SWEDISH ARCHIVES CONFIRM: IT WAS A GENOCIDE!

AZG Armenian Daily
23/04/2008

Genocide

A recently conducted study at the Uppsala University has revealed
highly nteresting information in the Swedish Archives, which once
again confirm the researchers’ view of the events in the Ottoman
Turkey during the First World War: the Christian minorities, the
Armenians in particular, were subjected to genocide.

The massacres in Ottoman Turkey during the First World War claimed the
lives of approximately 1.5 million out of a world population of four
million Armenians, while over 250,000 Assyrians/Chadeans and equal
number of Pontic Greeks. In 1923, for the first time in over 2,500
years, Armenians no longer lived on 85 % of their fatherland. Thus,
the Armenian genocide was, in a sense, a successful genocide, acquiring
the perpetrators an Armenia without Armenians.

The conducted survey covers the period between 1915 and 1923 and
includes, among others, reports which the Swedish Ambassador, Cosswa
Anckarsvard, and the Swedish Military Attache, Einar af Wirsen, both
stationed in Constantinople, sent to the Foreign Department (found in
the National Archive) and the General Staff Headquarters (found in
the War Archive) in Stockholm, respectively. In total, about eighty
documents were found with direct relevance to the so-called Armenian
Question, of which some are over-explicit in their message: the Turkish
Government conducted a systematic extermination of the Armenian Nation.

On July 6, 1915, Ambassador Anckarsvard, writing to the Swedish Foreign
Minister, Knut Wallenberg, concludes: "Mr. Minister, The persecutions
of the Armenians have reached hair-raising proportions and all points
to the fact that the Young Turks want to seize the opportunity, since
due to different reasons there are no effective external pressure to be
feared, to once and for all put an end to the Armenian question. The
means for this are quite simple and consist of the extermination
[utrotandet] of the Armenian nation [emphasis added]." Anckarsvard’s
reports until 1920 persisted in the same insight. At several
occasions, the Ambassador points out that "It is obvious that the
Turks are taking the opportunity to, now during the war, annihilate
[utplåna] the Armenian nation [emphasis added] so that when the peace
comes no Armenian question longer exists." In a later report (1917)
he underlines that the massacres are not clashes between the Muslim
and the Armenian populations, but "that the persecutions of Armenians
have been done at the instigation of the Turkish Government [emphasis
added]…" As an explanation to the prevailing famine in Turkey during
1917, the Embassy Envoy Alhgren mentions the shortage of workers,
which is claimed partly to be a result of "the extermination of the
Armenian race [utrotandet af den armeniska rasen] [emphasis added]".

Major Wirsen’s reports to the General Staff concur with Anckarsvard’s
analysis. In 1942 Wirsen published his memoirs, entitled Minnen
från fred och krig ("Memories from Peace and War"), reflecting upon
his time as Swedish Military Attache in the Balkans and Turkey. In a
chapter entitled Mordet på en nation ("The Murder of a Nation"), Wirsen
renders his observations of the Armenian massacres: "Officially, these
[deportations] had the goal to move the entire Armenian population
to the steppe regions of Northern Mesopotamia and Syria, but in
reality they aimed to exterminate [utrota] the Armenians [emphasis
added], whereby the pure Turkish element in Asia Minor would achieve
a dominating position." In the conclusion of this chapter he recalls
his conversation with the Turkish Grand Vizier Talaat Pasha and notes:
"The annihilation of the Armenian nation [emphasis added] in Asia
Minor must revolt all human feelings…The way the Armenian problem
was solved was hair-raising. I still can see in front of me Talaat’s
cynical expression, when he emphasized that the Armenian Question
was solved."

The mentioned quotations are a fraction of the information presented
in the study. In addition to the mentioned archives of the Foreign
Ministry and the General Staff, the reports from the Swedish
missionaries and the Swedish newspapers were also included in the
study and concur with the same view.

The surveyed documents are mainly in regard to the Armenian Question,
but the data bed indicates that other Christian groups, such as Greeks
and Syriacs, were affected by the same fate.

The study clearly emphasises the concept of "bystander". While the word
itself implies that the bystanders do not participate in the genocide,
some contend that they are far from just a neutral viewer to the
tragedy, but passive participators in the annihilation. The British
statesman and political thinker Edmund Burke’s statement captures
the essence of the bystanders to genocide: "the only thing necessary
for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." The documents
clearly indicate that the Swedish Government was well informed about
the state-orchestrated extermination of the Armenians.

They also disclose that the Government, fully in accordance with
the policy of a small state, consciously chose not to intervene in
the matter, neither during the massacres nor after when the League
of Nations suggested Sweden as a mandate power in Armenia. While
resorting to isolationism during the period of the implementation of
the genocide, Sweden followed the general stream, in particular that
of the Major Power’s, during the post-war period when the question
ofsecuring the future of the Armenian Nation was discussed. Sweden,
as all other states, chose to secure its national interests rather
than standing out from the rest by advocating Armenia’s right and the
question of punishing the perpetrators of the Armenian genocide. The
present-day Swedish Government does not seem to be willing to become
involved in the question either. Just last fall, the Foreign Minister
Carl Bildt, during an interpellation in the Swedish Parliament,
refrained from officially recognising the 1915 genocide, partly by
referring to "the need of additional research about what really
transpired in the Ottoman Empire." The surveyed documents should
at least quench that need; the official reports from the Swedish
Ambassador and the Swedish Military Attache in Constantinople are
unambiguous: Armenians were subjected to genocide.

The study in its whole is included in a master thesis paper
which will be presented in the Higher Seminar at the Uppsala
University’s Department of History. It will also be available at

–Boundary_(ID_FzT1qU ZySrIyv3NFart7Hg)–

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress