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Confiscation and Colonization: The Young Turk Seizure of Armenian PropertyPos ted By Ugur Ungor On April 22, 2011 @ 8:14 am In Opinion,Special Reports | 57 Comments

Leave all your belongingsyour furniture, your beddings, your artifacts. Close your shops and businesses with everything ins ide. Your doors wil l be sealed with special stamps. On your return, you will get everything you left behind. Do not s ell property or any expensive item.Buyers and sellers alike will be liable for legal action. Put your money in a bank in the name of a relative who is out of the country. Make a

list of everything you own, including livestock, and give it to the s pecified official so that all your things can be returned to you later. Youhave ten days to comply with this ultimatum. [1]

Government promulgation hanged in public places in Kayseri, June 15, 1915.

The Armenian W eeklyApril 2011 Magazine

Introduction

This article is based on a forthcoming monograph on the expropriation of Ottoman Armenians during the 1915 genocide. [2] It willparaphrase s ome of the main arguments o f the boo k, which details the emergence o f Turkish economic nationalism, offers insight intothe economic ramifications of the genocidal process, and describes how the plunder was organized on the ground. The bookdiscusses the interrelated nature of property confiscation initiated by the Young Turk regime and its cooperating local elites, andoffers new insights into the functions and beneficiaries of state-sanctioned robbery. Drawing on secret files and unexamined recordsfrom eight languages, the book presents new evidence to demonstrate how Armenians suffered systematic plunder and destruction,and how ordinary Turks we re assigned a range of property for their progress.

This two-way policy is captured in the two concepts of confiscation and colonization . The book use s the concept of confiscation tocapture the involvement of an extensive bureaucratic apparatus and illustrate the legal facade during the dispossession of Armenians. Furthermore, it will deploy the concep t of colonization to denote the redistribution of their property as a form of internalcolonization. Together, these concepts best encapsulate the twin processes of seizing property from Armenians, and reassigning it toTurks. [3]

The book is situated in the field of genocide studies, and starts off by asking questions that have been answered fairly satisfactorilyfor other genocides such as the Holocaust and the Rwandan Genocide: Was confiscation of the victim groups properties economicallymotivated as a mere instrument for material gain? Did the Young Turk regime distribute Armenian property to local elites in exchangefor support for the genocide? In other words, did they simply buy their loyalty by appealing to their sense of economic self-interest?Or did the local elite support the destruction and expropriation out of ideological convictions? Finally, what was the scope of thedispossession process? In other words, how wide was the circle of profiteurs? Did just the Young Turk elite, from the imperial capitaldow n to the provincial tow ns, profit from it, or did much wider classes in Turkish society bene fit?

The book consists of se ven chapters that can be divided into three se ctions. Chapters tw o a nd three constitute the first section andwill discuss main issues such as ideology and law. Chapter two, entitled Ideological
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A 1918 photo of the Armenian church inTrabzon, which was us ed as a de pot anddistribution center for confiscated property.(Photo from Raymond Kvorkian and PaulPaboudjian's book "Les Armniens la veilledu gnocide.")

foundations : constructing the Turkish national economy, will trace the evolution of the Turkish-nationalist ideology o f building a purely Turkish na tional econo my within the multi-ethnic Ottoman economic landscape. It will discuss how the YoungTurk Party envisioned such a Turkish econo my to come into being by analyzing thewritings of leading Young Turk ideologues. Rather than macro-economic analyses of Ottoman financial policy in the early 20 th century, the chapter will investigate howthe party imagined the role of the state and the economic progress of the ethnicTurkish populat ion.

Immediately following it is chapter three, entitled Legal foundations: using the justice s ystem for injustice. This chap ter w ill close ly analyze the many laws anddecrees that the Young Turk regime passed to provide a veneer of legality to theircrimes. It will see k to answ er the question: Why did the Young Turk regime feel theneed to pass elaborate laws on the s tatus of w artime Armenian property? It willdiscuss not only the laws that w ere adopted by the regime, but also the legal statusof Armenian property. The chapte r will distinguish the legal provenance of land andimmovable prope rty versus movables.

