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DID TALAT PASHA SEND SECRET TELEGRAMMES ORDERING
GENOCIDE?
Armenian propaganda claiming
that so-called genocide was an Ottoman government policy requires
proof that such a decision was in fact made. For this purpose
the Armenians produced a number of telegrams attributed to
Talat Pasha supposedly found by British forces commanded by
General Allenby when they seized Aleppo in 1918. It was claimed
that they were found in the office of an Ottoman official
named Naim Bey, and that they could be destroyed only because
the British occupation came with unexpected speed. Samples
of these telegrams were published in Paris in 1920 by an Armenian
author named Aram Andonian, (38) and they also were presented
at the Berlin trial of the Armenian terrorist Tehlirian, who
killed Talat Pasha. Nevertheless, the court neither considered
these documents as "evidence" nor was involved in
any decision claiming the authenticity of them. These documents
were, however, entirely fabricated, and the claims deriving
from them therefore cannot be sustained. They were in fact
published by the Daily Telegraph of London in 1922, (39) which
also attributed them to a discovery made by Allenby's army.
But when the British Foreign Office enquired about them at
the War Office, and with Allenby himself, it was discovered
that they had not been discovered by the British army but,
rather, had been produced by an Armenian group in Paris. In
addition, examination of the photographs provided in the Andonian
volume shows clearly that neither in form, script or phraseology
did they resemble normal Ottoman administrative documents,
and that they were, therefore, rather crude forgeries.
Following the Entente occupation
of Istanbul, the British and the French arrested a number
of Ottoman political and military figures and some intellectuals
on charges of war crimes. In this they were given substantial
assistance by the Ottoman Liberal Union Party, which had been
placed in power by the Sultan after the war, and which was
anxious to do anything it could to definitively destroy the
Union and Progress Party and its leaders, who had long been
political enemies. Most of the prisoners were sent off to
imprisonment in Malta, but the four Union and Progress leaders
who had fled from the country just before the occupation were
tried and sentenced to death in absentia in Istanbul. Three
other Government officials were sentenced to death and executed,
but it was discovered later that the evidence on which the
convictions had been based was false.
In the meantime, the British
looked everywhere to find evidence against those who had been
sent to Malta. Despite the complete cooperation of wome enthusraztic
supporters such as the Ottoman Liberal Union (38) ANDONIAN,
Aram, Documents Qfficiels concernant les Massacres Armmiens,
Paris, Armenian National Delegation, 1920. (39) Daily Telegraph,
29 May 1922. government, nothing incriminating could be found
among the Ottoman government documents. Similar searches in
the British archives were fruitless. Finally, in desperation,
the British Foreign Office turned to the American archives
in Washington, but in reply, one of their representatives,
R. C. Craigie, wrote to Lord Curzon:
"I regret to inform your
Lordship that there was nothing therein which could be used
as evidence against the Turks who are at present being detained
at Malta ...no concrete facts being given which could constitute
satisfactory incriminating evidence.... The reports in question
do not appear in any case to contain evidence against these
Turks which would be useful even for the purpose of corroborating
information already in the possession of His Majesty's Government.''(40)
Uncertain as to what should
be done with prisoners, who already had been held for two
years, without trial and without even any charges being filed
or evidence produced, the Foreign Office applied for advice
to the Law Officers of the Crown in London, who concluded
on 29 July, 1921:
"Up to the present no
statements have been taken from witnesses who can depose to
the truth of the charges made against the prisoners. It is
indeed uncertain whether any witnesses can be found."
(41)
At this time the "documents"
produced by Andonian were available, but despite their desperate
search for evidence, which could be presented in a court of
law, the British, never used them because it was evident that
they were forgeries. As a result, the prisoners were quietly
released in 1921, without charges ever having been filed or
evidence produced.
It is useful to reiterate
that the main elements in the chain of evidence constructed
in proving that Andonian's "documents" were all
patent forgeries:
1. To show that his forgeries
were in fact "authentic Ottoman documents" Andonian
relied on the signature of the Governor of Aleppo, Mustafa
Abdiilhalik Bey, which he claimed was appended to several
of the "documents" in question. By examining several
actual specimens of Mustafa Abdülhalik Bey's signature as
preserved on contemporary official documents, it is established
that the alleged signatures appended to Andonian's "documents"
were forgeries.
2. In one of his forged documents,
Andonian dated the note and signature attributed to Mustafa
Abdülhalik Bey. Again, by a comparison with authentic correspondence
between the Governor (40) 13 July 1921; British Foreign Office
Archives 371/6504/8519 (41) British Foreign Office Archives
371/6504/E8745
Aleppo and the Ministry of
the Interior in Istanbul, on the date in question, it is proven
that the Governor of Aleppo on that date was Bekir Sami Bey,
not Mustafa Abdulhalik Bey.
3. Consistently, Andonian's
forgeries attest to the fact that he was either totally unaware
of, or carelessly neglected to account for, the differences
between the Muslim Rumi and Christian calendars. The numerous
errors he made as a result of this oversight are, in and of
themselves, sufficient to prove the fabricated nature of his
"documents". Among other things, the errors Andonian
made in this respect served to destroy the system of reference
numbers and dates that he concocted for his "documents".
4. By way of a detailed comparison
of the entries made in the Ministry of the Interior's Registers
of outgoing Ciphers, wherein are recorded the date and reference
number of every ciphered communication sent out by the Ministry,
with the dates and reference numbers placed by Andonian on
his forgeries, it is proven that his so-called "ciphered,
telegrams" bear no relationship whatsoever to the actual
ciphers sent by the Ministry to Aleppo in the period in question.
