GOMIDAS INSTITUTE PUBLISHES SECOND UNCENSORED EDITION OF BRITISH
PARLIAMENTARY BLUE BOOK ON ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
LONDON, APRIL 13, NOYAN TAPAN. The Gomidas Institute announced the 2nd
edition of the uncensored edition of the 1916 British Parliamentary
Blue Book on the Armenian Genocide. “The recent denial of the Armenian
Genocide and the continuing attacks on the Blue Book by Turkish
officials has revived interest in this work,” said Ara Sarafian
(Gomidas Institute), who compiled the uncensored edition of the Blue
Book. “Until recently it was a mere reference work, but now it has
become a centrepiece of discussions.” Last month Turkish
Parliamentarians agreed to send a petition to the British Parliament
to protest against the 1916 work. According to the latest Turkish
press reports, the final text for the petition has been drafted for
the signature of 550 Turkish Parliamentarians. Prime Minister Tayyip
Erdogan has already indicated that this petition will be conveyed to
the British Houses of Parliament. According to Turkish Parliamentarians,
the British Blue Book was a wartime propaganda fabrication concocted
by British agents to tarnish the image of Ottoman Turkey and its
German allies. According to Ara Sarafian, an archival historian on the
Armenain Genocide, the 1916 work was a milestone in the understanding
of the Genocide and a creditworthy publication. The centrepiece of the
700 page work was a collection of informed accounts on the Genocide.
Most of these materials can still be found in various archives around
the world, most notably in the United States. The current uncensored
edition gives full citations for each of these reports. Some of the
most devastating materials were written by United States consuls in
the interior provinces of the Ottoman Empire. These materials, as the
uncensored edition of the Blue Book points out, were leaked to the
public by the State Department in Washington DC. “Deniers of the
Armenian Genocide refuse to acknowledge these documents as a matter of
course, because that is the nature of their work,” adds Sarafian. The
Gomidas Institute has recently published two other documentar! y
works r elated to the Armenian Genocide and the Blue Book. These are
“United States Official Records on the Armenian Genocide 1915-1917”
and “United States Diplomacy on the Bosphorus: The Diaries of
Ambassador Morgenthau, 1913-1916.” Both titles represent core United
States records on the Armenian Genocide, including reports which were
not leaked to the British by the Americans in 1915-16. Sarafian states
that the new moves by Turkish Parliamentarians will result in
embarassment, because the British parliamentary report stands up to
severe and honest scrutiny. The Gomidas Institute is an independent
centre of modern Armenian Studies, including the documentation of the
Armenian Genocide.