A Recent Anti-Semitic Theme: The Sabbatean Role in the Armenian Genocide

By Rifat Bali

We publish below chapter IX of Rifat Bali’s book A Scapegoat for All Seasons: The Doenmes or Crypto-Jews of Turkey in its entirety.

Rifat Bali was born in Istanbul in 1948. Between the years 1970-1995 he worked first as a manager then as a managing partner in a private company. In 2001 he graduated from the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes of the Sorbonne University. Since 1996 he has been researching and publishing in the field of non-Muslim minorities of Turkey, anti-Semitism, conspiracy theories, the social and cultural transformation of the Turkish society and Doenmes (Crypto Jews). He is a research fellow of the Alberto Benveniste Center for Sephardic Studies and Culture based in the Religious Studies Department of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Sorbonne (Paris) and a member of Ottoman-Turkish Sephardic Culture Research Center. He is fluent in English, French and Ladino. Currently he is serving libraries through his company Libra Kitapcilik ve Yayincilik with monographs and serials published in Turkey.

 To obtain a copy of A Scapegoat for All Seasons: The Doenmes or Crypto-Jews of Turkey, contact Libra Books at rifat.bali@gmail.com.

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Another interesting and recent product of the anti-Dönme mindset, a worldview that sees those belonging to or descended from this group as a secret, select and extremely powerful branch of Judaism that controls Turkey, is the claim that is was not the Turks, but the Sabbateans, who both planned and implemented the 1915 Deportation resulting in the mass slaughter and death of most of the Ottoman Empire’s Armenian population. According to this view the idea of mass deportation and slaughter emerged because the country’s Jewish bourgeoisie wished to take control of the empire’s economic life, and, since many of the leaders of the ruling Committee of Union and Progress were of Dönme origin (e.g. Talât Pasha and Dr. Nâzım), they proposed this plan to the committee as a way of eliminating their Armenian competitors. An example is Christopher Jon Bjerkness, an amateur historian of science. A 543-page document entitled The Jewish Genocide of Armenian Christians which he posted on the internet where he claims as the title suggests, that it was the Crypto-Jews who were the perpetrators of the Armenian genocide.[1] Since this opinion has been shared by a wide audience among Armenian and Turkish Islamist circles, Khatchig Mouradian, the editor of The Armenian Weekly, an American-Armenian weekly newspaper, and Dr. Nilgün Gülcan, a researcher working at the International Strategic Center Research Organisation (Ankara),[2] felt obliged to discount such claims. Mouradian in his article stated that:[3]  

Having written several articles on Jewcy about the bigotry and racism of some Jews and Turks regarding the Armenians and their suffering, I now feel obliged to address one of the conspiracy theories that has been passed from generation to generation—and shared by some Armenians—for a few decades at least. It goes something like this:

The plan to exterminate the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire was conceived and implemented by Jews, Zionists and Freemasons. You want proof? Several leaders of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP)—that committed the genocide—were Jews converted to Islam (the Turkish term used to refer to them is Donme) and freemasons. Those who present these arguments, of course, set out several reasons that might have prompted the Jews to exterminate the Armenians, ranging from jealousy (for example, the Armenians were successful merchants, even more so than the Jews) to greater geo-political schemes sometimes involving the domination of the world. In some cases, this conspiracy theory is amalgamated with a similar theory prevalent among some Arabs that the Young Turk revolt of 1908 against the Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid II was also a Jewish and Freemasonic conspiracy because the sultan was vehemently opposed the settling of Jews in Palestine, while the Young Turks were allegedly more inclined to implement the Zionist designs.

While no professional historian of the Armenian genocide has taken this conspiracy theory seriously, there has unfortunately been no separate academic analysis as well to expose its origins and the reasons of its persistence, making it possible for this theory to survive on the margins of Armenian life.

A quick glance of those in Turkey who espouse this view will show that they can be classified into three main groups: a) numerous columnists from the Islamist press; b) a group of Turkish-Armenian journalists, most notably the recently assassinated[4] Editor-in-Chief of the Armenian community’s semi-official organ Agos,[5] Hrant Dink, the paper’s columnist Markar Esayan and Levon Panos Dabağyan, a writer for the Turkish nationalist paper Önce Vatan; c) Ilgaz Zorlu, a young Turk who, after ‘going public’ with an admission of his Dönme origins in the late 1990s, has been on this basis accorded widespread media attention and whose every public statement has enjoyed an extraordinary level of credibility;[6] and finally d) the Marxist Economics Professor Yalçın Küçük, whose fame has spread in recent years as a result of his numerous publications on the Sabbateans.

a. The Islamist Press

Akit Editor-in-Chief Abdurrahman Dilipak

During the fall of 2000 the Turkish press was completely preoccupied with the debate then transpiring in the U.S. House of Representatives over the House Resolution 398 “Affirmation of the United States Record on the Armenian Genocide”. During this period Abdurrahman Dilipak, the Editor-in-Chief of the radical Islamist daily Akit wrote a column in which he raised the subject of the genocide and role of the Sabbateans in it:

Is there such a thing as Sabbateanism or isn’t there? Some say there is, others claim that there’s no such thing, while still others say that there once was, but it no longer exists.

Sabbateanism is a subject which is not written about, outlined or spoken of very often. But it’s not that there aren’t some works from which the curious can acquire some general information about the topic. For example, there are Abdurrahman Küçük’s work titled Dönmeler,[7] Galante’s work,[8] and the National Education [Ministry] and [The Presidency of] Religious Affairs’ İslâm [A]nsiklopedileri.                           

What is generally agreed upon [by all of these authors] is that [Sabbateanism] is a secret movement like Freemasonry, it is connected to the Jewish faith, Kabbala and its traditions, based on the Messianic claim [of Sabbatai Sevi], and, having originated in Salonica, is centered in Izmir and Salonica. It is a sect or a [dervish] order.

What we’re talking about is an unknown reality of this country.

In fact, we do not know enough about the Armenians, the Greeks, the Syriac Christians or the Yezidis either.

Now, as the debate of the claims of a[n Armenian] genocide has begin in America, the question [of the Sabbateans] has once more come to the agenda in this regard. A good researcher will easily see that the true address for claims of [responsibility for] the genocide are neither the Ottoman [Empire] nor the Republic of Turkey. The role in this affair of those Jewish, Masonic and Sabbatean Unionists within the Committee of Union and Progress is a well-known fact.

So why doesn’t anyone want to see it as a fact? The reality of it is painfully clear.[9]

Six years later, upon the French Parliament’s passage of a law outlawing the denial of the truth of the Armenian genocide, Dilipak would once again pick up this line of argument, implying, among others, Jewish and Dönme responsibility for the Armenian genocide with the statement “The Armenian question is a subject that not only concerns the Turks, the Kurds and Jews are also involved in this affair. The Sabbateans are also [involved]. So, for that matter, are the Russians, the Americans, the British, the French and the Greeks. We will [soon] understand that none of us are without blame”.[10] In 2007 the day after the House Resolution 106 entitled “Affirmation of the United States Record on the Armenian Genocide Resolution” was accepted by The Foreign Affairs Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives Dilipak referred again in his column to this matter and stated that “if we discuss in depth the Armenian problem, it would become apparent that those who did this in the Ottoman Empire were Committee of Union and Progress bands made up of Jews, Freemason-Sabataist mongrels”.[11]

Millî Gazete Columnist Mehmed Şevket Eygi

The question of the Armenian genocide and Dönme responsibility for it was also recently taken up by the columnist of the Islamist daily Millî Gazete,[12] Mehmed Şevket Eygi. In a late-2005 column Eygi wrote:

The events of 1915 were planned by the Dönme. [They were carried out] because at that time the commerce, the crafts production and capital of Anatolia were in great measure in the hands of the Armenians. The Dönmes wanted to replace them in the economic, commercial and finance-related fields.

Were some atrocities committed against the Armenians? They were, but it wasn’t the Muslim Turks who committed them. As to those who did carry out [such acts], those who are well-versed in history, who know the true nature of the[se] events, are aware [of who is responsible].

(1)     The Armenian question is the concern of the Dönmes.

(2)     [These actions] were performed as a reprisal for the actions carried out by the Armenian armed gangs incited by aggressive missionaries. Let it not be forgotten how, when the Russian army entered Anatolia, entered Van, some Armenians who were enemies of the very state to which they belonged carried out barbarities against the Muslim [inhabitant]s.

(3)     In general, those Armenians who had been deported were killed and robbed by other, non-Turkish groups.

 The columnist then concludes his piece with the following ‘note’:

I suggest that you read the article titled “GİZLİ BİR SAVAŞ: YAHUDİLER ERMENİLERE KARŞI” [‘A secret war: the Jews against the Armenians’] found at the Internet site for which I give the web address below. In this two-page article it is claimed that the planners of the Armenian events of 1915 were Dönmes, or Crypto-Jews. http://mitglied.lycos.de/goezelele53.[13]

The web article to which Eygi refers his readers was written in Turkish in 2001 and is presented below in full:

In this article of mine, I wish to explain to you some truths about the Armenian Question with the intention of at least partially removing the scales from your eyes:

I want to speak of two large minority [populations] that competed with one another within the Ottoman Empire for centuries, that is to say, the Jews and the Armenians. The disputes between these two minorities derived not from the land dispute [that, originating with] the Young Turks [and continuing] down to the establishment of the Union and Progress Party, but with the struggles between these two groups for commercial advantage. The Armenians were always much more capable artisans than the Jews and [so the latter] did not engage in commerce apart from through fraud and dubious dealing or by creating all manner of division and dissent against their competitors, because the society was not familiar with their culture. That’s how it was with the Jews, it was part of their ideology; that’s what it meant to be Jewish.

In the 1870s two branches of Judaism, the Sabbateans and the Jews,[14] began to organize among themselves and gain in strength. Through the assistance of the French, Italians and other foreign powers they began to understand the dimensions of their own united power in the economic field. They began to [work toward] destroy[ing] the [Ottoman] Empire and planting the seeds of an entirely new state that they themselves would establish. But naturally, as part of this plan they could not be on friendly terms with the Armenians, who were their biggest competitors. For this reason you cannot find Armenians among the Young Turks or the [Committee of] Union and Progress. They embarked upon preparations for the whittling down and elimination of the Armenians. What they intended to do was to eliminate the Armenians, who for centuries had established a powerful minority community within the various cities and centers of Anatolia, and to establish a state in which the control and administration would be in their own hands. This was what Sabbatai Sevi had intended in the 17th century. The Armenians would be eliminated and they themselves, that is, the Sabbateans, the majority of whom were wealthy and powerful, would come from the Balkans to Anatolia and settle there. In this way the Jews would also be rid of the their strongest competitors.

The Sabbateans attempted not to make themselves noticed within the other communities of the Balkans. If [these] other communities sensed that the Sabbateans were different in any way, they didn’t do a thing about it. The majority of persons in the[se] other communities were very poor. Power and money were in the hands of the Sabbateans. The visible behavior and other characteristics peculiar to the Sabbateans appeared to [those of] other nations simply as behaviors that derived from their material wealth. But it was not so. On the contrary. The Sabbateans were culturally very different and they grew rich from acting in partnership with the Jews, and because, in fact, they were Jews.

There were Sabbateans who attained command and high rank within the army. Because the army was, in the eyes of the people, the savior [of the nation], they submitted to the dictates of its high officers without knowing what was being done or what it’s objectives were. Upon the orders of the [Committee of] Union and Progress, most of the Armenians were either killed in their villages or, while being driven in utter misery and deprivation to Lebanon and Syria, died on the journey.

The Armenians all know that those who killed their ancestors were the Young Turks/Union and Progress—in other words, the Jews (Musevi) and Sabbateans, who descended from the Jewish (Yahudi) race. The killers may have been Turkish on the outside, but on the inside they were in fact Jewish. Although the Sabbateans all possess Turkish names and cloak themselves in a Muslim identity, they [i.e., the Armenians] are able to make this differentiation because in the Ottoman Empire for centuries there was no interaction between them and the Muslim Turks. They all know very well with whom they interacted and they were not deceived in the least. Since the appearance of Sabbateanism the Armenians even wrote books about them. In this sense in a memorial commemorating the Genocide that was opened last year in France, they even inscribed upon this monument that it was not the Turks but the Union and Progress or Young Turks (in other words, the Sabbateans and Jews) who carried out this genocide.

Have you ever noticed that the ASALA has never killed a single Turk who descends from [true] Muslim roots? It is said that without exception only Sabbateans are accepted into the Foreign Ministry. Everybody knows this. Turkish youth who are of Muslim origin are not accepted into the Foreign Ministry so that they won’t notice the presence of Sabbateans, won’t discern their games, and [therefore] won’t tell others outside the ministry. Now think for a minute: why has the ASALA up to now only attacked [Turkish] diplomats and other Foreign Ministry employees? The reason is simple: it is because they know that those who work in the Foreign Ministry are the descendents of those ordered and are responsible for the genocide of their ancestors.

For the past years there have been a number of panel discussions on the Armenian Genocide on the ATV, Show TV, NTV, Kanal D and BRT [television channels]. For some reason, all of those who are called to be discussants are Sabbateans. Professor Eser Karakaş,[15] for instance…It is interesting that he himself carries [a surname that is identical with] the name of the Karakaş group, one of the three branches of the Sabbateans. What is this individual’s knowledge and interest in the Armenian Genocide? We knew him as a professor of business management, was it history in which he specialized? And why did he come out so strongly against the statement by his co-panelist Hürriyet’s Paris correspondent Madam [Nurdan] Bernard, that “the more young people who apply to the Foreign Ministry, the more persons will be accepted”? On another interesting note, a student at Harvard, who has been characterized by the media as “our own young, super nationalist [Turkish] girl” actually comes from a Sabbatean family.[16] It will be recalled that she allegedly stood up to French parliamentarians! She [allegedly ] taught [them] a lesson! I wonder, did the French parliamentarians even hear what she said? What wonderful scales have been placed on the eyes of the Turkish nation, and how masterfully those who have placed these scales have blinded them [to the truth]….

The Armenians are particularly aware of the Sabbatean-Greek rapprochement that has been going on for the past ten years. An example of this increasing intimacy, which has been fostered within [the framework of] Freemasonry, was seen on Show-TV. Let’s see how long before we actually notice this rapprochement….[17]  

Mehmet Kamış, writer for Zaman

Mehmet Kamış, a writer for the daily Zaman, which is owned by the ‘moderate’ Islamist community of Fethullah Gülen, speaks of the Armenian deportations, but refers to it chief architect, Unionist Interior Minister Talât Pasha, as a ‘Sabbatean’:

Talât Pasha, whom Soner Yalçın characterizes as a ‘Sabbatean’ in his book Efendi, did not only bring all of these things upon our heads; instead, by exaggerating the actions that he took when writing in his notebook, which has now appeared I don’t know how many years since his death, he has continued to cause us troubles.[18]

Kamış goes on in this column to depict the question of the Armenian massacres as the problem of Talat Pasha, whom he takes pains to portray as a Sabbatean: “The Armenian [D]eportation”, he claims, “is not a problem for the Ottomans and the Turks. It is the problem of Talat Pasha and his ilk”.

İbrahim Karagül, Foreign Policy Columnist for Yeni Şafak

Another Islamist writer who has broached the question of who conceived of and planned the Armenian Deportation is İbrahim Karagül, a commentator on foreign policy issues for the daily Yeni Şafak, an Islamist daily owned by the Albayraklar Group, which is known for its close ties with the ruling Justice and Development Party, (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, or AKP). In a piece on the Armenian question that appeared in May, 2005 Karagül states:

There are no aspects of the Armenian [D]eportation and genocide claims that have not already been debated. Turkey’s relations with the rest of the world have continually be framed within the parameters of this painful debate. While the United States and the European powers have repeatedly employed the genocide claim as the most effective means of pushing Turkey into a corner, Turkey itself continues to hope for help against these claims from the Jewish lobby in the United States.

Karagül then presents his readers with three sources for consideration:

1)     an article by Joseph Brewda published in 1994 and which appears on the website of The Schiller Institute, named after the 18th century German poet and dramatist Friedrich Schiller and established by the American politician and conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche and his wife Helga Zepp LaRouche. In his article, Brewda claims that the American Jewish organization B’nai B’rith took control of the Middle East by means of Dönme, Zionist and Freemasonic members of the Committee of Union and Progress.[19]

2)     a web article by Clifford Shack claiming that the famous American [sic] Jewish Rothschild family concocted the Armenian Deportation with the aim of gaining control of the Middle Eastern oil reserves.[20]

3)     An article by the Armenian American Jack Manuelian, who is also the author of the book Nostradamus: Predictions of World War III (distributed by an American publisher known for its ‘conspiracy theory’ works). Manuelian claims—largely on the basis of the two aforementioned articles—that the Armenian Deportation was carried out by the Dönmes.[21]

After making frequent reference to these three sources, Karagül hedges his bets:

I’m simply sharing [this information] with my readers…I’m not claiming that these [claims] are true. But there is a sensitive question that I have not been able to answer: Are we, the people who live on this patch of earth, being forced to pay the price for the sins of others? We all notice the dark clouds that hover over Turkey. For the sake of this country we will all struggle against these with all our might. But I wonder: are we only doing ourself evil by acting so? I mean, who is defending whom here? The subject impels us to come face to face with ourselves….[22]

Karagül’s piece would in the following days be widely quoted by the Islamist daily Millî Gazete,[23] and only Engin Ardıç of the centrist daily Akşam would offer any criticism of the Yeni Şafak writer’s claims:

In recent times Turkey has been experiencing a ‘Sabbatean’ crisis. Certain ‘eccentric thinkers’ in possession of questionable mental states have been tossing a Sabbatean stone in the well; no one has any intention of pulling it out again—and the fact is, no one could [once it’s been thrown]. On the contrary, there are those who have something to gain by having this stone remain there, and who are attempting to quickly convert it into ‘a series of articles, [which will lead] to increased sales and [thus, more] money’….that is shameful.

Let me quickly explain for the psychopaths that I have no connection, either close or distant, with Judaism, Sabbateanism or ‘Dönme-ism’. That said, I also don’t believe that these are a condition of which one need be ashamed. But some consider it so strange that I would devote attention to questions like the concentration camps, genocide and such, that they delight in searching out alternate reasons for this [behavior]; so much so that one of my Jewish readers even said “O.K., Engin Bey, [it’s out of a love for] humanity and whatnot. We got it. But really, why are you so interested in these topics?” I wonder: did he think I would ultimately turn out to be a ‘dönme’?

The word ‘dönme’ is used in this country as a term of opprobrium. And because in recent years in particular it has also been used in the sense of ‘a person who changes their sex’ [i.e., a transsexual], it also conjures up all manner of negative associations.

The person who has ‘converted’ to Islam, meaning he or she has come from another religion and chosen Islam is not to be debased—on the contrary, they are to be exalted and embraced. To say such things like ‘He used to belong to another religion, and only became a real human because of us’ either to their face or behind their back is absolutely disgraceful.

