Journal of Turkish weekly
April 14 2005

British Parliament urged to disown Blue Book

The New Anatolian
14 April 2005

Ankara – In a letter signed by Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan and
opposition leader Deniz Baykal, Turkish National Parliament asks the
British Parliament to declare ‘The Blue Book’ invalid as a historical
document.

The Turkish Parliament has prepared a letter to be sent to British
Parliament urging it to disown a World War I era document called “The
Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915-1916,” more
commonly known as “The Blue Book.”

The letter was first signed by ruling Justice and Development (AK)
Party leader and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and main
opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Deniz Baykal at
Parliament. The six-page letter was then openedfor signing by all
lawmakers in Parliament.

`Considering that Great Britain’s Parliament decided to publish
Arnold Toynbee’s work as a reference book in 1916, we kindly request
that the British Parliament shed light on a significant part of our
joint history by declaring The Blue Book invalid and unfounded as a
historical document,’ the letter says.

The letter stresses that the book was part of a campaign carried out
to urge the U.S. to join World War I. It emphasized that the Ministry
of Information (Wellington House) prepared two important reports
called `German brutality’ and `Turkish brutality’ as part of this
campaign. The letter refers to the late Foreign Minister Austin
Chamberlain, who said that the report about the Germans was just
unfounded war propaganda in a speech to the House of Lords in 1925.
It also says that Arnold Toynbee, one of the authors of the book,
admitted that the book was war propaganda.

Some 150 people told their stories in the book and the letter goes on
to say that 59 of them were later found out to have been
missionaries, 52 were Armenian activists while seven were Armenian
Tashnak rebels. The remaining 32 names cited in the book were
fictitious or the same people already mentioned in the book.

`The Blue Book was an extremely successful piece of propaganda by
Britain during the war but it’s not a trustworthy historical source
about the Ottoman Armenians revolt and the measures taken by the
Ottoman state against this revolt,’ the letter says. “The book
doesn’t mention the Armenian gangs which joined forces with the
Russians against the Ottoman armies; killing of Ottoman state
officials; cutting of communication lines; attempts to invade Ottoman
cities; massacre of Turks in Van; and exile of over 1 million Muslims
from their land by Russians and Armenians.”