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EXCERPT FROM “THE NAIM–ANDONIAN DOCUMENTS”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 May 2008

Judith E. Tucker
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International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , May 2008 , pp. 171 - 179
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

We continue celebrating the fortieth volume of the International Journal of Middle East Studies with an excerpt from an article of yore recommended by a former IJMES editor.

Peter von Sivers, now Associate Professor in the History Department at the University of Utah, took over the editorship from Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid-Marsot in 1985. In his first issue he promised readers not to “turn IJMES upside down,” but he also introduced a major change: “multiple evaluations for each manuscript submitted.” This practice continues today, as we solicit at least three referee reports for each article as part of the double-blind peer-review process.

During von Sivers's tenure, the cover acquired a more rust-colored hue, but inside, the journal continued its interdisciplinary mix. “As far as I can judge, IJMES was always very eclectic and did not push for any particular fashions in analysis or theoretical orientation,” writes von Sivers in an e-mail. “In my judgment, this eclecticism is its strength.”

He says that the article he remembers best “(and was also asked about a number of times) is by [sociologist] Vahakn Dadrian, on the Armenian genocide. This article is cited in a number of books published since then as ground-breaking. Of course, the Armenian genocide continues to be a hotly debated topic, but it is much easier now to discuss it in articles and books.”

Here follows an excerpt from Vahakn N. Dadrian, “The Naim-Andonian Documents on the World War I Destruction of Ottoman Armenians: The Anatomy of a Genocide,” published in IJMES 18, no. 3 (1986), pp. 311–360 (http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=00207438%28198608%2918%3A3%3C311%3ATNDOTW%3E2.0.CO%3B2-M). Note that we incorporate the very minor corrections Dadrian made in the subsequent issue.

INTRODUCTION

The protracted Turko–Armenian conflict, marked by intermittent massacres, was violently resolved during World War I. By governmental decree the bulk of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire was uprooted from its ancestral territories and was committed to a process of deportation that became a process of destruction. The provinces in the interior of Turkey with heavy concentrations of Armenians were thus completely denuded of their indigenous population.

Volumes have been produced regarding the instruments and dimensions of this destruction. The carnage was attested to by multitudes of Armenian survivors; by German, Swiss, and American missionaries; and by European and American consuls in the provinces and their ambassadors in Istanbul, the Ottoman capital. The testimony of Austrian and German officers of all ranks who fought in and directed that war alongside the Turks as political and military allies is even more striking.

The overall picture emerging from these narrations points to a network of administrative measures entailing, in one way or another, the extermination of most of the deportees. Highlighted in that picture is a deportation-destruction syndrome warranting treatment as a twin problem and focus.

Such a preponderance of testimony is deficient, however, in one major respect.

Although it overwhelmingly confirms the fact of what Toynbee called “this gigantic crime that devastated the Near East,”Footnote 1 it does not inform specifically on the underlying mechanisms of these administrative measures. More specific knowledge is needed on the structure of decision making, on division of labor in organization and implementation, and on the network of power relations ensuring the authorization and legitimacy of the measures. Likewise, more knowledge is needed of the command and control system, the nature of associated orders, and the positive and negative sanctions applied to the provincial subalterns for the purpose of securing their compliance.

In brief, there has been a paucity of specific documentation on the involvement of key power-wielders and the hierarchy of subordinate agents. That paucity was somewhat mitigated by the 1919-1920 Turkish Court Martial proceedings at which a congeries of official documents surfaced. These were introduced as evidence by a succession of procurors-general after competent ministerial officials had authenticated them with the standard notation: “It conforms to the original” (aslına muafıkdır, or aslına mutabık). Yet it was apparent that these were but the scattered fragments of a large volume of secret records that, according to Turkish testimony, were hastily whisked away and eventually destroyed.

This being the case, the Naim–Andonian documents, if authentic, assume extraordinary import for two main reasons. First, they are intrinsically valuable as primary sources on state secrets involving a major state crime. Second, by declaring these documents as forgeries, a host of Turkish scholars, supported and sponsored by the Turkish Historical Society, currently are mounting a largescale campaign to challenge that contention of crime.Footnote 2

This study proposes to examine the truth and validity of the documents in question in order to ascertain the fact of that crime, thereby putting to the test the relevance of these arguments denying it. The documents will first be scrutinized in terms of their internal and external consistencies. They will then be assessed against the background of other data and sources confirming, with a high level of consistency, the existence of a policy of extermination and the respective roles of the associated personalities described in these documents.

