all were profes-

  sionals. They were trained and expected to report accurately what they

  saw, while, of course, casting a positive light on their own activities and

  their governments’ policies. British, American, and French reporting was

  classified and for internal, institutional consumption, not designed to sway

  public opinion or international mediators. If their reports were “anti-

  Turkish,” this was mainly because they heard about or witnessed be hav ior

  and attitudes that were brutal and often criminal.

  It is particularly impor tant that French sources corroborate stories of mas-

  sacres, forced deportation, and, in general, ethnic cleansing. That is because

  Introduction

  the French were typically less “pro- Christian” than were their Anglo- Saxon

  allies, certainly before and after 1914–1918. French diplomacy during 1920–

  1924 tended to be pro- Turkish, and the French military, while fighting the

  Turks during 1920–1921, tended to have a jaundiced view of the Armenians,

  Greeks, and even the British. The French army in Turkey was largely com-

  posed of Muslim colonial troops, and their superior officers had to take these

  soldiers’ affinity for local Muslim populations into account in their dealings

  with Turks.

  Accusations against Christian, and especially American, missionaries are

  no more persuasive than those against foreign officials. Most missionaries were

  well- educated and liberal, albeit deeply Christian, in outlook. Diligently

  following Ottoman rules, they had come to work only with Christian denom-

  inations, not to illegally convert Muslims. They did wish to protect Christians

  from harm and often supplied them with aid, but they rarely deliberately en-

  deavored to undermine the state. By and large their reports, like those of the

  diplomats and officers, were intended for internal, not outsiders’, perusal.

  The missionaries were writing to superiors, friends, and family to inform

  them as accurately as pos si ble of what they saw, heard, and understood. Few

  of them had great sympathy for Muslim Turks or Kurds but all shared a

  common fear of divine and collegial reproach and so tried to cleave to the

  truth.

  In addition to reports from missionaries and British, French, and Amer-

  ican diplomats, in some chapters we have used extensively reports by German

  and Austrian diplomats, residents, and travelers in Turkey. German- Ottoman

  relations began warming a few years before World War I, and Austria- Hungary

  and Germany were the Ottoman Empire’s main allies in the war. Some offi-

  cers in the higher echelons of the German army condoned the Armenian de-

  portations; many didn’t. While Germans and Austrians had nothing to gain

  from tarnishing the Ottoman reputation, their reports from the provinces

  during 1914–1918 almost invariably parallel and corroborate the findings of

  Allied counter parts: Muslim- Turkish genocidal and expulsionist intent and

  the butchery of masses of unarmed Christians. Reports and diary entries by

  German and Scandinavian missionaries tell the same story.

  The German diplomatic reports, as well as reports by German travelers and

  German- linked missionaries, were assembled from the German Foreign

  Introduction

  Ministry archive by a German scholar, Wolfgang Gust. They are published

  online at www . armenocide . com and in a densely packed, 786- page En glish

  translation. We have also used a similar volume of Austro- Hungarian diplo-

  matic reports emanating from Turkey during the war.

  Further corroboration comes from postwar trials of war criminals in

  Constantinople, memoirs and speeches by Turkish officials, and interviews

  published in Turkish newspapers and journals. And while, as we have noted,

  there are serious prob lems with Turkish state archives and official documen-

  tation, these are not totally useless. We have combed them thoroughly and

  have found documents that help explain what happened. Often they rein-

  force the evidence in Western sources. We have also relied on secondary

  lit er a ture, which, in the case of Turkish- Armenian relations during World

  War I, has burgeoned in recent years.

  Although we have made every effort to be comprehensive in our use of ar-

  chival materials, we realize that a great deal is missing. This was, after all, the intention of those covering their tracks. If more Turkish sources were available, we would have included them. We believe, though, that the documenta-

  tion we have used is a sufficient basis for a credible description and analy sis

  of what happened. The reader will judge.

