Daniel Allen Butler: Armenian Agony or Genocide?
by
MB
“What we are talking about here … is the annihilation of the Armenians.”—Talât Paşa, Ottoman Interior Minister, quoted by German Consul-General Mordtmann in an official report[1]
Great historians are always great storytellers, but the converse need not be true. The historian must not only tell a good story, but must also be historically accurate, methodically proving the work with relevant primary sources. As a case in point, Daniel Allen Butler is an accomplished storyteller, and the author of many bestselling books. While the style and prose of Daniel Allen Butler’s writing in Shadow of the Sultan’s Realm may charm the reader into willing credulity, his dramatization of history cannot conceal the glaring omissions, inconsistencies, and shortcomings of his work[2]. He has mischaracterized the Armenian Genocide.
Butler’s opening salvo in the chapter entitled Armenian Agony states, among other things, that the “question” of the extermination of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire, was contemplated by few, if any, men previous to the events of 1915. Two sources immediately refute this. Paul Cambon, the French ambassador to Istanbul from 1890 to 1898, explains that, “A high ranking Turkish official told me, ‘the Armenian question does not exist but we shall create it.’”[3] He goes on to say that the Ottoman authorities were “contemplating the possibility of transporting the Armenians en masse to Mesopotamia,” and he predicted that the persecution of the Armenians would result in the massacres of 1894-96.[4] Furthermore, Max Erwin von Schneuber-Richter, the German vice-consul in Erzerum, noted in a 1915 report that the annihilations of the Armenians were preceded by “the Armenian question with which European diplomacy has been wrestling for centuries.[5]”
This is only the smallest of Butler’s mistakes in comparison to his ignorance or disregard for scholarship and evidence when dealing with the genocide. He argues that the Armenian genocide was the product of incompetence in the Turkish government in the execution of orders calling for the mass deportation of the Armenians. These deportations, he claims, were raised to quell the anti-Armenian sentiments building up in the Ottoman empire and to remove the threat of Armenians rebelling and joining forces with the Russians on the Eastern Front. Butler claims that the intent of Talât Paşa was to preserve the safety of the Armenian peoples while at the same time dissolving the bands of insurgents, and Talât was in fact driven to such extreme measures by the impending threats of the annihilation of the Armenians by fanatics. He claims that a clause in one of the orders establishes that Talât, far from intending to destroy the Armenians, wished to deport the Armenians in full respect of the law. Butler believes that the Ottoman government was simply inept, and unable to achieve its aim of safely exiling an unwanted minority; their extermination was a result not of vicious intent, but of tragic coincidence[6].
When dealing with a matter as important as genocide, there is an extra measure of care required in promulgating an account: Dr. Stanton of Genocide Watch lists denial as the final stage of genocide[7]. It is not clear whether Butler has merely been negligent in his research and has misunderstood the seriousness of his offense, or whether his work was conducted with the advice and funding of the Turkish government.
The definition of genocide, as set out in Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide held by the United Nations in 1948, four years after Raphael Lemkin coined the word itself to describe the atrocities suffered by the Armenians and the Jews during the first and second World Wars, respectively (neither Lemkin nor his motive is mentioned by Butler[8]), is, “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children from the group to another group.”[9]
Lemkin’s intent in creating this word is further explained in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress (the first example of the word in print):
“By ‘genocide’ we mean the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group. This new word, coined by the author to denote an old practice in its modern development, is made from the ancient Greek word genos (race, tribe) and the Latin cide (killing)…. Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. Genocide is directed against the national group as an entity, and the actions involved are directed against individuals, not in their individual capacity, but as members of the national group.”[10]
In Article III of the aforementioned convention on genocide, it is laid out that these acts will be considered internationally actionable: “(a) genocide, (b) conspiracy to commit genocide, (c) direct and public incitement to commit genocide, (d) attempt to commit genocide, and (e) complicity in genocide.[11]”
By the law of the United Nations, genocide requires the established intent to annihilate a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, in whole or in part, and a physical manifestation of that intent, whether to the extent originally intended or not. What it does not require is the intent to completely exterminate every last member of the group, or bald-faced proclamation of such intent by a country’s government. As such, Butler’s rubric, “the scale of the slaughter, the methods [employed], and the ultimate responsibility”[12] merely serves to deflect attention from the true issues, namely, intent and physical manifestation.
In the case of the Armenians, the Young Turks controlling the Ottoman government had a clear motive to conceal their intentions: to avoid international intervention. However, both intent to annihilate the Ottoman Armenian population and physical manifestation thereof are clearly present in official documents, reports, and telegrams of their German and Austro-Hungarian allies, as well as in official telegrams and testimonies entered into the court records as they were used in the trials of government officials after the genocide. Hundreds of memoirs—both of Turkish officials and Armenian survivors—corroborate the documents[13]. To review and present the entire field of evidence available is and has been the subject of many careers; this paper will present only representative documents to refute Butler’s most important points.
He first claims that the Armenians, as persecuted Christian minorities, appreciated positions in the janissary troops as an opportunity for their progeny to advance in status[14]. The practice of enlisting Janissaries, which had been practiced for centuries by the Ottoman Empire, entailed the forcible enslavement and military training of young Christian boys from subjugated minorities (at first) for the military and for the purpose of quelling rebellion. (The Janissaries would be sent to put down insurgents from their original province as a sort of psychological warfare against the rebels.) While the suggestion that subject peoples approved of having their children taken as slaves is presented entirely without evidence[15], it is entirely irrelevant to Butler’s argument regarding genocide, as the institution of Janissaries was abolished in 1826, eighty-nine years before the events of 1915.[16]
Butler further argues that, as the Armenians could not, outside of the Janissaries, advance further than the ranks of peasantry, they welcomed Russian rule[17]. While the massacres of the 1890’s under Sultan Abdul Hamid[18]provide a far more cogent reason for Armenian sympathies with the Russians, the Armenians spread throughout the empire did not look to overthrow the rule, nor, as Butler claims, were they actively attempting to free themselves from Ottoman rule. According to Turkish historian Enver Ziya Karal, “the Armenians were not pursuing their independence as was the case with the other Ottoman millets.[19]” They instead appear to have pinned their hopes on Ottoman assurances, such as the Tanzimat reform acts of 1839 and 1856,[20] the 1878 Berlin Treaty, and the Balkan negotiations reform accord which went into effect in 1914[21].
Butler further asserts that the presence of Russian-born Armenians fighting alongside the Russian army precipitated the deportation orders, as an Armenian rebellion would be an existential threat[22]. Actually, many more Turkish soldiers died in the disastrous battle of Sarikamis from the cold than from battle[23]; nevertheless, “Like the Nazis on World War II, the Ottomans felt that ‘the defeat was due to a treacherous deception,’” and the catastrophe was blamed on the Armenians through propaganda that had been prepared beforehand.[24]
Overarching Butler’s claims is his assertion that, because of the presence of clauses referring to legal consequences to those who harass the Armenians during the deportations, the Turkish Government fully intended to follow the correct legal outlines in deporting the Armenians, and, in fact, wished only to safely deport them[25]. These clauses are suspect, because the genocide was carried out unofficially, using a two-track system.[26] As Reşid Akif Paşa, addressing the Ottoman Chamber of Deputies, explained:
“There are certain secrets that I learned in my most recent, brief service in the [Izzet Paşa] cabinet that didn’t survive more than 25-30 days. Among these, I came across one peculiar thing. This deportation order was given openly and in official fashion by the Interior Ministry and communicated to the provinces. But after this official order [was given], the inauspicious order was circulated by they Central Committee to all parties so that the armed gangs [çete] could hastily complete their cursed task. With that, the armed gangs then took over and the barbaric massacres then began to take place.”[27]
As support for the first instance of Butler’s claim, he offers a clause in a document from Talât’s ministry, which, he claims, is a “crucial passage…in light of what would shortly transpire.[28]” The proffered passage, which is supposed to confirm Talât’s innocence and purity of heart, states that, “the measures taken shall be realized justly; and should there be any arrests after the thorough investigations of the documents the criminals shall be sent to the military courts immediately.[29]” The document in which this clause appears is not the “Temporary Law of Deportation” which was passed by the Committee of Union and Progress[30] on the twenty-fifth of May, 1915, supposedly to deport the entirety of the Ottoman Empire’s Armenian subjects to “places which have been prepared in interior vilayets”—it is an order titled “Increased Security Precautions,” issued by Talât’s interior ministry on the twenty-fourth of April and calling for the arrest of Armenian leaders from the main Armenian villages as well as Istanbul and their subsequent relocation to holding centers in Ankara, as Butler later admits. In short, it is not the thinly veiled order for the genocide of the Armenians—it is a relatively minor document, referring to Istanbul Armenians who were cosmopolitan and integrated, and the disappearance of whom would be in full view of European diplomats. It is a possible prelude to, but certainly not, the actual order which authorized the genocide.[31] His more blatant statement deals with the “Temporary Law of Deportation,[32]” and while he does admit that the law was directed exclusively at the Armenians[33], he maintains that the reason that the “massacres” occurred was the “incompetence and inefficiency of the Ottoman bureaucracy.[34]” The intent of genocide, therefore, is contested by Butler. While a full treatment is beyond the scope of this paper, a quotation from a Turkish primary source will demonstrate the existence of full intent:
“One trial verdict concludes that:
‘The defendant CUP Central Committee member Dr. Bahaettin Sakir Bey, left Istanbul for the Trabzon and Erzurum provinces and other regions as the ‘head of the Special Organization.’ He assumed leadership of the armed ganges {cete} which had been set up and formed by a procession of criminals released from prison… He sent them into action by delivering secret orders and instructions, some verbal, others encoded, to certain people and officials… [to carry out] the atrocities and evil massacre of the population and the plunder of their possessions, which were committed at different times and places during the deportation of the Armenians… the Special Organizations had been formed for the purpose of destroying and annihilating the Armenians.’”[35]
The honesty of Talât was highly suspect, as referenced in many Turkish sources[36]. “His closest friend, Hüseyin Cahit, said that Talat ‘regularly lied in government and political affairs.’ Falih Rifki Atay, Talat’s private secretary, described him as a man for whom ‘lying and injustice did not count as immorality.’ Atay said that sending an order only to cancel it shortly afterward by coded cable was business as usual for Talât.”[37] It is not, therefore, surprising that he would use this mechanism to conceal the true genocidal purposes of the deportations from European onlookers. Butler ignores a tremendous weight of evidence in lending credence to these protection clauses.
Butler goes on to state that the incompetence in executing the “Temporary Law of Deportation” was due to poor central control and miscommunication.[38] In fact, regional governors who refused to carry out the orders, or insisted on a full set of official documents, were removed or executed.[39] All outside assistance in remedying the plight of the Armenians from the Red Cross or missionary groups was forbidden.[40] Officials who attempted in any way to condone the plight of the Armenians were threatened, and Muslim citizens of the empire aided the Armenians only at peril of their lives[41].
