Mustafa "Ataturk" Kemal
Founder of the modern Turkish Republic in 1923 and revered throughout Turkey, in an interview published on August 1, 1926 in The Los Angeles Examiner, talking about former Young Turks in his country...
These left-overs from the former Young Turk Party, who should have been made to account for the millions of our Christian subjects who were ruthlessly driven en masse, from their homes and massacred, have been restive under the Republican rule.
Adolf Hitler
While persuading his associates that a Jewish holocaust would be tolerated by the west stated...
Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?
Yossi Beilin
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister. April 27, 1994
on the floor of the Knesset in response to a TV interview of
the Turkish Ambassador
It was not war. It was most certainly
massacre and genocide, something the world must remember...
We will always reject any attempt to erase its record, even for
some political advantage.
Gerald Ford
Addressing the US House of Representatives.
Mr. Speaker, with mixed emotions we mark the 50th anniversary of the
Turkish genocide of the Armenian people. In taking notice of the shocking
events in 1915, we observe this anniversary with sorrow in recalling the
massacres of Armenians and with pride in saluting those brave patriots
who survived to fight on the side of freedom during World War I. -
Congressional Record, pg. 8890
Various Turkish Quotes, beginning with multiple quotes from the 3 rulers of wartime Turkey,
Cemal Pasha, Enver Pasha and Talat Pasha.
Enver Pasha
One of the triumvirate rulers publicly declared on 19 May 1916...
The Ottoman Empire should be cleaned up of the Armenians and the Lebanese. We have destroyed
the former by the sword, we shall destroy the latter through starvation.
In reply to US Ambassador Morgenthau who was deploring the massacres against Armenians and
attributing them to irresponsible subalterns and underlings in the distant provinces, Enver's reply was...
You are greatly mistaken. We have this country absolutely under our control. I have no desire to shift
the blame onto our underlings and I am entirely willing to accept the responsibility myself for
everything that has taken place.
Talat Pasha
In a conversation with Dr. Mordtmann of the German Embassy in June 1915...
Turkey is taking advantage of the war in order to thoroughly liquidate (grundlich aufzaumen) its
internal foes, i.e., the indigenous Christians, without being thereby disturbed by foreign intervention.
After the German Ambassador persistently brought up the Armenian question in 1918,
Talat said "with a smile"...
What on earth do you want? The question is settled. There are no more Armenians.
Cemal Pasha
To a German officer upon seeing the deportations in Mamure said...
I am ashamed of my nation (Ich schame mich fur meine Nation)
Cemal
Minister of the Interior of Turkey publicly declared on March 15 that
on the basis of computations undertaken by Ministry Experts...
800,000 Armenian deportees were actually killed...by holding the guilty
accountable the government is intent on cleansing the bloody past.
Prince Abdul Mecid
Heir-Apparent to the Ottoman Throne, during an interview...
I refer to those awful massacres. They are the greatest stain that has ever disgraced our nation and race.
They were entirely the work of Talat and Enver. I heard some days before they began that they were intended.
I went to Istanbul and insisted on seeing Enver. I asked him if it was true that they intended to
recommence the massacres which had been our shame and disgrace under Abdul Hamid. The only reply I could get
from him was: 'It is decided. It is the program.'
Grand Vezir Damad Ferid Pasha
Equivalent rank in the US would be head of the cabinet I think. He described the treatment of the Armenians as...
A crime that drew the revulsion of the entire humankind.
Mustafa Arif
Minister of Interior stated on 13 December 1918...
Surely a few Armenians aided and abetted our enemy, and a few Armenian Deputies committed crimes
against the Turkish nation... it is incumbent upon a government to pursue the guilty ones. Unfortunately,
our wartime leaders, imbued with a spirit of brigandage, carried out the law of deportation in a manner
that could surpass the proclivities of the most bloodthirsty bandits. They decided to exterminate the
Armenians, and they did exterminate them.
Various Western Quotes
Henry Morgenthau, Sr.
When the Turkish authorities gave the orders for these deportations, they were merely giving the death warrant to a whole race; they understood this well, and, in their conversations with me, they made no particular attempt to conceal the fact. . . . I am confident that the whole history of the human race contains no such horrible episode as this. The great massacres and persecutions of the past seem almost insignificant when compared to the sufferings of the Armenian race in 1915.
October 6, 1915, speech
The massacres are the result of a policy which, as far as can be ascertained, has been entertained for some considerable time by the gang of unscrupulous adventurers who are now in possession of the Government of the Turkish Empire. They hesitated to put it in practice until they thought the favorable moment had come, and that moment seems to have arrived about the month of April.
Count Wolff-Metternich
German Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire
July 10, 1916, cable to the German Chancellor
In its attempt to carry out its purpose to resolve the Armenian question by the destruction of the Armenian race, the Turkish government has refused to be deterred neither by our representations, nor by those of the American Embassy, nor by the delegate of the Pope, nor by the threats of the Allied Powers, nor in deference to the public opinion of the West representing one-half of the world.
Theodore Roosevelt
May 11, 1918, letter to Cleveland Hoadley Dodge
. . . the Armenian massacre was the greatest crime of the war, and the failure to act against Turkey is to condone it . . . the failure to deal radically with the Turkish horror means that all talk of guaranteeing the future peace of the world is mischievous nonsense.
Herbert Hoover
The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover, 1952
The association of Mount Ararat and Noah, the staunch Christians who were massacred periodically by the Mohammedan Turks, and the Sunday School collections over fifty years for alleviating their miseries—all cumulate to impress the name Armenia on the front of the American mind.
Jimmy Carter
May 16, 1978, White House ceremony
It is generally not known in the world that, in the years preceding 1916, there was a concerted effort made to eliminate all the Armenian people, probably one of the greatest tragedies that ever befell any group. And there weren't any Nuremberg trials.
Ronald Reagan
April 22, 1981, proclamation
Like the genocide of the Armenians before it, and the genocide of the Cambodians which followed it, . . . the lessons of the Holocaust must never be forgotten.
George Bush
April 20, 1990, speech in Orlando, Florida
[We join] Armenians around the world [as we remember] the terrible massacres suffered in 1915–1923 at the hands of the rulers of the Ottoman Empire. The United States responded to this crime against humanity by leading diplomatic and private relief efforts.
Most of the quotes of Turkish origin are from Vahakn Dadrian's collections which
were published in Genocide: A Critical Bibliographic Review, Vol. 2 (Israel Charny, ed.)
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This page added 12 May, 1996
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Copyright © 1999 Raffi Kojian n_w$$h
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