|
WHAT IS THE OUTCOME OF RESEARCH CONDUCTED BY FOREIGNERS?
Immediately after the World
War I and following the occupation of Istanbul and several
other regions of the country by the Allied armies, the British
authorities had sent several hundred Ottoman political and
military leaders as well as intellectuals, to Island of Malta
under the accusation that they were criminals of war and imprisoned
them there. The Sublime Porte had vehemently co-operated with
the Allied Powers in all areas just in order to keep the sultanate
and its very existence and to get rid of the Union and Progress
Party that ruled the Empire for ten years and had a significant
influence in the Government.
A thoroughgoing examination
was made on the Ottoman archives in order to find clues for
indicting the Union and Progress Party as well as the detainees
both in Malta and in Istanbul. All these efforts did not produce
an iota of evidence that might be used to incriminate the
Government of that time and the detainees. Despaired by this
failure, the British Government screened its own archives
and the documents held by the United States Government in
Washington. The result was a blatant impasse.
The United States archives
contain an interesting document sent to Lord Curzon on 13
July 1921 by Mr. R.C. Craigie, the British Ambassador in Washington.
The tenor of this message is as follows: “I regret to
state that there is nothing that may be used as evidence against
the Turkish detainees in Malta. There are no events that may
constitute adequate proofs. The said reports do not appear
to contain even circumstantial evidence that could be useful
to reinforce the information held by His Majesty’s Government
against the Turks.(1)”
On 29 July 1921, the legal
advisers in London decided that the intended indictments addressed
against the persons on the the British Foreign Ministry’s
list were semi-political in nature and therefore these individuals
should be treated separately from the Turks detained as criminals
of war.
They also stated the following:
“No statements were hitherto received from the witnesses to the effect that the
indictments intended against the detainees are correct. Likewise
it does not need to be restated that finding witnesses after
so long a time is highly doubtful in a remote country like
Armenia which is accessible only with great difficulties.
(2)” This statement was also made by
the legal advisers in London of His Majesty’s Government.
In the end, the detainees
in Malta were released in 1922 without trial and even indictment.
Yet the efforts to smear image
of Turks with the so-called genocide claims had not come to
an end as the British press published certain documents attempting
to prove the existence of a massacre claimed to have been
perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire while efforts were on-stream
to start a lawsuit in Malta. It was stated that these documents
were unearthed by the British occupation forces in Syria led
by General Allenby. The inquiries subsequently made by the
British Foreign Office revealed, however, that these documents
were fakes prepared by the Armenian Nationalist Delegation
in Paris and distributed to the Allied representatives instead
of having been discovered by the British army.
REFERENCE:
1. PRO.FO. 13th
July 1971, 371/6504/E8519.
2. Foreign Office, 29th
July 1921, 371/6504/E8745
|
