by Cem Oguz, head of the Turkish Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The diaspora of Armenian scholars is very eager to present the Armenian deportation of 1915 as the first “holocaust” of the 20th century. They go further and say that it was used by the Nazi leadership as the model for their own genocidal program. The world’s presumed lack of reaction to the so-called “forgotten genocide,” as they describe it in their own literature, is alleged to have served as a justification for Adolf Hitler’s planned extermination of European Jewry. In their arguments, Hitler is frequently quoted as having said in a speech to his generals about his plans to wage a ruthless war against Poland in 1939, “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of Armenians?”
The Armenian motive behind efforts at establishing a connection between their own history and the tragic fate of European Jewry during World War II is highly obvious. It stands as the greatest single human tragedy the world has ever seen and any would-be relationship between the Holocaust and the Armenian allegations would serve as an important tool to justify their arguments. In order to proceed, however, the essential enigma we should focus on is whether there really exists such a relationship.
It was US historian Heath W. Lowry who demonstrated that there is no historical basis for attributing such a statement to Hitler. In his article titled “The US Congress and Adolf Hitler on the Armenians,” published in 1985 in the Journal of Political Communication and Persuasion, Professor Lowry proved that the source of the purported Hitler quote is an article (“Nazi Germany’s Road to War”) which appeared in the Times of London on Nov. 24, 1945. The said Times article was written by an anonymous author and in fact, was not the earliest mention of Hitler’s alleged statement on the Armenians. Rather, as Professor Lowry has pointed out, “this quotation and indeed an entire text” of Hitler’s speech purportedly made at Obersalzberg was first published in a book entitled What About Germany authored by Louis Lochner, a former bureau chief of the Associated Press in Berlin. Lochner wrote that he obtained it from an unnamed informant as well and since then, its provenance has never been disclosed or investigated. What is more important, says Mr. Lowry, is the fact that in even Lochner’s version of Hitler’s quote there is no direct or implied reference to the Jewish people. At length he concludes that Hitler’s alleged reference to the Armenian case was merely a piece of wartime propaganda.
Years later, Professor Lowry was unable to escape the severe consequences that objectors to the Armenian allegations eventually face. In September 1990, upon the request of the then Turkish ambassador to Washington, Nüzhet Kandemir, Professor Lowry wrote a memorandum regarding Robert Jay Lifton’s book The Nazi Doctors, Medical Killings and the Psychology of Genocide (published in 1986). Mr. Lifton, a recognized authority in his own field as Professor Lowry himself indicated, used in the book remarks like, “But I found that Nazi doctors differed significantly from these other groups, not so much in their human experimentation but in their central role in genocidal projects... (Perhaps Turkish doctors, in their participation in the genocide against the Armenians, come closest, as I shall later suggest)...” I won’t get into the argument as to whether the few Ottoman doctors of the time were that competent due to war-time conditions, but totally agree with Professor Lowry’s conclusion that Mr. Lifton indeed “knows absolutely nothing about the so-called Armenian genocide.” His entire work was based on the articles by Vahakn N. Dadrian, together with references to the work of Helen Fein and Leo Cuper, none of whom are historians.
In October the same year, Ambassador Kandemir sent a reproachful letter to Mr. Lifton, together with Professor Lowry’s memorandum. It was subsequent to this action that the concerted personal attacks on Professor Lowry began. He was accused of being paid as well as academically promoted by the Turkish state and being engaged in the “denial” of a known genocide. Since then, any counter-argument to Armenian allegations, scientific ones included, have been put forward as evidence of “denial.”
Denial in genocide terminology refers to claims that the Holocaust did not occur as it is defined by mainstream historiography. In this assertion, the key word we have to focus on is the mainstream historiography. What does it mean and who represents it?
History is a science of facts rather than an art of distorted data. In the case of the Holocaust, it is almost impossible to challenge the existent evidence and truth. Holocaust deniers such as David Irving or Ernst Zündel, in turn, have a common pattern of either falsifying historical documents or deliberately misrepresenting historical data. As can be seen in Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad’s attitude, denial is basically motivated by either an anti-semitic conspiracy theory or hatred. This politically motivated bias necessitates moral and legal protection that will help humanity save new victims.
In contrast to the Holocaust, the mainstream historiography on the “Armenian genocide” is highly disputable. Facts our Armenian friends claim to be sufficient to conclude that the tragedy of 1915 is a genocide are distorted. As put in Professor Lowry’s memorandum, the basic problem Turkey has been facing is “with authors such as Dadrian, Fein and Kuper, each of whom are now serving as sources for authors such as Lifton” and “Lifton’s book is simply the end result of the Turkish failure to respond in a prompt fashion to the Dadrian articles and the Fein and Kuper book.”
In the atmosphere of intellectual terror which our Armenian friends have successfully built up, they resort to using the sad memory of the Holocaust and stubbornly oppose any challenge to their version of mainstream historiography. Turkey’s relatively puny efforts at self-defense are frequently portrayed as attempts at denial, and history is sadly being politicized.
Let me wrap up by repeating the question that I posed in my last week’s piece: Do you really think Western politicians like French President Nicholas Sarkozy who support Armenian genocide bills are even aware of realities such as these?
C. Cem Oguz This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