  I

  Abdülhamid II

  1

  Nationalist Awakenings in the

  Nineteenth- Century Ottoman Empire

  For many in the Ottoman Empire, the first months of 1878 were a night-

  mare come true. Rus sian artillery batteries pounded the suburbs of Constan-

  tinople, and the empire’s Eu ro pean provinces were all but lost. Large

  chunks of the Caucasus and northeast Anatolia, as far as Erzurum, were

  overrun by the Rus sian army, the Ottomans’ age- old nemesis. The imperial

  coffers were empty, and a new, authoritarian regime was doing its best to

  sweep away hard- won civil liberties.1

  Only a year or so earlier, the situation looked very diff er ent. Not only was

  life relatively peaceful, but it also seemed that a mea sure of open- mindedness

  had taken hold. On December 23, 1876, after a century of incremental legal

  reforms, Turkey adopted a modern constitution. Drawn up mainly by the re-

  formist minister Midhat Pasha and his Armenian companion Krikor Odian,

  the charter promised a new bill of rights for all and improved status for the

  empire’s non- Muslim subjects. Midhat hoped that by guaranteeing certain

  freedoms and protections for minorities, including Christians, the empire

  might stave off threatened Eu ro pean encroachment. The constitution even

  placed some constraint on the sultan, forcing him to share power with a senate

  of grandees— albeit, subject to his own appointment— and a chamber of

  deputies selected by an electoral college directly elected at the provincial

  level.2

  Midhat and fellow reformists had taken advantage of a moment of anarchy.

  In May 1876 the veteran sultan Abdülaziz, under whose reign the pace of west-

  ernization had quickened, was deposed in a coup d’état. His opponents

  accused him of squandering the country’s assets on grand homes and

  Abdülhamid

  II

  grand ships. He was replaced by Murad V, his nephew, but the new sultan was

  ousted after only three months, when it emerged that he was mentally un-

  stable. He was replaced by his brother, Abdülhamid II, who was believed to

  be sympathetic to the reformist cause.

  But even as the reformists were formulating the constitution and electoral

  system, the stage was being set for the Rus sian invasion. The immediate cause

  was a rebellion in the Ottoman territory of Bulgaria.
The empire was already

  on shaky ground, brought to the edge of bankruptcy by an exceptionally long

  dry spell and a welter of high- interest loans coming due. The Bulgarian up-

  rising added to these considerable woes. Determined to protect his rule and

  his empire from existential threats, Abdülhamid responded with a hard line.

  He moved to crush the Bulgarian rebellion, curtail the new freedoms, reinstate

  An Armenian volunteer

  soldier during the

  Balkan Wars. Some

  Armenians fought in the

  Ottoman army, while

  others joined Bulgarian

  and Rus sian

  combat units.

  Nationalist Awakenings

  his authority, and restore order and discipline. He suspended the constitu-

  tion; dispersed the parliament; and sent his irregulars, the Başı Bozuks, to

  quash the Bulgarians.

  The Bulgarian suppression triggered outrage in the West, especially in

  Britain, where former Prime Minister William Gladstone and his opposition

  Liberal Party decried the cruelty of the “Turkish race” and what soon became

  known as the “Bulgarian atrocities.” Gladstone memorably wrote of the Turks,

  “They were, upon the whole, from the black day when they first entered

  Eu rope, the one great anti- human specimen of humanity. Wherever they

  went, a broad line of blood marked the track behind them, and as far as their

  dominion reached, civilisation dis appeared from view.”3 Outraged Eu ro pe ans

  called for Balkan liberation from Ottoman rule.

  This was the opening Rus sia needed. Exploiting the anti- Turkish fervor

  and claiming its position as standard- bearer of a new pan- Slavic conscious-

  ness, the tsar moved to rescue his Bulgarian protégés and attack a traditional

  foe. In April 1877 Rus sian forces passed through Romania and crossed the

  Danube. Another Rus sian army invaded eastern Anatolia. By summer, the

  Ottoman army was in retreat, and the Rus sians had occupied Edirne (Adri-

  anople) and eastern Thrace. The road to Constantinople was open.

  Germany, Britain, and France refused to take sides, leading to condemna-

  tion from Abdülhamid. However, notwithstanding the sultan’s suspicions of

  collusion against him, the three powers were not in cahoots with the Rus sians