Chapter four, The dispossession of Armenians during the genocide, 1915-1918, constitutes a section in itself. It will examine the development of the genocide andtrace Young Turk economic policies to wa rds the Armenian populat ion from the YoungTurk coup dta t in 1913 to the fa ll of the regime in 1918. It will chart how this policymoved from boycott to d iscrimination, into confiscation and outright p lunder,

resulting in the mass paupe rization of the victims. It identifies main currents anddevelopments of this ruthless policy and how it affected Ottoman Armeniancommunities. The chapter is meant to be a general introduction to the next three important chapters.

The third and last section of the book comprises chapters five and six. They are each in-depth case studies of several importantprovinces in the Ottoman Empire. Chapter five, Adana: the cotton belt, will be the first of two case studies that describe theorganized plunder of Armenians and the subsequent deployment and allocation of Armenian property to Turks. It will focus on thesouthern city of Adana, where Armenians were employed in cotton fields, and describe how the local Young Turks dispossessedArmenians and assigned the property to Turkish refugees from the Balkans.

Chapter six, Diyarbekir: the land of copper and silk, is the second and last case study, concentrating on the southeastern region of Diyarbekir, famous for its coppe r and silk products. Here, economic life in the ba zaa r was dominated by Armenian artisans. Thechapter will de scribe how the local perpetrators participated in the destruction of their Armenian neighbors and were rewarded by thecentral authorities. It will also focus on large-scale corruption and embezzlement. [4]

Finally, chapter seven, the conclusion, will re-center the main questions posed in this introduction and draw the general conclusions of each chapter together. It will report in a direct style how and w hy the Armenians we re dispossess ed during the ge nocide, how thisaffected local economies, and ho w o rdinary Turks profited from the expropriation campaign.

Confiscation

The Armenian Genocide consisted of an overlapping set of processes: elite homicides, deportations, massacres, forced assimilation,destruction of material culture, and our current theme, expropriation. Although these dimensions of the genocide differed and werecarried out by different agencies, they converged in their objective: destruction. By the end of the w ar, the approximately 2,900Anatolian Armenian settlements (villages, towns, neighborhoods) were depopulated and the majority of its inhabitants dead. What
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made the massacres genocidal is that the genocide targeted the abstract category of group identity, in that all Armenians, loyal o rdisloyal, were destroyed.

The qualitative leap in the e limination of the Armenians from the Ottoman economy reached an important acceleration w ith theproclamation of war and the abolishment of the capitulations. The abrogation of the capitulations was a unilateral breach of international law and a catalyst that channelized high levels of power into the Young Turks hands. Turkification could now besystematized into a comprehensive empire-wide policy of harassment, organized boycotts, violent attacks, exclusions fromprofessional associations and guilds, and mass dismissals of Armenian employees from the public service and plunder of theirbusinesses in the private sector.

The confiscation process began right after the deportation of the Armenian owners. As a rule of thumb, no prior arrangements weremade regarding the properties. The Committee o f Union and Progress (CUP) launched both the deportation and the dispossession o f Armenians well before the promulgation of any laws or official decrees. The deportation decrees of May 23, 1915 and the deportationlaw o f May 27, 1915 we re issued a fter the deportations had already begun. Decrees and laws merely served to unite the hithertodiverse practices and render the overall policy more consistent. So too was the CUPs approach to confiscation. Telegrams to variousprovinces ordering the liquidation of immovable property were followed by the streamlined program of June 10, 1915 that establishedthe key agency overseeing the liquidation processthe Abandoned Properties Commission ( Emvl- Metruke Komisyonu ). These werenot yet christened Liquidation Commissions, but nevertheless mostly fulfilled that function.

Officially, there were 33 commissions across the country, and in towns without any, the local CUP chapter often took charge of thetasks. These consisted of inventorizing, liquidating, appropriating, and a llocating Armenian property. The most detailed a nd reliableinformation w e have abou t the commissions is from Germans sta tioned in the Ottoman Empire. For example, Deutsche Bank staff members recognized that the Ottoman Bank collaborated in the endeavour. [5] From its correspondence with the provinces, theGerman ambassador concluded that the confiscation process went through two phases: the direct liquidation of all unplunderedArmenian property by the Abandoned Properties Commission, and the transfer of the revenues to the Ottoman Bank that heldresponsibility for the money. [6] According to Andr Mande lstam, in 1916 a sum of 5,000,000 Turkish lira (the e quivalent of 30,000kilograms of gold) was deposited by the Ottoman government at the Reichsbank in Berlin. This astronomic amount of money was mostprobably the aggregate of all Armenian bank accounts, as well as the total sum gained from the liquidations in the provinces. [7]Furthermore, German diplomats argued that the commissions w orked in tande m with the Grand Vezirate, the Finance Ministry, andthe Justice Ministry. [8] The entire operation was supervised by the Interior Ministry, which was tasked with an enormous amount of coordination and recordkeeping. These records have survived and I will draw on them extensively to outline the process of dispossession.