The significance of this probe and demonstration was accentuated by the recent discovery of some extant copies of the pertinent issues of Takvimi Vekayi, the official gazette of the Ottoman government (see Table 1). All but removed from circulation, these issues contain the transcripts of the proceedings of the governmentally instituted Extraordinary Courts-Martial (fevkalâde) that tried the chief authors of that policy of extermination and pronounced a series of verdicts (Divanı Harbi Örfi Muhakematı Zabıt Ceridesi).

Consequently, this study will be limited to the task of probing, assessing, and, if possible, authenticating a set of documents the critical import of which is matched by the intensity with which their legitimacy is currently being contested. These documents depict the involvement of the organs of the Ottoman state apparatus and the role of the Ittihad Party in controlling that apparatus. The effort is therefore largely a historiographical one. Its central thrust is an attempt at exposing the fallacies rampantly in evidence in a new trend of revisionism bent on rewriting history relative to the World War I destruction of Ottoman Armenians. It is hoped that once the record is set straight, scholarship in this area will be kept free from the inroads of political expediency and partisanship.

THE MAKE-UP OF THE MATERIAL

Published in three separate volumes in Armenian, French, and English,Footnote 3 the material consists mainly of 52 pieces purporting to be documents of which all but 2, which are letters, are decoded cipher telegrams. Mostly orders from Istanbul, these pieces are further divided into originals and hand-copied replicas. Additionally, a significant part of the material consists of Naim Sefa's annotations explaining and enlarging upon individual ciphers. . .. Aram Andonian's own supplementary comments are interspersed in the main text, along with a whole series of footnotes and editorial opinions.

Two letters from Dr. Behaeddin Şakir, the head of the Special Organization field units and a key member of Ittihad's secret Directorate, to Responsible Secretary Cemal (Nos. 1 and 2 in Table 2) are of paramount significance. They provide an ideological framework for the anti-Armenian measures to be initiated. The letters focus on the cumulative, bitter aspects of the lingering Turko-Armenian conflict, for which a radical solution is forecast—namely, the complete annihilation of the Armenian people. These pronouncements are later buttressed by Mehmed Talat, then Interior Minister and the chief leader of Ittihad, who validates them as policy decisions. He declares the Armenians, including “babes,” to be outside the pale of law (No. 4), and therefore slated for “complete extermination” (No. 5) or for maximum decimation (No. 14). In the last document, a dateless cipher from Talat (No. 52), the Armenians are labeled as “a curse for centuries.” The process of destruction through extermination is described in Deputy Director of Deportation Abdulahad Nuri's two ciphers (Nos. 29 and 42).

. . .

THE LIABILITIES OF THE MATERIAL

The material was assembled in the turmoil and chaos of the armistice, with extreme secrecy and without the benefit of legal advice. It received a shabby treatment in its English translation, its editing, printing, and custodial safekeeping. The resulting damage is considerable but not irreparable, as described below.Footnote 5 Moreover, misleading statements were made regarding Naim and his position in the Ottoman administration. It was the same penchant for propaganda that prompted Andonian to rush the documents to London with a view to influencing public opinion and Allied diplomats who were to elaborate the terms of peace with defeated Turkey. A valuable opportunity was thus lost for submitting the documents to Ottoman authorities for possible authentication. The Ministries of Justice, Interior and Defense were in the process of setting up a Military Tribunal to try the authors of the wartime massacres, and were in search of pertinent documents.

. . .

THE WEIGHT OF MULTIFACETED EVIDENCE FAVORING THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE MATERIAL

An Introductory Note

The word “favoring” in the subtitle above indicates the difficulty of a strictly legal authentication of the material. This may suspend but does not nullify the value of any document in contention. Moreover, there are alternative routes of assessing the documentary nature of the material; scholarship affords a variety of additional ways to pursue truth. What is proposed here to demonstrate the truth and validity of the material is a method of content verification. The principal actors covered by the Naim-Andonian material are repeatedly depicted in the same roles of arch-perpetrators and with reference to the same atrocities in identical or similar circumstances pinpointed in that material.