The CUP, in full control of the government since 1913, had adopted as its first policies the targeting and liquidation of all non-Muslim elements in the Ottoman Empire, but most particularly the Armenians. This is evidenced by various declarations made by Cemal Paşa and Talât Paşa from 1913 to 1918.[42] The most damning evidence of intent, however, is supplied by reports made by German officials in Turkey at the time of the genocide In a 1917 report, Richard von Kühlmann, the German ambassador to Turkey during World War I, mentions “the annihilation of the Armenians which was carried out on a large scale” (die in grossem Umfange durchgefürte Armeniervernichtung) because of “a policy of extermination,” formed by “a policy shift and to a total victory of the Turkish-nationalistic direction in the councils of the CUP.”[43] Intent, therefore, was clearly present, and had in fact been there for some time.
His report goes on to say that the main catalyst to this policy shift was the separatist activities of the Armenians coinciding with the economic downturn in Turkey after misfortune during the Balkan war in 1912[44].The accusations found in this report are confirmed by remarks detailed in the post-war memoirs of Joseph Pomiankowski, the Austro-Hungarian military minister plenipotentiary in the Ottoman Empire from 1909-1918, who also states that the CUP had decided before World War I to exterminate the Armenians.[45] Further confirmation is found in the report of Lieutenant-Colonel Stange, made to the German Military Mission to Turkey on 23 August 1915, in which he states that the annihilation of the Armenians was executed in accordance with “a plan conceived a long time ago,” and that this “expulsion and annihilation” was ordered by the CUP[46]. The crowning condemnation, however, is provided in the written testimony of Vehip Paşa, former commander of the Third Army of the Ottoman Empire, dated 5 December 1918:
“The massacre and annihiliation [sic] of the Armenians and their looting and pillaging by the killers were the result of a decision made by the [C]entral [C]ommittee of the [Committee of] Union and Progress [sic] …These specific acts of violence, which [were] carried out in accordance with a comprehensive program and with a clear intent, were performed upon the instruction and urging, and with the supervision and follow-up of government functionaries, who were the tools of, first, the Central Committee of the CUP and its plenipotentiaries, and second, the wishes and aspirations of the CUP itself, which had discarded [all considerations of] law and conscience.”[47]
Butler does not seem to have consulted the mountain of evidence available through the allies of the Ottoman Empire, but he does mention that the CUP passed the “Temporary Law of Expropriation and Confiscation,” on 26 September 1915, which declared all property previously belonging to deported Armenians to now be the possessions of the government[48]. Butler not only misstates the date on which it was published (the 26th, not the 13th, of September)—he crucially fails to note that the decree was rescinded by the Ottoman Empire on 12 January 1920, and that the Turkish Republic abrogated that rescinding on 14 September 1914[49] [50] [51]. This may seem a strange law for a government which commanded only temporary deportment of the Armenians to pass, and he himself points out the inconsistency of the Turkish Government’s position, saying, “No matter what befell them [the Armenians]…even had they lived, in the end they would have had nothing to which they could return.”[52]
Perhaps the most concerning part of Armenian Agony lies at the end. After proclaiming the “massacres” tragic, the incompetence catastrophic, and the events “undeniably a crime against humanity,” and acknowledging the “impressive array of documentation supporting their [the Armenians’] claims,” he states that this multitude of confirmation of intent should be discounted because “there is something patently phony about the Armenian version of the events of 1915.”[53] [54] Butler’s lack of citation and evidence is representative of his chapter as a whole, and while his particular story may seem well-thought-out and plausible, he draws the opposite conclusions to genocide scholars Dadrian and Akçam, who have the best ability to interpret the mountain of primary sources available. His chapter on the Armenian Genocide is by no means history and should be neither used nor construed as such.
Appendix A: Temporary Law of Deportation, 29 May 1915, as translated by the United States State Department, 25 June 1915
TRANSLATION: OFFICIAL PROCLAMATION
Our Armenian fellow countrymen, who form one of the Ottoman racial elements, having taken up with a lot of false ideas of a nature to disturb the public order, as the result of foreign instigations for many years past, and because of the fact that they have brought about bloody happenings and have attempted to destroy the peace and security of the Ottoman state, of their fellow countrymen, as well as their own safety and interests, and, moreover, as the Armenian societies now have dared to join themselves to the enemy of their existence, and to the enemies now at war with our state, our Government is compelled to adopt extraordinary measures and sacrifices, both for the preservation of the order and security of the country, and for the continuation of their existence and for the welfare of the Armenian societies. Therefore, as a measure to be applied until the conclusion of the war, the Armenians have to be sent away to places which have been prepared in the interior vilayets, and a literal obedience to the following orders, in a categorical manner, is accordingly enjoined upon all Ottomans:-
1---With the exception of the sick, all Armenians are obliged to leave, within five days from the date of this proclamation, and by villages or quarters, under the escort of the gendarmery [sic].
2---Although they are free to carry with them on their journey the articles of their movable property which they desire, they are forbidden to sell their landed and their extra effects, or to leave them here and there with other people. Because their exile is only temporary, their landed property, and the effects which they will be unable to take with them will be taken care of under the supervision of the Government, and stored in closed and protected buildings. Any one who sells or attempts to take care of his movable effects or landed property in a manner contrary to this order shall be sent before the Court Martial. They are only free to sell to the Government, of their own accord, those articles which may answer the needs of the army.
3---To assure their comfort during the journey, hans and suitable buildings have been prepared, and everything has been done for their safe arrival at their places of temporary residence, without their being subjected to any kind of attack or affronts.
4---The guards will use their weapons against those who make any attempts to attack or affront the life, honor, and property of one or of a number of Armenians, and such persons as are taken alive will be sent to the Court Martial and executed. This measure being the regrettable result of the Armenians having been led into error, it does not concern in any way the other races, and these other elements will in no way or manner whatsoever intervene in this question.
5---Since the Armenians are obliged to submit to this decision of the Government, if some of them attempt to use arms against the soldiers or gendarmes, arms shall be employed only against those who use force, and they shall be captured dead or alive. In like manner, those who, in opposition to the Government’s decision, refrain from leaving, or hide themselves here and there, if they are sheltered or are given food and assistance, the persons who thus shelter them or aid them shall be sent before the Court Martial for execution.
6---As the Armenians are not allowed to carry any firearms or cutting weapons, they shall deliver to the authorities every sort of arms, revolvers, daggers, bombs, etc [sic], which they have concealed in their places of residence or elsewhere. A lot of such weapons and other things have been reported to the Government, and if their owners allow themselves to be misled, and the weapons are afterwards found by the Government, they will be under heavy responsibility and receive severe punishment.
7---The escorts of soldiers and gendarmes are required and are authorized to use their weapons against and to kill persons who shall try to attack or to damage Armenians in villages, in city quarters, or on the roads for the purpose of robbery or other injury.
8---Those who owe money to the Ottoman Bank may deposit in its warehouses goods up to the amount of their indebtedness. Only in case the Government should have need thereof in the future are the military authorities authorized to buy the said goods by paying the price therefor. In the case of debts to other people it is permitted to leave goods in accordance with this condition, but the Government must ascertain the genuine character of this debt, and for this purpose the certified books of the merchant form the strongest proof.
9---Large and small animals which it is impossible to carry along shall be bought in the name of the army.
10--On the road the vilayet, leva, kaza and [sic] nahieh officials shall render possible assistance to the Armenians.
13/25 June 1331/1915.
Copy handed by the vali of Trebizond to U.S. consul Oscar Heizer and forwarded to the U.S. Department of State, June 28, 1915, N.A., D.S., R.G. 59, Dec. File No. 867.4016/85. The English translation is from N.A., D.S., R.G. 59, Dec. File No. 867.4016/114.
Leslie A. Davis, The Slaughterhouse Province: An American Diplomat’s Report on the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1917, ed. Susan K. Blair, (New Rochelle, New York: Orpheus Publishing, Inc., 1989), Appendix B, 188-190.
Appendix B
“The Ten Stages of Genocide”
Dr. Gregory H. Stanton [1], President, Genocide Watch
1986
Presented as a briefing paper at the United States State Department in 1996.
Genocide is a process that develops in ten stages that are predictable but not inexorable. At each stage, preventive measures can stop it. The process is not linear. Stages may occur simultaneously. Logically, later stages must be preceded by earlier stages. But all stages continue to operate throughout the process.
➔ 1. CLASSIFICATION: All cultures have categories to distinguish people into “us and them” by ethnicity, race, religion, or nationality: German and Jew, Hutu and Tutsi. Bipolar societies that lack mixed categories, such as Rwanda and Burundi, are the most likely to have genocide.
The main preventive measure at this early stage is to develop universalistic institutions that transcend ethnic or racial divisions, that actively promote tolerance and understanding, and that promote classifications that transcend the divisions. The Roman Catholic Church could have played this role in Rwanda, had it not been riven by the same ethnic cleavages as Rwandan society. Promotion of a common language in countries like Tanzania has also promoted transcendent national identity. This search for common ground is vital to early prevention of genocide.
➔ 2. SYMBOLIZATION: We give names or other symbols to the classifications. We name people “Jews” or “Gypsies,” or distinguish them by colors or dress; and apply the symbols to members of groups. Classification and symbolization are universally human and do not necessarily result in genocide unless they lead to dehumanization. When combined with hatred, symbols may be forced upon unwilling members of pariah groups: the yellow star for Jews under Nazi rule, the blue scarf for people from the Eastern Zone in Khmer Rouge Cambodia.
To combat symbolization, hate symbols can be legally forbidden (swastikas in Germany) as can hate speech. Group marking like gang clothing or tribal scarring can be outlawed, as well. The problem is that legal limitations will fail if unsupported by popular cultural enforcement. Though Hutu and Tutsi were forbidden words in Burundi until the 1980’s, code words replaced them. If widely supported, however, denial of symbolization can be powerful, as it was in Bulgaria, where the government refused to supply enough yellow badges and at least eighty percent of Jews did not wear them, depriving the yellow star of its significance as a Nazi symbol for Jews.
➔ 3. DISCRIMINATION: A dominant group uses law, custom, and political power to deny the rights of other groups. The powerless group may not be accorded full civil rights, voting rights, or even citizenship. The dominant group is driven by an exclusionary ideology that would deprive less powerful groups of their rights. The ideology advocates monopolization or expansion of power by the dominant group. It legitimizes the victimization of weaker groups. Advocates of exclusionary ideologies are often charismatic, expressing resentments of their followers, attracting support from the masses. Examples include the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 in Nazi Germany, which stripped Jews of their German citizenship, and prohibited their employment by the government and by universities. Denial of citizenship to the Rohingya Muslim minority in Burma is a current example.