And so among us [the word] ‘dönme’ [i.e., ‘convert’] is an insult…And the one who is doing this is an old Marxist![24] Go, figure…

Yes, it’s true. The masonic lodges of Salonica in particular played a role—not in the founding of the Committee for Union and Progress, but in its transformation into a [political] party and, later on, in its coming to power as well. Enver and Cemal were not masons, but Talât was. (As for the situation of [other] leading figures like Bahaettin Şakir, Nazım of Florina and Mithat Şükrü, go and ask it yourself to the Supreme Master [of the freemason lodge] ….But in order to assert that this [organization] was simply ‘the result of a grand conspiracy to take control of the Ottoman [Empire] and the Middle East [as a whole]’ one has to be a few cards short of a full deck!

They may have indeed been able to imagine ‘giving equality and freedom to all of the peoples of the Ottoman [Empire], and meanwhile plucking off an autonomous Jewish province in Palestine’.

Just look: this upstart Armenian, some fellow by the name of Jak Manuelian has asserted that ‘the Sabbateans who wished to seize the economy of the Middle East from the Christians concocted the Armenian deportation’. Whoa, stop right there. The ones who created the Armenian deportation were Turanist and Unionist bureaucracy that wanted to create a [racially] pure and unadulterated fortress, a true homeland that would remain from the shrinking and crumbling [Ottoman] Empire, one last piece of earth in Anatolia in which we could seek refuge.

This policy ‘overlapped’ (as the intellectuals love to say) with this same party’s policy of wishing to take the economy out of the hands of the minorities and giving it to the Turkish nation, or more correctly, of wanted to create a Turkish bourgeoisie, because there were no proper Turkish merchants available [at the time].[25]  

Dünden Bugüne Tercüman Columnist Nuh Gönültaş[26]

 Several weeks before the Karagül piece the Islamist journalist Nuh Gönültaş, well known for his antisemitic conspiracy theories, published an article that is worth quoting in full:

Bediüzzaman fought against the Armenian armed gangs and the Russian army, but he never harmed civilians. Bediüzzaman freed the thousands of Armenian children who were collected over the course of these battles and returned them to their families in Russia. This action was an important lesson by example for the Armenians and they were astounded at the ethics of the Muslims. In response the Armenian militia heads abandoned their custom of slaughtering the Muslim children [that fell into their hands] and vowed, “If Molla Said will not slaughter our wives and children and instead turn them over to us, from this point on we will not slaughter Muslim children”. One blizzard-filled night, during a battle with the Russian and Armenian soldiers over the city of Bitlis, [Bediüzzaman] broke his leg while jumping from a wall into a ditch in an attempt to hide under a bridge and remained there with his students for two days, lying in a drainage canal amid the ice. They were finally forced to surrender so as not to freeze to death.

One can read in the book Tarihçe-i Hayat’tan ve Bilinmeyen Taraflarıyla Bediüzzaman Said Nursi how he rescued a great number of Armenian civilians from the hands of Muslim militiamen who were going to kill them. That’s but a summary of one part of the event that concerns Bediüzzaman. But there is a very interesting duplicity in regard to the question of the Armenian Genocide. Unfortunately it was the Armenians and the Kurds who did this. Although the Armenians and the Armenian terror organizations know full well which particular community having an ‘international’ reach within the Committee of Union and Progress helped to transform the ‘deportation’ operation into a tragedy, and which later killed many of its important leaders, they do not state this openly. Why not? Because today, just like back then and every time since then, it is the same center of power that nourishes the Armenian Diaspora. They cannot go any further than this center.

Tell me, who gave to Professor Vahakn Dadrian, [an Armenian-American professor] who has devoted his life to obtaining official recognition for the Armenian Genocide, a prize “for the contributions that he has made to genocide studies”? The International Jewish Holocaust Conference. They held their gathering this year in Florida in the United States on March 5-8. Five years ago this crew demanded that Turkey accept “the Armenian genocide as a reality whose histor[ical] truth is undeniable”.[27] Among the names [of those receiving this award] is Eli Wisel [sic], a survivor of the Auschwitz [sic] [extermination] camp and one of the closest advisors of U.S. Presidents.

So what has happened in recent years to those persons who for years spoke of the Armenian ‘genocide’ and then, at the last moment came to support the Turkish position and withdrew their genocide resolutions from the conference?

The first accusation in this matter was expressed five years ago by Israel’s former National Education Minister Yosi Sarid, thereby causing a diplomatic crisis. [At that time] Sarid said: “In our new history [textbooks] I want to see a lengthy section about genocide and the Armenian genocide must be mentioned openly in this section. This is our duty to you and to ourselves”.[28]  

In fact the subject is quite complicated, but it’s not so out of control as all that. In order to be able to understand the Armenian question it is necessary to know [about] the ‘Auspicious Event’, [that is] the elimination of the Janissaries, and how the gang of Jewish community leaders was also eliminated–the same leaders who exploited the Janissary officers during the course of these momentous events, to make them turn over their large rice cauldrons [in revolt], how all their assets were seized, how [all] Jewish influence was removed from the government and how the Armenians were brought in their place.[29]

The disputes between these two minorities derived not from the land dispute [that, originating with] the Young Turks [and continuing] down to the establishment of the Union and Progress Party, but with the struggles between these two groups for commercial advantage. The Armenians were always much more capable artisans than the Jews and because it was not a part of the [ Armenians’] culture they generally did not engage in commerce “by eliminating their competitors by other means”. But that wasn’t the case with their rivals. During the 1870s Ottoman Jewry (including Dönmes (Avdeti) and Masons), which was centered in Salonica began to organize itself and grow in strength. Through the assistance of the French, Italians and other foreign powers they began to understand the dimensions of their own united power in the economic field. They destroyed the [Ottoman] Imperial Dynasty and began planting the seeds of an entirely new state that [in which] they themselves would establish. But their most important rivals, the Armenians, would spoil their plans. Ever since Greek Independence, the Greek Orthodox [Ottoman subject] had formed an enormous problem. But the Armenians were, in contrast to them, “the loyal community”. They had settled in Anatolia and in the capital [i.e., Istanbul].   For this reason you cannot find Armenians among the Young Turks or the C[ommittee of] U[nion and] P[rogress]. In fact, at the beginning there was a fair amount of mutual sympathy [between the two sides], but later on things quickly changed. The CUP’s “steel core” embarked on preparations to eliminate the Armenians. What they intended to do was to drive out the Armenians, who for centuries had established a powerful edifice within the various [population] centers of Anatolia, and to establish a state in which the control and administration would be in their own hands. The Armenians all knew that the ones who “brainwashed” their ancestors were the European states and Russia, along with the great weapon and finance cartels.

Just as [the Armenians] betrayed the Ottoman [Empire] for the Russians during the First World War, the [Kurdish] Peshmerga that trusted Bush the father in 1991 and revolted against Saddam [Hussein], only to be scattered into the mountains by the hundreds of thousands, fell into this same state. The Armenians know full well who the real persons are with whom they have accounts [to settle], but there isn’t a whole lot that they can do about it today. They are in the situation in which a ‘carrot’ has been held out before them yet again. Just as they knew who was behind the events of September 6-7, 1955, and who gained ownership of their property for but a pittance. Indeed, the basic question here is one of ethics, and they  can’t say it. They know very well about Dr. Nâzım, Finance Minister Cavid, Talat [Pasha], Cemal [Pasha], CUP Secretary-General Mithat Şükrü Bleda and the “special” connections between this group. Just as they knew about Dr. Yahya Muhlis Bey, the CUP member who, while appearing to be vaccinating the Armenian villages in the Bingöl and Bitlis areas against the contagious diseases, was actually infecting the population with the typhoid and typhus microbes.

It is clear that we have entered into volatile times, but it’s still necessary to be able to be calm and objective about everything. I should remind [my readers] just how much of an incendiary matter the insulting of the [Turkish] flag represented during the Nevruz demonstrations. During the events of September 6-7 [1955], the naive population was driven into Şişli and Bakırköy by such empty boasts as “Atatürk’s house in Salonica has been bombed” and the final elimination of the Armenians and Greeks was carried out. There’s benefit to be had in being cautious![30]  

Apart from the fact that Gönültaş has lifted nearly half his piece word-for-word from the aforementioned 2001 web article (see the section on Mehmed Şevket Eygi) while leaving out any overt references to the Dönmes, even at first glance it becomes apparent that the author’s intent is to exonerate Muslim Turks from any responsibility for the Armenian genocide and place the entire blame for the planning and execution of the atrocities on the Sabbateans. Gönültaş doesn’t stop their, however, and even insinuates that they incited the 1955 anti-Greek riots as well, a claim subsequently reiterated by Yalçın Küçük.

Bülent Şahin Erdeğer

Bülent Erdeğer, editor of the journal Kur’an Nesli “Qur’an Generation” of the website with the same name (www.kurannesli.info) and a contributor to the radical Islamist journal Haksöz also seems to believe that the Dönmes were influential in the decision to deport the Armenian population of Anatolia. In a lengthy piece titled “The Armenian Question in the Context of Atrocities and Genocide” he writes:[31]

A rather powerful commercial bourgeoisie was raised up in Salonica. The Salonican dönmes [i.e., the Sabbateans] distinguished themselves quite thoroughly as a commercial bourgeoisie, through their level of culture, their knowledge of languages, the printing houses they established, their newspapers, clubs and special schools. The Dönmes and the Jews both lent their support to the Young Turk movement. They hoped that a change of regime would provide them with the opportunity to destroy the [commercial] monopoly of the Greek and Armenian businessmen in Istanbul. For the sake of their own interests, this burgeoning commercial bourgeoisie was much closer to the Central Powers, to Germany and Austria. In their economic relations with Turkey the British and French generally supported the Greeks and Armenians. As for the Germans, whose economic relations with Turkey were rapidly developing, they showed a greater tendency to support the Jewish and Muslim bourgeoisie. By means of the Masonic Societies ties were established between the leading figures of the [Committee of] Union and Progress and the Salonica Bourgeoisie. It was against just such political conditions and social relations that the 1908 Movement came to fruition.

The movement did not long remain a movement of [army] officers and intellectuals, but also rested on a social foundation, being supported by a commercial bourgeoisie intent on destroying the monopoly in economic life established by the pashas and the wealthy Greek and Armenians. The 3rd army corps commander of the Action Army that marched from Salonica to Istanbul on March 31 [1909] was Hüseyin Hüsnü Pasha. We can see this name appearing on the list of famous Masons that the Masons themselves have provided. The Adjutant Major (Kolağası) of the Action Army was Mustafa Kemal. Whether out of the historical Jewish-Armenian hostility, due to the dominance of the Jewish and Sabbatean elements within the CUP, or as a result of the effort to create a ‘Turkish’ bourgeoisie, the pro-German CUP embarked upon a complete settling of accounts with the problematic Armenians by means of the Armenian genocide. The period was a republican epoch, and in order to sell property to the bourgeoisie it was necessary to have a state like a republic, an ideology like nationalism, a nation like the Turks and a national market like Anatolia…and that is what happened. From the standpoint of both its the leaders and its ideologues, the CUP was a construct stamped first by its Sabbatean and secondly, its Jewish identity—and in that period the Jews needed a state, a country….

During those trying days, the extent of efforts that the Jews living in Istanbul showed on behalf of the Turkist cause was made manifest in the area of supplying the Nationalist Government with intelligence, weapons and other supplies. At the head of those providing services, and especially the provision of intelligence, was Avram Galanti. Çetin Yetkin shares the following information with his readers: “Moreover, let me state that when I appealed to Üzeyir Garih, the businessman about whose father we had obtained snippets of information concerning his involvement in the same type of activities, and asked him whether or not such information existed on this matter, we learned from him that beginning in 1919 his father had worked with Colonel—later, Turkish Ambassador to Vienna and Paris—Behiç (Erkin) Bey in smuggling people to Anatolia and intelligence gathering, and that another person with whom he had had connections was Kara Kemal”. [32]

Erdeğer adds the following warning in one of his footnotes: “Nevertheless, it is important not to forget that it is obvious that the claims of the popular conspiracy theories that have recently emerged about Sabbateanism, whereby all the events are connected to one single cause/Judaism, are both tenuous and [highly] speculative”. However, coming as it does within a lengthy exposition insinuating that it is precisely such a Jewish/Dönme/Masonic cabal that is responsible for the tumultuous events in the Ottoman-Turkish realm during the first quarter of the 20th century, his qualification rings false, and must be seen as nothing more than an attempt to ‘cover himself’ against accusations of subscribing to such theories.  

M. Emin Kazcı, writer for Anadolu’da Vakit

M. Emin Kazcı, a writer for the radical Islamist daily Anadolu’da Vakit, also made his contribution to the incestuous, gossipy nature of much of the ‘yellower’ Turkish press by citing the aforementioned articles by Jack Manuelian and Clifford Shack, having read about them in the İbrahim Karagül piece in Yeni Şafak. In a piece in which he explains the reasons of the American Jewish organizations’ support of the position of the Turkish Republic in opposing the latest (January 2007) “Affirmation of the United States Record on the Armenian Genocide Resolution” (USHR No. 106) submitted to the U.S. Congress, Kazcı writes:

[AK Party] Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül went to America.

As is well known, there is an “Armenian Genocide Resolution” on the agenda of the U.S. House of Representatives.

The matter at hand is that Gül, having contacted various circles within this milieu, is working to convince the concerned parties that Turkey-U.S. relations would be severely hurt should the aforementioned resolution be accepted into law.

According to the reports that have again been appearing in our press, the Jewish lobbies in the U.S. are attempting to block [the passage] of the resolution by exercising their influence in Congress.

In fact, it has long been known that the Jewish lobbies take the position of fully supporting Turkey against the claims of the alleged Armenian genocide.

While some have attempted to portray this stance as “a steadfast love for Turkey”, there is of course no place in the language of international relations for such notions as “best of friends”.

We can safely state that the Jewish lobbies’ coolness toward the Armenians’ genocide claims derives from two general sources. The first of these is the Armenian claims that the Jews and some of their leading companies played a central role in the bringing about of the alleged genocide.

According to the Armenian claims, the Young Turks, who carried out the massacres against them and who—again, according to their claims—were composed primarily of Sabbateans and Masons, were but all pawns. The real power behind all of these was the French Jewish Rothschild family and their war for oil.

In his article titled “The Planned, Organized and Executed Genocide of the Armenians” the Armenian writer Jack Manuelian claims that the Armenian genocide that was carried out between 1915-1923 was planned by the Young Turks who appeared to be Muslims, but who were actually composed of (Sabbatean) Balkan Jews who were members of a secret sect”….

No doubt, to what degree these claims are in agreement with historical truth is a separate issue for debate.

Ultimately, some of these claims have found some resonance within Armenian circles.

Nevertheless, it is not possible to understand the reasons that the Jewish lobby has remained so cool and distant on the question of the “Alleged Armenian Genocide” without knowing these claims that hold the Jews directly “responsible” [for the crime].

The second reason that the Jewish lobbies have distanced themselves from the “Genocide” claims is that, from the strategic viewpoint they find a second claim of a genocide—one that will take place next to their own in the world—to run contrary to their interests.

They do not wish to share with others a weapon that they have used as an extremely effective and useful instrument in the international arena, this much is clear.

Certainly, every approach is important and valuable that would support Turkey’s claims against the Armenian lobbies and the Western powers that support them,  who, if we observe their various, shrouded middle and long-range goals, wish to forcibly brand Turkey with the mark of ‘perpetrator of genocide’.

Yet, without getting swept away with unnecessary delusions and emotionality, Turkey who is struggling for its existence within a difficult geography nevertheless has both the right and the duty to know the what and why of things.[33]

 Baran writer Fazıl Duygun

The program “No Place for Hate” that was implemented in various communities throughout the United States by the Anti-Defamation League in order to combat racism, antisemitism and bigotry gave rise to a heated and interesting debate in the community of Watertown, Massachusets, home to a large Armenian population. The uproar began in August 2007 when the leaders of the town’s Armenian community declared that they would not be putting the program into effect so long as the ADL refused to publicly recognized the Armenian genocide. During the course of the ensuing recriminations, the call began to be heard within the American Jewish community for ADL National Leader Abraham Foxman to resign.[34] In response, the ADL, which up to that time had referred to the various incidents associated with the Armenian genocide as “massacres”, would begin to change its stance and state that they compromised to the definition of “genocide”.[35] This reformulation of its long-held stance would be met in the Turkish press with expressions of shock, anger and betrayal.[36] Among the many voices sharing these views was the radical Islamist journal Baran, although in contrast to many of the other Turkish publications, the journal asserted that the reasons for the ADL’s volte-face was that the actual perpetrators of the Armenian genocide were Dönmes, and that the Turkish Republic itself was a “Dönme Republic”. Fazıl Duygun, one of the writers for Baran, wrote as much in an article for the journal: [37]

The Jews, and the ADL at their head, have until now rejected the claims of an Armenian genocide. The reason for this is that, by means of the [widespread] propaganda claiming that the Jews are the only ones who’ve been subjected to a genocide, they are able to falsely portray themselves as the sole victims [of such a crime] and this has afforded them a means of political pressure to influence the policies and nations of the world; and until now they have been wildly successful at this. By constantly shielding themselves behind the claim that “antisemitism is being perpetrated”, the Jews have even [attempted to] legitimize the[ir] butcheries in Palestine and the massacre operations [carried out] by the Mossad against the independence movements fighting against Israel and Jewish imperialism! Nevertheless, this weapon will now be taken from their hands, and as a result of the Armenian Genocide Draft Resolution that they have been forced to accept, they may well find themselves as defendants [against charges of genocide].

And this, because those who carried out the Armenian massacres were the Committee of Union and Progress, which an organization of the Jewish Dönmes, and the leaders of this party were also members of famous masonic lodges. The petroleum trusts of the period, like Rockfeller and Nobel (both of them were Jewish), saw the Armenians as their enemies. Armenians lived in the Promised Lands, where the petroleum was located.[38] The Armenians  were then one of the greatest obstacles laying before the Jews in their attempt to control these lands. [Moreover,] the Armenians, as members of the Orthodox Church, one of the more fundamentally and fiercely anti-Jewish sects of Christianity, had to be eliminated, one way or another. Immediately after the Armenians had been ‘cleansed’ by means of immense massacres, it was the turn of the Greek Orthodox Christians, and within one year’s time a full 2.5 million wealthy Greeks were forced to leave for Greece, leaving their wealth and immovable property here in Anatolia. After all of this had been realized, the Turks, the Kurds, the Circassians—essentially all of the Muslim peoples of Anatolia, who had been broken and subjected over a decade of wars, and an entire generation of whose young men had been decimated in the First World War and the Turkish-Greek War. If the Armenians and Greeks had not been [ethnically] cleansed, the CUP[39] and its successor Turkish Republic would never have been able to impose a secular regime on these lands, because these two communities (millet) both possessed the traditions of communal worship demanded by their faiths, and in addition, they represented a potential three-way bloc due to both their [possession of immense] capital and their holding a sizeable and well-organized presence within the bureaucracy. It is interesting [to note] that, although they shared the same faith as the West, the latter never made a peep during either the Armenian massacres during the CUP era, nor the Greek expulsions during the Republican period; on the contrary, it gave [these governments] as much support as it was able. As we explained previously, this was all part of the plan to bring about the grand plan of permanently secularizing Istanbul, the location of the Caliphate, and the Turkish nation, the leader of the [world’s] Muslims. This project was deemed so crucial that the West not only did not openly object to the oppression of its coreligionists, but even lent its support [to the effort]. The greatest support for the massacre of the Armenians came from Germany, which admitted that these killings amounted to a ‘genocide’. As for the expulsion of the Greek population, the entire West lent its support, with the principal supporters being England, the United States, France and Russia.

