 |
|
EVENTS
|
|
"What Really Happened On April 24, 1915?"
TORONTO - Professor Ataöv, who has been painstakingly researching the Armenian tragedy for over 50 years, is undoubtedly one of the most knowledgeable authorities on the topic. For the past two years, his lecture series in North America have been attracting tremendous interest because of the meticulous supporting evidence he provides for each and every argument he presents. He started his lecture titled "What Really Happened on April 24, 1915" quoting one of his many resources, the Dictionary of the First World War by Stephen Pope and Elizabeth-Anne Wheal: "This outstanding British source states on pages 34 and 35 that between 1 and 1.5 million Armenians were living in Turkey in 1914 and that the Armenian nationalists 'slaughtered an estimated 120,000 non-Armenians while the Turkish army was pre-occupied with mobilization.' It adds that '2,500 rebels took Van in April 1915 and proclaimed a provisional government and that the Armenian forces resumed control in 1917 killing perhaps another 50,000 non-Armenians.'" A captivating speaker, Professor Ataöv, during his three-hour presentation to an audience of 300 people at the University of Toronto, talked in detail about the Armenian revolt in Van and the events leading to April of 1915, as well as the arrest of 235 Dashnak and Hinchak party members who have been suspected of being the ring-leaders of the revolt, and what happened to them after their arrest. Professor Ataöv's main arguments consisted of the following points for which he provided irrefutable evidence, mostly from the Armenian sources: Amongst the Ottoman Armenians there was a large group of rebels who were armed and fighting against Ottoman armies under Russian or British command. They organized an uprising to break away from Ottoman state to form an independent nation and most importantly, they were engaged in treason by disrupting communications' infrastructure and army resource paths to cripple the mobilized forces at the front lines. Professor Ataöv displayed the photographs of Armenian volunteer bands who have posed with a plethora of weapons and ammunition in Urfa, Amasya, Malatya, Sivas, Kayseri, Diyarbakir, Adapazary, Mus and Bitlis, as well as the photos of Armenians in British uniforms when they were fighting against the Turks in the Sinai Peninsula. The fact that the Armenians had joined the Russian armies and helped the allied forces behind the enemy lines were documented by Armenian sources, in the form of letters, articles, memoirs and history books. Bogos Nubar Pasha wrote letters to the Allied negotiators during Paris peace talks after WWI, boasting that Ottomans lost the war because of the Armenian contributions to the Allied war efforts. Türkkaya Ataöv also cited Katchaznouni's manifesto which he delivered to his party's congress in Bucharest in July of 1923. First Prime Minister of the independent Armenian Republic of 1920s, Hovhannes Katchaznouni's honest admission of the Armenian mistakes, reveals the complexity of the tragedy: "At the beginning of the Fall of 1914 when Turkey had not entered the war but had already been making preparations, Armenian revolutionary bands began to be formed in Transcaucasia with great enthusiasm and, especially, with much uproar... It would be useless to argue today whether our bands of volunteers should have entered the field or not. Historical events have their irrefutable logic. In the Fall of 1914 Armenian volunteer bands organized themselves and fought against the Turks because they could not refrain themselves from fighting. This was an inevitable result of a psychology on which the Armenian people nourished itself during an entire generation: that mentality should have found its expression, and did so... We had created a dense atmosphere of illusion in our minds. We had implanted our own desires into the minds of others; we had lost our sense of reality and were carried away with our dreams... We overestimated the ability of the Armenian people, its political and military power, and overestimated the extent and importance of the services our people rendered to the Russians. And by overestimating our very modest worth and merit we were naturally exaggerating our hopes and expectations..." Professor Ataöv emphasized that the Ottoman government had no choice but to react to the actions of the armed Armenian guerrillas harming the war effort, noting that Ottoman state was fighting in WWI against the allied forces on more than three fronts: Dardanelles war that had started on April 24th 1915, ongoing fighting on the Eastern front against Tsarist Russian forces and the struggle against British forces in the South. In this context, on 24th of April, Ottoman government issued a decree to round up the leaders of Dashnak and Hinchak parties, whose party programs contained starting a general uprising in May 1915. On 24 April 1915, 235 party leaders who were charged with conspiring against the government and for planning an uprising, were moved to small towns in Anatolia. All 235 of them were accounted for at the end of the war. Except for two of them who had died of natural causes and another one who was killed by common criminals who were caught and punished for their crime, all of them survived the war. Professor Ataöv explained in detail how each one responded to the charges against them and how their defences were treated. For instance, one of them was freed after he was able to prove that it was not himself, but his son whom the authorities were after. Those who successfully demonstrated their innocence were free to return back to Istanbul. Some of them showed proof of citizenship of other countries such as the United States or Britain and they were allowed to depart for those countries. Not one person of the April 24 arrests was killed by the authorities. Professor Ataöv noted that the names, professions and other information regarding these individuals were meticulously recorded by the Ottoman government, notorious for its extensive recording and archiving systems. In response to a question from a member of the audience, Türkkaya Ataöv explained how it was absolutely impossible for the highly bureaucratic Ottoman system to issue two sets of orders by sending two sets of contradicting telegrams, as alleged by some Armenians to support their claim of the government's intent to have the Armenians. Professor Ataöv made it very clear that the alleged dual telegram scheme could not have been possible in a system of excessive documentation and archival such as the Ottoman government's, and even if it had been possible, it is absurd to think that the scheme would have worked since the recipients of the telegrams were soldiers under order and they would not have known which order to carry out and which telegram to believe. After three hours of presenting proof after proof, document after document against the Armenian allegations of genocide, when Professor Ataöv's lecture ended, the audience who has been listening with undivided attention and who seemed to be willing to listen for another three hours, applauded the professor with a standing ovation. Bizim Anadolu readers may visit http://www.vimeo.com/11027427 to watch an interview with Professor Türkkaya Ataöv taped by the Turkuaz TV crew the day after the lecture. May-June 2010 |
| l |