Prevention against discrimination means full political empowerment and citizenship rights for all groups in a society. Discrimination on the basis of nationality, ethnicity, race or religion should be outlawed. Individuals should have the right to sue the state, corporations, and other individuals if their rights are violated.
➔ 4. DEHUMANIZATION: One group denies the humanity of the other group. Members of it are equated with animals, vermin, insects or diseases. Dehumanization overcomes the normal human revulsion against murder. At this stage, hate propaganda in print and on hate radios is used to vilify the victim group. The majority group is taught to regard the other group as less than human, and even alien to their society. They are indoctrinated to believe that “We are better off without them.” The powerless group can become so depersonalized that they are actually given numbers rather than names, as Jews were in the death camps. They are equated with filth, impurity, and immorality. Hate speech fills the propaganda of official radio, newspapers, and speeches.
To combat dehumanization, incitement to genocide should not be confused with protected speech. Genocidal societies lack constitutional protection for countervailing speech, and should be treated differently than democracies. Local and international leaders should condemn the use of hate speech and make it culturally unacceptable. Leaders who incite genocide should be banned from international travel and have their foreign finances frozen. Hate radio stations should be jammed or shut down, and hate propaganda banned. Hate crimes and atrocities should be promptly punished.
➔ 5. ORGANIZATION: Genocide is always organized, usually by the state, often using militias to provide deniability of state responsibility. (An example is the Sudanese government’s support and arming of the Janjaweed in Darfur.) Sometimes organization is informal (Hindu mobs led by local RSS militants during Indian partition) or decentralized (jihadist terrorist groups.) Special army units or militias are often trained and armed. Arms are purchased by states and militias, often in violation of UN Arms Embargos, to facilitate acts of genocide. States organize secret police to spy on, arrest, torture, and murder people suspected of opposition to political leaders. Special training is given to murderous militias and special army killing units.
To combat this stage, membership in genocidal militias should be outlawed. Their leaders should be denied visas for foreign travel and their foreign assets frozen. The UN should impose arms embargoes on governments and citizens of countries involved in genocidal massacres, and create commissions to investigate violations, as was done in post-genocide Rwanda, and use national legal systems to prosecute those who violate such embargos.
➔ 6. POLARIZATION: Extremists drive the groups apart. Hate groups broadcast polarizing propaganda. Motivations for targeting a group are indoctrinated through mass media. Laws may forbid intermarriage or social interaction. Extremist terrorism targets moderates, intimidating and silencing the center. Moderates from the perpetrators’ own group are most able to stop genocide, so are the first to be arrested and killed. Leaders in targeted groups are the next to be arrested and murdered. The dominant group passes emergency laws or decrees that grants them total power over the targeted group. The laws erode fundamental civil rights and liberties. Targeted groups are disarmed to make them incapable of self-defense, and to ensure that the dominant group has total control.
Prevention may mean security protection for moderate leaders or assistance to human rights groups. Assets of extremists may be seized, and visas for international travel denied to them. Coups d’état by extremists should be opposed by international sanctions. Vigorous objections should be raised to disarmament of opposition groups. If necessary they should be armed to defend themselves.
➔ 7. PREPARATION: Plans are made for genocidal killings. National or perpetrator group leaders plan the “Final Solution” to the Jewish, Armenian, Tutsi or other targeted group “question.” They often use euphemisms to cloak their intentions, such as referring to their goals as “ethnic cleansing,” “purification,” or “counter-terrorism.” They build armies, buy weapons and train their troops and militias. They indoctrinate the populace with fear of the victim group. Leaders often claim that “if we don’t kill them, they will kill us,” disguising genocide as self-defense. Acts of genocide are disguised as counter-insurgency if there is an ongoing armed conflict or civil war. There is a sudden increase in inflammatory rhetoric and hate propaganda with the objective of creating fear of the other group. Political processes such as peace accords that threaten the total dominance of the genocidal group or upcoming elections that may cost them their grip on total power may actually trigger genocide.
Prevention of preparation may include arms embargos and commissions to enforce them. It should include prosecution of incitement and conspiracy to commit genocide, both crimes under Article 3 of the Genocide Convention.
➔ 8. PERSECUTION: Victims are identified and separated out because of their ethnic or religious identity. Death lists are drawn up. In state sponsored genocide, members of victim groups may be forced to wear identifying symbols. Their property is often expropriated. Sometimes they are even segregated into ghettoes, deported into concentration camps, or confined to a famine-struck region and starved. They are deliberately deprived of resources such as water or food in order to slowly destroy them. Programs are implemented to prevent procreation through forced sterilization or abortions. Children are forcibly taken from their parents. The victim group’s basic human rights become systematically abused through extrajudicial killings, torture and forced displacement. Genocidal massacres begin. They are acts of genocide because they intentionally destroy part of a group. The perpetrators watch for whether such massacres meet any international reaction. If not, they realize that that the international community will again be bystanders and permit another genocide.
At this stage, a Genocide Emergency must be declared. If the political will of the great powers, regional alliances, or U.N. Security Council or the U.N. General Assembly can be mobilized, armed international intervention should be prepared, or heavy assistance provided to the victim group to prepare for its self-defense. Humanitarian assistance should be organized by the U.N. and private relief groups for the inevitable tide of refugees to come.
➔ 9. EXTERMINATION begins, and quickly becomes the mass killing legally called “genocide.” It is “extermination” to the killers because they do not believe their victims to be fully human. When it is sponsored by the state, the armed forces often work with militias to do the killing. Sometimes the genocide results in revenge killings by groups against each other, creating the downward whirlpool-like cycle of bilateral genocide (as in Burundi). Acts of genocide demonstrate how dehumanized the victims have become. Already dead bodies are dismembered; rape is used as a tool of war to genetically alter and eradicate the other group. Destruction of cultural and religious property is employed to annihilate the group’s existence from history. The era of “total war” began in World War II. Firebombing did not differentiate civilians from non-combatants. The civil wars that broke out after the end of the Cold War have also not differentiated civilians and combatants. They result in widespread war crimes. Mass rapes of women and girls have become a characteristic of all modern genocides. All men of fighting age are murdered in some genocides. In total genocides all the members of the targeted group are exterminated.
At this stage, only rapid and overwhelming armed intervention can stop genocide. Real safe areas or refugee escape corridors should be established with heavily armed international protection. (An unsafe “safe” area is worse than none at all.) The U.N. Standing High Readiness Brigade, EU Rapid Response Force, or regional forces — should be authorized to act by the U.N. Security Council if the genocide is small. For larger interventions, a multilateral force authorized by the U.N. should intervene. If the U.N. Security Council is paralyzed, regional alliances must act anyway under Chapter VIII of the U.N. Charter or the UN General Assembly should authorize action under the Uniting for Peace Resolution GARes. 330 (1950), which has been used 13 times for such armed intervention. Since 2005, the international responsibility to protect transcends the narrow interests of individual nation states. If strong nations will not provide troops to intervene directly, they should provide the airlift, equipment, and financial means necessary for regional states to intervene.
➔ 10. DENIAL is the final stage that lasts throughout and always follows genocide. It is among the surest indicators of further genocidal massacres. The perpetrators of genocide dig up the mass graves, burn the bodies, try to cover up the evidence and intimidate the witnesses. They deny that they committed any crimes, and often blame what happened on the victims. They block investigations of the crimes, and continue to govern until driven from power by force, when they flee into exile. There they remain with impunity, like Pol Pot or Idi Amin, unless they are captured and a tribunal is established to try them.
The best response to denial is punishment by an international tribunal or national courts. There the evidence can be heard, and the perpetrators punished. Tribunals like the Yugoslav, Rwanda or Sierra Leone Tribunals, the tribunal to try the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, or the International Criminal Court may not deter the worst genocidal killers. But with the political will to arrest and prosecute them, some may be brought to justice. When possible, local proceedings should provide forums for hearings of the evidence against perpetrators who were not the main leaders and planners of a genocide, with opportunities for restitution and reconciliation. The Rwandan gaçaça trials are one example. Justice should be accompanied by education in schools and the media about the facts of a genocide, the suffering it caused its victims, the motivations of its perpetrators, and the need for restoration of the rights of its victims.
[1] President, Genocide Watch; Research Professor in Genocide Studies and Prevention, School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University, Arlington,Virginia 22201.
Primary Sources
Secondary Sources
(Note on sources: I have followed Dadrian and Akçam in preferring source material from Ottoman, Turkish, German, and Austrian official sources, rather than material from British, American, Armenian, and French primary sources which can be subject, perhaps unfairly, to claims that it may be tainted as propaganda. This limits my ability to interact with primary sources, since I am not proficient enough in Turkish or Armenian to read the original documents. I am also unable to travel to the archives in which they are kept [mostly in Germany, Turkey, Armenia, and Austria]. However, Dadrian and Akçam make extensive use of primary source material, which is referenced in detail in their works.)
Footnotes
[1] Taner Akçam, The Young Turks’ Crime Against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2012),202. The original reference is as follows: DE/PA-AA/Bo.Kons./Band 169, Report by Consul General Mordtmann, dated 30 June 1915. (Original references will be included when considered especially pertinent to the text and helpful to the reader.)
[2] Daniel Allen Butler, Shadow of the Sultan’s Realm: The Destruction of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East (Dulles, Virginia: Potomac Books, Inc., 2011), 147-161, Armenian Agony. One glaring omission is the citation of any of his content save direct quotations, whose sources run the gamut from The Arms of Krupp to Hamlet. Hamlet, 159. Arms of Krupp, 161. See also 250. Butler recommends several books in what he calls his “chapter source notes and citations,” (Armenian Agony, 2249-250) as the “best examinations of the Armenian massacres.” On what basis he makes this determination is not clear. The current author has, in attempt to find the sources for the content in his chapter, sifted through his bibliography to no avail, and therefore could not vouch for the verity of any of his claims and has been forced to resort to speculation as to whence each part of Butler’s material comes.
[3] Vahakn N. Dadrian, “The Armenian Question and the Wartime Fate of the Armenians as Documented by the Officials of the Ottoman Empire’s World War I Allies: Germany and Austria-Hungary,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 34 (2002):59-85: 61. The original reference is as follows: Diplomatic Archives of Foreign ministry of France (Documents Diplomatiques Français 1871-1900), vol. 11, doc. no. 50 (1947), 71-74. See also 20 February 1894 report, Livre Jaune. Affaires Arméniens. Projets de réformes dans l’Empire Ottoman 1893-1897, doc. no. 6 (1897), 10-13. (Original references will be included when considered especially pertinent to the text and helpful to the reader.)
