Marashlian's testimony to the House of Representatives about the Armenian Genocide
House Committee on International Relations
May 15, 1996
Testimony on the Armenian Genocide
By Levon Marashlian, Ph.D.
Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee, thank you for this opportunity to
speak before you on an issue which is intimately tied to American history and
directly related to the welfare of Turkey and to the success of United States
policy in a region of the world which is critically important economically and
strategically.
In 1919, a political body called The National Congress of Turkey
confirmed the overwhelming American evidence that the Armenians of the Ottoman
Empire were victims of a mass destruction during World War I. The National
Congress of Turkey declared that the "guilt" of the Turkish officials who
"conceived and deliberately carried out this infernal policy of extermination
and robbery is patent," those officials "rank among the greatest criminals of
humanity."
The official Turkish gazette Takvimi Vekayi published the verdict of the
post-war Ottoman trials of those officials. The Turkish court ruled that the
intention of the Ottoman leaders was "the organization and execution" of the
"crime of massacre."
German Ambassador Johann Bernstorff, whose country was allied to Turkey,
wrote about "Armenia where the Turks have been systematically trying to
exterminate the Christian population." Raphael Lemkin, who coined the word
genocide in 1944, specifically cited the "genocide of the Armenians."
Those who today deny the Armenian Genocide are resorting to academically
unsound revisionism, in order to prevent the moral act of remembering this crime
against humanity. In the process, the deniers are doing a disservice to the
majority of today's Turkish people. By keeping the wounds open with their
stonewalling tactics, by making it necessary to have hearings like this, they
force the Turkish people to continue wearing like an albatross the negative
image earned by a circle of officials who ruled eight decades ago.
A consideration of House Concurrent Resolution 47, which remembers "the
genocide perpetrated by the governments of the Ottoman Empire from 1915 to
1923," would provide a good opportunity to draw a distinction between the guilty
and the innocent Turks, to remember also the Turks of decency who opposed their
government's policy of inhumanity.
At a time today when so many people in our own society too often shirk
their individual responsibility to make personal choices based on principles and
values, it is a good lesson for us to recall the years when American witnesses
and Turkish civilians made the personal choice to resist a wrong and save human
lives, when a few Turkish officials even chose to object, even though doing so
could have endangered their own lives.
One was an Ottoman Senator, Ahmed Riza. In December 1915 he courageously
condemned the policy to destroy and deport Turkey's two million Armenian
citizens and expropriate their assets, which authorities were carrying out under
the cover of a legislative fig leaf euphemistically called the Abandoned
Properties Law.
"It is unlawful to designate" Armenian properties as abandoned, declared
Senator Riza, because they did not leave their properties voluntarily. They
were "forcibly" removed from their homes and exiled. "Now the government is
selling" their possessions. "Nobody can sell my property if I am unwilling to
sell it. This is atrocious. Grab my arm, eject me from my village, then sell
my goods and properties? Such a thing can never be permissible. Neither the
conscience of the Ottomans nor the law can allow it."
Mr. Chairman, during a debate on the Senate floor in February 1990, your
colleague Senator Robert Dole championed another resolution commemorating the
Armenian Genocide (SJR 212), and declared, "it's finally time for us to do what
is right. Right. We pride ourselves in America as doing what's right, not
what's expedient."
In this case, doing what is right does not exact a big price. The
frequently heard argument that a commemorative resolution will harm
American-Turkish relations is not credible. It ignores the fact that the
relationship is much more in Turkey's favor than America's. Not doing what is
right, on the other hand, is tantamount to rejecting mountains of documents in
our National Archives, testimonies that refute the denial arguments generated in
Ankara and, most disturbingly, promoted in prestigious academic circles here in
America.
This denial recently spurred over 100 prominent scholars and
intellectuals, including Raul Hilberg, John Updike, Norman Mailer, Kurt
Vonnegut, and Arthur Miller, to sign a petition denouncing the "intellectually
and morally corrupt . . . manipulation of American institutions" and the
"fraudulent scholarship supported by the Turkish government and carried out in
American universities."
A typical example of the powerful evidence in the US Archives is a July
10, 1915 cable to the State Department from Ambassador Henry Morgenthau:
"Persecution of Armenians assuming unprecedented proportions. Reports from
widely scattered districts indicate systematic attempts to uproot peaceful
Armenian populations and through arbitrary arrests" and "terrible tortures," to
implement "wholesale expulsions and deportations from one end of the Empire to
the other," frequently accompanied by "rape, pillage, and murder, turning into
massacre . . ."
And the persecutions continued even after World War I ended in 1918. "It
was like an endless chain," reported Edith Woods, an American nurse, in 1922.
"The children would often be dead before I had taken their names. Forty to
fifty of the older women died each day. . . . Their mouths were masses of sores,
and their teeth were dropping out. And their feet, those poor, bleeding feet. .
. . Deportation is sure death--and a far more horrible death than massacre.