The Preponderance of Confirmatory Official Documents

Kemalism gained a foothold in the interior of Anatolia and subsequently developed a momentum largely due to the landing of Greek forces at Izmir (Smyrna) in May 1919. Successive post-Ittihad Turkish cabinets during a six-month period immediately following the armistice collected and marshaled incriminating evidence. The intent was to prosecute Ittihad leaders and their provincial cohorts on charges of centrally directed deportations and massacres (tehcir ve taktil). That evidence, tested and adjudged as probative in the proceedings of the Courts-Martial instituted by the Turkish government, included a host of official documents, which seemingly had survived the elimination process, from civilian as well as military authorities. Each one of these documents was authenticated by competent ministerial officials with the customary notation “it confirms to the original” before being introduced as a prosecution exhibit.

. . .

Of those figuring prominently in the Naim-Andonian material, Talat, Enver, Şakir, and Nazim were condemned to death in absentia in subsequent verdicts (TV, No. 3604, p. 220; No. 3771, p. 2). Nazim, who like Şakir was a trained physician and about whom more details will follow, was one of the most powerful Ittihadist leaders, mostly operating behind the scenes. His influence grew considerably after 1912 when with Şakir and Ziya Gökalp, the ideologue of Ittihadism, he set forth a new course for the party which involved the creation of a new and homogeneous Turkish society. The others' trials were jettisoned during the subsequent months of Kemalism. What follows is a string of item-by-item corroborations depicting perpetrators and perpetrations that together form the documentary centerpiece of the material under review.Footnote 31

. . .

On Nazım

In relation to all of the 52 documents, Nazim prefigures as the elusive and invisible mastermind of the crimes involved. The February 18 letter (No. 1) reveals his visions and ambitions for Turkey and his resulting sense of frustration that they are avowedly being checkmated by the Armenians. The Indictment cites him eight times, seven of which portray him as a key organizer of the brigands (çetes) of the Special Organization. That role was conceded as a result of persistent cross-examinations of the defendants at the following sittings of the trial of the top Ittihadists. At the second trial, that role was confirmed by Atıf, Cevad (the Military Governor of Istanbul [Constantinople]), Z. Gökalp, and M. Sükrü (TV, 3543), with the latter repeating his testimony at the fourth (TV, 3549), the fifth (TV, 3553-54), and the seventh trials (TV, 3561). At the sixth trial, Midhat Şükrü, the Secretary-General of the Ittihad party, admitted that Nazım, along with Şakir, had the power to dismiss governors and district commissioners in the provinces (TV, 3557). Defendant Küçük Talat testified at the third sitting that Nazım carried out his work in those provinces in which the Special Organization had its field operations (TV, 3547; Journal d'orient, May 7, 1919).

The most incriminating evidence was produced in the eighth and last citation of the Indictment by Aleppo Governor Celal. Celal had traveled to Istanbul in an endeavor to dissuade Talat and Nazım from continuing in their work of extermination. He was rebuffed by both. Nazım had earlier let him know that the anti-Armenian plan “was determined following extensive and full deliberations by the Central Committee” (Merkezi Umumice ariz ve amik düşünülerek karar verilmiş). During the subsequent personal exchange at Istanbul, Nazım not only remained adamant about “the necessary and useful measures” (lüzüm ve faidesi), but went one step further, prognosticating that “this undertaking will solve the Eastern Question” (bu teşebbüsün Şark meselesini halledeceğini) (TV, 3540, p. 8, ref. to investigative loose papers, p. 17). As this material was being assembled for the Court Martial, the Special Correspondent of the Morning Post reported to his paper in London that “Dr. Nazım prides himself on having committed a million murders” against the Armenians.Footnote 41

. . .

CONCLUSION

There are two ways by which to inquire into the validity of documents when their authenticity is called into question. One of them involves the negative route of falsification. Problems of doctoring, signature forging, or outright fabrication of an entire piece are examined. One may assess these documents also by comparing stated objectives against attained results: Were the Ottoman Armenians in fact largely exterminated or not?

This study has established that the material under review is flawed with respect to technicalities. These, however, are matters that are rather extrinsic to the test of falsification. The recent efforts of a number of Turkish authors to invalidate the Naim-Andonian material by focusing on these flaws have been examined and found to be equally and similarly deficient. These flaws involve miscounting, misdating, misconversion of dates from old to new style, and careless editing, despite the availability of manifold resources, including staff assistance provided by the Turkish Historical Society—which in the chaos of the armistice were neither available nor affordable by either Naim or Andonian. Besides being incidental rather than central, such problems are endemic to the cumbersome nature of the material itself.