Yet it was these same western countries who, during the reign of Sultan Abdulhamid II, established a great many international tribunals to deal with the ‘Hamidiye Regiments’ that were established to prevent the Armenians from carrying out, with Russian support, any more massacres against the Muslim Kurds and Turks in the East. The most famous of these was the trial against the martyr Hacı Musa Bey, who during that period was the man most feared by the Armenians of the East, and who was tried in Istanbul and acquitted. 

As part of its overall strategy of claiming an “Armenian Genocide”, the Armenian lobby is proceeding with great caution and deliberation, and omits any mention or discussion of the events in Eastern Anatolia.  This is because they know full well that they were the ones who first pepetrated massacres in the East, and who were the main ones responsible for them. Nevertheless, the Armenian communities in the West show no interest in these massacres. And many of those who were truly innocent ultimately fell victim to a wholly Jewish-CUP massacre.

Indeed, the whole problem lies therein. The Armenian-Jewish conflict that is taking place on the international stage is being fought over the secular Republic of Turkey, which is a Dönme Republic. The Jews, who officially view the Dönmes as “the children of adulterous unions” (veled-i zina) (see: Ertuğrul Düzdağ, Yakın Tarihimizde Dönmelik ve Dönmeler), nevertheless see no harm in using these Dönmes, with whom they maintain close ties, in order to impose their policies on the world. The Dönmes, who in this sense see the Republic of Turkey as the first ‘Israel’ to have been created, have received a great deal of support from the Jews of Israel, who see as one of its central objectives the creation and maintenance in a certain fashion of the Republic of Turkey, which has been one of the principal factors in [the ensuring of] Israel’s survival. It must not be forgotten that those Jews who emigrated from Turkey (the founding Prime Minister Ben-Gurion) and the Dönmes were the ones who founded Israel by [waging] war and killing Muslim Arabs. And the Israeli Jews themselves say “We would prefer to lose [the support] of America to [that of] losing Turkey”, because they know that if Turkey is lost, they may well lose America, too. Turkey is one of the first three or four countries in the world to recognize Israel! The loss of Turkey will mean the reestablishment of the Caliphate and the demonstration that Islam is the TRUE BELIEF, and that theirs is falsehood and superstition. Indeed, Turkey does indeed hold such a vital importance for the Jews of Israel….

Another reaction to the ADL’s declaration would come from the radical Islamist Aylık journal too. The journal would comment this decision as follows: [40]

Every year during the “Genocide Day” campaigns the Jews in Armenia are subjected to attacks, because when the Armenians in Turkey were subjected to massacres after the [Committee of] Union and Progress came to power, the Jews played the leading role. This fact is well known all over the world except in Turkey.

For years, the lie of the Jews that only they have been the victims of “genocide” has been a policy that was devised and developed in order to strengthen their own political position in the world and to create international pressure. Although it has stung their consciences greatly, the Jews have been forced reluctanty to digets the initiatives that the Armenians have taken [to have their own genocide recognized]. But from now on it is going to be a very difficult process, both for the Jews and for their servants. (…)

As it will be understood, the Jew has been forced to leave Turkey to confront its own pains. But it seems that the prize that [Prime Minister] Tayyip [Erdoğan] received from the Jew wasn’t worth a damn thing.[41] At this point, as so many internal and external developments are coming one after the other, will Turkey be able to confront and emerge from the hopelessness that [ADL National Director Abe] Foxman was obliged to describe by consulting and cooperating with the Jew?

If not, will new clashes be triggered when the truths upon which the regime was founded unexpectedly come to light one after the other? 

Our opinion is that the “guarantee certificate”, that the Turkish Republic obtained in Lausanne from the Jew who was the vanguard of imperialism, has now expired.

 

b. The Turkish-Armenian Journalists

Agos Editor-in-Chief Hrant Dink     

During an interview with Agos Editor-in-Chief Hrant Dink the day following the appearance of the above-mentioned Karagül and Kamış pieces, the conspiracy-minded journalist Aydoğan Vatandaş[42] broached the subject of Jewish involvement in the Armenian Genocide. Below is an account of their conversation and Dink’s replies:

Question: There was an article by Mehmet Kamış in yesterday’s Zaman. İbrahim Karagül also published an article in Yeni Şafak. There is such a theory [stating that] a group known today as the Sabbateans was to a large extent in control of the leadership of the Committee of Union and Progress. Another analysis has claimed that there was Jewish capital behind the [actions of] the German Army. What do you say [to these claims]?

Answer:  It is not a new thesis. I also wrote on this matter a few times. You can also add to that the Baghdad Railway project. I could mention some things from Armenian sources or about the way that Armenians see the[ir] history, but there might be persons who will interpret our conversation as a kind of antisemitism. Let me say right here and now that that would be unfair. If you look to the account generally accepted by the Armenians you will indeed see that behind the Committee of Union and Progress there was German military power, and along side German military power there was the Jewish capital of Germany. This is a topic yet to be researched. If there are any documents or information [on this subject] it will [eventually] come out. In the end the German archives will be the most important testimony, and the Germans themselves have begun to question their own history. In the future we will have a much clearer view [of what happened]. I do not want to go too far into this Sabbateanism thing because, yes, in fact, there are views that claim that among the Committee of Union and Progress leaders that you listed there were indeed certain leaders, such as Dr. Nâzım, who were Dönmes.

I don’t wish to say that the Jews were the enemies of the Armenians. It’s true, such things can exist, [but] it doesn’t make any difference. Let me state that here. An Armenian could also have been a member of the Committee of Union and Progress (…) You know that there was the problem [of competition over influence] in the Palace between the Jews and the Armenians during the Ottoman period. The question of who would economically dominate the Palace was a crucial matter. Sometimes, it was the Jews who would dominate, at other times, the Sultan would grow angry at the Armenians and would decree that from that moment on Armenians would be prohibited from participating in tenders [for contracts]. It is a fact that such a competition existed between the Armenians and the Jews over who would dominate commerce.

The economists will discover [the truth about this matter]. Anyway, it is not my task to find out how this competition has or has not affected what happened [in 1915]. But, when speaking openly, the Armenians do say such things as that “it was in fact the Jews that had a hand behind what happened to us”.[43]   

Although Dink attempted—unsuccessfully—to give the impression that his approach to the matter was objective and scholarly, his response ultimately implied that the Dönmes were indeed the real agents in the Armenian genocide. Not that we should be surprised by this, for five years previous Dink had expressed such a view much more clearly in a piece that he penned during the time when the much disputed U.S. House Resolution No. 398 calling for official American recognition of the historical reality of the Armenian genocide was being submitted to Congress, only to be ultimately withdrawn at the last minute as a result of the combined urgings of the Turkish Foreign Ministry, the Quincentennial Foundation, various Jewish-American organizations, the State of Israel and even President Bill Clinton. In this article Dink openly expressed the disappointment and irritation that had been created within the Turkish Armenian community at the aforementioned Jewish organizations, the Israeli government and the Quincentennial Foundation for their consistent and successful effort to block successive ‘Armenian genocide resolutions’ every time they came before Congress. The Agos editor-in-chief then went on to indirectly hint that crypto-Jews played an important role in the 1915 Deportation:

The history of Armenian-Jewish relations is a subject to which I have always paid close attention. It’s likely that there were good times [in this relationship] and bad times, too. It certainly is an interesting area for those with an interest in history, and one that should be further studied.

Some historians have indirectly said that there might be a ‘Jewish hand’ behind the 1915 Armenian Genocide, as well as in a series of events that preceded it. It has been shown that there were a goodly number of Jewish descendants of Sabbatai Sevi among the leadership of the CUP, persons such as [Dr.] Nâzım Bey, and that they played an important role in the decision to [carry out] the deportation of 1915. There are even those who claim that ‘German-Jewish Capital’ was [the force] behind the German Militarism that manipulated the CUP during this period. The research on the subject is still inconclusive, but new claims are appearing daily. I don’t know if the Jews played an important role in [the events of] 1915, but it should be remembered that both the Jewish ‘palace’ merchants and the Armenian ‘Amira’ merchants were in competition for the Sultan’s favor, and the [two communities’] bazaar merchants were waging a momentous struggle to secure themselves contracts from the palace.

 This struggle between the[se two sides] sometimes reached the level of attempting to ‘trip each other up’ in extremely brutal fashion. And it is so written in the history books that, in one period in which Jewish influence in the Palace was great, the Sultan Abdülhamid [II] issued an imperial decree stating that “from this time onward, Armenian merchants shall not be considered for state tenders”.

Anyway, let’s leave history to the historians and deal with the here and now.

It appears that the word “Jewish Lobbies” has been mentioned in some way or another in connection with almost every “Armenian Genocide [Resolution]”. The Jewish Lobbies have consistently opposed the “Armenian Genocide [Resolution]s for two separate reasons.

The first of these can be summed up thus: “The term Holocaust cannot be used for such a claim. Until now, the only people to have suffered a genocide are the Jews and the only genocide that has been recognized in international legal circles as meeting the definition of Holocaust is that perpetrated by the Germans against the Jews. All claims apart from this are attempts to cheapen the significance of this term”.

 If we were to reduce this down to one sentence, it would be:

“Holocaust is a term that exclusively explains the genocide of the Jews, no one else has the right to use it”.

A cautious approach to Turkish-Israeli relations would appear to be the second reason, as this situation is better understood. And so certain circles can claim that, the Jewish lobbies’ stance of opposing the Armenian lobbies has played an important role matter of the good relations that have developed between Turkey and Israel.[44]

 In response to Dink’s article, the Turkish-Jewish businessman and Quincentennial Foundation Chairman Jak Kamhi would react by writing a letter to the editorial board of Agos claiming that “the attribution of the responsibility for the bitter events of 1915 to Turkish-Jewish community, and on the basis of words that carry very different meanings from those into which they are forced, is, in my mind, an example of a fanaticism whose equal is rarely seen”.[45]

On August 16, 2007 Jak Kamhi was given the Turkish Medal for “Outstanding Service to the State” by President Ahmet Necdet Sezer at an official ceremony. After reporting on this event Agos added an “editor’s note” at the end of the article showing very clearly, that it continued to stand by the comments made by Hrant Dink in the year 2000:[46]

It is clearly understood that first and foremost among the services for which Jak Kamhi has earned the state’s outstanding service award are the extensive efforts that he has displayed in regard to the Armenian Question. It should be recalled that in his function as President of the Quincentennial Foundation and within the framework of the outstanding services that he performed against the Draft Resolution on the Armenian Genocide, Jak Kamhi sent a letter to the [U. S.] House of Representatives. In response Hrant Dink, the founder of our newspaper wrote and published in Agos on October 20, 2000 an article titled ‘The Real Farce’ (Gerçek Maskaralık), and that Jak Kamhi then responded by sending a refutation—not to the daily Zaman, which was the source of the original report, but to Agos. Those of our readers who wish to do so may access the aforementioned article via the Agos website and can then once more recollect how Hrant Dink explained and interpreted [Kamhi’s] “outstanding services”.

Another example of the anger generated within Turkey’s Armenian community intellectual intelligentsia by President Ahmet Necdet Sezer’s awarding of Jak Kamhi with the medal for “Outstanding Service for the State” appeared not in Agos this time, but in an article by Levon Panos Dabağyan, an Armenian popular historian and columnist published in the Turkish ultra-nationalist daily Önce Vatan:[47]

In truth, no serious enmity has ever been experienced in any period of Turkish-Armenian history and for centuries they lived together, intertwined with one another. And that’s exactly how they had continued to live until the appearance of those well-known [foreign] incitements and conspiracies.
The “Zionist-derived” and nourished The Party of Union and Progress as well as the arm of Zionism, Dashnaktsoutian and Hunchak Parties played the central role in the emergence of the aforementioned tragedy and the Turkish and Armenian peoples were made to pay the price for this!..
This is what they have wanted to keep secret from the Turks and Armenians, and how bitter it is that certain corrupt media and television outlets have even succeeded in hiding this horrible truth.(…)

The American “Jewish Lobby” will look you straight in the eyes and use the Armenians in the most reprehensible ways and even deceive you when necessary…. In this way some of the Jewish businessmen in Turkey are, by fanning the flames, working with all their might so that the question will become a full-blown problem!…
[Such a thing] has not been seen anywhere else in the world: That [a member of] one of the two minorities that live within a country as citizen be able to state openly and publicly that he is against the other minority and receive an award from the State?!.. This is the case in Turkey, and although the problem is our problem, since we are not trusted [with such a task] an individual who is a member of another minority is entrusted with said task. The most interesting aspect of this question is that they look upon this [minority] as heroes, even though they have been unable to solve any problem whatsoever!… (…)

The people who suppose that we can resolve the “Turkish-Armenian” question through [using] Jewish scholars, Jewish businessmen and those in the media and such, are doomed to err again and again, because “the mill doesn’t turn with carried water! (You can’t complete a task without the correct means to do so)”

The Jew, in order to preserve his position in the Middle East, wants always to see Turkey as his ally and he is absolutely right since the issue is his own “national existence”. But since he is thinking about his own benefit in the sense of his own national interests, it is not at all elegant to incorporate the Armenian sphere into his political plans!..

 Agos Columnist Markar Esayan

In a piece reviewing Soner Yalçın’s highly successful book Efendi, the Agos columnist Markar Esayan calls “the book, something that has greatly drawn my interest, and deals with a subject over which I have myself conducted only very superficial research: the connections between the Sabbateans, [i.e.,] the ‘White Turks’, the Union and Progress Party, Ottoman history in the 19th century, the Armenians and, of course, the connection of all of these to the 1915 Deportation…”. Esayan then goes on to briefly explain the phenomenon of Sabbatai Sevi and the Dönmes, finally concluding by saying:

What sort of connection is there really between these persons, who controlled the sect of Sabbateanism and Islam, and occupied the highest positions in the [Ottoman] state, and who skillfully merged Jewish identity and Turkishness, with the ‘deep state’ of today and of yesterday? This is exactly the subject of Soner Yalçın’s book Efendi. Although its reliability and scientific character are open to debate, it is certain that this book had posed a number of unanswered questions. In particular, this subject is connected a lot to the elimination of the Janissary regiments, which had thoroughgoing economic ties with the Jews, during the reign of Mahmud II and the establishment of the Nizam-ı Cedid—which was supported by the Armenians and Greeks—in their place, the [burgeoning] relations with Europe that produced economic conditions that increasingly favored the Armenians and Greeks at the expense of the Jews, and soon thereafter, the overthrow of Abdülhamid II, plus the elimination of the Armenians after the Unionists came to power.[48]

Önce Vatan Columnist Levon Panos Dabağyan

One final example of the ‘Sabbatean conspiracy’ theorists within the Armenian community is again from an article of Levon Panos Dabağyan, published in the Turkish ultra-nationalist daily Önce Vatan. Dabağyan, who is well-known for his antisemitic[49] and staunchly pro-Turkish nationalist views, also touched on the subject of the Armenian genocide in one of his essays:

 England, which was planning the partition and elimination of the Ottoman-Turkish Empire, naturally envisioned [by means of] this issue the establishment of direct control over the Middle East [in order] to obtain ownership and control of 100 per cent of the oil of the [region]. As for the Zionists, who possessed their own grand plan in this region during those years, and who relied upon the ability to establish the central goal of this plan (a reborn State of Israel), they never for one second forgot the Armenians who, despite being a minority population, were considered the most loyal subjects. Likewise, they were able to solve this problem—albeit only partially—during the years of the First World War. Because Czarist Russia, which was expanding, incited the Armenians of the Caucasus to action and they brought the Armenian Question to the agenda within Ottoman-Turkish lands and were thereby indirectly able to drive the Armenians of Ottoman Turkey into the midst of the inferno.

 And afterward? What came afterward is well known: There were rebellions and suppressions [of rebellions] during the reign of Sultan Abdülhamid II. And after that there was the well known and unfortunate [Deportation affair], in which thousands of innocent Turks and Turkish Armenians fell victim. In other words, together with the Russians, the Armenians of the Caucasus attacked the Turkey of the Ottomans, and the Turkish Armenians paid the price [for this].[50]

Other Examples

It would be wrong to conclude, on the basis of the examples exhibited above that this type of theorizing is a phenomenon peculiar to Turkish Armenian journalists. This view has also been embraced both by certain fringe elements in Armenia itself as well as by some of the Armenians in the diaspora. For example, an Armenian in Iran taking part in  an Armenian discussion group online expressed near identical views. He wrote:

I just wanted to share with you a certain conspiracy theory that is being widely recited amongst Armenian Persians and Persians both inside and outside of Iran. You may be able to help me to verify the truth or falseness of this claim concerning the Armenian Genocide.

As you may agree[,] in any major event there are instigators and perpetrators. The instigators being those who pull the strings behind the scenes and the perpetrators being those mercenaries who carry out their orders in exchange for some form of compensation.

It is being said that in the Armenian Genocide[,] although the perpetrators were indeed the Turks[,] the instigators were Jewish. This by no means is meant to diminish the horrible crimes committee by Turks and their brutality and cruelly.

The reason being cited is that the great majority of Jews living in Turkey had escaped the Spanish Inquisition in Spain and had taken refuge in Turkey around 500 years ago. The Jewish people were burnt at [the] stake and flayed alive and viciously persecuted by the advancing Catholic Armies. The Jewish community in Turkey had become prosperous as successful merchants and businessmen and were very influential in the Ottoman courts as advisors, treasurers and doctors. The Jewish people were looking for an opportune moment to take revenge on a Christian minority since they truly believe in an eye for an eye. So they used the chaos created by WWI in order to realize their plans.

The other reasons being cited is that the Jews are mad at Armenians since they partly blame them for the survival of Christianity[,] since the Armenians are believed to be amongst the first people who converted to Christianity en masse.

That is why to this day the jews are reluctant to allow any comparison between the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust and it is also being rumored that they are blocking indirectly Armenian efforts to have the Armenian Genocide recognized[,] particularly in the US.[51]

In another online article discussing the situation of the Jews in Armenia, one can find frequent claims that the recent emergence of antisemitism in Armenia derives from the views mentioned above:

It appears that Anti-Semitism began in Armenia in the 1960s and 1970s. Some Soviet historians claimed that the Young Turks had been guided by the Zionists when planning out and implementing the Armenian Genocide. One thing that remains unclear is how Israel took advantage of the Armenian Genocide when founding the nation.

Many Armenian nationalists adopted this ridiculous theory. Those nationalist forces became more active during the past couple of years by spreading their Anti-Jew comments in the press. The most influential representative of the “Tribe Worshippers”[,] Armen Avetisyan[,] was the most talked about figure in the media throughout 2003-2004. In one of the interviews, Avetisyan threatened to exile all Jews from Armenia. Even [the] owner of the ALM television network[,] Tigran Karapetyan[,] enjoyed cursing the Jews.[52]

And yet another testimony worth noting—despite its bad grammar–is the following declaration that appeared in another Internet discussion site:

The anti-Semitism, or to be more concrete, the antagonism felt toward Jews by some Armenian circles is very closely connected to the Turkish-Armenian past. I have many times witnessed people starting talking or condemning Israeli politics and reaching to a point at the end of the discussion where they accuse all Jews ruling the world anyway. (Not to be able to distinguish between criticizing a country for its politics and condemning a whole group of people being responsible for world suffering—that is, in Jewish context, anti-Semitism. Where hostility toward Jews among some Armenians is very much connected to the issue we discuss here, is when discussions (mostly in private circles) on Armenian Genocide reach a point where people decide to agree upon not the Turks or the Ottomans, but the Jews being the perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide (because of claims regarding Talat, Enver, etc. being Jews, or Dönme, or Sabetayist, etc.)

