Robert Fisk: You’re talking nonsense, Mr Ambassador

All the while, new diplomatic archives are opening to reveal the
smell of death – Armenian death

The Independent
Published: 20 May 2006

A letter from the Turkish Ambassador to the Court of Saint James
arrived for me a few days ago, one of those missives that send a
shudder through the human soul. “You allege that an ‘Armenian
genocide’ took place in Eastern Anatolia in 1915,” His Excellency Mr
Akin Alptuna told me. “I believe you have some misconceptions about
those events …”

Oh indeedy doody, I have. I am under the totally mistaken conception
that one and a half million Armenians were cruelly and deliberately
done to death by their Turkish Ottoman masters in 1915, that the men
were shot and knifed while their womenfolk were raped and eviscerated
and cremated and starved on death marches and their children
butchered. I have met a few of the survivors – liars to a man and
woman, if the Turkish ambassador to Britain is to be believed – and I
have seen the photographs taken of the victims by a brave German
photographer called Armen Wegner whose pictures must now, I suppose,
be consigned to the waste bins. So must the archives of all those
diplomats who courageously catalogued the mass murders inflicted upon
Turkey’s Christian population on the orders of the gang of
nationalists who ran the Ottoman government in 1915.

What would have been our reaction if the ambassador of Germany had
written a note to the same effect? “You allege that a ‘Jewish
genocide’ took place in Eastern Europe between 1939 and 1945 … I
believe you have some misconceptions about those events …’ Of
course, the moment such a letter became public, the ambassador of
Germany would be condemned by the Foreign Office, our man in Berlin
would – even the pusillanimous Blair might rise to the occasion – be
withdrawn for consultations and the European Union would debate
whether sanctions should be placed upon Germany.

But Mr Alptuna need have no such worries. His country is not a member
of the European Union – it merely wishes to be – and it was Mr
Blair’s craven administration that for many months tried to prevent
Armenian participation in Britain’s Holocaust Day.

Amid this chicanery, there are a few shining bright lights and I
should say at once that Mr Alptuna’s letter is a grotesque
representation of the views of a growing number of Turkish citizens,
a few of whom I have the honour to know, who are convinced that the
story of the great evil visited upon the Armenians must be told in
their country. So why, oh why, I ask myself, are Mr Alptuna and his
colleagues in Paris and Beirut and other cities still peddling this
nonsense?

In Lebanon, for example, the Turkish embassy has sent a “communiqué”
to the local French-language L’Orient Le Jour newspaper, referring to
the “soi-disant (so-called) Armenian genocide” and asking why the
modern state of Armenia will not respond to the Turkish call for a
joint historical study to “examine the events” of 1915.

In fact, the Armenian president, Robert Kotcharian, will not respond
to such an invitation for the same reason that the world’s Jewish
community would not respond to the call for a similar examination of
the Jewish Holocaust from the Iranian president – because an
unprecedented international crime was committed, the mere questioning
of which would be an insult to the millions of victims who perished.

But the Turkish appeals are artfully concocted. In Beirut, they
recall the Allied catastrophe at Gallipoli in 1915 when British,
French, Australian and New Zealand troops suffered massive casualties
at the hands of the Turkish army. In all – including Turkish soldiers
– up to a quarter of a million men perished in the Dardanelles. The
Turkish embassy in Beirut rightly states that the belligerent nations
of Gallipoli have transformed these hostilities into gestures of
reconciliation, friendship and mutual respect. A good try. But the
bloodbath of Gallipoli did not involve the planned murder of hundreds
of thousands of British, French, Australian, New Zealand – and
Turkish – women and children.

But now for the bright lights. A group of “righteous Turks” are
challenging their government’s dishonest account of the 1915
genocide: Ahmet Insel, Baskin Oran, Halil Berktay, Hrant Dink, Ragip
Zarakolu and others claim that the “democratic process” in Turkey
will “chip away at the darkness” and they seek help from Armenians in
doing so. Yet even they will refer only to the 1915 “disaster”, the
“tragedy”, and the “agony” of the Armenians. Dr Fatma Gocek of the
University of Michigan is among the bravest of those Turkish-born
academics who are fighting to confront the Ottoman Empire’s terror
against the Armenians. Yet she, too, objects to the use of the word
genocide – though she acknowledges its accuracy – on the grounds that
it has become “politicised” and thus hinders research.

I have some sympathy with this argument. Why make the job of honest
Turks more difficult when these good men and women are taking on the
might of Turkish nationalism? The problem is that other, more
disreputable folk are demanding the same deletion. Mr Alputuna writes
to me – with awesome disingenuousness – that Armenians “have failed
to submit any irrefutable evidence to support their allegations of
genocide”. And he goes on to say that “genocide, as you are well
aware, has a quite specific legal definition” in the UN’s 1948
Convention. But Mr Alputuna is himself well aware – though he does
not say so, of course – that the definition of genocide was set out
by Raphael Lemkin, a Jew, in specific reference to the wholesale mass
slaughter of the Armenians.

And all the while, new diplomatic archives are opening in the West
which reveal the smell of death – Armenian death – in their pages. I
quote here, for example, from the newly discovered account of
Denmark’s minister in Turkey during the First World War. “The Turks
are vigorously carrying through their cruel intention, to exterminate
the Armenian people,” Carl Wandel wrote on 3 July 1915. The Bishop of
Harput was ordered to leave for Aleppo within 48 hours “and it has later
been learned that this Bishop and all the clergy that accompanied him
have been … killed between Diyarbekir and Urfa at a place where
approximately 1,700 Armenian families have suffered the same fate …
In Angora … approximately 6,000 men … have been shot on the
road … even here in Constantinople (Istanbul), Armenians are being
abducted and sent to Asia …”

There is much, much more. Yet now here is Mr Alptuna in his letter to
me: “In fact, the Armenians living outside Eastern Armenia including
Istanbul … were excluded from deportation.” Somebody here is not
telling the truth. The late Mr Wandel of Copenhagen? Or the Turkish
Ambassador to the Court of St James?