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Armenian crime amnesia?

Bruce Fein
October 16, 2007

Armenian crimes against humanity and war crimes against the Ottoman Turkish and Kurdish populations of eastern and southern Anatolia during World War I and its aftermath have been forgotten amidst congressional preoccupation with placating the vocal and richly financed Armenian lobby.

Last Wednesday, the Armenians hectored members of the House International Relations Committee by a 27-21 vote into passing a counterfactual resolution convicting the Ottoman Empire and its successor state, the Republic of Turkey, of genocide. A historically supportable resolution would have condemned massacres against Armenians with the same vigor, as it should have condemned massacres by Armenians against the innocent Muslim populations of the crumbling Ottoman Empire.

Capt. Emory Niles and Arthur Sutherland, on an official 1919 U.S. mission to eastern Anatolia, reported: "In the entire region from Bitlis through Van to Bayezit, we were informed that the damage and destruction had been done by the Armenians, who, after the Russians retired, remained in occupation of the country and who, when the Turkish army advanced, destroyed everything belonging to the Musulmans. Moreover, the Armenians are accused of having committed murder, rape, arson and horrible atrocities of every description upon the Musulman population. At first, we were most incredulous of these stories, but we finally came to believe them, since the testimony was absolutely unanimous and was corroborated by material evidence. For instance, the only quarters left at all intact in the cities of Bitlis and Van are Armenian quarters ... while the Musulman quarters were completely destroyed."

Niles and Sutherland were fortified by American and German missionaries on the spot in Van. American Clarence Ussher reported that Armenians put the Turkish men "to death," and, for days, "They burned and murdered." A German missionary recalled that, "The memory of these entirely helpless Turkish women, defeated and at the mercy of the [Armenians] belongs to the saddest recollections from that time."

A March 23, 1920, letter of Col. Charles Furlong, an Army intelligence officer and U.S. Delegate to the Paris Peace Conference, to President Woodrow Wilson elaborated: "We hear much, both truth and gross exaggeration of Turkish massacres of Armenians, but little or nothing of the Armenian massacres of Turks. ... The recent so-called Marash massacres [of Armenians] have not been substantiated. In fact, in the minds of many who are familiar with the situation, there is a grave question whether it was not the Turk who suffered at the hands of the Armenian and French armed contingents which were known to be occupying that city and vicinity. ... Our opportunity to gain the esteem and respect of the Muslim world ... will depend much on whether America hears Turkey's untrammeled voice and evidence which she has never succeeded in placing before the Court of Nations."

The United States neglected Col. Furlong's admonition in 1920, and again last Wednesday. Nothing seems to have changed from those days, when Christian lives were more precious than the lives of the "infidels."

Justin McCarthy of the University of Louisville concluded that a staggering 2.5 million Anatolian Muslims died in World War I and the Turkish War of Independence. More than 1 million died in the Six Provinces in Eastern Anatolia, as Armenians with the help of Russia's invading armies sought to reclaim their historical homeland.

In contrast, best contemporaneous estimates place the number of Armenians who died in the war and its aftermath at between 150,000 and 600,000. The Armenian death count climbed to 1.5 million over the years on the back of political clout and propaganda.

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