Let me stress here that, yes, these discussions take place among private circles, and, yes, I base my claims on anti-Semitic mind-set among some Armenian circles to my private observations. Please note my wording “SOME Armenian circles.” I refrain from most generalizations. It is therefore that I will never be able and never want to claim anti-Semitism being prevalent among ALL Armenians. Coming to the issue of the validity of private observations: I believe of these incidents—as they occurred to me more than once—to be pretty representative. Another reason why I rely on my “private” observations is because they involve “public” figures in both Turkish and Armenian communities.[53]

One final example is the following statement, which was made by the Armenian citizen Arshak Sarkisyan and recorded by Milliyet writer Ece Temelkuran in a series of articles that she wrote reporting his impressions of her visit to Armenia:

Talat Pasha was a Jew. They [i.e., the Young Turks] created the bad blood between the Turks and Armenians. The Turks didn’t carry out the genocide. But all of the Young Turks were Jews.[54]

In a similar vein, on April 24, 2003, at a commemoration of the 88th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, the extreme rightist Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaksoutian) burned a Turkish flag in which the traditional five-pointed Turkish star had been replaced by a six-pointed Star of David, no doubt intending to send the message by this action that the Republic of Turkey was controlled by the Jews.[55] 

 

            c. Ilgaz Zorlu

Another figure who has expressed views similar to those espoused by Hrant Dink and the Armenian nationalists is Ilgaz Zorlu, the Turkish citizen who created a sensation when he came forth in the late 1990s with the claim that he was of Sabbatean origin. As a result of his claim of being an ‘insider’ to the whole Dönme phenomenon, Zorlu was quickly embraced by the Turkish media as an authority on the subject. In a 2001 interview, he gave his own, largely corroborating version of the Armenian nationalists’ thesis:

I believe that there has been a serious Armenian-Sabbatean dispute in regard to this Armenian question. The greatest error of all derives from this [dispute]. [It’s in] the German archives of that period in which the [documentation regarding] the [Berlin-to-]Baghdad Railway is located, because Germany was very powerful during that period. I think that the German archives were destroyed during the Second World War. There’s the same problem in the Russian archives, as well as in the Ottoman Archives. In any case, at this time it isn’t possible for all of the documentation to be opened [to the public], because we’re talking about millions of documents. In such a situation, it seems to me that it’s just a lot of empty chatter. What needs to be done is for researchers and historians to come together and study these things. The Armenian question is a serious problem. The question of the [Committee of] Union and Progress is even more serious. I believe that when the Union and Progress is resolved, a lot of [other] things in Turkey will be resolved as well.[56]

Zorlu would repeat these same views—wildly conjectural as they were–in various online discussion groups. On the “Türkistan Newsletter” discussion group site, for example, he asserted that a secret agreement had been made between the Unionist leaders Dr. Nâzım and Finance Minister Mehmet Cavit, both of whom were of Sabbatean origin, and that “those who look [into this matter] know that these individuals [we]re the active agents in the [Committee of] Union and Progress and especially, by means of the anti-Armenian group that they established, in the transforming of the [Armenian] deportation into a genocide”.[57] In the “Tarih ve Demokrasi Forumu” (History and Democracy Forum) discussion group he wrote “this much is definite: the expulsion of the Greeks and Armenians from Anatolia is a Jewish-Sabbatean idea”.[58] In a subsequent posting to a different discussion group, Zorlu would add the following: “Very bitter things occurred during the course of the Armenian incidents (please note: I said ‘incidents’; I’m consciously not using [the words] massacre and genocide), [and] it’s a shame that the Sabbateans were active in this, but it’s difficult to write about these matters without documentation[.] I have made a point of not writing about certain things that I have discovered, but I relayed them to a great many persons, including Yalçın [Küçük] Hoca’.[59]

            d. Yalçın Küçük

Yalçın Küçük is a Marxist professor of economics who in the past decade has increasingly turned his attention to the question of the Sabbateans and Sabbatean-Jewish influence in/control of Turkey. In particular, as a piece with his conviction that the Turkish political, cultural, economic and social elite is nearly entirely composed of crypto-Jewish Sabbateans (and has been since its inception), he has become an ardent proponent of the use of ‘Onomastie’, also called the science of name origins, as a method of ‘determining’ the Hebrew equivalents of Turkish surnames, and thereby unmasking such persons. In light of this worldview, it is perhaps not surprising that in nearly every statement that he has made on the subject, Professor Küçük has characterized the 1915 Armenian Deportation as the result of a “Jewish-Armenian war”. In similar fashion, the anti-Greek riots of September 6-7, 1955, in which crowds in Istanbul descended upon, burnt and looted Greek-owned businesses, homes, cemeteries and churches, as the product of a “Jewish-Orthodox war”. Consider the following statements:

The [events of] “September 6-7 [1955]” [occurred] within [the framework of] the “Jewish-Christian Wars”. The 1915 Armenian massacre was also [one link] in the chain of these wars. We can show these things [to be true]. Thanks to heavens, Yerevan also sees things this way, and holds the Hebrews and the Sabbateans more responsible than the Turks.[60]       

For the past hundred years there has been [a series of] Jewish-Christian Wars on these lands. Whether overtly or covertly, the Christian communities have been driven out by the Jewish elements. Want examples?: a) the 1915 Deportation was the Jewish expulsion of the Armenians, we call this the “Jewish-Armenian Wars”; b) the events of September 6-7, 1955 was the expulsion and massacre of the Hellenes, or, more correctly, the Orthodox [Christians]. There were no involvement of Turks in either of these two [events], [or if] there were, they were [merely] figure[heads]….Sometimes we are belligerents, and sometimes we are [merely] figure[heads].[61]   

The Armenians hold the Crypto-Jews responsible for those things that came upon them. We can see traces of this in the ‘ASALA’ plots (those members of the Foreign Ministry of the Turkish Republic who fell victim to these plots were [all] Sabbateans). My works do not contradict this view. Among the most active [actors] in this field was Dr. Nâzım. Tevfik Rüştü Aras was another. We know that they were ‘brothers-in-law’. While one of them was hanged, the other was a [government] minister. The son-in-law of the minister—the one who wasn’t hanged—was later hanged himself. I think that they were [members of the Sabbatean subsect of the Karakaş. There is no difference between Allawi, Saakashvili, [Azerbaijan President] Aliyev’s son and İrecep İrdoğan, they were all placed [in their positions] by Washington. In fact, there is a difference between the first two and the latter two, one that favors the former. They were put in place by means of an occupation or a coup. Washington didn’t feel the need to [carry out] a coup when putting Aliyev and İrdoğan in place. There was no genocide [against] the Armenians. The Armenians themselves speak of the “great massacre”. Th[ese actions] that the former and ‘set-in-place’ Minister carried out need to be confessed to and forgiveness requested. When Kemal Derviş asks for forgiveness, he is asking for forgiveness on behalf of his Sabbatean ancestors.[62]

In a reference to a recent article by the Russian-Israeli writer Israel Shamir,[63] Küçük made the following declaration:

In a new piece Israel Shamir writes the following [about the Sabbateans]: “This peculiar sect played an important role in the tragic development in Turkey in the early 20th century; some Turkish historians connect them with the genocidal expulsion of Armenians, massacres of Greeks in Anatolia…” What [he’s] writing about [is that] some Turkish historians have attributed the expulsion of the Armenians and Greeks from these lands to the sabbateans; that means that our debates are already being heard everywhere [outside of Turkey as well].[64]

e.         The Murder of Hrant Dink and the Conspiracy Theories Surrounding it

 On October 19, 2007, Agos Editor-in-Chief Hrant Dink was gunned down in front of his offices by a young Turkish nationalist incensed by what he had been led to believe was Dink’s insulting and disrespectful statements toward Turkey. News of Dink’s murder created a great stir in the Turkish press. Not surprisingly, in attempting to answer the question of “Who killed Hrant Dink—and why?”, the Islamist press wasted no time in turning out antisemitic conspiracy theories for the killing of this meteoric Turkish-Armenian journalist.

Aydoğan Vatandaş

In a piece that appeared the day after the assassination, Aydoğan Vatandaş (see section b. above) recalled the interview that he had had with Dink a year earlier in which the latter had not-so-indirectly hinted that the Dönmes and Jews were the main architects of the Armenian genocide. Using this as his starting point, Vatandaş then went on to imply on a vaguely worded piece that these same groups may have also planned Dink’s murder:

I got to know him in the month of May, in the year 2005, at the time that I was doing interviews for my book ASALA Operasyonları, published by Alfa Yayınları, and in which I attempted to understand the Armenian Question and the ASALA Murders.

During this interview [with him] Dink made several claims that no one in Turkey had yet had the courage to discuss, and he mentioned entirely different factors in the things that had happened to the Armenians.

Regarding the events that came upon the Armenians Dink drew attention to various countries apart from the Ottoman [Empire], to the composition of the [large] capital accumulations behind them and to a powerful ethnic community within the [Committee of] Union and Progress.

Dink was inclined to view the whole deportation affair in connection to ‘imperialism’.

When one looks at the timing of the murder, it [appears to be a] situation of killing two birds with one stone.

As is well known, the Armenian question will soon be taken up by the American Senate.

In a lead piece from last week, Eyüp Can, the Editor-in-Chief of the daily Referans, recounted at a dinner that he had attended with representatives of the Jewish Lobby in America and that these Jewish Lobby representatives had said that they wouldn’t be able to rescue Turkey this time.[65]

The truth of the matter is that, with this murder, Turkey has both lost its ability to maneuver abroad in regard to the Armenian question and has also had Hrant Dink silenced, the person who in recent years has been blaming the ‘Dominant’ powers [of complicity] in the Armenian question.

There will no doubt appear those who will interpret this murder as connected with the [current issue of] the President[ial election] process. But the timing of the Dink murder appears to me to be but one of the many assaults meant to weaken Turkey’s hand in regard to its international activity concerning the Armenian question.

 The task [of discovering the truth] now falls to MİT [Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization] Under Secretary Emre Taner.

An important opportunity has now presented itself to Taner, who has previously called for MİT to develop a more proactive vision, to go on the offensive and not to merely react to developments [as they occur].

Like to solve th[is] murder, as well as to expose the international connections [behind it].

Let’s recall the words of the MİT Advisor while they are still fresh: in carrying out of such a plot, there absolutely must be [some] leads that point toward MİT itself.

Maybe the message to MİT is: “Go ahead, try and be as proactive as you can, we are still going to carry out such murders in broad daylight, right under your noses!”

“To foresee the future is to create it anew”.[66]     

Bugün columnist Nuh Gönültaş

Vatandaş’s interview with Dink, published in the book Asala Operasyonları was then taken up by Bugün writer Nuh Gönültaş, who, after quoting Vatandaş’s account of Dink’s claims of Dönme responsibility for the Armenian genocide, concluded:

This book by Aydoğan Vatandaş is a really satisfying work. His interview with Hrant Dink really reveals what party or parties are really behind those who attacked him for his agenda![67] 

The website Kürşad Harekâtı

Another contributor to the ‘Dönme conspiracy’ theory of Dink’s murder was the web entity known as Kürşad Harekâtı,[68] which has also asserted that Turkey’s current Chief-of-Staff, Army Commander Yaşar Büyükanıt comes from Dönme origins. The following article appeared on the organization’s website:

The murder of Hrant Dink was planned by masonic cells with ties to the Treason Organization, which is under the control of the secret sabbatean minority. The sabbateans who, by camouflaging themselves have gained control of a number of civilian and military offices, and the masons who are under their control are deceiving us with even simpler and conjectural threats so as to cloak themselves and cause [others] to forget [about their presence].

Ever since the end of the 19th century, when these circles succeeded in infiltrating the [Committee of] Union and Progress, they have directed all of the attention of our nation and its leaders toward the “Greek” and “Armenian” minorities, while hiding their own Jewishness by passing themselves off as Turks and Muslims. These sabbateans, who are in fact secret Jews, are more dangerous—incomparably more—than our Greek and Armenian fellow citizens, whose ethnic origins and religion we know and toward whom we clarified our legal relationship through the Lausanne Treaty.

The crypto-Jewish sabbateans have constantly fanned the flames of others’ ethnic and religious differences in order to disguise their own identities and cause it to be forgotten, to keep it off the agenda, to infiltrate into our ranks and [use it for] a field of activity. Behind the various tensions that are stirred up in our country at regular intervals, whether Turkish-Kurdish, secular-religious, Turkish-Armenian, Turkish-Greek or alevi-sunni tensions, are the filthy hands of the Treason Organization. These agents of treachery today work to foist upon our country’s most important institutions some of the intrigues that they have spun in the past.

Most recently, they have not only managed to have all reports of the formation of sabbatean cadres dropped from the headlines through the murder of Hrant Dink, which they carried out by means of nationalist terrorists, but also to ignite the first sparks of a new period of internal disorder, to incite against the [Turkish] nationalist [camp] so as to discredit them and leave them under a cloud of suspicion. What’s more, we will now be forced to depend on the support of the Jewish lobbies in order to be rescued from the pressures [exerted] by the Armenian diaspora; we will consent to the Greater Middle East Project[69] operations that the U.S. and Israel will carry out, and our ability to act against the illegal kurdo-judaic organizations will be steadily reduced so as not to be accused of being perpetrators of genocide, and on this pretext our present legal arrangements that punish insults to our Turkishness will be done away with, the position of the crypto-Jews and other minorities will be strengthened so that our nation will be declared guilty, and the economic fields that will be emptied of Armenians, who will be forced to leave our country, will quickly be filled by sabbateans, and so on, and so on….  

Baran writer Hakkı Açıkalın

Another voice reiterating claims of a vast ‘Sabbatean conspiracy’ was Dr. Hakkı Açıkalın, a writer for the radical Islamist journal Baran.[70] In a recently published article, Açıkalın identifies the Jews and Dönmes as being behind the Armenian genocide:

The massacre and forcible deportation of the Armenians was carried out in April 1915 and beyond. The [Committee of] Union and Progress was the reason that this black mark has been credited to the people of Anatolia. Ziya Gökalp has defended this massacre with the following words:

‘[But] do not sully the name of our nation [on this account]. There has never been anything in Turkey like a wholesale slaughter of Armenians. There is a Turkish-Armenian dispute. They stabbed us in the back. And we struck [back]…’[71] How bitter it is that this person, who is considered the father of Turkish Nationalism, was a Kurdish Jew. That which has been characterized as the ‘Turkish-Armenian dispute’ was actually a ‘Jewish-Christian’ dispute, and this Jew inciting the Muslim Turks and Muslim Kurds against the Christian Armenian population, who were known as ‘the loyal nation’, threw them into the inferno with the aim of protecting Jewish interests. For 90 years the Turkish and Kurdish people have been [living] under torment of this accusation. But for their part, the Jews have come out smelling clean.

In a great many families in Turkey there are old women of Armenian origin. They always hid their Armenian origins out of fear. The Armenians experienced an enormous social and political trauma [as a result of] the deportation and massacres. Besides the Armenians, who were subjected to massacres, the Kurds, who inhabit the same geography [as the Armenians], have been equally affected by the trauma that they experienced as a result of their own participation in these events.

Why should the Turks and Kurds be the partners of this generation of Talat, Enver and Cemal Pashas, of Dr. Bahaettin Şakirs, Dr. Nâzıms and Ziya Gökalps in Turkey (AND I’LL SAY IT AGAIN; THEY ARE ALL SABBATEAN DÖNMES, THEY ARE JEWS!), on account of what they did to the Armenians?[*]

The Sabbateans attempted not to make themselves noticed within the other communities of the Balkans. If [these] other communities sensed that the Sabbateans were different in any way, they didn’t do a thing about it. The majority of persons in the[se] other communities were very poor. Power and money were in the hands of the Sabbateans. The visible behavior and other characteristics peculiar to the Sabbateans appeared to [those of] other nations simply as behaviors that derived from their material wealth. But it was not so. One the contrary. The Sabbateans were culturally very different and they grew rich from acting in partnership with the Jews, and because, in fact, they were Jews.

There were Sabbateans who attained command and high rank within the army. Because the army was, in the eyes of the people, the savior [of the nation], they submitted to the dictates of its high officers without knowing what was being done or what it’s objectives were. Upon the orders of the [Committee of] Union and Progress, most of the Armenians were either killed in their villages or, while being driven in utter misery and deprivation to Lebanon and Syria, died on the journey.

The Armenians all know that those who killed their ancestors were the Young Turks/Union and Progress—in other words, the Jews (Musevi) and Sabbateans, who descended from the Jewish (Yahudi) race. The killers may have been Turkish on the outside, but on the inside they were in fact Jewish.

Although the Sabbateans all possess Turkish names and cloak themselves in a Muslim identity, they [i.e., the Armenians] are able to make this differentiation because in the Ottoman Empire for centuries there was no interaction between them and the Muslim Turks. They all know very well with whom they interacted and they were not deceived in the least. Since the appearance of Sabbateanism the Armenians even wrote books about them. In this sense in a memorial commemorating the Genocide that was opened last year in France, they even inscribed upon this monument that it was not the Turks but the Union and Progress or Young Turks (in other words, the Sabbateans and Jews) who carried out this genocide.

Have you ever noticed that the ASALA has never killed a single Turk who descends from [true] Muslim roots? It is said that without exception only Sabbateans are accepted into the Foreign Ministry. Everybody knows this. Turkish youth who are of Muslim origin are not accepted into the Foreign Ministry so that they won’t notice the presence of Sabbateans, won’t discern their games, and [therefore] won’t tell others outside the ministry. Now think for a minute: why has the ASALA up to now only attacked [Turkish] diplomats and other Foreign Ministry employees? The reason is simple: it is because they know that those who work in the Foreign Ministry are the descendents of those who ordered and are responsible for the genocide of their ancestors. There is no need for either the Turkish nation nor Muslims in general to get up in arms. Those who are being liquidated are neither Muslims, nor Turks, nor Kurds, nor Circassians, nor Arabs.

In that case, why should it concern us if a [C]UP gang is punished by the Armenian people or its organizations? Aren’t they the ones who have conspired against our very lives? In that case, why should we hold a ‘requiem’ after the sabbateans [who were murdered], why should we feel sorrow? For those who spill the blood of Palestine, those who are responsible [for what’s happening] in Iraq, those who set the entire world against itself, why should we entertain this illusion that they have been ‘persecuted’? The Armenian people is much closer to us than the curse of the Jews and we’ve never received any injury from them. The Armenians have never done any damage to Islâm. Whereas the history of the Jews is the history of destruction and loss.[72]

Another insinuation that the perpetrators of Hrant Dink’s murder were Sabbatean was to be found in the pro-İBDA-C journal Aylık. Enes Duman, one of the journal’s writers, explained the assailants’ reason for killing Dink thus:[73]   

Those utterances directed at Dink to the effect of “That’s enough out of you!” were not simply empty threats, because Hrant Dink had become quite frightening to those gentlemen, in regard to his identification of the source of the filth [in this country]; he held the Union and Progress, its successors (whoever was left) the United States and Germany responsible for the Armenian massacres, and, most important, in recent times he had identified [the entire affair] as a Sabbatean operation.