The argument of falsification has been found to be untenable, since the few instances on which the argument is predicated merely involve irregularities. Irregularity is not coterminous, however, with forgery. Forgery presupposes skill, caution, and above all a measure of sophistication geared to avoiding mistakes. The presence and easy detection of such defects in the material under review mitigate against that charge. Indeed, no forger of any value would have produced material so incomplete and so flawed with glaring imperfections; these could have been easily avoided by anyone disposed to forge. Furthermore, a government apparatus known for its chronically erratic methods of transactions cannot be held exempt from such irregularities. Moreover, one is dealing here with highly secret transactions in the midst of a consuming “Great War,” initiated and directed by a political party that relied on diversions and camouflage for the pursuit of its secret designs; irregularity is an integral part of such a mentality.

. . .

When shifting the discussion to the other route of analysis—namely, the route of confirmation—the essence of the material under review becomes highlighted as primary source. Indeed, the confirmation is amply afforded by the findings of the Turkish Military Tribunal through a comprehensive indictment and a series of verdicts. These findings were based on authenticated official documents, sworn testimony, and depositions provided by a plethora of high-ranking officials, civilian and military, who independently verified the direct complicity of the men prominently figuring in the Naim-Andonian documents. These officials include three army commanders, several deputy commanders, and seven governors. Furthermore, the evidence, gathered before and during the trials, was itemized and placed in more than 200 files, with specific labels, numbers, and proofs of certification attached. The proceedings were published in Takvimi Vakayi, the official gazette of the Ottoman government, the special supplements of which served during the proceedings as a judicial journal.Footnote 106

The material is rendered even more substantial when one moves from confirmation to corroboration by still another independent source—the official and mostly secret reports of German and Austrian diplomats, Ottoman Turkey's fervent allies, and of American representatives at Istanbul and Aleppo up to April 1917, when the U.S. entered the war. These wartime accounts foreshadow most of the postwar findings of the Courts-Martial.. . .

It may be concluded with a high degree of certainty that the two letters and the 50 decoded ciphers that constitute the Naim-Andonian material are true documents. This certitude is unmistakably manifest in the case of those 13 documents whose original Ottoman texts are reproduced through plates, as noted in Table 2.

Having reached this conclusion, it is necessary to evaluate briefly the thrust of these documents. The paramount question to be answered in this regard is: What was the nature of the destruction of Ottoman Armenians? From the body of the data presented in this study, three criteria emerge:

  1. 1. Premeditation.. . .

  2. 2. Intent.. . .

  3. 3. Organization and Supervision.. . .

. . . Governmental premeditation, intent, organization, and outcome respecting the scope of casualties are major determinants in any enactment of genocide. It is therefore maintained that the World War I destruction of Ottoman Armenians was a distinct case of genocide, which typologically may be called “optimal” since these determinants configure in it in full measure.Footnote 112 In this configuration the criteria “nature” and “outcome” of destruction intertwine in producing the final solution to the Armenian Question as intended and sought by the Ittihad hierarchy. Johann Bernstorff, the last German Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire (September 7, 1917–October 27, 1918), attests to this fact by citing a laconic statement made to him in an exchange with no less a figure than the then Grand Vezir Talat whom Metternich, another wartime German ambassador to Turkey (November 15, 1915–October 3, 1916), described as “the soul of the Armenian persecutions” (die Seele der Armenierverfolgungen): “When I kept on pestering him on the Armenian Question, he once said with a smile, ‘What on earth do you want? The question is settled, there are no more Armenians.’” The ambassador later explains this assertion of having solved the Armenian Question in terms of the ancestral territories of the victims, namely, “Armenia where the Turks have been systematically trying to exterminate the Christian population.” Despite his expressions of esteem for Talat, the ambassador goes on to concede Talat's role in that extermination: “His complicity in the Armenian crime he atoned for by his death.”Footnote 113

Footnotes

1 In Viscount Bryce, The Treatment of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. 1915–16, Miscellaneous No. 31 (London, 1916), p. 653. Contrary to repeated claims by Turkish authors, throughout his life Toynbee, who was commissioned by the British Foreign Office to complete the material, stuck to his central conclusion that this crime constituted genocide. In a letter to the author he wrote, “My feelings and judgment are the same as they have always been. The genocide of the Armenians was a capital crime” (December 6, 1973).

