Today’s Zaman, Turkey
March 22 2009

Historian challenges politically motivated 1915 arguments

The general tendency to debate the events of 1915 — the killings of
Anatolian Armenians during World War I — by employing politically
motivated theories on the nature of these events stands as a barrier
between the peoples of Armenia and Turkey, preventing them from
adequately airing their deep, almost century-old grievances.

Prominent German historian Hilmar Kaiser is presently in Ankara
carrying out research in the Turkish archives. In an interview with
Sunday’s Zaman this week, Kaiser says the field of history "is flooded
with political advocates who are less historians than
opinion-formers," drawing a picture full of gray areas, showing there
is still ample room for research on the 1915 events.

In the 1990s, Kaiser was working exclusively in Ä°stanbul and
that period, he was only granted access to the Ottoman archives, which
were under special regulations, and had been declined permission to
carry out his research in any other library or archive by the
then-Tansu Ã?iller government. Today, however, Kaiser believes
that there aren’t any issues as far as access to the state archives is
concerned.

`Two weeks ago, I was in Washington, D.C., presenting my research and
photos at an Armenian Assembly [of America] conference, and I
suggested that if they are looking for a good director for their
archives and genocide museum, they might consider hiring Yusuf
Sarınay, the head of the Turkish state archives, or Mustafa
Budak, the head of the Ottoman archives. These are two highly
qualified people with vision, determination and commitment. Some
people were surprised, but I was very serious about it,’ says Kaiser.

`Yes, there are still problems, but having said this, I should
immediately add there are problems everywhere. The important thing is
there is a process in place to overcome these problems. It’s a huge
administration, and encountering problems is part of the daily work. I
can only say that, as far as I’m concerned, and I know the same for
many, many researchers — both Turkish or foreigner — that they have
had exactly the same experiences. If there is a problem, it’s
immediately addressed and resolved. That’s all you can ask for. Turkey
has gained a lot of credit with its new archive policy, and it will
gain more credit if the present government would support the archives
more strongly with additional funding,’ he notes.

Historical research and reassessments

Kaiser is critical of colleagues who prefer doing their work without
researching the context of original documents and thus making
`reassessments’ of certain theses — one of which is that the
Ä°ttihat ve Terakki (Committee of Union and Progress) had a
racist motivation, acted premeditatedly and had developed a systematic
extermination policy during the 1915 events.

`One should stop thinking of the [Committee of Union and Progress] CUP
as a kind of monolithic party. Research on the Armenians in WWI has
tended to try to create the impression of a Turkey that was like a
small version of Nazi Germany, with a single party and with a poor
man’s SS named TeÅ?kilat’ı Mahsusa. I think this is
totally wrong; one has to study the Turkish-Armenian case on its
own. Yes, there were some people within the CUP inspired by European
positivists, who were partly racist, but thinking that this was not
the general party line. That racism was not the driving motive behind
the Armenian policy is quite clear because if you compare it to the
German racism, you cannot explain the survival of tens of thousands of
Armenian women and children in Muslim houses, even in the government
orphanages. This would have been completely impossible if the
government had been inspired by the German type of racism,’ says
Kaiser.

`People like to compare Young Turk-Turkey to Nazi Germany, but it is
not a comparison; they equate it. A comparison should also stress the
fundamental differences,’ he continued. `Racism as well as Muslim
fundamentalism were not driving forces. Some allege that Islam was
very conducive to large-scale massacres of Armenians. It’s totally
illogical. If Islam is very conducive to large-scale massacres of
Armenians, why were they here for 600 years? Second, why did the
survivors survive in Muslim societies in the Middle East?’

`Ridiculous’ mega explanations

There is a major argument over demographic planning, suggesting that
it was planned by the Committee of Union and Progress and culminated
in the Armenian relocation.

Kaiser stresses demographic planning is as old as the Ottoman Empire,
starting in the 14th century.