[4] Ibid. en masse les Arméniens…dans la Mésopotamie. The original reference is as follows: Paul Cambon, Corespondance 1870-1924 (Paris: Edition B. Grasset, 1940), 393, 395.
[5] Ibid., 72. Die Armenische Frage welche seit Jahrhunderten die Diplomatic Europa’s beschäfligt hat. The original reference is as follows: A. A. Türkei 183/39, A28584, or R14088, J. no. 598, enclosure no. 1, 10 August 1915 report.
[6] Butler, Shadow of the Sultan’s Realm, 151-152. Referenced throughout the chapter.
[7] Dr. Gregory H. Stanton, “The Ten Stages of Genocide,” Genocide Watch, 1986, < http://genocidewatch.net/genocide-2/8-stages-of-genocide>, accessed January 10, 2018. The full text is provided in Appendix B.
[8] Butler, Shadow of the Sultan’s Realm, 156. He does specifically mention the date of coinage—perhaps in a half-hearted attempt to disprove genocide?
[9] United Nations, General Assembly, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Paris, 9 December 1948, United Nations Treaty Series, vol. 78, No. 1021, 280.
[10] Lemkin, Raphaël. Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress, (Washington, Carnegie endowment for international peace, division of international law, 700 Jackson Place, N.W. 1944), 79 (Chapter IX, Genocide).
[11] United Nations, General Assembly, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 280.
[12] Butler, Shadow of the Sultan’s Realm, 155.
[13] As mentioned further in the text, these will not be dealt with in this paper. Outstanding in these memoirs are Armenian Golgotha, by Grigoris Balakian, and The Road from Home, an account by David Kherdian of the experiences of his mother, Veron Dumehjian. See also The Slaughterhouse Province, the account of Leslie A. Davis, American Consul to Turkey at the time.
[14] Butler, Shadow of the Sultan’s Realm, 148.
[15] Ibid. This particular penchant is present throughout the chapter.
[16] Lord Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries: The Rise and Fall of the Turkish Empire (New York, New York: William Morrow and Company, 1977), 364, 456-457.
[17] Butler, Shadow of the Sultan’s Realm, 149-150. This assertion is false. Many minorities were wealthy, successful in finance and commerce, and socially influential. Among these were Greeks, Armenians, and Jews. See Lord Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries, 363.
[18] Taner Akçam, A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility (New York, New York: Henry Holt and Company, LLC, 2006),40-46
[19] Dadrian, “The Armenian Question and the Wartime Fate of the Armenians as Documented by the Officials of the Ottoman Empire’s World War I Allies: Germany and Austria-Hungary,” 63. The Armenian Reform was the implementation of 1912-1914 reform package stipulating that two provinces would be formed in Armeno-Turkey which would be overseen by two European Christian governors. It was implemented on February 8, 1914, and abolished Dec. 16 of that year after Turkey’s entry into WWI.
[20] Ibid., 61.
[21] Ibid, 65
[22] Butler, Shadow of the Sultan’s Realm, 151, 153.
[23] Eugene Rogan, The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East (New York, New York: Basic Books, 2015), 106-114.
[24] Akçam, A Shameful Act, 125.
[25] Butler, Shadow of the Sultan’s Realm, 152-154.
[26] Described in detail in The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus, by Dadrian, and The Young Turk’s Crime against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire, by Akçam.
[27] Taner Akçam, The Young Turks’ Crime Against Humanity, 193. The full reference is as follows: ‘Meclis-I Ayan Zabit Ceridesi [Minutes of the Ottoman Chamber of Notables, hereafter MAZC], 3rd Electoral Term, Year of Assembly 5, Vol. 1 (Ankara: TBMM Basimevi 1990), 123.)
[28] Butler, Shadow of the Sultan’s Realm, 152.
[29] Butler, Shadow of the Sultan’s Realm, 152-154.
[30] The Turkish name is Ittihad ve Terakki Jemiyeti. Hereafter “CUP.”
[31] Ibid.
[32] Ibid., 153. See Appendix A.
[33] Ibid. “Under the circumstances, there could be little doubt toward which of the empire’s subject peoples the law was directed.”
[34] Ibid.
[35]Akçam, A Shameful Act, 164. The full reference is as follows: Takvim-i Vekayi, no. 3771, 9 February 1920, the verdict of the Mamüretülaziz trial, p 236.
[36] Ibid., 170. Throughout 149-204.
[37] Ibid., 170-171.
[38] Butler, Shadow of the Sultan’s Realm, 154.
[39] Akçam, A Shameful Act, 164.
[40] The New York Times, “Turkey Bars Red Cross: Will Not Permit America to Aid Armenian Sufferers,” The New York Times, October 19, 1915, <http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archivefree/pdf?res=9401E5DF1E38E633A2575AC1A9669D946496D6CF> (accessed January 12, 2018).
[41] Akçam, A Shameful Act, 172. “A Muslim who protects an Armenian will be executed in front of his house and the house burned. If he is a civil servant, he will be dismissed and sent before the Court-Martial; members of the military who consider it appropriate to protect [such persons] will come before the Court-Martial for military insubordination and be tried.” Full reference is as follows: First session, trial of Unionist leaders (indictment), Takvîm-i Vekâyı, no. 3540 (27 Nisan 1335/27 April 1919).
[42] Dadrian, “The Armenian Question and the Wartime Fate of the Armenians as Documented by the Officials of the Ottoman Empire’s World War I Allies, Germany and Austria-Hungary,” 65. “The empire was to be purged…attest to this preliminary decision.” The original reference is as follows: Outstanding in this respect are the statements of Cemal Paşa. Several times, he warned the Armenian leaders of dire consequences, including the massacre of 300,000 Armenians in the provinces earmarked for reforms, unless they stopped their push for European-controlled reforms. In his post-war memoirs, Cemal openly admitted that “our sole purpose (bizim yegâne gayemiz) in entering the war was to stop once and for all the Powers’ interventions in our internal affairs . . . and to tear up the [Armenian] reform accord which was imposed upon us by Russia”: Cemal Paşa, Hatıralar, ed. and trans. Behcet Cemal (Istanbul: Çağdaş, 1977), 438. For his threat of large-scale massacres and related statements in 1913, see Dadrian, History of the Armenian Genocide, 211, n. 23. Talaˆt also let it be known that the CUP had never forgotten that the Armenians in 1912 had “composed all their factional differences and through the initiative of their Catholicos had sent a delegation to Europe in pursuit of their goal of autonomy. While we were negotiating with them for a new reform scheme they did this in order to take advantage of Turkey’s [temporary] weakness” (Türkiyenin zaafından istifade . . . ) Talât Paşanın Hatıraları, 50–51. Armenian sources indicate that Talât in 1913 personally warned Armenian Parliamentary Deputy K. Zohrab to cease and desist from seeking European intervention, adding, “By doing so you are touching a very raw nerve. . . . We are determined to prevent by all means the materialization of such intervention and are prepared to resort to any means for this purpose. . . . Don’t force us to desperate measures”: Yervant Odian, “Teev Dasauyotu Khafiyen” (The Number 17 Spy), Vertcheen Lour (Istanbul Armenian newspaper), 11 and 12 November 1918. Another account indicates that during the initiation of the wartime anti-Armenian measures, Talât also told Armenian deputy, Vartkes, “During the Balkan war we were weak and the Armenians took positions against us. Now that we are strong we will teach a lesson to them”: “Dzerougeen Hishadagneru” (The Memoirs of Dzeroug), Jagadamard (Istanbul Armenian newspaper), 2 March 1919. It should be noted that a few weeks after the major 24 April round-ups, these two deputies were also deported, and outside the city of Urda the authorities had them killed: German Foreign Ministry Archives (Auswärtiges Amt; hereafter, A. A.), A. A. Türkei, A23991, or R14087 in the new system of indexing. K. no. 81/B.1645, Rössler’s 27 July 1915 report. As to Enver, the third member of the triumvirate, during the war he told the German Marine Attache Lieutenant Commander Hans Humann that through the implementation of the anti-Armenian measures, the basis for foreign intervention “has been eliminated without further ado” (ohne weiteres aus der Welt geschaffen worden): Botschaft Konstantinopel (hereafter, BoKon) 170, fol. 52, Humann’s 6 August 1915 memorandum.
[43] Ibid. “As noted earlier, the revival of the Armenian reform issue…a total victory of the Turkish-nationalistic direction in the councils of CUP.’” The original reference is as follows: A. A. Türkei, 183/46, A5919, or R14095. Copies of this 16 February 1917 report are found also in 181 secr. Band 2, and 161 Band 5.
[44] Ibid.
[45] Ibid., 65-66. The original reference is as follows: Joseph Pomiankowski, Der Zusammenbruch des Ottomanischen Reiches (Greiz, Austria: Akademische Druck-und-Verlagsanstadt, 1928/1969), 162-63.
[46] Ibid., 66. “einen lang gehegten Plan.” “Anstreibung und Vernichtung.”
[47] Ibid., 199. The original reference is as follows: From the written testimony of Vehip Pasha, delivered “to the President of the Commission for the Investigation of Crimes in the Office of General [Directorate of] Security,” dated 5 December 1918. I used the copy that is found in AAPJ, Box 7, File H, Doc. no 171-82. Vehip Pasha’s testimony played a critical role in the conviction of the defendants, not only in the main trial of Unionist leaders, but also of those tried for perpetrating the massacres in Trebizond and Harput. The entire testimony was actually read into the record in the second session of the Trebizond trial, held on 29 March 1919, and included in the judges’ decision in the Harput trial.
[48] Taner Akçam and Umit Kurt, The Spirit of the Laws: The Plunder of Wealth in the Armenian Genocide, trans. Aram Arkun (New York, New York: Berghahn Books, 2015), 22-24. Subject of book.
[49] Ibid., 24.
[50] Ibid., 37.
[51] Ibid., 64.
[52] Butler, Shadow of the Sultan’s Realm, 161.
[53] Ibid., 156.
[54] Ibid., 157.
Great historians are always great storytellers, but the converse need not be true. The historian must not only tell a good story, but must also be historically accurate, methodically proving the work with relevant primary sources. As a case in point, Daniel Allen Butler is an accomplished storyteller, and the author of many bestselling books. While the style and prose of Daniel Allen Butler’s writing in Shadow of the Sultan’s Realm may charm the reader into willing credulity, his dramatization of history cannot conceal the glaring omissions, inconsistencies, and shortcomings of his work[2]. He has mischaracterized the Armenian Genocide.