El Aziz Newspaper’s columnist Vahit Şekerci

Another article suggesting that Hrant Dink was murdered by a “Sabbatean plot” was published in El Aziz, a local newspaper of Elazığ known for its pro-Erbakan and pro-Felicity Party (SP) views:[74] 

The deep, underlying powers that lay the utmost importance on taking measures to hide their [true] identities and goals are quite merciless toward those who expose them and reveal their true identities. They cannot stand those who shine the harsh light on the either their existence or activities and bring them before the public’s attention, who never tire of enlightening and educating society. And as for a person who has the status of an opinion leader who has influence over a given society, someone such as Hrant Dink, who is the subject of our discussion…

Hrant Dink made the following statement—a statement not only terrifying but also dangerous—so dangerous in fact as to cost him his life:  

As a person who knows and is intimately familiar with the Diaspora, the truth as I see it, is that the Diaspora definitely doesn’t possess the power to allow them to continue the influential international campaigns concerning the claims of an Armenian genocide, or to have various laws and resolutions passed in various countries’ parliaments. How can anyone imagine that they could have such decisions passed in the parliaments of countries like Germany, where the Armenian population is so small as to be practically non-existent? Let me also add this fact: the claims of an Armenian genocide have until now not produced any benefit whatsoever for either the Armenians or for Armenia.

These words show that Hrant Dink had correctly discerned the power of the American Jewish Lobby and international Zionist organizations and had clearly and precisely stated that, by constantly keeping these claims of an Armenian genocide on the world’s agenda, these powers had devised policies that served the Jews more than the Armenians.

Here at El-Aziz we have consistently explained that ever since the final years of the Ottoman [Empire] the Armenian and Greek danger was artificially inflated by sowing the seeds of enmity, hatred and hostility between them and the Muslim society, and that behind this [effort one can find concealed] the awesome power of the Sabbatean community. [The modern country of] Turkey was established on such policies.

It is as a result of these systematic, persistent and deeply-rooted policies that the Greeks—and especially the Armenians, who had traditionally been referred to affectionately as the ‘faithful community’ (tebaa-i sadıka)–became the most hated minorit[y communitie]s within Turkey and were completely extirpated, despite the fact that they were those communities with the deepest roots in the Ottoman State. In contrast, the Jews were raised up and exalted, and brought to a position of domination over the overwhelmingly Muslim majority in every area [of society].

Those who carried out the Deportation of Armenians (Tehcir) were the leaders of the Committee (Party) of Union and Progress, who acquired control of the Ottoman state through a number of political conspiracies, revolts and coups d’etat. Talât Pasha, who as Grand Vizier planned and brought to fruition the Deportation affair, would pay for this deed with his life in Germany, his place of exile [after the war], when he was struck in the back by the bullets of an Armenian militant. He was both a Sabbatean and a Freemason. 

Those states under the control of International Zionism, who established and ran the Armenian Hunchak and Dashnak organizations and who, by [holding out] the promise of an independent state [of their own], incited them to undertake bloody actions and thereby betray the Ottoman [Empire] by striking it from behind, were not satisfied merely to watch the calamity of the [D]eportation, but instead even provided various [means of] support.

These same states [under the control of International Zionism] remained also passive observers when the oligarchy [in charge of the] Sabbatean community, which generally relies on Zionism, forced those Armenians remaining [in Turkey] after the Deportation and those Greeks remaining after the [1923] Population Exchange to emigrate as a result of an incomprehensible action like the Capital Tax, which was carried out before the gaze of the modern world, and the looting and pillaging that were systematically carried out on September 6-7 [1955] with the knowledge of the state forces. Since the Sabbatean community oligarchy has been dispersed in Turkey the Zionist powers are now continuing to keep the claims of an Armenian genocide on the [world] agenda by showing as an argument the political conspiracies and murders that they have themselves arranged with the aim of again bringing Turkey to the state of that they will monopolize all power within the country. In short, the very political crimes and murders that were carried out a century before are now used as a justification for shielding [their responsibility for] new ones. 

And so it is that elements connected to the American Jewish lobby are on one hand annually receiving hefty amounts of cash from Turkey for the purpose of preventing [the passage of] Armenian genocide bills, while on the other hand they are the ones preparing these bills and submitting them to the U.S. Congress. And of course they cover the deceitful games that they are playing with the cloak of the Armenian diaspora. 

Without any doubt, the Armenian diaspora has neither the strength or the intelligence for such grand matters. And Hrant Dink, the Editor-in-Chief of the Agos newspaper, was targeted because he saw this reality and tried to show it to the community to which he belonged. Apart from International Zionism and its branch in Turkey (the members of the Sabbatean community), who else would be angered by Hrant Dink’s [above quoted] statement, and his dissemination of his views and opinions regarding this statement?

Just as International Zionism has worked to instill hostility toward Turkey among the Armenian diaspora and its puppet the government of Armenia, the actions of the Sabbatean Community has here employed certain allegedly ultra-nationalist elements in the attacks that it has carried out against the Armenian community. 

The members of this crypto-Jewish community, which places extraordinary importance on disguising its true identity, have established themselves in almost every sector and particularly within the nationalist organizations. It is for this reason that the greatest nationalist ideologues of our recent history have almost all been members of this crypto-Jewish community.

It is no coincidence that the trigger men in political murders are generally identified and chosen from within the militant nationalist groups. The Jews’ tactic of divide and conquer, which is their oldest method, can still be implemented within societies that are divided and weakened by micro-nationalism. Judaism itself, which, in a word, is a racist religion, is [responsible for] organizing all of the racist movements on the face of the earth. 

The fact that the views and opinions expressed by Hrant Dink were likely to throw a wrench in the gears of Zionist plots, and the nationalist tendencies of the trigger men that are used in these conspiracies both clearly point to the real actors [in these events]. I think that that it goes without saying that ‘tidy’ (!) operations like these were cooked up in the MOSSAD kitchen and served up [in Turkey].
 

Conclusion

There are two principal reasons for the spread of the notion that the Dönmes are the true architects of the Armenian genocide, now so frequently encountered in Armenian popular culture.

The first of these is the fact that the State of Israel, the various Jewish-American organizations, the Quincentennial Foundation and even the Chief Rabbinate of Turkey have adopted such a harsh, rejectionist stance toward the idea that the events of 1915 constitute a genocide and reject any comparisons with the Holocaust.

The second—and partially stemming from the first—is the ongoing (and heretofore, largely successful) struggle that these groups have waged on Turkey’s behalf to block the more than 30-year attempt by Armenian-American organizations to receive official governmental recognition of these events as a genocide. This behavior is largely seen by the Armenian community as an unwillingness by the Jewish people to compromise the uniqueness of the Holocaust, and of their own historical experience by ‘sharing’ the status of ‘genocidal victimhood’ with others. One of the principal ways in which the resentment that such behavior has elicited among the mass of Armenians has manifested within their popular culture is the development and spread of the idea that the Jews were behind their own genocide. In this attempt, the presence—real or imagined—of persons originating crypto-Jewish Sabbatean sect plays a crucial role, since it allows one to claim that ‘things are not what they seem’ and therefore to overcome the fact that the actual Jewish population of the Ottoman Empire, (and certainly in the government and coercive branches) was too negligible to actually be charged with such a task. Not so the Dönmes, who by their very secretive nature and unconfessed identities can thus be ‘discovered’ everywhere. Who is a Dönme? Whoever you want, or, more seriously put, anyone who, by their identification as such, further reinforces one’s conspiracy theory.

And if these variations on the theme of Dönme responsibility for the Armenian genocide find a psychic and emotional resonance among Armenians as a sort of ‘moral payback’ for the Jewish rejection of their Holocaust, how much more satisfying must such an explanation of the Armenian tragedy be for Turkey’s Muslim population? Turkish popular culture has long has its own widespread theory of a Jewish-Zionist-Dönme-Masonic cabal (varying combinations and explanations exist) having toppled Sultan Abdülhamid II and having created and/or dominated the Committee of Union and Progress. This theory has long been current among a large part of Turkey’s conservative Islamic population, as it works to blame someone else both for the Ottomans’ military debacles during the final decades of its existence as well as for the creation of the secular, Western-oriented (and therefore much-despised) Turkish Republic. Upon the bedrock of this already widespread belief, the exculpating theory that it wasn’t real Turks, (or, alternately, real Kurds or real Muslims) but rather a ‘foreign’, Jewish cabal who planned and carried out the deportation and massacre of Armenians must be an immensely satisfying notion for a nation that has labored for decades under what it considers unjust accusations, and which has yet to fully confront its own troubled history. Moreover, in light of the recent sad history of Turkish-Armenian relations, one that is characterized by the hopeless cycle of harsh accusations, categorical denials, intolerable burdens of guilt, and a complete lack of closure regarding the events of 1915, against such a background, the projection of all blame onto a third party, one against which both sides already have their prejudices, seems to offer a psychic path out of this impasse. And it is in this role that the Dönmes fit so perfectly: an entity immeasurable and unknown, and thus, eminently malleable to the conspiratorial mindset; an empty vessel of indeterminate volume, one which can be filled with one’s fears, resentments, guilt and other psychological needs. Within the Turkish context, the Dönmes have indeed become the perfect scapegoat.

 


[1] www.jewishracism.com/Jewish_genocide_Enlarged.pdf

[2] Nilgün Gülcan, “Strange Armenian Claim: ‘Atatürk was Jewish and Zionists were Behind Armenian Genocide’”, Journal of Turkish Weekly, February 18, 2008, www.turkishweekly.net/news.php?id=52530

[3] Khatchig Mouradian, “The Stubborn Myth of Jewish Involvement in the Armenian Genocide”, http://www.jewcy.com/print/11768, February 11, 2008.

[4] On January 19, 2007 Dink was assassinated outside his office by a 19 year old Turkish nationalist who had traveled to Istanbul from his hometown of Trabzon in northeastern Turkey. This article was completed before Dink’s murder. For a narrative of the murder see Timur Soykan, Demet Bilge Ergün, Sapan, (İstanbul: Güncel Yayınları), 2007.

[5] Because the paper is the only Armenian newspaper published exclusively in Turkish it has received a certain amount of esteem and a ‘semi-official’ status from the Turkish elites as the mouthpiece of the country’s Armenian community. 

[6] See the book’s Foreword for more on Zorlu and his place in the Dönme debate.

[7] The correct title of Küçük’s work is actually Dönmelik ve Dönmeler Tarihi (1st printing 1979).

[8] Dilipak is referring to the Turkish translation of Abraham Galante’s work Nouveaux Documents Sur Sabbatai Sevi Organisation et Us et Coutumes et ses Adeptes.

[9] Abdurrahman Dilipak, “Sabetaycılık ya da soykırım iddiaları üzerine”, Akit, September 25, 2000.

[10] Abdurrahman Dilipak, “Soykırım meselesi”, Anadolu’da Vakit, October 11, 2006. Anadolu’da Vakit is the more recent name of daily Akit.

[11] Abdurrahman Dilipak, “Derin Gerçek”, Anadolu’da Vakit, October 12, 2007.

[12] The paper has since its inception been an enthusiastic proponent—and, as a result, the semi-official mouthpiece—of the ‘National View’ (Millî Görüş) ideology espoused by Necmettin Erbakan, the doyen of political Islam in Turkey.

[13] Mehmed Şevket Eygi, “Agresif Misyonerler, Müslümanlar, Ermeniler”, Millî Gazete, December 29, 2005.

[14] The term the author uses for Jews is Musevi (literally, ‘Mosaic types’). In modern Turkish both this term and Yahudi are used interchangeably for ‘Jew’ or ‘Jewish’, but since the author uses the term Yahudilik for Judaism, the term Musevî is apparently used—albeit mistakenly–to show that Jews are but one of several branches of what he or she conceives of as ‘Judaism’. 

[15] Eser Karakaş is a professor of economics and Vice Rector of Bahçeşehir University.

[16] The “student” being referred here is Suna Vidinli. Her name became popular on January 25, 2001 during the TV debate screened on the Show TV channel  where a French parliamanterian participated. She was one of spectators following the debate and became famous when she interfered and told the French parliamanterian that he was wrong when he defined the mass killing of the Ottoman Armenians as a genocide.  Hürriyet reported that “she teached a lesson to French parlamentarian François Rochebloine”. See Ayda Kayar, “Suna Pantagos’a da haddini bildirmişti”, Hürriyet, January 27, 2001. She was until April 2007 the Foreign Relations Coordinator of Doğan Media Group, afterwards she worked for the Ciner Media Group. She was the DP candidate for parliament from Samsun in the July 22, 2007 general elections but was not elected.

[17] “Gizli bir savaş: Yahudiler Ermenilere karşı”, http://mitglied.lycos.de/goezelel53/Ermeniler/body_ermeniler.htm. The same article can also be found at: http://www.angelfire.com/wy/yaw.moved-to-lid-hash/Ermeniler/ermeniler.html. Since writing this article these links no more exist. However this text has been published in a Turkish Turanist forum See: http://turkcuturancilar.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=2918&PN=19

[18] Mehmet Kamış, “Suçlu Talat Paşa”, Zaman, May 4, 2005.

[19] Joseph Brewda, “Palmerston launches Young Turks to permanently control Middle East”, http://www.schillerinstitute.org/conf-iclc/1990s/conf_feb_1994_brewda.html.

[20] Clifford Shack, “The Armenian & Jewish Genocide Project: Eliminating Ethnic Conflict Along the Oil Route From Baku to the Suez Canal Region”, http://www.geocities.com/cliff_shack/RothschildianGenocide.html.

[21] Jack Manuelian, “The Planned, Organized and Executed Genocide of the Armenians”, March 27, 2005, http://www.panarmenian.net/library/eng/?part=2&id=59.

[22] İbrahim Karagül, “Ermeni tehciri, Selanik ‘dönmeleri’ Bakü petrolü ve Rothschild ailesi…”, Yeni Şafak, May 6, 2005. Karagül would repeat these claims in another piece the following year, “Soykırım ve paylaşımı: Ermeniler kimin umurunda!”, Yeni Şafak, October 20, 2006. 

[23] “Ermeni tehciri ve Selanik dönmeleri”, Millî Gazete, May 7, 2005.

[24] Engin Ardıç refers here to Prof. Yalçın Küçük.

[25] Engin Ardıç, “Başbakan’ın kedisi”, Akşam, May 7, 2005.

[26] Gönültaş (1966- ) began his journalistic career with the Islamist daily Zaman, eventually moving to Dünden Bugüne Tercüman. The latter paper has since changed its name to Bugün.

[27] Professor [emeritus] Vahakn N. Dadrian was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the International Association of Genocide Scholars during its Sixth Biennial Conference on June 4-7, 2005. See Roger W. Smith’s “Brief Biography of Vahakn N. Dadrian”, www.zoryaninstitute.org/Table_Of_Contents/genocide_bio_dadrian.htm. As can be readily seen, Gönültaş’s account is flawed, both in its dates and in his representation of the gathering as ‘The International Jewish Holocaust Conference’.

[28] Gönültaş is referring to Yossi Sarid’s statement made in April 2000. See: Gil Hoffman, “Armenian Genocide to be taught”, The Jerusalem Post, April 25, 2000.

[29] Gönültaş’s footnote: Aron Rodrigue, French Jews, Turkish Jews: The Alliance Israelite Universelle and the Politics of Jewish Schooling in Turkey, 1860-1925 (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press), 1990. 

[30] Nuh Gönültaş, “Bediüzzaman ve Ermeniler”, Dünden Bugüne Tercüman, April 9, 2005.  

[31] Bülent Şahin Erdeğer, “Mezalim ve Soykırım Bağlamında ‘Ermeni Sorunu’ ”, Haksöz, May 2005, no.170, pp.36-48.

[32] Although missing quotation marks and the author’s failure to provide proper citation make this unclear, the source for Erdeğer’s quotation is Çetin Yetkin’s Türkiye’nin Devlet Yaşamında Yahudiler, (Istanbul: AFA Yayınları), 1992, p. 197. The italics of the second quotation, which is actually found in the footnote at the bottom of the page, are in the original article.

 

[33] M. Emin Kazcı, “Lobiler ve diplomasi”, Anadolu’da Vakit, February 6, 2007.

[34] Ben Harris, “ADL faces fight over Armenian Position”, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, August 7, 2007.

[35] “ADL Statement on the Armenian Genocide”, August 21, 2007, www.adl.org/PressRele/Mise_00/5114_00.htm

[36] For example Ertuğrul Özkök, “İsrail Türkiye’yi kaybedebilir”, Hürriyet, August 24, 2007; Ergun Babahan, “İsrail Türkiye’yi gözden mi çıkardı?”, Sabah, August 24, 2007.

[37] Fazıl Duygun, “Ermeni lobisi bastırdı, Panikleyen Yahudi, Dönmeler Rejimini Sattı…”, Baran, August 30, 2007, no. 34, p. 21. See also: Fazıl Duygun, “Ermeni Katliamlarından Suriye Saldırısına, “İsrail ve TC” Bağı”, Baran, September 13, 2007, no.36, p. 21.

[38] The plural used here “Promised Lands” (Vaat Edilmiş Topraklar) is not merely a Turkish grammatical idiosyncracy. Rather, it reflects here the widespread belief within the Islamic world that Jews—and more specifically the Zionist movement–view the entire area of the central Islamic lands “from the Nile to the Euphrates” as their divine inheritance, and are determined and actively attempting to expand Israel’s borders until it encompasses these areas. Thus, when the author speaks of “petroleum being found there”, this is a reflection not of author’s bad geological knowledge, but of his ideological outlook. 

[39] The term increasingly used in Islamic circles for the Committee of Union and Progress (and used here, as well), is “İT”, for İttihat [ve] Terakki, since in addition to the acronym, the Turkish word it means dog, but is largely used as a pejorative; similar to calling someone a dog or swine in English. 

[40] “Ermenilerin Yahudilere Atağı”, Aylık, no. 36, September 2007, p.40.

[41] The author is referring here to the “Profiles in Courage” award presented to Prime Minister Erdoğan by the American Jewish Congress on January 27, 2007 and the “Courage to Care” award, in memory of the Jews who were saved by Turkish diplomats from the Holocaust in World War II, presented by ADL on June 10, 2005.

[42] Aydoğan Vatandaş (1974- ) started his career as a veteran writer for the Fethullah Gülen-affiliated journal Aksiyon. In his 1997 book Armagedon: Türkiye-İsrail Gizli Savaşı (Armageddon: The Covert War of Turkey and Israel), Vatandaş claimed that former Deputy Chief of Staff Çevik Bir was of Dönme origin. Among his other works of apocalyptic conspiracy theory are: Agharta: Elektromanyetik Savaş Başladı (Agharta: the Electromagnetic War has begun) (Istanbul: Timaş Yayınları), 2001; Apokalipse: Kıyametin Gizli Tarihi (Apocalypse: The Secret History of Doomsday) (Istanbul: Timaş Yayınları), 1999; Kızıl Tarikat: Tokyo Moskova Washington Üçgeninde Kıyamet Silahları (The Red Sect: Doomsday Weapons in the Tokyo-Moscow-Washington Triangle) (Istanbul: Karakutu Yayınları), 2003; Kod adı: Kılıçbalığı/11Eylül Senaryosu (Code Name: Swordfish/The September 11th Scenario) (Istanbul: Karakutu Yayınları), 2002 and Kuru Kafa ve Kemik Tarikatının Gizli Tarihi (The Secret History of the Order of The Skull and Bones) (Istanbul: Q Matris Yayınları), 2003.      