2 The campaign was launched by the publication of a book in Turkish that summarily dismisses these documents as fraudulent. A subsequent tract in English, French, and German, edited by Türkkaya Ataöv, Chairman of the Department of International Relations at Ankara University, summarizes the conclusions of that book. See Şinasi Orel and Süreyya Yuca, Ermenilerce Talat Paşaya Atfedilen Telegrafların Gerçek Yüzü (Ankara, 1983). A synopsis in English, French, and German of the same work is produced by Türkkaya Ataöv, The Andonian Documents Attributed to Talat Pasha Are Forgeries, with corresponding French and German titles (Ankara, 1984); see also Kamuran Gürün, Ermeni Dosyası (Ankara, 1982), p. 246.

Since April 1984, universities, foreign offices, and, above all, key echelons of the media, have been inundated with copies of this synopsis. The campaign evidently did not fail to make an impression on some members of the U.N. Sub-Commission on Human Rights. As “experts” rather than as representatives of their respective countries, they had convened at Geneva in August 1985 to discuss “The Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.” Some members raised the issue of forgery on the basis of the above-mentioned pamphlet, which was handed out to them for the purpose of quashing paragraph 24 of a report that defined “the Ottoman massacre of Armenians in 1915–1916” as a bona fide “case of genocide.” That report was prepared for the Sub-Commission by the latter's British member, Benjamin Whitaker. After rebutting the allegation of forgery and providing additional data and explanations on his findings, which he said involved 8 years of research, Whitaker finally prevailed. Thus ended a debate that had remained unresolved since 1971, when the U.N. Economic and Social Council, the parent body of the U.N. Human Rights Commission, had agreed to the preparation of a historical study on genocide. By a vote of 14 to 1, with 4 abstentions, the Sub-Commission on August 29, 1985, voted to “take note” of the Whitaker report. For what it is worth, an international body thus for the first time has registered its recognition of the historical fact of the Armenian genocide involving as victims “at least one million, and possibly well over half of the Armenian population” (“Revised and updated report on the question of the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide prepared by Mr. B. Whitaker,” United Nations Economic and Social Council, Commission on Human Rights, Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, 38th Session, Item 4, E/CN.4/Sub.2/198516 [2 July 1985], pp. 8–9). In a revised and updated report Whitaker made some corrections and additions at the end of the Sub-Commission's deliberations; in note 13, for example, he changed “1 million” to “40%.” See E/CN.4/Sub.2/1985/6/Corr. 1 [29 August 1985]. Furthermore, Şinasi Orel published a new article since this work was completed. It is more or less a synopsis of the original book in Turkish that has been reviewed here, without the detailed references and arguments. See “The Facts Behind the Telegrams Attributed to Talat Pasha by the Armenians,” Turkish Review Quarterly Digest (Winter 1985–86), pp. 83–102.

3 Aram Andonian, Medz Vojeeru [The Great Crime], (Boston, 1921), hereafter cited as AT (Armenian translation); Aram Andonian, Documents offiiciels concernant les massacres arméniens, M. S. David-Beg, trans. (Paris, 1920), hereafter cited as FT; The Memoirs of Naim Bey, compiled by Aram Andonian, no translator indicated (London, 1920), hereafter cited as ET. The English translation is but a compressed version, and the French is less extensive in scope than the original Armenian. More significantly, the original of all three versions was first prepared in Armenian sometime in the summer of 1919, and its publication was delayed nearly 2 years. The resulting confusion in the publication sequence of the three volumes provides the context within which the errors of dating in a key letter (No. 1 in Table 2) will be easily understood when reviewing that error.

. . .

5 The first to point out some of these flaws was Walter Rossler, the 1908–1918 veteran German Consul at Aleppo, who in a confidential letter in the spring of 1921 described these flaws “as simple errors.” He had read the French text, and the French translation of his comments are in Justicier du genocide armenien, le procèes de Tehlirian (Paris, 1981), pp. 226–29. Similar and other errors are reviewed in Krieger, “Keetch Mu Lurtchoutiun” [Let Us Be A Little Serious], Houssaper (Cairo Armenian daily), December 30 and 31, 1964, and January 2 and 4, 1965; and in Krieger, “Aram Andonianee Huradaragadz Tourk Bashdonagan Vaverakrerou Vaveraganoutiunu,” [The Authenticity of the Turkish Official Documents Published by Aram Andonian] 1915–1965 Houshamadian Medz Yeghernee [Commemorative Compendium on the Great Holocaust, 1915–1965], (Beirut, 1965), pp. 229–30. Although not free from an array of errors, this study reflects the pioneering work of Krieger, who for decades singlehandedly and patiently canvassed the available archives here and abroad, especially the Jerusalem Armenian Patriarchate Archive, compiling a mass of documentary data. The author takes this opportunity to express his appreciation to Krieger, who helped him become initiated into this most neglected genre of scholarship combining Turkish and Armenian studies.