Butler’s opening salvo in the chapter entitled Armenian Agony states, among other things, that the “question” of the extermination of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire, was contemplated by few, if any, men previous to the events of 1915. Two sources immediately refute this. Paul Cambon, the French ambassador to Istanbul from 1890 to 1898, explains that, “A high ranking Turkish official told me, ‘the Armenian question does not exist but we shall create it.’”[3] He goes on to say that the Ottoman authorities were “contemplating the possibility of transporting the Armenians en masse to Mesopotamia,” and he predicted that the persecution of the Armenians would result in the massacres of 1894-96.[4] Furthermore, Max Erwin von Schneuber-Richter, the German vice-consul in Erzerum, noted in a 1915 report that the annihilations of the Armenians were preceded by “the Armenian question with which European diplomacy has been wrestling for centuries.[5]”
This is only the smallest of Butler’s mistakes in comparison to his ignorance or disregard for scholarship and evidence when dealing with the genocide. He argues that the Armenian genocide was the product of incompetence in the Turkish government in the execution of orders calling for the mass deportation of the Armenians. These deportations, he claims, were raised to quell the anti-Armenian sentiments building up in the Ottoman empire and to remove the threat of Armenians rebelling and joining forces with the Russians on the Eastern Front. Butler claims that the intent of Talât Paşa was to preserve the safety of the Armenian peoples while at the same time dissolving the bands of insurgents, and Talât was in fact driven to such extreme measures by the impending threats of the annihilation of the Armenians by fanatics. He claims that a clause in one of the orders establishes that Talât, far from intending to destroy the Armenians, wished to deport the Armenians in full respect of the law. Butler believes that the Ottoman government was simply inept, and unable to achieve its aim of safely exiling an unwanted minority; their extermination was a result not of vicious intent, but of tragic coincidence[6].
When dealing with a matter as important as genocide, there is an extra measure of care required in promulgating an account: Dr. Stanton of Genocide Watch lists denial as the final stage of genocide[7]. It is not clear whether Butler has merely been negligent in his research and has misunderstood the seriousness of his offense, or whether his work was conducted with the advice and funding of the Turkish government.
The definition of genocide, as set out in Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide held by the United Nations in 1948, four years after Raphael Lemkin coined the word itself to describe the atrocities suffered by the Armenians and the Jews during the first and second World Wars, respectively (neither Lemkin nor his motive is mentioned by Butler[8]), is, “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children from the group to another group.”[9]
Lemkin’s intent in creating this word is further explained in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress (the first example of the word in print):
“By ‘genocide’ we mean the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group. This new word, coined by the author to denote an old practice in its modern development, is made from the ancient Greek word genos (race, tribe) and the Latin cide (killing)…. Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. Genocide is directed against the national group as an entity, and the actions involved are directed against individuals, not in their individual capacity, but as members of the national group.”[10]
In Article III of the aforementioned convention on genocide, it is laid out that these acts will be considered internationally actionable: “(a) genocide, (b) conspiracy to commit genocide, (c) direct and public incitement to commit genocide, (d) attempt to commit genocide, and (e) complicity in genocide.[11]”
By the law of the United Nations, genocide requires the established intent to annihilate a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, in whole or in part, and a physical manifestation of that intent, whether to the extent originally intended or not. What it does not require is the intent to completely exterminate every last member of the group, or bald-faced proclamation of such intent by a country’s government. As such, Butler’s rubric, “the scale of the slaughter, the methods [employed], and the ultimate responsibility”[12] merely serves to deflect attention from the true issues, namely, intent and physical manifestation.
In the case of the Armenians, the Young Turks controlling the Ottoman government had a clear motive to conceal their intentions: to avoid international intervention. However, both intent to annihilate the Ottoman Armenian population and physical manifestation thereof are clearly present in official documents, reports, and telegrams of their German and Austro-Hungarian allies, as well as in official telegrams and testimonies entered into the court records as they were used in the trials of government officials after the genocide. Hundreds of memoirs—both of Turkish officials and Armenian survivors—corroborate the documents[13]. To review and present the entire field of evidence available is and has been the subject of many careers; this paper will present only representative documents to refute Butler’s most important points.
He first claims that the Armenians, as persecuted Christian minorities, appreciated positions in the janissary troops as an opportunity for their progeny to advance in status[14]. The practice of enlisting Janissaries, which had been practiced for centuries by the Ottoman Empire, entailed the forcible enslavement and military training of young Christian boys from subjugated minorities (at first) for the military and for the purpose of quelling rebellion. (The Janissaries would be sent to put down insurgents from their original province as a sort of psychological warfare against the rebels.) While the suggestion that subject peoples approved of having their children taken as slaves is presented entirely without evidence[15], it is entirely irrelevant to Butler’s argument regarding genocide, as the institution of Janissaries was abolished in 1826, eighty-nine years before the events of 1915.[16]
Butler further argues that, as the Armenians could not, outside of the Janissaries, advance further than the ranks of peasantry, they welcomed Russian rule[17]. While the massacres of the 1890’s under Sultan Abdul Hamid[18]provide a far more cogent reason for Armenian sympathies with the Russians, the Armenians spread throughout the empire did not look to overthrow the rule, nor, as Butler claims, were they actively attempting to free themselves from Ottoman rule. According to Turkish historian Enver Ziya Karal, “the Armenians were not pursuing their independence as was the case with the other Ottoman millets.[19]” They instead appear to have pinned their hopes on Ottoman assurances, such as the Tanzimat reform acts of 1839 and 1856,[20] the 1878 Berlin Treaty, and the Balkan negotiations reform accord which went into effect in 1914[21].
Butler further asserts that the presence of Russian-born Armenians fighting alongside the Russian army precipitated the deportation orders, as an Armenian rebellion would be an existential threat[22]. Actually, many more Turkish soldiers died in the disastrous battle of Sarikamis from the cold than from battle[23]; nevertheless, “Like the Nazis on World War II, the Ottomans felt that ‘the defeat was due to a treacherous deception,’” and the catastrophe was blamed on the Armenians through propaganda that had been prepared beforehand.[24]
Overarching Butler’s claims is his assertion that, because of the presence of clauses referring to legal consequences to those who harass the Armenians during the deportations, the Turkish Government fully intended to follow the correct legal outlines in deporting the Armenians, and, in fact, wished only to safely deport them[25]. These clauses are suspect, because the genocide was carried out unofficially, using a two-track system.[26] As Reşid Akif Paşa, addressing the Ottoman Chamber of Deputies, explained:
“There are certain secrets that I learned in my most recent, brief service in the [Izzet Paşa] cabinet that didn’t survive more than 25-30 days. Among these, I came across one peculiar thing. This deportation order was given openly and in official fashion by the Interior Ministry and communicated to the provinces. But after this official order [was given], the inauspicious order was circulated by they Central Committee to all parties so that the armed gangs [çete] could hastily complete their cursed task. With that, the armed gangs then took over and the barbaric massacres then began to take place.”[27]
As support for the first instance of Butler’s claim, he offers a clause in a document from Talât’s ministry, which, he claims, is a “crucial passage…in light of what would shortly transpire.[28]” The proffered passage, which is supposed to confirm Talât’s innocence and purity of heart, states that, “the measures taken shall be realized justly; and should there be any arrests after the thorough investigations of the documents the criminals shall be sent to the military courts immediately.[29]” The document in which this clause appears is not the “Temporary Law of Deportation” which was passed by the Committee of Union and Progress[30] on the twenty-fifth of May, 1915, supposedly to deport the entirety of the Ottoman Empire’s Armenian subjects to “places which have been prepared in interior vilayets”—it is an order titled “Increased Security Precautions,” issued by Talât’s interior ministry on the twenty-fourth of April and calling for the arrest of Armenian leaders from the main Armenian villages as well as Istanbul and their subsequent relocation to holding centers in Ankara, as Butler later admits. In short, it is not the thinly veiled order for the genocide of the Armenians—it is a relatively minor document, referring to Istanbul Armenians who were cosmopolitan and integrated, and the disappearance of whom would be in full view of European diplomats. It is a possible prelude to, but certainly not, the actual order which authorized the genocide.[31] His more blatant statement deals with the “Temporary Law of Deportation,[32]” and while he does admit that the law was directed exclusively at the Armenians[33], he maintains that the reason that the “massacres” occurred was the “incompetence and inefficiency of the Ottoman bureaucracy.[34]” The intent of genocide, therefore, is contested by Butler. While a full treatment is beyond the scope of this paper, a quotation from a Turkish primary source will demonstrate the existence of full intent:
“One trial verdict concludes that:
‘The defendant CUP Central Committee member Dr. Bahaettin Sakir Bey, left Istanbul for the Trabzon and Erzurum provinces and other regions as the ‘head of the Special Organization.’ He assumed leadership of the armed ganges {cete} which had been set up and formed by a procession of criminals released from prison… He sent them into action by delivering secret orders and instructions, some verbal, others encoded, to certain people and officials… [to carry out] the atrocities and evil massacre of the population and the plunder of their possessions, which were committed at different times and places during the deportation of the Armenians… the Special Organizations had been formed for the purpose of destroying and annihilating the Armenians.’”[35]
The honesty of Talât was highly suspect, as referenced in many Turkish sources[36]. “His closest friend, Hüseyin Cahit, said that Talat ‘regularly lied in government and political affairs.’ Falih Rifki Atay, Talat’s private secretary, described him as a man for whom ‘lying and injustice did not count as immorality.’ Atay said that sending an order only to cancel it shortly afterward by coded cable was business as usual for Talât.”[37] It is not, therefore, surprising that he would use this mechanism to conceal the true genocidal purposes of the deportations from European onlookers. Butler ignores a tremendous weight of evidence in lending credence to these protection clauses.
Butler goes on to state that the incompetence in executing the “Temporary Law of Deportation” was due to poor central control and miscommunication.[38] In fact, regional governors who refused to carry out the orders, or insisted on a full set of official documents, were removed or executed.[39] All outside assistance in remedying the plight of the Armenians from the Red Cross or missionary groups was forbidden.[40] Officials who attempted in any way to condone the plight of the Armenians were threatened, and Muslim citizens of the empire aided the Armenians only at peril of their lives[41].
The CUP, in full control of the government since 1913, had adopted as its first policies the targeting and liquidation of all non-Muslim elements in the Ottoman Empire, but most particularly the Armenians. This is evidenced by various declarations made by Cemal Paşa and Talât Paşa from 1913 to 1918.[42] The most damning evidence of intent, however, is supplied by reports made by German officials in Turkey at the time of the genocide In a 1917 report, Richard von Kühlmann, the German ambassador to Turkey during World War I, mentions “the annihilation of the Armenians which was carried out on a large scale” (die in grossem Umfange durchgefürte Armeniervernichtung) because of “a policy of extermination,” formed by “a policy shift and to a total victory of the Turkish-nationalistic direction in the councils of the CUP.”[43] Intent, therefore, was clearly present, and had in fact been there for some time.