[43] Aydoğan Vatandaş, Asala Operasyonları Aslında Ne Oldu?, (Istanbul: Alfa Yayınları), 2005, pp. 110-111.

[44] Hrant Dink, “Gerçek maskaralık”, Agos, October 20, 2000.

[45] Hassasiyet”, Agos, October 27, 2000.

[46] “Jak Kamhi’ye devlet üstün hizmet madalyası”, Agos, August 24, 2007.

[47] Levon Panos Dabağyan, “Gidi Amerikan kemikçileri gidi Amerikan oğlanları sizi!”, Önce Vatan, September 14, 2007.

[48] Markar Esayan, “Efendi kim?”, Agos, May 28, 2004.

[49] In his book 100 Makale 100 Yorum (Istanbul: Karadağ Yayınları), 2006, which as its name might suggest is a compilation of 100 of his essays originally appearing in Önce Vatan, Dabağyan claimed that he was not an antisemite (p. 54), but then went on to repeat the well-worn antisemitic saw about Jewish domination of the U.N. (pp. 54-60), referred to Theodor Herzl as “a Zionist whose God is Gold” (p. 100), and claimed that the Armenian terrorist organization ASALA, which carried out a number of assassinations of Turkish diplomats in Europe and the United States in the 1970s and 1980s, had in fact been infiltrated by Zionists and was acting in accordance with Zionist designs (pp. 320-321).

[50] Ibid., pp. 139-140.

[51] Persian Friend, September 28, 2003, 12:11 p.m., Member No.: 1427, HyeForum>Politics>Genocide, http://hyeforum.com/index.php?showtopic=7131.

[52] Emil Danielyan, “Who continues to destruct [sic] the Holocaust monument in Yerevan?”, February 2, 2006, http://168.am/en/articles/1506.

[53] Ani Değirmencioğlu’s, message dated March 5, 2006, posted in the Workshop for Armenian Turkish Scholarship listserve.

[54] Ece Temelkuran, “En uzak komşu Ermenistan”, Milliyet, May 17, 2006.

[55] “Ermenistan’daki Türk ve Yahudi düşmanlığı”, http://www.tetedeturc.com/home/article/.php?id_article=538.

[56] Hatice Sancaktar, “O şimdi Yahudi”, http://www.angelfire.com/wy/yaw/Ilgaz_Zorlu/Mulakat/mulakat.html

[57][57] Hanifi Altaş, “Dedikodu Tarihçiliği ve Yahudi – İslamcı Paslaşması!”, Yeni Hayat, Year 8, No. 91 (May, 2002), pp. 3-5.

[58] Ilgaz Zorlu, “Mehmet Şevket Eygi Hakkında”, www.sabetay.50g.com/gokyuzu/gökyuzu/html  

[59] Ilgaz Zorlu, “Yazılanlar hakkında birkaç söz”, http://fl.parsimony.net/forum789/messages/9599.htm, March 17, 2003.

[60] Erol Elmas, “Büyüyemezsek Küçülürüz”, Yarın, November, 2005, pp. 32-37.

[61] Gürkan Hacır, “Onların MİT’i Mossad’i varsa, halkımızın da Yalçın Küçük’ü var”, Yeni Harman, No. 85 (October 1, 2005), pp. 8-12.

[62] Emin Şirin, “Yalçın Küçük’e inanmıyorum (!)…”, November 10, 2004, http://www.haberx.com/w/3205/yalcin-kucuk-inanmiyorum.htm.

[63] Israel Shamir, “An Etude in Cabbala”, in PaRDeS, www.vho.org/aaargh/fran/livres2/PardesEng.pdf. Shamir has been a champion of the ‘One Man, One Vote, One State’ position which sees in a single, united democratic state a solution for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. For more on the author and his beliefs, see: www.israelshamir.net.

[64] Gürkan Hacır, “Prof. Yalçın Küçük: Şimdi kapılar makarnacılara ve şarapçılara, beyaz saray tercümanlarına havluculara açıktır”, Yeni Harman, No. 92 (March 1, 2006).

[65] The article to which Vatandaş is referring is: Eyüp Can, “Musevi Lobisinden Dışişlerine Ermeni Soykırımı tasarısı için uyarı”, Referans, January 13, 2007.

[66] Aydoğan Vatandaş, “Hrant Dink Cinayeti: Bir taşla birkaç kuş”, January 19, 2007, www.sonsaniye.net/yazar9396.htm.

[67] Nuh Gönültaş, “Bizim başımıza gelenlerde Yahudi parmağı vardı!”, Bugün, February 2, 2007.

[68] For details on this entity please refer to section I.

[69] “The Greater Middle East is a political term invented by the Bush administration to englobe together various countries, pertaining to the Arab world, but also including the non-Arabic countries of Turkey, Iran, Israel, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Various Central Asian countries and the lower Caucasus (Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia) and Cyprus and Greece are sometimes also included. Some speakers may use the term to denote areas with significant Muslim majorities, but this usage is not universal. This expanded term was introduced in the U.S. administration’s administration’s preparatory work for the G8 summit of 2004 as part of a proposal for sweeping change in the way the West deals with the Middle East. This initiative is aimed at the Muslim world in the region and promoted heavily by neoconservative think tanks such as Project for the New American Century. It was outlined around the Helsinki Accords from 1975.” Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Middle_East . In the Turkish political culture “Greater Middle East” has been perceived as “an imperialistic project of the United States”.

[70] Baran is known to be published by persons sympathetic to the aims and means of the Islamist terror organization known as the [Paramilitary] Front of the Islamic Great Eastern Raiders İBDA-C (İslamî Büyük Doğu Akıncılar Cephesi), which has been implicated in numerous murders and other crimes within Turkey.

[71] The statement to which Açıkalın is alluding is the statement that Gökalp made in his own defense before the Court-Martial after the First World War, when he was on trial for his role in the killing of Armenians: “There was no Armenian massacre in Turkey, there was a [mutual] Turkish-Armenian massacre. They struck us from behind, and we struck [back]”. See: Zafer Toprak, “Ermeni Sorunu’nda Dünü İnşa Etmek ya da ‘Mukatele’nin İcadı”, Toplumsal Tarih, No. 147 (March, 2006), pp. 18-25.

[72] Dr. Hakkı Açıkalın, “Ermeni-dönme-İT-Türk-Kürt ve 2007”, Baran, No. 7 (February 22, 2007), pp. 10-11. As the reader may have already noticed, Açıkalın’s article represents yet another example of the unconscionable practice of ‘lifting’ of passages wholesale from the works of others. The section beginning after the bracketed asterisk [*] at the end of paragraph eight, and continuing until the middle of the penultimate paragraph was taken word for word from the article “Gizli bir savaş: Yahudiler Ermenilere karşı” cited in footnote 12 above. Additionally, the use of the acronym ‘İT’ for the Committee of Union and Progress (İttihat ve Terakki [Cemiyeti]) is frequently used by conservative opponents of secularism and/or the Republic—both of which trends they see as originating with this organization–because the word ‘it’ in Turkish is a derogatory term with the approximate meaning of ‘lowly swine’ or ‘cur dog’. See further examples in the subsequent text.

[73] Enes Duman, ‘Damarlarda Zehirli Kan’, Aylık, April 2007, year 3, no. 31, p.10.

[74] Vahit Şekerci, “Who had Hrant Dink in their sights?”, El Aziz, January 24, 2007.

Guest Contributor

Guest Contributor

Guest contributions to the Armenian Weekly are informative articles or press releases written and submitted by members of the community.

63 Comments

  1. I didn’t get past the suspicious title of this essay… Why is it “anti-Semitic” to point out the unmistakable Jewish/Zionist role in the Armenian Genocide?
     
    Anyone that want to see the true nature of Zionism, or organized Jewry, should read Ralph Schoenman’s book The Hidden History of Zionism: http://www.marxists.de/middleast/schoenman/

  2. It is well known fact that modern day Turks are a mix of various indignation nationalities with Turkic tribes that invaded the area 1000 years ago. Is not surprising that most Turks have Jewish, Armenian, Greek, Assyrian, or Kurdish genes. But regardless of their genetic makeup those who planned and carried out the Armenian Genocide were Muslims and Turkish nationalist that wanted to create a Christian fee country Turkey on the skeleton of Ottoman Empire.  According to some scholars Hitler has some Jewish ancestry too, but that does not mean Jews were responsible for Holocaust.

  3. It’s tremendous that you’ve given this whole issue a good airing. I’v painfully noticed how it’s been festering unhealthily in various nooks and crannies on the WWW. Hopefully getting it out in the light will lead to some much needed, reality based clarification in the relations between the Jewish and Armenian worlds and a more sober and detailed approach to the Armenian Genocide. It can’t just be left to the loonies or they’ll just push everything over the cliff. But the intimate connection between certain higher level dönmeh and the formulation of  aggressive Turkish nationalism cannot simply be wished away.

  4. Most Armenians today are pained by the knowledge that the Jewish Lobby (headed by AIPAC) in the United States is paramount in the denial and blocking of the reaffirmation of the Armenian Genocide. This – in and of itself –  is a shameful and cannot be simply dismissed as yet another “conspiracy theory.”  This is what angers most of Armenians today and imagine if the reverse was true – “Armenian lobby denies the Holocaust.” What would the Jewish reaction be to this vital role in horrific denial and towards Armenians? Yet again the victim is blamed for all the anguish and the unhealed wounds of an unrecognized genocide. The best and by far the only way to remove so-called “anti-semitism” (if you can call it as such when Armenians with greatest pain point this out) is for the Jewish people to take a righteous position and to demand from their organized community leaders like Abraham Foxman to once and for all end this shameful and ongoing act of the denial of the Armenian Genocide, since I do believe Jewish people must know very well the level of anguish the offspring of survivors go through. There will never be true human healing when there is so much injustice and mistruth.

  5. The author needs to find out why his name is Rifat and not Rafael?  Pressure? Hiding? From what? The Turks have always been very tolerant towards minority religions!   And can it be taken advantage of?  All you have to do is to ask a couple of poor people to take revenge in the name of religion.  Denouncing the names of the writers is not a very good way of making a point.  Surely he found a couple of articles refuting those theories.  Where are they?

  6. There are still a number of questions that are not 100% answered when it comes to the Armenian Genocide, especially since turkey has done everything in its power to distort the historical events.  Yet, questioning the role of various ethnic or religious groups involvment in the AG shouldn’t be seen as a bad thing.  If Jews were involved in the AG, this needs to be pointed out, I am tired of seeing the Armenian organizations in the U.S. being afraid to stand up to organizations like AIPAC, of course there have been a few times in recent years when ANCA have stood up to foxman and his cronies.

    Search Christopher Jon Bjerknes and his book on the Armenian Genocide.  It is avaliable as an e-book on his website.

  7. One form of genocide denial is to blame another group (in this case the Jews) for what  happened.  Those who believe this form of denial and blame the Jews are being abused, and it looks from the article, will be abused til the end of days, by the perpetrators of the genocide (the Turks, bolsheviks?, and Germans?).   Psychologically, they are being hurt and will be hurt, by genocide deniers (but only those who believe the deniers will be hurt). 
    If a scammer wants to sell you a lemon, a car that doesn’t work, a worthless stock, etc., he will lie and a sucker will buy it and get hurt, with no recourse.  Same with genocide deniers; they lie and those who bought the lie are stuck with a lemon. 
    P.T. Barnum said a sucker is born every minute. 
    The posts are already full of scammers trying to blame the Jews; you can only warn the Armenians: “buyer beware.”  
    Off the subject, wait until Wall Street gets a hold of the next bunch of suckers to buy their worthless stocks in the next generation Wall Street crisis because an uneducated sucker is born every minute.  You can’t really prevent all the crooks, you can just warn the victims before they become victims.   You can only warn the Armenians before they become victims of genocide deniers.  Armenians and Jews should be friends, as usual the enemy tries to divide and conquer. 

  8. My Jewish family knows about the Armenian genocide and feels the pain and anguish.  They escaped the Russian Revolution and stayed in Constantinople for ten years.  My father and uncle attended Robert College, established to teach the Christians in Turkey.  When my aunt came to the USA, she did not know about the genocide, and only found out when she met and married my Armenian uncle.  A Turk, Ali, took care of their farm.  I guess they all had the strength to survive, since it was very difficult for the survivors, and there were a few in the family, to keep their mental balance or not commit suicide, the crimes were so horrible.   They had the strength and the courage to overcome.   I certainly do think more Jews are becoming aware of the Armenian genocide; I don’t think they all know about it; and I am sure many will visit the Armenian genocide museum opening in Washington next year.  It is sad to see how the perpetrators of the genocide are still hurting you with their denial.  I was surprised at how bad the situation in Turkey was.   The only friends we had in Turkey left years ago.  I think now it is also bad for the secularists today and they are really afraid. 
    I only recently learned more about it from my family when I asked them.  I can understand why they didn’t want to discuss it because it was horrible.  They were more resilient, which you need to be to overcome a trauma.

  9. It is starting to make sense. Why then do some Jews and many Jewish organizations take such an active role in Armenian Genocide denial? Why would the truth of another races’ genocide be such a threat to them? And, why would the recognition of the Armenian  Genocide specifically be a threat to the Jews in Turkey? It that why Hitler said, “who after all remembers the Armenians”? Maybe he knew something we don’t?

  10. Were Jews, as a people, responsible for the Armenian genocide? The short answer is, no.
     
    However, the political variant of Judaism, organized Jewry or Zionism, was definitely involved in the genocidal agenda against Armenians of the Ottoman Empire. According to Ralph Schoenman (a holocaust survivor and an ardent anti-Zionist activist) the founding fathers of Israel, Hertzel and Jabotinsky, openly supported the genocide of Armenians in the Ottoman empire with the hopes of gaining political favors in Palestine, then under Ottoman jurisdiction. Let’s remember that Jews were in Germany then what they are in the United States today.  Let’s also remember that Salonika Jews were prominently represented within the Young Turk movement (much like the Jewish representation in the warmongering “neo-conservative” movement here in the US). Even on a societal level, there are many documented cases of Jews working with Turks to persecute Armenians and Greeks – the  two main Christian competitors within the Ottoman economy.
     
    In short, while the average Shlomo may have been innocent, organized Jewry was clearly an integral part of the genocide that befell Armenians. Even today we see remnants of the anti-Armenian sentiments of organized Jewry. After Turks and Kurds Jews are perhaps the only other nationality that needs to face up to their crimes against the Armenian nation.
     
    I’m not even going to start discussing Jews and Bolshevism…

  11. Having taken a closer look at the excerpt (chapter 9) that you posted from Rifat Bali’s book, I find it very unfortunate that he has besmirched Hrant Dink’s honor as an independent intellectual by tendentiously associating him with thinkers who were not fit to tie his shoes. Nowhere is Dink quoted as saying anything that suggests he gave any credence to the crude notion that “Jews were behind the genocide of the Armenians”. What he is quoted as saying is very nuanced, i. e.,  that there are many questions having to do with the rivalry between two minorities within the Ottoman Empire, the Jewish and the Armenian. His addressing that issue is stated honestly and in a balanced, measured tone. The only way he might have avoided being placed in such obnoxious company in Bali’s book would have been to bite his tongue and stay silent until the end. The imputation of the “Sabbatean conspiracy” mindset to Dink is not justified and reflects the prejudices of the author.

  12. Avetis, when they say semitic, they mean Assyrians and Jews were in the genocide. mostly Assyrians were being killed in Turkey, because there were more Assyrians in Turkey then there were Jews. and we wanted our country and we wanted to be independent but the Turks didnt let us and were fighting us not only because we wanted to be independent but also because we are christians, same goes with Armenians and Greeks.

  13. The problem is that Turkey has threatened anyone mentioning the Armenian genocide in Turkey, under the penal code, with imprisonment or worse.  You may compare this to the code of silence of the mafia, omerta.  There was no freedom of speech on this topic.  Brave journalists spent thousands of hours in Turkish prisons for speaking about this issue; only now do they allow any speech about it, but there is no law protecting those who speak out.  They have blackmailed the world into not mentioning it by threatening to harm the Jews in Turkey; and when the genocide resolution came up, they also rounded up the Armenian workers from Armenia in Turkey for deportation.  So they are willing and capable of inflicting harm on anyone in Turkey or outside who mentions the genocide.  They also may not be willing to pay reparations or give back land, even if they apologize. 
    However, Ze’ev Elkin, who comes from the Ukraine and is head of the Armenia-Israel friendship group in Israel said that Russia also used these strong arm, blackmail tricks and that the Jews in Russia stood up to them; so he is not afraid to stand up to Turkey and speak out and pass the genocide resolution in Israel.  
    Very few Jews were bolsheviks; we were white Russians and fought with Kolchak.
    Jewish groups were trying to protect the Jews in Turkey because of the threats Turkey made that it would harm the Jewish community if the resolution was passed.  They also threatened to harm the Armenians in Turkey. 
    The EU said that Turkey cannot get into the EU before it allows freedom of speech on the Armenian genocide.  Turkey is allowing a little, but I don’t know if they can reach the level the EU wants. 
    In Chicago, we have trouble putting the gangs into jail too, because of the code of silence, omerta; anyone who speaks out against the gangs can get killed. 

  14. It is apparent that Turkey is playing “blame the Jews” card to stir antisemitism on the part of Armenians. This of course will only help in employing Jewish lobby  for its denial campaign.  Turkey is counting on its many faces both appearing as a the only friend of Israel in the region, and fighter for the rights of Palestinians.  However, Turkish society has deep rooted anit-Americanism, antisemitism and hate towards Armenians, which needs to be pointed out as their true face.

  15. Hey AVETIS:
    The number of  unattributed statements and words in “quotes” in Ralph Schoenman’s book are a complete joke; it’s a book of opinions, not history.  There are practically more footnotes in the above article. 
    No wonder he’s giving it away.
    But the Armenian Genocide was a travesty and especially Jews (and other historically persecuted groups) should be much more  active and vocal in publicizing the Armenian Genocide, rather than suppressing such efforts.  No one has a monopoly on suffering.

  16. How come nobody mentions The Inner Folds of Turkish Revolution by Mevlan Zadeh Rifat?
    Or for that matter what T.E. Lawrence told his biographer concerning the composition of the Young Turks?

  17. TO C.K. Garabed
    Probably because it doesn’t seem to exist beyond the ravings of Jack Manuelian.  Anyone read it?
    P.S.  Just cause it’s in a book (much less the Internet), doesn’t make it true… 

  18. It is absolutely irrelevant which national or religious roots people in government (CUP) belonged to. this is truly an exercise in futility. The responsibility of the Genocide falls on the shoulders of the government of the State, the Ottoman Empire. Today’s Turks might fall for shifting the blame to others, which by the way, might explain Prime Minister Erdogan’s daily utterance that it is apparently impossible for Muslims to commit genocide. And that it is impossible to blame his (Islamist) ancestors of this heinous crime. Our legal fight is with a legal State, and not with stateless and unaccountable entities.
    This is dangerous because would be playing in Turk’s hands if we remove the responsibility of this crime from the hand of the Turk, the perpetrator, and put it into the hands of some invisible, hidden, conspiratorial party that has no power to redress and no physical existence for us to accuse. We would end up chasing political UFOs, Unidentified Fictitious Organizations.