. . .

31 In the annotative part of his material Naim cited two instances that the Court Martial subsequently specifically verified. They deserve to be introduced here because of their substantial value. One refers to Naim's exchange with his superior, A. Nuri, who confided that before Nuri's departing to his new post at Aleppo, Talat took him to a corner in Talat's office and told him, “You surely do know what you have to do. I am not going to put up with the continuous existence in Turkey of those accursed people anymore,” meaning of course the Armenians (AT 32; FT 31; ET 13). This lethal instruction was independently confirmed and substantiated before the Turkish Court Martial by Ihsan, a former staff member in Talat's Interior Ministry Special Secretariat, who directly quoted A. Nuri as saying that he “personally received Talat's order of extermination” of the Armenian deportation survivors (imha emirlerini bizzai aldım) (TV, 3540, p. 5 of the Indictment; reference to investigative papers, p. 15).

The other has reference to Naim's assertion that the frequently used phrase “the deportees have been sent to their destination” was a euphemism for “they were killed” (AT 174; FT 125; not cited in ET). At the ninth sitting of the Yozgad trial series (February 22, 1919) this assertion was documented. One of the 11 ciphers read into the record at that sitting was Boğazliyan Recruitment Bureau Chief Mustafa's wire informing the Deputy Commander of the Fifth Army Corps at Ankara that the deportees in question were “sent off to their destination” (müretteblerine sevk). When Commander Recayi asked for clarification, the answer came on the same day: “They were killed” (katledildikleri) (Nor Giank, Renaissance, Yeni Gün, Ikdam, February 23, 1919 issues).

. . .

41 “In Turkey Behind the Scenes,” Morning Post, December 5, 1918, p. 7; the quotation is repeated on p. 9 of the December 7, 1918, issue of the same paper.

. . .

106 Beside the transcripts of the Courts Martial, there was another official publication that summarized the hearings of the Fifth Committee of the Ottoman Chamber of Deputies (Meclisi Mebusan Beşinci Şube Tahkikat Komisyonu). From November 5 to December 11, 1918, the Committee conducted 14 hearings, interrogating 15 ministers, including two şeyhülislams. In the course of its inquiries, the Committee secured a number of top-secret documents that eventually were transmitted to the Courts Martial. The Grand Vezir Said Halim three times in a single sentence conceded the fact of “the Armenian massacres,” without adding the twin term “deportation.” Referring to Talat's concealments and cover-ups, Said Halim also admitted to the practice of translating orders for “deportation” into orders for “killing.” Furthermore, alluding to the Special Organization, he declared that it was “an evil” outfit, and was created without the decision of the government (Meclisi Mebusan Zabıtları, Üçüncü Meclis, No. 521 [Istanbul, 1918]; for the abridged version see Harb Kabinelerinin Isticvabı [Istanbul, 1933], pp. 285, 287, 290, 293–94, 308).

. . .

112 Vahakn N. Dadrian, “A Typology of Genocide,” International Review of Modern Sociology, 5, 2 (Autumn 1975), pp. 201–12.

113 Memoirs of Count Bernstorff, trans. from the German by Eric Sutton (New York, 1936), pp. 176, 180, 374. For another reference to solving the Armenian question see the discussion on Nazım, pp. 328–29 above. The Metternich description of Talat is in Türkei 183, vol. 40, A36184, December 7, 1915, report. It should be noted that in a rare, confessional mood Talat during the war had revealed his premonition of a violent death in an interview with the Turkish feminist writer Halide Edib by saying, “I am ready to die for what 1 have done, and I know that I shall die for it” (Memoirs of Halide Edib, p. 387). For a similar utterance of guilt see n. 20. Talat was indeed assassinated on March 15, 1921, in Berlin where he was living incognito and under the fictitious name Mehmed Sâi. Tehlirian, the Armenian student charged with the murder, was on June 3, 1921, acquitted by a Berlin-Moabit District Court jury, which, following a one-hour deliberation, found Tehlirian not guilty on grounds of temporary insanity as provided by Article 51 of the German Penal Code. For details of the trial see note 29. Finally, it is most significant that, while serving as German Ambassador to the United States (1908–1917), Bernstorff categorically denied the massacres when they had already run their course, describing them as “the alleged atrocities” and “pure invention” (September 28, 1915, issues of The Washington Post and The New York Times).