His report goes on to say that the main catalyst to this policy shift was the separatist activities of the Armenians coinciding with the economic downturn in Turkey after misfortune during the Balkan war in 1912[44].The accusations found in this report are confirmed by remarks detailed in the post-war memoirs of Joseph Pomiankowski, the Austro-Hungarian military minister plenipotentiary in the Ottoman Empire from 1909-1918, who also states that the CUP had decided before World War I to exterminate the Armenians.[45] Further confirmation is found in the report of Lieutenant-Colonel Stange, made to the German Military Mission to Turkey on 23 August 1915, in which he states that the annihilation of the Armenians was executed in accordance with “a plan conceived a long time ago,” and that this “expulsion and annihilation” was ordered by the CUP[46]. The crowning condemnation, however, is provided in the written testimony of Vehip Paşa, former commander of the Third Army of the Ottoman Empire, dated 5 December 1918:
“The massacre and annihiliation [sic] of the Armenians and their looting and pillaging by the killers were the result of a decision made by the [C]entral [C]ommittee of the [Committee of] Union and Progress [sic] …These specific acts of violence, which [were] carried out in accordance with a comprehensive program and with a clear intent, were performed upon the instruction and urging, and with the supervision and follow-up of government functionaries, who were the tools of, first, the Central Committee of the CUP and its plenipotentiaries, and second, the wishes and aspirations of the CUP itself, which had discarded [all considerations of] law and conscience.”[47]
Butler does not seem to have consulted the mountain of evidence available through the allies of the Ottoman Empire, but he does mention that the CUP passed the “Temporary Law of Expropriation and Confiscation,” on 26 September 1915, which declared all property previously belonging to deported Armenians to now be the possessions of the government[48]. Butler not only misstates the date on which it was published (the 26th, not the 13th, of September)—he crucially fails to note that the decree was rescinded by the Ottoman Empire on 12 January 1920, and that the Turkish Republic abrogated that rescinding on 14 September 1914[49] [50] [51]. This may seem a strange law for a government which commanded only temporary deportment of the Armenians to pass, and he himself points out the inconsistency of the Turkish Government’s position, saying, “No matter what befell them [the Armenians]…even had they lived, in the end they would have had nothing to which they could return.”[52]
Perhaps the most concerning part of Armenian Agony lies at the end. After proclaiming the “massacres” tragic, the incompetence catastrophic, and the events “undeniably a crime against humanity,” and acknowledging the “impressive array of documentation supporting their [the Armenians’] claims,” he states that this multitude of confirmation of intent should be discounted because “there is something patently phony about the Armenian version of the events of 1915.”[53] [54] Butler’s lack of citation and evidence is representative of his chapter as a whole, and while his particular story may seem well-thought-out and plausible, he draws the opposite conclusions to genocide scholars Dadrian and Akçam, who have the best ability to interpret the mountain of primary sources available. His chapter on the Armenian Genocide is by no means history and should be neither used nor construed as such.
Appendix A: Temporary Law of Deportation, 29 May 1915, as translated by the United States State Department, 25 June 1915
TRANSLATION: OFFICIAL PROCLAMATION
Our Armenian fellow countrymen, who form one of the Ottoman racial elements, having taken up with a lot of false ideas of a nature to disturb the public order, as the result of foreign instigations for many years past, and because of the fact that they have brought about bloody happenings and have attempted to destroy the peace and security of the Ottoman state, of their fellow countrymen, as well as their own safety and interests, and, moreover, as the Armenian societies now have dared to join themselves to the enemy of their existence, and to the enemies now at war with our state, our Government is compelled to adopt extraordinary measures and sacrifices, both for the preservation of the order and security of the country, and for the continuation of their existence and for the welfare of the Armenian societies. Therefore, as a measure to be applied until the conclusion of the war, the Armenians have to be sent away to places which have been prepared in the interior vilayets, and a literal obedience to the following orders, in a categorical manner, is accordingly enjoined upon all Ottomans:-
1---With the exception of the sick, all Armenians are obliged to leave, within five days from the date of this proclamation, and by villages or quarters, under the escort of the gendarmery [sic].
2---Although they are free to carry with them on their journey the articles of their movable property which they desire, they are forbidden to sell their landed and their extra effects, or to leave them here and there with other people. Because their exile is only temporary, their landed property, and the effects which they will be unable to take with them will be taken care of under the supervision of the Government, and stored in closed and protected buildings. Any one who sells or attempts to take care of his movable effects or landed property in a manner contrary to this order shall be sent before the Court Martial. They are only free to sell to the Government, of their own accord, those articles which may answer the needs of the army.
3---To assure their comfort during the journey, hans and suitable buildings have been prepared, and everything has been done for their safe arrival at their places of temporary residence, without their being subjected to any kind of attack or affronts.
4---The guards will use their weapons against those who make any attempts to attack or affront the life, honor, and property of one or of a number of Armenians, and such persons as are taken alive will be sent to the Court Martial and executed. This measure being the regrettable result of the Armenians having been led into error, it does not concern in any way the other races, and these other elements will in no way or manner whatsoever intervene in this question.
5---Since the Armenians are obliged to submit to this decision of the Government, if some of them attempt to use arms against the soldiers or gendarmes, arms shall be employed only against those who use force, and they shall be captured dead or alive. In like manner, those who, in opposition to the Government’s decision, refrain from leaving, or hide themselves here and there, if they are sheltered or are given food and assistance, the persons who thus shelter them or aid them shall be sent before the Court Martial for execution.
6---As the Armenians are not allowed to carry any firearms or cutting weapons, they shall deliver to the authorities every sort of arms, revolvers, daggers, bombs, etc [sic], which they have concealed in their places of residence or elsewhere. A lot of such weapons and other things have been reported to the Government, and if their owners allow themselves to be misled, and the weapons are afterwards found by the Government, they will be under heavy responsibility and receive severe punishment.
7---The escorts of soldiers and gendarmes are required and are authorized to use their weapons against and to kill persons who shall try to attack or to damage Armenians in villages, in city quarters, or on the roads for the purpose of robbery or other injury.
8---Those who owe money to the Ottoman Bank may deposit in its warehouses goods up to the amount of their indebtedness. Only in case the Government should have need thereof in the future are the military authorities authorized to buy the said goods by paying the price therefor. In the case of debts to other people it is permitted to leave goods in accordance with this condition, but the Government must ascertain the genuine character of this debt, and for this purpose the certified books of the merchant form the strongest proof.
9---Large and small animals which it is impossible to carry along shall be bought in the name of the army.
10--On the road the vilayet, leva, kaza and [sic] nahieh officials shall render possible assistance to the Armenians.
13/25 June 1331/1915.
Copy handed by the vali of Trebizond to U.S. consul Oscar Heizer and forwarded to the U.S. Department of State, June 28, 1915, N.A., D.S., R.G. 59, Dec. File No. 867.4016/85. The English translation is from N.A., D.S., R.G. 59, Dec. File No. 867.4016/114.
Leslie A. Davis, The Slaughterhouse Province: An American Diplomat’s Report on the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1917, ed. Susan K. Blair, (New Rochelle, New York: Orpheus Publishing, Inc., 1989), Appendix B, 188-190.
Appendix B
“The Ten Stages of Genocide”
Dr. Gregory H. Stanton [1], President, Genocide Watch
1986
Presented as a briefing paper at the United States State Department in 1996.
Genocide is a process that develops in ten stages that are predictable but not inexorable. At each stage, preventive measures can stop it. The process is not linear. Stages may occur simultaneously. Logically, later stages must be preceded by earlier stages. But all stages continue to operate throughout the process.
➔ 1. CLASSIFICATION: All cultures have categories to distinguish people into “us and them” by ethnicity, race, religion, or nationality: German and Jew, Hutu and Tutsi. Bipolar societies that lack mixed categories, such as Rwanda and Burundi, are the most likely to have genocide.
The main preventive measure at this early stage is to develop universalistic institutions that transcend ethnic or racial divisions, that actively promote tolerance and understanding, and that promote classifications that transcend the divisions. The Roman Catholic Church could have played this role in Rwanda, had it not been riven by the same ethnic cleavages as Rwandan society. Promotion of a common language in countries like Tanzania has also promoted transcendent national identity. This search for common ground is vital to early prevention of genocide.
➔ 2. SYMBOLIZATION: We give names or other symbols to the classifications. We name people “Jews” or “Gypsies,” or distinguish them by colors or dress; and apply the symbols to members of groups. Classification and symbolization are universally human and do not necessarily result in genocide unless they lead to dehumanization. When combined with hatred, symbols may be forced upon unwilling members of pariah groups: the yellow star for Jews under Nazi rule, the blue scarf for people from the Eastern Zone in Khmer Rouge Cambodia.
To combat symbolization, hate symbols can be legally forbidden (swastikas in Germany) as can hate speech. Group marking like gang clothing or tribal scarring can be outlawed, as well. The problem is that legal limitations will fail if unsupported by popular cultural enforcement. Though Hutu and Tutsi were forbidden words in Burundi until the 1980’s, code words replaced them. If widely supported, however, denial of symbolization can be powerful, as it was in Bulgaria, where the government refused to supply enough yellow badges and at least eighty percent of Jews did not wear them, depriving the yellow star of its significance as a Nazi symbol for Jews.
➔ 3. DISCRIMINATION: A dominant group uses law, custom, and political power to deny the rights of other groups. The powerless group may not be accorded full civil rights, voting rights, or even citizenship. The dominant group is driven by an exclusionary ideology that would deprive less powerful groups of their rights. The ideology advocates monopolization or expansion of power by the dominant group. It legitimizes the victimization of weaker groups. Advocates of exclusionary ideologies are often charismatic, expressing resentments of their followers, attracting support from the masses. Examples include the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 in Nazi Germany, which stripped Jews of their German citizenship, and prohibited their employment by the government and by universities. Denial of citizenship to the Rohingya Muslim minority in Burma is a current example.
Prevention against discrimination means full political empowerment and citizenship rights for all groups in a society. Discrimination on the basis of nationality, ethnicity, race or religion should be outlawed. Individuals should have the right to sue the state, corporations, and other individuals if their rights are violated.
➔ 4. DEHUMANIZATION: One group denies the humanity of the other group. Members of it are equated with animals, vermin, insects or diseases. Dehumanization overcomes the normal human revulsion against murder. At this stage, hate propaganda in print and on hate radios is used to vilify the victim group. The majority group is taught to regard the other group as less than human, and even alien to their society. They are indoctrinated to believe that “We are better off without them.” The powerless group can become so depersonalized that they are actually given numbers rather than names, as Jews were in the death camps. They are equated with filth, impurity, and immorality. Hate speech fills the propaganda of official radio, newspapers, and speeches.