  19. It was after all Turkey’s responsibility that they let some other entities to control their country and they played in their hands.  They let themselves being controlled and they too committed a heinous crime.  It is after all Turkey’s responsibility.

  20. There’s nothing like blaming the Jews for everything that’s wrong on the planet. No one even stops to consider that the Jews can’t even control theor own country, one that is smaller than New Jersey, and that more than half the Jewish population of the planet has nothing to do with anything Jewish. If  you want to believe the insane rants of haters who have nothing better to do than instigate stupidity and hatred for Jews who don’t even live among their people, that becomes your problem.  It’s easier  for dictators and totaliatrians and religious extremists to control their own people by focussing them to hate people who have nothing to do with them. Those who believe these lies deserve whatever they get when their human rights are trampled. Instead of revolting against their oppressors and the oil companies they deal with, they take it out on the Jews.  How convenient for them.

    But the National Geographic Genome project has already proven that most people on the planet have Jewish genes, even in darkest Africa. Most Europeans stem from three matrilineal Jewish lines. That includes those who considered themselves Aryans.

    Pogrom anyone? Just blow up the whole planet and be done with it. That should solve the Jewish problem once and for all.

  21. Two parts for my current contribution:
    A] I couldn’t expect so many errors or approximations in that text which cites references:
    The Ottoman and the Kemalist declared war to Russia or to USSR. That reality is easily ignored by the pro-turkish columnists.
    The Ottomans joined the Kaiser and declared war to Allies in 1914.
    (In the WW2, Ankara declared war to Germany 7 weeks before the suicide of Hitler!)
    Someone write “the first murderers were the armenian troops with the Russian army”, I only suggest to that Someone to verify the date of the Russian attack compared to 1915. I have not the same data.
    I had never heard before that the ASALA killed the diplomats because they were Dönme.  Something new? I am always surprised to notice the turks making confusion with ASALA and Dashnag-party,  it’s absolutely different and, even more,  ASALA commited only half of the attempts.
    So many defaults weaken the text and make the author unbelievable.
    B] Why to  mention “antisemitism” (again and again) like a shield ?
    Height members of CUP were jews. It seems that was reality. Some of them, like the lawyer Carasso, Ben Gourion etc…  came from Europ. They were famous Zionists who wanted to ask the Sultan for an jewish province in  the Ottoman Empire.
    In the past, it was rivalry between the jews+Janissaries and the Armenians (Thesis By Jamgocyan, La Sorbonne, Paris).
    It could be interesting to study if there was a link.
    Today, 64 years after the WW2  Demjanjuk  who is supposed to be involved in the Genocide of the Jews, is prosecuted.
    C] On 1967, consecutively to the Israeli-Egypt war, General De Gaule President of France, declared  “That people (Israel) of elite self-confident and dominating”.  Another President, François Mitterrand declared to Jean D’Ormesson ” There is in France, a jewish lobby very powerful and harmful (in Le Rapport Gabriel”. (It is easily verifiable with Google.). They have never been called “antisemitic”. That people gives to humanity the best,  philosophers, scholars, physicians, musicians but, also the worst : Kissinger (see “the Crimes of Mr.Kissinger” he daren’t  come in Europ), Wolfowitz, Pearl,  B.Lewis, Sharon, Dayan (who ousted that nice PM, Levi Eshkol for he wanted to treat tactfully the inferior Egyptian army)…

  22. “But the National Geographic Genome project has already proven that most people on the planet have Jewish genes, even in darkest Africa. Most Europeans stem from three matrilineal Jewish lines. That includes those who considered themselves Aryans.”
    This is sheer madness, another Jewish propaganda scheme to get people involved in their debilitating self-awareness.. Armenians, as a people, were living in the Armenian highland before Jews even existed as a nation-state (hence the advent of the Bronze and Iron age in Greater Armenia and archeological discoveries from the Araxes culture, circa 4,000 BC) . Most Europeans do not ‘stem’ from any three matrilineal lines, much less three JEWISH lines. Let’s not even get started about Africa and Asia. The oldest known historical evidence of Judaism comes the a few centuries before Ramses, sometime around 1700 BC.

  23. Karekin you are right.  I mean about Armenians and Europeans having their own blood but not mixed with Jewish blood.  After all, Armenians are at least 7-8,000 years old nationality.  Even the Chinese are not as old, they are only 5,600 year old nationality.  The British migrated from Armenia.  It’s in their history’s manuscripts and it is on the website.  Anyone can see it.  Furthermore, Armenians first created the calendars.  The Greek Panthenon was built 5,000 years after ours was built.  And Garni Keghart was built only 1,000 years ago.  We taught the world architecture, engineering and building.

  24. I think what Ms. Friedman is referring to is a particular Near Eastern/Anatolian gene that is found throughout the world.  Arabs, Turks, Kurds, Armenians also have that genetic marker.  If anything the gene in question is more Armenian than anything else, but it is silly to attach a nationality to it.
    And please Ms. Friedman, don’t bring points into this discussion that no one has brought up, stick to the topic. 

    I don’t think anyone here is saying that Jews were responsible for the Genocide, what some have pointed out is that there is evidence to support the claims that some of the young turks were of Jewish extraction, and that Zionism was/is against Armenia.  Also, Ms. Friedman, do you not find it ironic that Jewish organizations have for years lobbied against the U.S. recognition of the Armenian Genocide, and the fact that Israel, a nation built out of the ashes of the Jewish Genocide, does NOT recognize the Genocide of the Armenians?

  25. I think the point was to disprove the racist theory of the Nazis by saying there is no thing as white supremacy or genes.  Also, in addition to their racist theory, the Nazis were the worst antisemites.   If Nazis continue to spread their propaganda today, AR (which I believe you are doing); and the Jews have always been their target, we can easily prove the Germans were  the instigators behind the Armenian genocide and later the Holocaust (this is an established historical fact I believe).   Later Ataturk said that Turkey should never get into another war, and if it had to, never to be on the side of the Germans again, when you win with Germany, you lose.  Was that an implication that he thought the Armenian genocide had been wrong and instigated by Germany?  The first Turkish govt. after the genocide, had decided to make reparations and restore the Armenians to their homes and land; but that govt. fell before it could be done; so many Turks thought what was done to the Armenians was wrong at the time. 
    I am reading the autobiography of Caleb Frank Gates, who was a missionary from Chicago, who came and taught the Armenians at Harput during the massacres, and later became president of Robert College in Constantinople.  I believe his book gives an accurate eye witness account of what happened during the Armenian massacres.  It is quite an interesting book; and I hope many of you will read it.  He was also one of the people to draft the Lausanne Treaty, and he gives his reasons for why he suggested the terms of the Treaty,and also his heart wrenching description of what was going on to the Armenians.  I am researching the pictures I have of my family in Turkey and found one I believe is of Caleb Frank Gates with my uncle, a student at Robert College.  I hope what I research will interest many of you as it has interested me.   I will supply his autobiography with the pictures to the Armenians for their historical records.  

  26. Genocide denial,

    The typical turk, trying to tell Armenians their own history.  Stick to the subject, stop bringing in bs and if you care so much about anti-semitism, then do something about it in your country, which ranks quite high in anti-Armenian, anti-American, and anti-Jewish sentiments.

    Spare us the research, or rather the garbage, which you are ‘researching’.

  27. I am an Armenian, my mother happens to be Jewish, so I guess my Armenian friends will call me a Jew. But trust me, I am a proud Armenian. My grandfather ended up in Der Zor desert, where he was picked up by priests and eventually brought to Beirut and into an orphanage.

    Let us look at some numbers here. Estimated offsprings of:
    1. Armenian -Jews= about 70,000, some estimate as high as 100,000.
    2. Turkish-Jews= about 300, some estimates as high as 600, and all Islamized.

    Now, we have the cards in our corner, but are not using it. And there the Turks use their estimated 300-600 Islamized mixed Jews for their benefit.
    What do/did we do to reach out to world Jewery? Nothing.
    Yeah yeah, we all know that the love affair between Israel and Turkey is solely a strategic partnership. Israel knows damn well, that sooner or later,  Islamic Turkey will betray Israel, but for now they need  each other. And trust me, I hate Israel for turning its back on us. But things are changing.
    We need to come together and form a solid bond between Israel and Armenia.  We cannot forever villify the Jews for anything and everything that happens in the world? You see how foolishly we fall for stupid inuendos and start an anti-Jewish campaign, and all the while Turkey stands and watches with admiration for our political naivette?  Who cares who was jewish in the ranks of the young Turks, what difference would that have made, if for example the leaders of the young Turks were predominantly Albanian. Absolutely nothing.  And who cares whether the majority of Communist leaders in Russia were of Jewish origin. If the Russians were that dumb, then they deserved those jewish leaders. And what about Stalin? He killed an estimated(latest estimates 2008) about 39 million people in the Soviet Union. So, we should villify Georgians for Stalins muderous regime? 
     A crime has been committed, and the country known as the Ottoman Empire committed that crime. If there was an Islamized Jew in their ranks, well, too bad, as all 300-600 mixed current Turkish-Jews are Muslim.
    As for the “Freemasonry,” I got some encouraging news for my people here.
    Most of the high ranking High Malakhiahs in the USA are either Armenian or Jewish.
    Check the history of the Freemasonry, and you will be surprised to see the number of Armenians in the organization. Krikor Zohrab was a high ranking Freemason, and he was not spared death at the hands of the Turks. To conclude, Armenians are, read my words, “heavily” involved in Freemasonry, and you will be surprised if I divulge the names of Armenian government officials, and reputable party members(all 3 traditional Armenian parties) here in the USA, who are high ranking Freemasons. So, does that mean we have traitors in our ranks? Come on guys, let’s grow up.
    We need to stay away from gossip, whether that gossip is true or imaginary, and stick to our main goal, the Recognition of the Genocide.

  28. As children, many of us had an excercise called ‘connect the dots’, at the end of which, we were able to see a very clear picture of something that was previously invisible.  Sadly, many adult Armenians are failing this fairly straightforward excercise. They’re also failing to follow the idea that ‘where there is smoke, there is fire’.   If an entire group of people, their leaders and organizations – other than nationalist Turks – deny the veracity of the Armenian genocide…there might be a much deeper historical reason that has nothing to do with current geopolitical realities.   Time to wake up and smell the real coffee that’s brewing….

  29. I know two high ranking ARF members, 1 Ramgavar and 3 Hunchaks, these are high ranking party officials, mind you.. who are also high ranking Freemasons. Also 2 high ranking ARF members in Armenia whose mothers are Jewish. So, what was the point bringing Freemasonry or Jewishness  in this article. Christ, almost all of my friends are Freemasons. Does this mean that our leaders too, are involved in treacherous activities, that we don’t know of? Grow up people.
    Whether there were Jewish, Zionist or Freemasonry conspiracies against us, then look around and you’ll see all three in our people. I have heard that Armenian-Jewish people number more than 120,000. But are we able to harness this powerhouse for our benefit? NOOOOOOOO, because we all are blinded by this and that. And there in Turkey, they have learned long ago to use and harness the energy from 500 plus Islamized Jews for their benefit.
    Now, you tell me who is ahead of this game, the Armenians or the Turks?
    The answer is in big T T T T T T T T T T Turkey.
    Now look at us, once again being distracted  from our main goals.
    When will we learn, relax and move forward?

  30. The fundamental problem is in the completely opposite treatment received by the Armenian and Jewish subjects of the Ottoman Empire. While Jewish subjects were being sheltered, promoted and elevated to very high positions and certain dönme were making indispensable contributions to the development of  lethal Turkish nationalism, Armenians were being persecuted, dispossessed and ultimately exterminated. This has to be squarely confronted if Armenians and Jews are to walk into the future hand in hand and with their eyes open. Ultimately the responsibility for the Armenian Genocide rests with the Turkish state, regardless of the ethnic extraction of the individuals who were the architects of its crimes. And it would be well to remind the  President  and the world that “Medz Yeghern” does not mean “great catastrophe”. It means very simply “Great Crime”.

  31. Diran, can’t you see the difference between the 2.5 million Armenian subjects of the Ottoman Empire, and the 60,000 Jewish subjects of the same Empire. One living on its ancestral land, the other, merely passing by. Now, assuming that you are a highly intelligent young man, who do you think the Ottoman Empire will have issues with? The Armenians? or the Jews?  The threat naturally will come from the Armenians, living on their lands and counting 2.5 million. Whereas the Jews lived in Istanbul(mainly) and were no threat to the Ottoman Empire.
    Hence the systematic massacre of the Armenians.
    I don’t understand why we are naive falling into this Turkish traps over and over again? Why?
    We should act like the Turks,  kiss the Jews and then turn around and stab them (remember how erdogan made Peres look like a first rate dumbbed fool???), and not the other way around.
    We love Jews and Israel, period, end of story.

  32. There certainly are a lot of antisemitic comments under this article. 
    1.  Re: Jack Manuelian and Christopher the Nazi.  JM also writes for the Nostradamus society; he predicted WWIII and the end of the world will come in 2012.  Anyone interested in 2012, this is the Mayan year for apocalypse; and there is a movie out called 2012 which you can go see and entertain yourself.  Obviously, the only entertainment you get is reading or imagining Jewish conspiracy theories and maybe apocalypse 2012.  Anyone who believes 2012 is the end of the world and WWIII is coming and Jewish conspiracy theories and calls historical research b.s., are you sure you are not one of those genocide deniers.
    2.  Many Jews were also killed during the Armenian massacres.
    3. I did read that Jews and Armenians did fight with each other in Turkey; maybe due to the Ottoman system which pit each against another; I think you can also evidence this in Lebanon today, which has no Jews now, but has shiites, sunnis and Christians fighting with each other due to the confessional system.   Armenians did also fight with each other, Zoroastrians vs. Christians. It is possible, David, son of Queen Esther, fought your Vartan). Maybe some people fight religious wars, Christians vs. Jews.    Everything was not  all roses in the past; but blaming the Jews for the Armenian genocide is as silly, I think, as believing the world will end in 2012.  Anyway, a lot of Jews and Christian Armenians are intermarried today.  Jewish history was influenced by Persians a lot; they were pretty close people, but look at Iran today (Ahmadinejad, a Holocaust denier; and is he Armenian – Sabojtian?); can you believe this is the land of biblical Persia and Cyrus, of Esther and Zoroaster?  What has happened to Iran? 

    Armenians do deserve sympathy for what happened to them; they deserve attention and love from the world; the Armenian genocide was one of the worst crimes in history as was the Holocaust.
    Unfortunately, many of you speak badly of Jews and blame them for your troubles, but I don’t think you will find many or any Jews who would not feel sorry for you or would deny the Armenian genocide.  

    I read that it took a long time for the Lausanne Treaty to be passed (years) because USA did not want to do business with the new Nationalistic Turkey due to the Armenian genocide.  It was passed after much deliberation due to the missionaries (who thought that Armenians could never live side by side with Turks again and that this would always be a difficulty for them; they suggested the Armenians move away from them) and that it was better to keep channels open with Turkey; by American business interests who wanted to protect their interests by keeping diplomatic channels open with Ataturk; and maybe the oil business.  Real politics, capitalism, took precedent over humanitarianism perhaps.   It seems you are still fighting to change the Lausanne treaty and get reparations and land back.  I just thought that many historians know that Americans had been on the side of the Armenians and did not want to do business with Ataturk’s Turkey at all, but I wonder how many people don’t. 
    So USA has been playing real politics; not because they were anti-Armenian or pro-Turk, but for various reasons, including business reasons.  Also,  1932 was the year Turkish nationalists shut down the history dept. at Robert College and replaced it with Turkish teachers and I guess their own version of history; and this is the year the president of Robert College left because his son was the history professor, and this is the year my dad and uncle probably left.  Turkish nationalism took over the University more and more every year and more minorities left Turkey, etc.
    More crap for you to complain about.

  33. You have an excellent point Serop.
    There are mountains of differences between the attitude and actions of Ottoman Armenians and Ottoman Jews and their fates during the worst times of the Ottomans.
    Armenians hatched a Greater Armenia scheme, on lands to be ethnically cleansed (of its Muslims) at the expense of the Sick Man of Europe.  They took up arms, attacked civilians and soldiers when the country was already under attack on all sides, they launched first terrorist attacks in modern times against their own state and country, they joined the enemy with the weapons given to them to defend their lands, they gave the keys of ancient Ottoman cities in the East to Czar’s generals, and in short they presented a mortal threat not just to the state but to the very people of the land.
    Ottoman Jews did none of that.
    You seem half smart Serop, you think this explains the difference in the fates of these two “millets”?

  34. The comparative population is a very valid point. Not only that, the Turkish Jews were not restive or separatist like the Armenians. But the point is that the important contributions made to the program of the Young Turks by its dönme members coincided with contemporaneous Zionist efforts to establish a Jewish homeland on Ottoman real estate, although that factor was always denied in favor of the strict Ottomanism professed by the dönme. Here is a quote from page 230 of the book “Jews, Turks, Ottomans”, edited by Avigdor Levy, from the section authored by Feroz Ahmad, in which probably the best known of the dönme figures in the CUP, Emmanuel Karasu, is being discussed: ‘The Jewish political élite was never monolithic, and the conflicting commitments to Ottomanism and Zionism would have been a matter for the individual conscience. . . . Karasu (in his own words) had “to reconcile his duty as a Turkish patriot with that of a nationalist Jew.” ‘  Part of Karasu’s “duty as a Turkish patriot” led to his enriching himself on the provision of food supplies to the Turkish army right through the genocide of the Armenians.

  35. Jews are great people. The greatest Jews always sided with the truth, the Genocide. We do, however understand the strategic importance of Turkey for the state of Israel in the turbulent middle east, but as Ariel, my Israeli friend put it, Israel is no fool, and they know that this one sided love relationship will someday come to an end, and as such, contingency plans are being prepared for that day.
    Long live Armenia, long live Israel.

  36. To “Genocide denial”
    Regarding Ahmadinejad, just a week ago, Mossad came up with the surprise of the century.
    They found diaries of Ahmadinejads Jewish grandmother, who wrote in her diary ” how proud she was that her grandson had his Bar Mitzvah, and how beautiful he sang, and how she shed happy tears etc etc. So, sorry my friend, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is Jewish. I have not seen an Armenian going through a Bar Mitzvah…..yet. But hey, I still love Israel and all Jews worldwide.

  37. I think there were two constitutional groups.  The first did contain a hidden Jew.  It is the second consisting of the Young Turks, which I do believe did not have any hidden Jews. 
    To change the subject, I believe that Caleb Frank Gates, belongs in your hall of the righteous for saving hundreds and thousands of Armenian lives.  He went to Turkey to teach the Christians and during his long life, if you read his autobiography, at great DANGER to his life, he had the courage and goodness and religious faith to save thousands of Armenians in Harput during the massacres and later in Constantinople, to speak on their behalf; and he headed the Near East Relief in Constantinople.  I do hope your Genocide Museum will remember the righteous missionaries who saved more than one Armenian life.   He was a great man and good person.  I will write to the museum asking that he be remembered.