5. Again, by comparing the
Turkish "originals" of Andonian's " ciphered
telegrams" with actual examples of contemporary Ottoman
ciphered messages, it is shown that the number groupings he
employed bear no relationship to the actual ciphers the Ottomans
were using in that period. Thus, in his attempt to make his
forgeries appear credible, he created a whole series of unusable,
non-existent ciphers. Further, from the dates he affixed to
his forgeries in this category, the Ottomans would have had
to use the same ciphers over a six-month period which was
impossible. By publishing a series of documents instructing
officials to change the ciphers they were using, it is shown
that, in fact, the Ottomans were changing their cipher codes
on average once every two months during the war years.
6. By comparing the manner
in which the common Islamic injunction, Besmele, was written
on Andonian's two forged letters with numerous examples of
the way in which it appears on authentic contemporary Ottoman
documents, it is suggested that Andonian's clumsy forgery
of this term may well have stemmed from the fact that non-Muslims,
even those who knew Ottoman Turkish, did not employ this injunction.
7. A number of examples from
Andonian's forgeries show that it is simply inconceivable
that any Ottoman official could have used such sentence structures
and make such grammatical errors. In the same vein, a host
of expressions; allegedly uttered by prominent Ottoman officials
are used, which no Ottoman Turk would ever have used. Andonian's
intention in these instances was clear: he wanted nothing
less than the Turks themselves to be seeming to confess to
crimes which he had manufactured for them.
8. The forged documents, with
two exceptions, were written on plain paper with none of the
usual signs found on the official paper used by the Ottoman
bureaucracy in this period. The fact that one of the forged
Turkish originals was written on a double-lined paper, which
the Ottomans did not even use for private correspondence,
constitutes an even more serious error on Andonian's part.
Even the two forgeries which appear at first glance to have
been written on some kind of official Ottoman stationery are
actually written on blank telegraph forms, which anyone wishing
to send a telegram could pick up in any Ottoman post office.
9. At a time when the British
were frantically searching the world's archives for anything
to be used as "evidence" against the group of Ottoman
officials whom they were holding for trial as being "responsible
for the Armenian incidents", their failure to utilize
Andonian's "documents" which were readily available
in their English edition, strongly suggests that the British
Government was fully aware of the nature of these forgeries.
10. Had documents of the nature
of those concocted by Andonian ever actually existed, their
confidential nature would have dictated that they be sent
by courier for security reasons; rather than through the easily
breachable public telegraph system. Likewise, had such documents
really ever been written; it is inconceivable that they could
have lain around in a file for three years, instead of being
destroyed as soon as they had been read.
11. There are also numerous
differences between the French and English editions of Andonian's
book. Indeed, these variations are of such significance that
it is absolutely impossible to ascribe them to printing errors,
or errors in translation.
12. Finally, the fact that
even some authors with close links to Armenian circles, who
serve as spokesmen for Armenian causes, have indicated their
own doubt as to the veracity of Andonian's "documents"
should not be overlooked. In short, from start to finish the
so-called "Talat Pasha Telegrams" are nothing more
than crude forgeries, concocted by Andonian and his associates.
Moreover the Ottoman archives contain a number of orders;
whose authenticity can definitely be substantiated, issued
on the same dates, in which Talat Pasha ordered investigations
to be made to find and punish those responsible for the attacks
which were being made on the deportation caravans. It is hardly
likely that he would have been ordering massacres on one hand
and investigations and punishments for such crimes on the
other.
A letter forged by Aram Andonian
with the date, February 18, 1331 (March 2,1916) opens with
a "bismillah" (blessing), which would never have
been written by a Moslem. The forger, Andonian, made his most
fatal mistake with the date, however. He was obviously not
well enough versed in the tricks of converting to the Rumi
year of the Ottomans, where a difference of thirteen days
between the Rumi and Gregorian calendars must be taken into
account.
The date he put on the letter
was off by a full year. Instead of 1330 (1915), he wrote 1331
(1916). The contents of the letter are supposed to be evidence
of the long advance planning of the resettlement operation
of 1915.(42) (42) Feigl, Erich. A Myth of Terror, 1991, Edition
zeitgeschichten-Freilassing- Salzburg, p. 85
An American aid organization
called "the Near East Relief Society" was allowed
by the Ottoman Government to stay and fulfill its functions
in Anatolia during the deportations. Even following the entry
of U.S.A. into war on the side of Entente powers against Ottoman
Empire, the same organization was permitted to remain in Anatolia.
This was dealt in the reports of the American Ambassador Elkus
in Istanbul. In this case, if an order for "massacring
Armenians" had been given, would the Ottoman Government
have allowed to an American organization to be witness to
the "massacres". In other words, it is ridiculous
to suppose that the Ottomans said to America: "We are
massacring Armenians. Why don't you have a look at it."
Such an allegation could never be a logical explanation of
historic facts. Finally, and in the end most important, when
the war came to an end, the Armenian population still was
substantially in place in Western Anatolia, Thrace and Istanbul.
Had the Ottoman government ordered massacres, evidently they
too would have been killed. And for that matter, had the Ottoman
government wanted to eliminate all the Armenians in the Empire,
it could have done so far more easily by killing and disposing
of them where they lived, rather than undertaking a large-scale
deportation of those in the Eastern war zones under the eyes
of foreign observers.
The claim, thus, that the
Ottoman government ordered and carried out a general massacre
of Armenians in the Empire cannot be sustained and is disproved
by the facts.
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