To combat dehumanization, incitement to genocide should not be confused with protected speech. Genocidal societies lack constitutional protection for countervailing speech, and should be treated differently than democracies. Local and international leaders should condemn the use of hate speech and make it culturally unacceptable. Leaders who incite genocide should be banned from international travel and have their foreign finances frozen. Hate radio stations should be jammed or shut down, and hate propaganda banned. Hate crimes and atrocities should be promptly punished.
➔ 5. ORGANIZATION: Genocide is always organized, usually by the state, often using militias to provide deniability of state responsibility. (An example is the Sudanese government’s support and arming of the Janjaweed in Darfur.) Sometimes organization is informal (Hindu mobs led by local RSS militants during Indian partition) or decentralized (jihadist terrorist groups.) Special army units or militias are often trained and armed. Arms are purchased by states and militias, often in violation of UN Arms Embargos, to facilitate acts of genocide. States organize secret police to spy on, arrest, torture, and murder people suspected of opposition to political leaders. Special training is given to murderous militias and special army killing units.
To combat this stage, membership in genocidal militias should be outlawed. Their leaders should be denied visas for foreign travel and their foreign assets frozen. The UN should impose arms embargoes on governments and citizens of countries involved in genocidal massacres, and create commissions to investigate violations, as was done in post-genocide Rwanda, and use national legal systems to prosecute those who violate such embargos.
➔ 6. POLARIZATION: Extremists drive the groups apart. Hate groups broadcast polarizing propaganda. Motivations for targeting a group are indoctrinated through mass media. Laws may forbid intermarriage or social interaction. Extremist terrorism targets moderates, intimidating and silencing the center. Moderates from the perpetrators’ own group are most able to stop genocide, so are the first to be arrested and killed. Leaders in targeted groups are the next to be arrested and murdered. The dominant group passes emergency laws or decrees that grants them total power over the targeted group. The laws erode fundamental civil rights and liberties. Targeted groups are disarmed to make them incapable of self-defense, and to ensure that the dominant group has total control.
Prevention may mean security protection for moderate leaders or assistance to human rights groups. Assets of extremists may be seized, and visas for international travel denied to them. Coups d’état by extremists should be opposed by international sanctions. Vigorous objections should be raised to disarmament of opposition groups. If necessary they should be armed to defend themselves.
➔ 7. PREPARATION: Plans are made for genocidal killings. National or perpetrator group leaders plan the “Final Solution” to the Jewish, Armenian, Tutsi or other targeted group “question.” They often use euphemisms to cloak their intentions, such as referring to their goals as “ethnic cleansing,” “purification,” or “counter-terrorism.” They build armies, buy weapons and train their troops and militias. They indoctrinate the populace with fear of the victim group. Leaders often claim that “if we don’t kill them, they will kill us,” disguising genocide as self-defense. Acts of genocide are disguised as counter-insurgency if there is an ongoing armed conflict or civil war. There is a sudden increase in inflammatory rhetoric and hate propaganda with the objective of creating fear of the other group. Political processes such as peace accords that threaten the total dominance of the genocidal group or upcoming elections that may cost them their grip on total power may actually trigger genocide.
Prevention of preparation may include arms embargos and commissions to enforce them. It should include prosecution of incitement and conspiracy to commit genocide, both crimes under Article 3 of the Genocide Convention.
➔ 8. PERSECUTION: Victims are identified and separated out because of their ethnic or religious identity. Death lists are drawn up. In state sponsored genocide, members of victim groups may be forced to wear identifying symbols. Their property is often expropriated. Sometimes they are even segregated into ghettoes, deported into concentration camps, or confined to a famine-struck region and starved. They are deliberately deprived of resources such as water or food in order to slowly destroy them. Programs are implemented to prevent procreation through forced sterilization or abortions. Children are forcibly taken from their parents. The victim group’s basic human rights become systematically abused through extrajudicial killings, torture and forced displacement. Genocidal massacres begin. They are acts of genocide because they intentionally destroy part of a group. The perpetrators watch for whether such massacres meet any international reaction. If not, they realize that that the international community will again be bystanders and permit another genocide.
At this stage, a Genocide Emergency must be declared. If the political will of the great powers, regional alliances, or U.N. Security Council or the U.N. General Assembly can be mobilized, armed international intervention should be prepared, or heavy assistance provided to the victim group to prepare for its self-defense. Humanitarian assistance should be organized by the U.N. and private relief groups for the inevitable tide of refugees to come.
➔ 9. EXTERMINATION begins, and quickly becomes the mass killing legally called “genocide.” It is “extermination” to the killers because they do not believe their victims to be fully human. When it is sponsored by the state, the armed forces often work with militias to do the killing. Sometimes the genocide results in revenge killings by groups against each other, creating the downward whirlpool-like cycle of bilateral genocide (as in Burundi). Acts of genocide demonstrate how dehumanized the victims have become. Already dead bodies are dismembered; rape is used as a tool of war to genetically alter and eradicate the other group. Destruction of cultural and religious property is employed to annihilate the group’s existence from history. The era of “total war” began in World War II. Firebombing did not differentiate civilians from non-combatants. The civil wars that broke out after the end of the Cold War have also not differentiated civilians and combatants. They result in widespread war crimes. Mass rapes of women and girls have become a characteristic of all modern genocides. All men of fighting age are murdered in some genocides. In total genocides all the members of the targeted group are exterminated.
At this stage, only rapid and overwhelming armed intervention can stop genocide. Real safe areas or refugee escape corridors should be established with heavily armed international protection. (An unsafe “safe” area is worse than none at all.) The U.N. Standing High Readiness Brigade, EU Rapid Response Force, or regional forces — should be authorized to act by the U.N. Security Council if the genocide is small. For larger interventions, a multilateral force authorized by the U.N. should intervene. If the U.N. Security Council is paralyzed, regional alliances must act anyway under Chapter VIII of the U.N. Charter or the UN General Assembly should authorize action under the Uniting for Peace Resolution GARes. 330 (1950), which has been used 13 times for such armed intervention. Since 2005, the international responsibility to protect transcends the narrow interests of individual nation states. If strong nations will not provide troops to intervene directly, they should provide the airlift, equipment, and financial means necessary for regional states to intervene.
➔ 10. DENIAL is the final stage that lasts throughout and always follows genocide. It is among the surest indicators of further genocidal massacres. The perpetrators of genocide dig up the mass graves, burn the bodies, try to cover up the evidence and intimidate the witnesses. They deny that they committed any crimes, and often blame what happened on the victims. They block investigations of the crimes, and continue to govern until driven from power by force, when they flee into exile. There they remain with impunity, like Pol Pot or Idi Amin, unless they are captured and a tribunal is established to try them.
The best response to denial is punishment by an international tribunal or national courts. There the evidence can be heard, and the perpetrators punished. Tribunals like the Yugoslav, Rwanda or Sierra Leone Tribunals, the tribunal to try the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, or the International Criminal Court may not deter the worst genocidal killers. But with the political will to arrest and prosecute them, some may be brought to justice. When possible, local proceedings should provide forums for hearings of the evidence against perpetrators who were not the main leaders and planners of a genocide, with opportunities for restitution and reconciliation. The Rwandan gaçaça trials are one example. Justice should be accompanied by education in schools and the media about the facts of a genocide, the suffering it caused its victims, the motivations of its perpetrators, and the need for restoration of the rights of its victims.
[1] President, Genocide Watch; Research Professor in Genocide Studies and Prevention, School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University, Arlington,Virginia 22201.
Primary Sources
- Davis, Leslie A. The Slaughterhouse Province: An American Diplomat’s Report on the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1917. Edited by Susan K. Blair. New Rochelle, New York: Orpheus Publishing, Inc., 1989.
- Lemkin, Raphaël. Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress. Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1944.
- Stanton, Dr. Gregory H. “The Ten Stages of Genocide.” Genocide Watch. 1986. < http://genocidewatch.net/genocide-2/8-stages-of-genocide> (accessed January 10, 2018)
- United Nations General Assembly. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. United Nations Treaty Series, vol. 78, No. 1021. Paris, 9 December 1948.
Secondary Sources
(Note on sources: I have followed Dadrian and Akçam in preferring source material from Ottoman, Turkish, German, and Austrian official sources, rather than material from British, American, Armenian, and French primary sources which can be subject, perhaps unfairly, to claims that it may be tainted as propaganda. This limits my ability to interact with primary sources, since I am not proficient enough in Turkish or Armenian to read the original documents. I am also unable to travel to the archives in which they are kept [mostly in Germany, Turkey, Armenia, and Austria]. However, Dadrian and Akçam make extensive use of primary source material, which is referenced in detail in their works.)
- Akçam, Taner. A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility. New York, New York: Henry Holt and Company, LLC, 2006.
- Akçam, Taner, and Kurt, Umit. The Spirit of the Laws: The Plunder of Wealth in the Armenian Genocide. Trans. Aram Arkun. New York, New York: Berghahn Books, 2015.
- Akçam, Taner. The Young Turks’ Crime Against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2012.
- Butler, Daniel Allen. Shadow of the Sultan’s Realm: The Destruction of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East. Dulles, Virginia: Potomac Books, Inc., 2011.
- Dadrian, Vahakn N. “The Armenian Question and the Wartime Fate of the Armenians as Documented by the Officials of the Ottoman Empire’s World War I Allies: Germany and Austria-Hungary.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 34 (2002): 59-85.
- Dadrian, Vahakn N. The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus. New York, New York: Berghahn Books, 2008.
- Kinross, John Patrick Douglas Balfour, 3rd Baron (The Right Honourable The Lord Kinross). The Ottoman Centuries: The Rise and Fall of the Turkish Empire. New York, New York: William Morrow and Company, 1977.
- Rogan, Eugene. The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East. New York, New York: Basic Books, 2015.
Footnotes
[1] Taner Akçam, The Young Turks’ Crime Against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2012),202. The original reference is as follows: DE/PA-AA/Bo.Kons./Band 169, Report by Consul General Mordtmann, dated 30 June 1915. (Original references will be included when considered especially pertinent to the text and helpful to the reader.)
[2] Daniel Allen Butler, Shadow of the Sultan’s Realm: The Destruction of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East (Dulles, Virginia: Potomac Books, Inc., 2011), 147-161, Armenian Agony. One glaring omission is the citation of any of his content save direct quotations, whose sources run the gamut from The Arms of Krupp to Hamlet. Hamlet, 159. Arms of Krupp, 161. See also 250. Butler recommends several books in what he calls his “chapter source notes and citations,” (Armenian Agony, 2249-250) as the “best examinations of the Armenian massacres.” On what basis he makes this determination is not clear. The current author has, in attempt to find the sources for the content in his chapter, sifted through his bibliography to no avail, and therefore could not vouch for the verity of any of his claims and has been forced to resort to speculation as to whence each part of Butler’s material comes.