`There has always been demographic planning — before and after
1915. One has to establish a direct link between the policy against
Armenians and demographic planning, more specifically that the
demographic planning was a motive behind the policy. I’m very
skeptical about this. Demographic planning played a role, but let’s be
realistic: When you have tens of thousands of Muslim refugees from the
Balkans and from the Russian border areas camping in the open and you
start deporting Armenians, and you have access to empty houses, what
do you do with it? Of course, you use it. To make the claim that this
was the driving force behind the deportations is, in my view, wrong
because it cannot explain the timing of the deportations. This
demographic argument is in a way a substitute for a blueprint,’ he
asserts.

`People who believe there was more some kind of long-term planning,
like since 1909 or 1912, have had a problem in showing a concrete link
between what happened in 1915 and these alleged earlier plans. So we
are faced now with a lot of substitutes after the earlier arguments
had been dismantled. Yes, demographic planning is very important, but
is not the driving motive. Not in my research; I haven’t found any
convincing proof — on the contrary, the evidence points in different
directions.’

Kaiser also is opposed to those who depict the Committee of Union and
Progress and the Ottoman army as homogeneous bodies.

`Yes, the CUP was a nationalist group, but it also included very
religious groups. These people cannot be united. They obviously put on
a straight face in public, like some politicians do today. And even if
you’re a Turkish nationalist, that doesn’t make you a killer. There
were people who were famous Turkish nationalists like Halide Edip; she
advocated assimilation of Armenians, but she very strongly opposed any
kind of murder. On the other hand, this opposition against it was not
just limited to nationalists; it also included anti-CUP opposition,
for example, from the Liberal Party. Believe it or not, this
opposition that concentrated on Cemal Pasha in the area of the Fourth
Army cooperated — there is proof for this — with the Armenian
underground against Talat,’ he explains.

`Let me say something more radical: The one person who saved most
Armenians in World War I was nobody other than Cemal Pasha. That this
hasn’t been discussed so far is just due to the fact that we have a
couple of political problems with the whole thing, and our field is
really flooded with political advocates who are less historians than
they are opinion-formers. We have reports from German navy officers
who were on the staff of Pasha because he was also minister of the
navy. Sometimes when he saw abuse of Armenian deportees, he just let
the official be hung on the spot, he didn’t even wait for it. There
are many, many Armenian sources about this as well, like memoirs. On
the other hand, one should not be too romantic about it.’

And cheap political arguments

Kaiser also has crucial notes suggesting that the Turkish Republic was
built by killers, and the alleged `Armenian genocide’ was the founding
act.

`Then you can also find other founding acts like the defeat in the
Balkan Wars. I mean this is nonsense. You have to establish a direct
link. The Armenian population base was destroyed, and look around
Turkey today: It’s obvious, and this had a strong impact, but the
republic wasn’t founded on this. This is very important; it was a part
of the environment that the republic was founded in, and as far as I
can see, I haven’t found anything from contemporary sources that would
suggest that Mustafa Kemal was involved in the killings. The only
thing I found is that he was very much opposed to it, very outspoken
at the time. But that later his opinions about Armenians changed has
something to do with the war in the Trans-Caucasus and then the
Soviet-Turkish problems. But what we were told about what happened in
1915, 1916 does not lend itself to any kind of interpretation that
Kemal followed any policy that was not dignified for a Turkish
officer.

`Coming to the army — the Fourth Army, they have resisted. We do have
a problem with the military; this is the Third Army because it is
there where the big killing took place. The problem with the Third
Army is that you have a kind of `çorba’ [soup in Turkish] among
political officers who owed their quick advancement to positions of
prominence to their party connections, or their dependency on Enver
PaÅ?a. These people were not very much liked by the standard
career officers who had earned their position on merit.

`Secondly, you have all sort of elements of the so-called
TeÅ?kilat-ı Mahsusa, the special organization operator,
and I remind you I was able to identify some of these units who were
killing Armenian villagers before even
SarıkamıÅ?. So there you have elements and players
that had been already active under Abdulhamid. They were just
continuing that trade under a different name.

`We need precision in research and these mega explanations — the
army, the Turks, the Muslims — this is simply ridiculous, and this is
only useful if you want to make a cheap political argument, which I
don’t.’

22 March 2009, Sunday
EMÄ°NE KART ANKARA

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