  38. Murat, the Turkish version is totally wrong.  Although there were a few Armenian instigators, the majority of Armenians did not pose any threat.  Morgenthau suggested the Turks arrest the few Armenian instigators; instead the Armenians were massacred.  The genocide was thoroughly unjustified according to Caleb Gates’ biography. I read this book and found out what happened; I have been listening to the Turkish version from the preent Turkish govt. and from posters like you.  I had to read the book to find out what really happened.  I am surprised more Armenians don’t speak out to you to tell you the truth.  I am an American Jew.   Unfortunately, Turkey is not having people speak up to them and tell them the Armenian people never were a threat.  There was an evil parnoid sultan, and maybe jealousy among Turks of the Armenians who were very successful.

  39. Murat, the Armenian genocide was unjustified.  They were no threat to the Ottoman Empire.  What I have been reading by posters, even in Haaretz, that the Jews during the Holocaust were not a threat, but the Armenians took up arms is FALSE and the situation was different; au contraire, it may be entirely similar.  The Holocaust and Armenian genocide both killed innocent people out of prejudice; both of them were no threat.  I really don’t trust all posters, since many may be Turkish genocide deniers using false names or people who lived in Turkey who were taught a false historical account of the Armenian genocide.   The Turkish govt. has been teaching them lies about Armenia and still speaks the same lies.  

  40. I did see Shimon Peres in Turkey in Hurriyet?; tensions were high because of the genocide bill.  The AKP told him Armenians were a threat to the Ottoman Empire and ready to rebel; and unfortunately, he agreed.  Did he want to keep ties with Turkey at any cost, or did he actually believe that?  Well, in truth, a  lot of Turkish people did believe the Armenian people were armed and a threat, and this  may have led to the massacres.  But according to the missionary there at the time, this was not true.  In one story he relates, he says he took any guns he could find from the Armenians and delivered them to the Turkish gendarme, who stopped an attack on them; and the missionary said, he did not believe the extent the Turks thought the Armenians were armed to harm them, which he said was a total untruth, the lie Turkey speaks today. Too bad I didn’t read this book sooner, I could have posted a reply on Haaretz defending the Armenians.  

  41. To: Genocide denial.

    I just read an article about Mahmoud Ahmadinjeds ancestry. Not Armenian, I believe the article mentions either Mossad or Shin Bet, that letters discovered suggest Ahmadinejd had a Jewish grandmother, who happened to be present at his Bar Mitzvah, and she wrote that Ahmdinejds singing voice was beautiful(singing during the Bar Mitzvah ceremony).
    In any case, for me, Hitlers(Jewish father), Ataturks(Albanian), Sultan Hamids(Armenian mother), Abdullah Guls(a Turkish think tank suggested that President Gul, beyond any doubt and almost 99.99% accuracy, has Armenian ancestry) , or a few Young Turks of Jewish ancestry, DOES NOT in any way take the blame from(decriminalize) the current day Turkish republic.
    We blame the Jews, heck, Armenians and Jews intermarry MORE than any other peoples, for absolutely no reason. recent estimates put Jewish-Armenian offsprings about 100,000-125,000, now that, relatively speaking, is a huge number for two small peoples. Who owned the Ottoman Empire, the Jews? Conspiracies? Come on guys, most of our leaders, government and/or party have either Jewish mothers, wives, husbands, or great mothers/fathers.
    The problem we have today is Confusion. We don’t know who to blame for the Genocide. The greatest minds of Jews and Zionists helped the Armenian cause in some way or shape. Does Morgenthau, Werfel, Weisel, lieberman, Boxer, Schiff ring any bells?
    I don’t understand why we like to antagonize world Jewery. What is the logic behind it? 
    Turks are way ahead of us in diplomacy and politics.
    Erdogan slammed Shimon Perez so hard that I thought the poor old man would cry. Perez’s face took every imaginable color in existence today…but then, they turned around and started kissing Israeli, you know what. And us? Instead of using our 100K mixed Armenian-Jews for our benefit, we go out and start bashing the Jew, and then wonder “why” Israel does not support our causes.
    And, oh before I forget, Yep, I have a Jewish mother, who herself escaped the Holocaust,  and as for my fathers relatives, you guessed it right, my grand father was the Only survivor in his immediate family, but I consider myself a very very very proud Armenian.
    God bless Armenia and Artsakh.

    Armenian Weekly. Kindly allow my opinion to be posted.

  42. You seem to be stuck in an alternate reality.  Overdose of self-propaganda does that.  Here is the reality:  Armenians took up arms and attacked their own state when it was in a state fo war.  They were fielding regular troops, had generals, arms depots all over the place, staged terrorist attacks and openly joined forces with Russians to create a Greater Armenian on lands where they were minority.  This is newspaper stuff.  You think we learn all this from books?  We lived there, our grandparents died there.  How dare you compare this to Jews in WWII?  How can you know so little and then lecture others about facts?  When all face the facts, then there may be hope for real reconciliation.  I am doubtful myself.

  43. Murat:  Go away, we don’t need the typical turkish talking points here, heard it enough already.

    Greg:  Two things, first, I am not sure where you are getting the number of Armenian-Jewish offspring from, can you please provide some kind of source?  Second, reason israel is close with turkey is due to geopolitics, not because they like turks any more or less than Armenians.  Fact is, in international affairs there are no friends just interests.

    And many of our leaders are not of mixed Jewish ancestry, never were and never have been, so let us please stay away from making fanciful comments.

  44. You should all pick up and read Dr. Robert Melson’s book, Revolution & Genocide. Therein, you will find a scholarly and very well researched study on the similarities of the Armenian genocide and the Jewish holocaust.  No matter what anyone says, they are brother and sister.  The CUP leaders of the bankrupt Ottoman empire turned on a group of its own citizens…while ignoring all the other minorities…and plotted to decimate them, steal their property, their businesses, their wealth, etc. and handed it over to their own supporters.  At that time, Armenians were 20 – 25% of the Anatolian population, not unlike the position Kurds occupy today, and some of them decided to fight back in self-defense AFTER the Ottoman govt entered WWI with its imperial army.  It was fighting wars on several fronts that doomed the Ottoman Empire, not the Armenians. And, it was a group of nutcases from Salonika who planned the largest ethnic cleansing on the planet at the time, not the imams of Konya who actually refused to cooperate in the crime.  

  45. AR

    Go to CIA website.
    Peoples
    Armenians
    Section ARcz8UY5
    Article 299, paragraph 33.
    You need to have access passcode for it.
    It clearly shows a number of 150,000 mixed Armenian Jewish offsprings.
    I had to trim the number to leave out any inconsistancies.

  46. Anyone citing the CIA for numbers of Armenian-Jews is completely brainwashed. Many Jews, especially those from Iran, cited Armenian heritage in Iran in order to avoid persecution, even though they were pure Jewish (hence, the changing of names, and present day -ian surnames in Jewish families of Iran)
    Citing 100,000-150,000 Armenian Jews would mean that almost 1% of All Armenians have Jewish ancestry, However, only about 3,000 Jews live in present day Armenia and most Armenian-Jews are ethnic Jews that lived in Soviet Armenia, not those that married Armenians. Of course, there was some intermarriage, and it is to be expected, as Jews and Armenians had a diaspora in many of the same countries: Iran, Russia, to name a few, however, the numbers reported are out of this world.

  47. Just the fact that the armed Armenian uprising and attempts at creating a Greater Armenia on lands where they were a minority is compared to the fate of Jews n WWII shows how far removed some folks are from reality.  Is it really possible that people who have been obsessed with this topic can be so ignorant of the facts?  Armeinan uprisings precede WWI!   Is this the reason why there is so much concern about the airing of the facts?   Is it not ironic that one of the places where one can freely discuss the topic is Turkey where there are regular conferences held and people have opined freely on both sides of the topic?

  48. Murat should be reminded that the issue being aired is not the Armenian Genocide itself. It is the question of how much influence, if any, descendants of Sabbatean Turkish Jews had on the CUP decision to eliminate the Armenians. If he wishes to discuss the Armenian Genocide with his clearly limited means, he should do it elsewhere.
     

  49. From one Jew to all Turks:

    Get over it, the Genocide happened,  OK?
    Enough already, accept it and come out like men of higher moral authority, otherwise your half baked excuses denying the Genocide amounts to absolute nothing.
    Peace
    Omid

  50. Descendant of no one had any influnce in the decision to eliminate the Armenian race since no such decision was taken, and no such elimination did take place as the plentiful descendents of the said race are here and there and everywhere.

    In general, given the long history, Turks have had to face many facts regarding their history, some pleasant some not.  This topic is only one of them.  The problem is facing non existent facts.  There are many issues related to the Republic already before addresing Ottoman history, let alone myths. 

    On the other hand, to have such demands made by people who are clearly in dark about the recent history of their ancestors, their war against the Ottoman Empire and the infighting and killings, just rubs all the wrong way.  One should look into a mirror occasionally.

    No amount of wishful thinking will re-write history.

  51. Historians don’t give serious consideration to the conspiracy theory; however, read the posters who pooh pooh books and historical works.  There is a lack of education or information available to people living under totalitarian societies which may lead to a vacuum to be filled by conspiracy theories.
    I think we are questioning the conspiracy theory of history which attributes too much power to a group, i.e. the Jews, and attributes them with the cause of all the evil in the world.  The Protocals of Zion was created by the Czar to demonize the Jews and blame them for all the problems and is still followed by Ahmadinejad in Iran and his antisemitic mentor.  Not all Iranians are antisemitic; however, he is.   Neither does Putin believe in the Protocals today. 
    Today the internet spreads a lot of conspiracy theories to the “fringe” group; it is an alternative to history as taught in schools or researched by historicans.  A lot of these conspiracy theories are part of apocalytic prophesies.   They include not only Jack Manuelian’s theory about WWIII with Iran coming in 2012; they include those about 9/11, etc.   The question is how many people read and how many people believe these conspiracy theories of history; how scientific or realistic are they.  Do people have to examine the reality and facts closer to see the reality, not conspiracy.  Are there a lack of facts available?  Is there, for instance, a lack of closure about the Armenian genocide, because of Turkey’s policy of not allowing free discussion, or lack of taking responsibility for it, that creates a need to blame the Jews, or a desire to blame the Jews to bring closure and not accept responsibility for the Turkish people’s crimes.  
    A psychologist wrote a book about the conspiracy theories on the internet.  There are really a lot of them, if you believe in science fiction and fiction like theories which a lot of people seem to gather together in groups and follow on the internet.     

  52. As to who ordered the genocide of the Armenians, all books, including Morgenthau , I believe, blame the Germans for ordering the genocide.  It was not part of a conspiracy theory of the Jews.
    I can quote from an old book I have from a family friend who lived in Turkey at the time.  He said everyone can write a book, and this is from his book concerning his  life in Turkey.  “Turkey – Key to the East,” by Chester Tobin.  He taught at Macalester College in Minnesota and was there to coach the first Turkish Olympic Racing team.
    1.  “Thus, tragically, the Christian  nations’ meddling in the internal affairs of the Ottoman Empire created in the warped mind of Sultan Abdul Hamid II a distrust and hatred of the Armenians.”
    2.  “The First World War broke on a weak and corrupt Ottoman Empire.  German ober-officers were everywhere with the Turkish troops.  By the spring of 1915 the Russians were pouring their troops through the Caucasus to launch their offensive against the eastern Ottoman front where lived many of the Armenians.  The usual war propaganda was pushed over on these unfortunate people by the Russians.  They were encouraged to betray their brutal rulers and help in their liberation by their Christian Russian brothers.  Weapons of war were provided.  Indeed to many Armenians it seemed their only hope.  Armenian resistance became a real menace to the Turkish defense.  German officers and civilians scattered throughout the Armenian districts.  They instigated with Prussian thoroughness the wholesale deportations of the Armenians from near the front.  The Armenian massacres, HISTORIANS AGREE, were not an impetuous act of fanatical Moslems bent on exterminating Christians.  They were the result of the cold-blooded political policy of a weak Ottoman govt. influenced by the Prussians.  It was the Prussians’ secret conviction that this was the logical time to eliminate a talented people whose functions in the Empire they intended to take over entirely after military victory had been achieved.  This combination of cruel circumstances led to some of the worst crimes committed in the First World War.  The Armenians were nearly exterminated.”  Then the Germans exterminated the Jews in WWII. 
    The missionary said the Turks were fearful of the Armenians. 
    This fear and prejudice also led to the murderof the Armenians and crimes against humanity committed.  Although there were some Armenian instigators, they could have been arrested by the Turks.  Instead the whole Armenian people was massacred.   The story the Turks tell about the armed Armenians in revolt is just false; the Turks had fear and prejudice against the Armenians.  They massacred an unarmed people due to the influence of the Germans. 
    There are books written by witnesses as to who ordered the genocide; all I read blame the Germans.
    Then I also read the triumphirate was just stupid and susceptible to follow the the Germans, as the Germans were only interested in their own interests, not in Turkey.
    The Jewish conspiracy theory that blames the Jews for all the evils in the world, attributes too much power to them, and says they rule the world,  is a fiction.
    There are the accounts by people who lived there at the time, including Morgenthau, and there are conspiracy theories.   One account is fact, the other is fiction.  I agree that any historical rendering of events should stick to facts, not fiction.  I suppose that is the trouble with Turkey’s historical commission; will it be fact or fiction?  The facts have been established; will Turkey teach facts or fiction to their people, or let the facts be published in Turkey and around the world without punishment?  Will they continue to tinker with our educational system and try to implant their fiction in our educational system.  I think this is a serious threat.  As long as they censor fact, conspiracy theories might continue as an alternate fiction to historical fact. 

  53. This talk about Jewish conspiracy against the Armenians is a Turkish propaganda. Not only Turks are getting desperate to blame their crime against the Armenians, they are trying to distance Jews from Armenians. Dear Armenians, do not fall for this trap. What Turks are doing is drawing other peoples into the Genocide equation,  to lessen their responsibility committing the Genocide.
    Any sane Armenian knows that Israeli-Turkish relations are temporary, we are seeing the resurgence of Islamic Turkey, and are well prepared to face the threat from Islamic Turkish republic.
    Turks have to come to term with their murderous past. Yes, the  Ottomans massacred 1.5 million Armenians, and as Ovid said in his post, it is about time Turks come clean, leave their murderous past behind them and join the world community of civilized countries.
    The Genocide was and still is the first mass murder of human beings on the hands of other human beings.  We deal with Turks every day, they are all cowards, I assure my Armenian friends that they will never accept their responsibility murdering innocent people. They are quick to betray their friends.
    Here is an example. We supported Turkey through thin and thick, but then they turn and when you least suspect, draw their knives and try to kill you. remember Erdogan the Islamist terrorist who tried to shame Israel? That is how Muslim Turks are.
    And they want to join the european Union, what a joke.
    I rather have 10 million Armenians living in Israel, then one Muslim Turk..aaaargh

  54. All this Israel love fest is quite disturbing for me as an Armenian. What’s with all the lofty talk by these  Zionists and their subservient Armenian lackeys? Let’s remember that Israeli Jews are to regional Arabs what Turks are to Armenians. And before we continue bashing Germans let’s also remember that at the time in question Jews were in German what they are in America today. Besides having a clear hand in the Turk’s genocidal campaign against Armenians during the early part of the 20th century, organized Jewry is the greatest obstacle against our Hai Dat in the early part of the 21st century…

  55. The Germans had a very heavy involvement in what befell the Armenians from Abdul Hamid up to the reign of the CUP. It was the Kaiser himself who personally presented a medal to Abdul Hamid after the massacres of the 1890’s

  56. It is a fact that andrew jackson was a freemason and belonged to the Presbyterian church. That has nothing to do with his signing of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, which resulted in the full scale genocide of the Native Indians. Are Presbyterian responsible for the Native Indian’s Genocide? No, all Americans are responsible, regardless of when they came to this country.
    It is also a fact that hitler was born in Austria. should Austria pay compensations to Israel?
    Many countries and groups had direct and indirect interests in wiping out the Armenians from that part of the world, such as Germany and Kurds. maybe a group of Jews did also. But that doesn’t mean they should be or could be recognized as criminal parties under international law.
    In any genocide the whole infrastructure of the government is involved. And always in the society the potential for it, has already been built up over at least a few decades.
    I think it’s best to ignore people like christopher bjerknes, since their reasoning is false. But we should never shy away from facts. Specially historians should not be intimidated by being labeled as “ani-semitic”.
    Yes, major figures amongst the young tucks were Domme and/or freemasons. So what?!?
    If christopher bjerknes works under a popetier, and this whole thing is part of a game or a trap, we should not play their game, because no matter what, it will be  a lose-lose situation for us.

  57. The issue, as I see it, is not what ethnicity some in the highest echelons of the CUP belonged to or whether or not they were initiated in secret societies. The issue is about the fact that both Bloody Sultan Abdul Hamid II and the Ittihadists represented the official governments of the Ottoman Turkish Empire. The fact that some of those rulers were not purely ethnic Turks (after all who is a “purely ethnic” Turk? Seljuk? Mongol?) does not shrink the stigma of genocide perpetrators that modern-day Turkish government obstinately refuses to wash off. Even if some top CUP members were crypto-Jews and Freemasons, as it appears they were, who were hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of mass murderers, executioners, generals, local administrators, soldiers, gendarmes, the Chettes, mutilators, rapists, looters, thieves, and settlers in the course of the Armenian Genocide in 1915-1923? Were they not ethnic Turks?

  58. Murat,
     
    You mean Ittihadists should have sent telegraph wires on their decision to eliminate the Armenian race throughout the world? Or maybe the descendants of the eliminated race might know better as to what had happened to Western Armenians in 1915-1923? Kindly explain why would descendents of the Armenian race be “here and there and everywhere” if their ancestral homeland for millennia has been the Armenian Plateau (all eastern parts of modern-day Turkey)? Also explain what could have possibly happen to roughly 2 million Ottoman citizens of Armenian descent, since only 60,000 now reside in modern-day Turkey?
     
    “Turks have had to face many facts regarding their history… This topic is only one of them.” This topic (the Armenian Genocide) is the most haunting of them, because Armenians were subjected to the most barbarian, cruel race annihilation by the Ottoman Turks. Other topics, indeed, are the elimination of other indigenous Christian peoples of Asia Minor: the Greeks and the Assyrians. The times when Turks could have faced many ugly facts regarding their history have passed. Now is the time for paying for the crimes.
     
    Would be interested to learn more about a new, hitherto unexplored, page in history of the mankind introduced by Murat about some “war”(?!) that the Armenians waged against the Ottoman Empire. Also kindly explain if interethnic, intercommunal “infighting and killings” that was widespread in the Ottoman Empire could be regarded as adequate to the deliberate, state-sponsored mass annihilation and forced deportation of a particular ethnic, national,  racial, and religious group.
     
    Survivor and witness accounts, CUP leaders’ announcements, official correspondence of the foreign diplomats and missionaries, Turkish Martial tribunals’ verdicts, tons of thoroughly researched material by historians, international lawyers, genocide scholars, and resolutions of dozens of foreign parliaments and professional associations, advocacy and human rights groups, and Nobel Prize laureates about the fact of genocide of Armenians by the Turks are not “wishful thinking.” Wishful thinking is to believe that the murderer state can eventually get away with murder…

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