[3] Vahakn N. Dadrian, “The Armenian Question and the Wartime Fate of the Armenians as Documented by the Officials of the Ottoman Empire’s World War I Allies: Germany and Austria-Hungary,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 34 (2002):59-85: 61. The original reference is as follows: Diplomatic Archives of Foreign ministry of France (Documents Diplomatiques Français 1871-1900), vol. 11, doc. no. 50 (1947), 71-74. See also 20 February 1894 report, Livre Jaune. Affaires Arméniens. Projets de réformes dans l’Empire Ottoman 1893-1897, doc. no. 6 (1897), 10-13. (Original references will be included when considered especially pertinent to the text and helpful to the reader.)
[4] Ibid. en masse les Arméniens…dans la Mésopotamie. The original reference is as follows: Paul Cambon, Corespondance 1870-1924 (Paris: Edition B. Grasset, 1940), 393, 395.
[5] Ibid., 72. Die Armenische Frage welche seit Jahrhunderten die Diplomatic Europa’s beschäfligt hat. The original reference is as follows: A. A. Türkei 183/39, A28584, or R14088, J. no. 598, enclosure no. 1, 10 August 1915 report.
[6] Butler, Shadow of the Sultan’s Realm, 151-152. Referenced throughout the chapter.
[7] Dr. Gregory H. Stanton, “The Ten Stages of Genocide,” Genocide Watch, 1986, < http://genocidewatch.net/genocide-2/8-stages-of-genocide>, accessed January 10, 2018. The full text is provided in Appendix B.
[8] Butler, Shadow of the Sultan’s Realm, 156. He does specifically mention the date of coinage—perhaps in a half-hearted attempt to disprove genocide?
[9] United Nations, General Assembly, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Paris, 9 December 1948, United Nations Treaty Series, vol. 78, No. 1021, 280.
[10] Lemkin, Raphaël. Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress, (Washington, Carnegie endowment for international peace, division of international law, 700 Jackson Place, N.W. 1944), 79 (Chapter IX, Genocide).
[11] United Nations, General Assembly, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 280.
[12] Butler, Shadow of the Sultan’s Realm, 155.
[13] As mentioned further in the text, these will not be dealt with in this paper. Outstanding in these memoirs are Armenian Golgotha, by Grigoris Balakian, and The Road from Home, an account by David Kherdian of the experiences of his mother, Veron Dumehjian. See also The Slaughterhouse Province, the account of Leslie A. Davis, American Consul to Turkey at the time.
[14] Butler, Shadow of the Sultan’s Realm, 148.
[15] Ibid. This particular penchant is present throughout the chapter.
[16] Lord Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries: The Rise and Fall of the Turkish Empire (New York, New York: William Morrow and Company, 1977), 364, 456-457.
[17] Butler, Shadow of the Sultan’s Realm, 149-150. This assertion is false. Many minorities were wealthy, successful in finance and commerce, and socially influential. Among these were Greeks, Armenians, and Jews. See Lord Kinross, The Ottoman Centuries, 363.
[18] Taner Akçam, A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility (New York, New York: Henry Holt and Company, LLC, 2006),40-46
[19] Dadrian, “The Armenian Question and the Wartime Fate of the Armenians as Documented by the Officials of the Ottoman Empire’s World War I Allies: Germany and Austria-Hungary,” 63. The Armenian Reform was the implementation of 1912-1914 reform package stipulating that two provinces would be formed in Armeno-Turkey which would be overseen by two European Christian governors. It was implemented on February 8, 1914, and abolished Dec. 16 of that year after Turkey’s entry into WWI.
[20] Ibid., 61.
[21] Ibid, 65
[22] Butler, Shadow of the Sultan’s Realm, 151, 153.
[23] Eugene Rogan, The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East (New York, New York: Basic Books, 2015), 106-114.
[24] Akçam, A Shameful Act, 125.
[25] Butler, Shadow of the Sultan’s Realm, 152-154.
[26] Described in detail in The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus, by Dadrian, and The Young Turk’s Crime against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire, by Akçam.
[27] Taner Akçam, The Young Turks’ Crime Against Humanity, 193. The full reference is as follows: ‘Meclis-I Ayan Zabit Ceridesi [Minutes of the Ottoman Chamber of Notables, hereafter MAZC], 3rd Electoral Term, Year of Assembly 5, Vol. 1 (Ankara: TBMM Basimevi 1990), 123.)
[28] Butler, Shadow of the Sultan’s Realm, 152.
[29] Butler, Shadow of the Sultan’s Realm, 152-154.
[30] The Turkish name is Ittihad ve Terakki Jemiyeti. Hereafter “CUP.”
[31] Ibid.
[32] Ibid., 153. See Appendix A.
[33] Ibid. “Under the circumstances, there could be little doubt toward which of the empire’s subject peoples the law was directed.”
[34] Ibid.
[35]Akçam, A Shameful Act, 164. The full reference is as follows: Takvim-i Vekayi, no. 3771, 9 February 1920, the verdict of the Mamüretülaziz trial, p 236.
[36] Ibid., 170. Throughout 149-204.
[37] Ibid., 170-171.
[38] Butler, Shadow of the Sultan’s Realm, 154.
[39] Akçam, A Shameful Act, 164.
[40] The New York Times, “Turkey Bars Red Cross: Will Not Permit America to Aid Armenian Sufferers,” The New York Times, October 19, 1915, <http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archivefree/pdf?res=9401E5DF1E38E633A2575AC1A9669D946496D6CF> (accessed January 12, 2018).
[41] Akçam, A Shameful Act, 172. “A Muslim who protects an Armenian will be executed in front of his house and the house burned. If he is a civil servant, he will be dismissed and sent before the Court-Martial; members of the military who consider it appropriate to protect [such persons] will come before the Court-Martial for military insubordination and be tried.” Full reference is as follows: First session, trial of Unionist leaders (indictment), Takvîm-i Vekâyı, no. 3540 (27 Nisan 1335/27 April 1919).
[42] Dadrian, “The Armenian Question and the Wartime Fate of the Armenians as Documented by the Officials of the Ottoman Empire’s World War I Allies, Germany and Austria-Hungary,” 65. “The empire was to be purged…attest to this preliminary decision.” The original reference is as follows: Outstanding in this respect are the statements of Cemal Paşa. Several times, he warned the Armenian leaders of dire consequences, including the massacre of 300,000 Armenians in the provinces earmarked for reforms, unless they stopped their push for European-controlled reforms. In his post-war memoirs, Cemal openly admitted that “our sole purpose (bizim yegâne gayemiz) in entering the war was to stop once and for all the Powers’ interventions in our internal affairs . . . and to tear up the [Armenian] reform accord which was imposed upon us by Russia”: Cemal Paşa, Hatıralar, ed. and trans. Behcet Cemal (Istanbul: Çağdaş, 1977), 438. For his threat of large-scale massacres and related statements in 1913, see Dadrian, History of the Armenian Genocide, 211, n. 23. Talaˆt also let it be known that the CUP had never forgotten that the Armenians in 1912 had “composed all their factional differences and through the initiative of their Catholicos had sent a delegation to Europe in pursuit of their goal of autonomy. While we were negotiating with them for a new reform scheme they did this in order to take advantage of Turkey’s [temporary] weakness” (Türkiyenin zaafından istifade . . . ) Talât Paşanın Hatıraları, 50–51. Armenian sources indicate that Talât in 1913 personally warned Armenian Parliamentary Deputy K. Zohrab to cease and desist from seeking European intervention, adding, “By doing so you are touching a very raw nerve. . . . We are determined to prevent by all means the materialization of such intervention and are prepared to resort to any means for this purpose. . . . Don’t force us to desperate measures”: Yervant Odian, “Teev Dasauyotu Khafiyen” (The Number 17 Spy), Vertcheen Lour (Istanbul Armenian newspaper), 11 and 12 November 1918. Another account indicates that during the initiation of the wartime anti-Armenian measures, Talât also told Armenian deputy, Vartkes, “During the Balkan war we were weak and the Armenians took positions against us. Now that we are strong we will teach a lesson to them”: “Dzerougeen Hishadagneru” (The Memoirs of Dzeroug), Jagadamard (Istanbul Armenian newspaper), 2 March 1919. It should be noted that a few weeks after the major 24 April round-ups, these two deputies were also deported, and outside the city of Urda the authorities had them killed: German Foreign Ministry Archives (Auswärtiges Amt; hereafter, A. A.), A. A. Türkei, A23991, or R14087 in the new system of indexing. K. no. 81/B.1645, Rössler’s 27 July 1915 report. As to Enver, the third member of the triumvirate, during the war he told the German Marine Attache Lieutenant Commander Hans Humann that through the implementation of the anti-Armenian measures, the basis for foreign intervention “has been eliminated without further ado” (ohne weiteres aus der Welt geschaffen worden): Botschaft Konstantinopel (hereafter, BoKon) 170, fol. 52, Humann’s 6 August 1915 memorandum.
[43] Ibid. “As noted earlier, the revival of the Armenian reform issue…a total victory of the Turkish-nationalistic direction in the councils of CUP.’” The original reference is as follows: A. A. Türkei, 183/46, A5919, or R14095. Copies of this 16 February 1917 report are found also in 181 secr. Band 2, and 161 Band 5.
[44] Ibid.
[45] Ibid., 65-66. The original reference is as follows: Joseph Pomiankowski, Der Zusammenbruch des Ottomanischen Reiches (Greiz, Austria: Akademische Druck-und-Verlagsanstadt, 1928/1969), 162-63.
[46] Ibid., 66. “einen lang gehegten Plan.” “Anstreibung und Vernichtung.”
[47] Ibid., 199. The original reference is as follows: From the written testimony of Vehip Pasha, delivered “to the President of the Commission for the Investigation of Crimes in the Office of General [Directorate of] Security,” dated 5 December 1918. I used the copy that is found in AAPJ, Box 7, File H, Doc. no 171-82. Vehip Pasha’s testimony played a critical role in the conviction of the defendants, not only in the main trial of Unionist leaders, but also of those tried for perpetrating the massacres in Trebizond and Harput. The entire testimony was actually read into the record in the second session of the Trebizond trial, held on 29 March 1919, and included in the judges’ decision in the Harput trial.
[48] Taner Akçam and Umit Kurt, The Spirit of the Laws: The Plunder of Wealth in the Armenian Genocide, trans. Aram Arkun (New York, New York: Berghahn Books, 2015), 22-24. Subject of book.
[49] Ibid., 24.
[50] Ibid., 37.
[51] Ibid., 64.
[52] Butler, Shadow of the Sultan’s Realm, 161.
[53] Ibid., 156.
[54] Ibid., 157.