Response To Edward Nalbandian by Maxime Gauin

Response To Edward Nalbandian by Maxime Gauin

Mavi Boncuk|

Maxime Gauin replied

 1)“Fayez El Ghossein” is an invention of British propaganda. No Ottoman civil servant with such a name existed in the 1910s, in the cities where he supposedly worked. Even the supposed “original” of the book, in Arabic, cannot be showed: because it does not exist.

 2)“one of the chief masterminds of the Armenian Genocide, then Interior Minister Mehmed ‪Talaat‬ Pasha confessed to Germany’s Consul General that ‘there is no Armenian question, because there are no more Armenians.’” Mr. Nalbandian does not even remember well this distortion of source: it was the German ambassador, not the consul general. The full text is available online, in German and English, so everybody can check that the meaning of the document has been inverted by Armenian propagandists:

http://www.armenocide.de/armenocide/armgende.nsf/24599fab3538b532c1257794007b610b/300f11530a3eacfdc1256d3d006c1e43!OpenDocument

“On the 2nd of this month, Talaat Bey gave me the German translation of various telegraphic orders on the persecution of the Armenians which he sent to the provincial authorities concerned, copies of which are enclosed. With these, he wished to deliver proof that the central government is seriously attempting to end the riots, which have taken place against the Armenians in the heart of the country and to see to it that those who have been deported receive provisions during transport. A few days earlier, in reference to this, Talaat Bey said to me, "La question arménienne n'existe plus." ("The Armenian question no longer exists.")”

3) “Or, how can one speak of ‘relocation’, when 1.5 million of people died or were killed?” Even the Armenian delegations did not allege, in 1918-1919, that “1.5 million of people died or were killed.” Arnold J. Toynbee estimated the total losses to about 600,000 

(“The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire: Documents presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon,” London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1916, pp. 650-651; “The Western question in Greece and Turkey,” London-Bombay-Sydney: Constable & Co., 1922, p. 342). 

The same estimation is used by R. Khérumian, a strongly nationalist Armenian scholar:

« Introduction à l'anthropologie du Caucase : les Arméniens », Paris, Paul Geuthner, 1943, p. 13-14. 1915-09-04-DE-001 armenocide.ders ago 

 4) “It seems that the 1919 Turkish Military Tribunal’s Indictment, which proved by undeniable facts that the deportations and large-scale massacres of the Armenians were a state policy, and sentenced its main masterminds to death, has been forgotten in Ankara.

” Concise answer: http://www.ejil.org/pdfs/23/3/2308.pdf “

Furthermore, the occupying British forces took 144 Ottoman officials to Malta to try them in a tribunal for presumed war crimes and crimes against Armenians. The author misrepresents the case of those 144 Ottoman officials interned in Malta from 1919 to 1921. They were released after more than two years of unsuccessful inves-tigation by a British prosecutor and his staff. The occupying powers had not found enough evidence in the British, US, and Armenian archives, or in the Ottoman docu-mentation seized by the British army. The statement by the author that the archives had been destroyed does not reflect the truth. It is known that at that time the British government relied on an Armenian researcher, Haig Khazarian, in its hunt for incrim-inating evidence against Ottoman officials taken to Malta. The British also requested the US government’s help for this purpose, but received the response that there was not enough evidence. If even the slightest evidence existed in the hands of the British authorities – enough to incriminate the prisoners in Malta – the trials would surely have taken place of the Ottoman citizens who were sent to Malta to face trial. Malta’s prosecutor refused to use the material of the courts martial of 1919–1920. Indeed, the trial of the ministers in 1919 was legally null and void, since it took place in the form of a court martial. According to the Ottoman Constitution, the ministers could be tried only by the High Court for crimes committed in the exercise of their responsibilities. As early as 1919, the right to appeal the sentences was denied. The courts martial of 1919–1920 did not allow cross-examination, the right to which exists even at Guantanamo. In April 1920, Damat Ferit Pasha even banned the defend ants from hiring a lawyer. After the final fall of Damat Ferit, the rights to appeal and hire a lawyer were restored. All the surviving convicts of April–October 1920 appealed their convictions, and they were acquitted of all or most of the charges. These decisions took place when Istanbul was still occupied by the Entente.” 

5) “Is it possible to equate perpetrators and victims of genocide by such clichés as ‘common pain’?” Let the primary sources speak: “In the territory untouched by war from which Armenians were deported the ruined villages are undoubtedly due to Turkish deviltry, but where Armenians advanced and retired with the Russians their retaliatory cruelties unquestionably rivaled the Turks in their inhumanity.” James G. Harbord, “Conditions in the Near East. Report of the American Military Mission to Armenia,” Washington: Government Printing Office, 1920, p. 9. “One tsarist official, Prince Vasilii Gadzhemukov, bluntly laid out the case the case against the Armenians in a report to Yudenich. […] With their indiscriminate slaughter of Muslims at Van, he explained, ‘the Armenians themselves’ had given the ‘signal of the barbaric destruction of the Armenian nation in Turkey’. And although that destruction left ‘the positive result that Turkey has left us Armenia without Armenians’, the legacy of Van had stiffened Muslim resistance to Russian arms ‘for fear of falling into Armenian hands’.

” Michael A. Reynolds, “Shattering Empires. The Clash and Collapse of the Ottoman Empires, 1908-1918,” New York-Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011, pp. 157-158. “

The second region, from Bitlis through Van to Bayazid may be described as the basin of the Lake Van. […] In this entire region we were informed that the damage and the 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 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 the Armenian quarters, as was evidenced by the churches and inscriptions on the houses, while the Musulman quarters were completely destroyed. Villages said to have been Armenian were still standing, whereas Musulman villages were completely destroyed. […] We believe that it is incontestable that the Armenians were guilty of crimes of the same nature against the Turks as those of which the Turks are guilty against the Armenians. […] The most salient fact impressed on us at every point from Bitlis to Trebizond was that in the region which we traversed the Armenians committed upon the Turks all the crimes and outrages which were committed in other regions by Turks upon Armenians. At first we were most incredulous of the stories told us, but the unanimity of the testimony of all the witnesses, the apparent eagerness with which they told of wrongs done them, their evident hatred of Armenians, and strongest of all, the material evidence on the ground itself convinced us of the general truth of the facts, first, that Armenians massacred Musulmans with many refinement of cruelty, and second that Armenians are responsible for most of the destruction done to towns and villages.” Captain Emory H. Niles and Arthur E. Sutherland, investigators sent to eastern Anatolia by the U.S. military mission, 1919. 

http://louisville.edu/a-s/history/turks/Niles_and_Sutherland.pdf https://www.academia.edu/attachments/33546596/