Unless one sees these things it is difficult to believe that such monstrous
cruelty and barbarity exist in the world."
Ms. Woods' testimony ripped to shreds the web of denial being woven by
Turkish officials in the early 1920s. She also exposed the new atmosphere of
insensitivity at the American Embassy in Istanbul, which contradicted the
overwhelming sentiment of American public opinion and the spirit of
Congressional resolutions in favor of Armenians that were passed during those
days. This American woman made the personal choice to speak up against the
response at her own Embassy, a policy imposed by acting ambassador Admiral Mark
Bristol, who, driven obsessively by commercial interests, was colluding in a
cover-up crafted by Turkish authorities.
Allen Dulles, the State Department's Near East Division chief (and later
CIA Director), found it hard to keep things under wraps as Bristol requested.
"Confidentially the State Department is in a bind," Dulles cautioned in April
1922.
Our task would be simple if the reports of the atrocities could be
declared untrue or even exaggerated but the evidence, alas, is
irrefutable and the Secretary of State wants to avoid giving the
impression that while the United States is willing to intervene
actively to protect its commercial interests, it is not willing to move
on behalf of the Christian minorities.
And the evidence mounted. In May 1922, four American relief workers,
Major Forrest D. Yowell of Washington DC, Dr. Mark Ward of New York, Dr. Ruth
Parmalee of Boston, and Isabel Harely of Rhode Island, were all expelled from
their posts in Turkey because they too chose to do what is right, they protested
the ongoing persecutions. Major Yowell said Armenians in his district were "in
a state of virtual slavery," with "no rights in the courts."
Dr. Ward quoted Turkish officials. One Turk declared: "We have been too
easy in the past. We shall do a thorough job this time." Another remarked:
"Why do you Americans waste your time and money on these filthy Greeks and
Armenians? We always thought that Americans knew how to get their money's
worth. Any Greeks and Armenians who don't die here are sure to die when we send
them on to Bitlis, as we always choose the worst weather in order to get rid of
them quicker."
Not all Turks were so cruel. A British diplomat reported that another
American in Turkey, Herbert Gibbons, knew of prominent Turks who protested the
"unparalleled inhumanity;" but they were "beaten and sent away" for intervening.
The Mayor of the Black Sea city of Trabzon had no sympathy with the government's
policy and did what little he could. The Governor also opposed the "massacres
and persecutions," but was powerless to stop it. His predecessor tried and was
removed.
Gibbons thought the government's policy was "a calumny upon the good
Turks, of whom there are many." Massacres never broke out spontaneously, since
"Christians and Moslems ordinarily get along very well." The massacres were
ordered, as part of a plan "to make Turkey truly Turkish."
Yet there are "humane and kind hearted Turks," Gibbons stressed, and
there are "Mohammedans who fear God and who are shocked by the impious horrors
of the extermination policy."
Revisionists today say in effect that Americans like Forrest Yowell, Mark
Ward, Ruth Parmalee, Isabel Harely, Edith Woods, Herbert Gibbons, and Ambassador
Henry Morgenthau were either liars or misguided.
Remembering the atrocities committed against the Armenians would show
respect for those Americans who spoke up, and respect as well for Turks like
Senator Riza who also chose to oppose the injustice. A recognition of the
Armenian Genocide by the US Congress would be a step toward helping erase this
important ally's image problem, which Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet described in
1951 as "this black stain on the forehead of the people."
Encouraging Turkey to face the facts of its history would help lift the
cloud of controversy which has haunted it for decades. It would help eliminate
the deep roots of Armenian-Turkish enmity, paving the way to normalized
relations, and it would give Armenia the sense of security many Armenians feel
is necessary if they are to respond to Russia's regional policies with more
independence and balance. The prospects for American commerce and regional
stability would be strengthened by a recognition of the Armenian Genocide.
Acknowledging the Armenian Genocide also would show that Congress cannot
condone the brazen contradiction of its own Archives and the dangerous
corruption of America's academic institutions. It would send a strong signal to
all deniers of genocide, especially to deniers of the Holocaust. Mr. Chairman,
taking a stand against the denial of the Armenian Genocide would be entirely
consistent with the successful resolution "Deploring Holocaust Deniers" which
you so wisely introduced last December, in which you too did what is right, by
calling denial efforts "malicious." Such language is applicable to the denial
of the Armenian Genocide as well.
Mr. Chairman, when weighing the merits of the arguments on both sides of
this issue, it would be useful to keep in mind a letter sent to Secretary of
State Charles Evans Hughes in 1924 by Admiral Bristol, a man who was called
"very pro-Turk" by Joseph Clark Grew, Washington's first Ambassador to Ankara.
Even the pro-Turk Admiral acknowledged "the cruelties practiced upon the
Armenians by Turks acting under official orders, and in pursuance of a
deliberate official policy." For that policy, wrote Bristol, "there can be no
adequate excuse."