At the outset, the problem of property was a concomitant effect of the deportations and there was probably no blueprint for it writtenby Talaat Pasha and his henchmen. Throughout 1915 and 1916, the Interior Ministry issued hundreds of directives, orders, decrees,and injunctions to provincial, district, and city authorities. When deportation came, it recorded the names, professions, and propertiesof Armenians, be fore expropriating them and liquidating their immovables. Several empire-wide decrees sketched the contours o f the

confiscation policy. Liquidation entailed auctioning and selling the property to the lowest, not highest, bidder. To this end, on Aug. 29,1915 the Inte rior Ministry wired a circular telegram summoning autho rities to auction aba ndoned Armenian prop erty for the bene fit of the local Turkish pop ulation. [9] As this order sufficed for the ongoing deportations, preparations were made for future ones. On Nov.1, 1915, the ministry ordered the drawing up of lists of Armenian merchants from provinces who have not yet been transported toother reg ions, including deta ils on their trading firms, real esta te, factories, the est imated worth of all their belongings, informationon their relatives living abroad, and whether they were working with foreign business partners. [10] To preclude jurisdictional dispute sfrom arising, the ministry admonished that the only agency authorized to organize the expropriation was the Abandoned PropertiesCommission. [11]

Talaat and the Interior Ministry he presided over were soon facing two acute problems: ambiguity regarding the forms andprovenance of property, and delimiting the scope of the expropriations. An example of the former trend was a question asked by the
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provincial authorities of Aleppo, namely whether only Apostolic Armenians were to be expropriated or also Protestant and Catholicones . By then, the de finition of the victim group had already trans formed from a religious de finition bas ed on the millet system, to anationa l definition. Thus, the ministry arbitrated that the targe ts were no t only Apostolic Armenians but all Armenians. [12] TheGerman consul of Trabzon remarked that under this law, technically, an Armenian converted to Islam would then be deported as aMohammedan Armenian. [13]

Other provinces wondered what to do with the property of undeported Armenians, often military families. The ministry ordered thatfor now, they would be a llowe d to keep their property. [14] In another case, three go vernors asked for advice on how to handle thesowed fields of Armenian farmers. The ministry admitted that the abstract decrees did not always correspond to the existingconditions on the ground a nd ordered: These need to be reaped and threshed under the supervision of the Abandoned Properties

Commissions and provided for by the funds for the expenses of the settlers. Report within two days how many soldiers or labourersfrom the population, and which kinds of machines and tools and utensils are needed to harvest the crops. [15]

These prescriptive provisions were supplemented by prohibitive rules. Those Armenians who anticipated that the deportations were atemporary measure counted on renting out their houses, stables, barns, or shops to neighbors and acquaintances. But the ministryprohibited this practice. [16] Those Armenians who attempted to sell their property to foreigners and other Christians (such as Greeksor Christian Arabs) were also counteracted. It issued a circular telegram prohibiting decidedly ( suret-i katiyyede ) the sale of any landor other property to foreigners. [17] Furthermore, the government prohibited Armenians from a whole host of strategies to avoidseizure o f their property. These included transferring property to non-Ottoman Armenians, se nding it abroad to family members,giving valuables to American missionaries and consuls, mailing it directly to their new residences at their final destinations . It is thes ekinds of prohibitions that shed light on the rationale behind the expropriations. They strongly suggest that there was no intention of either compensa ting Armenians fa irly for their disposse ssion, or offering them any prospe ct of a future return to the ir homes. HilmarKaiser has rightly concluded that these res trictions w ere a plain admission of official criminal intent. [18]

A more precise explanation perhaps lays in a revealing telegram sent by the go vernment to Balkesir District. It read that theexpropriation needed to be carried out to e nsure that the transported pop ulation w ill no longer have any connection to posse ssionsand owne rship ( nakledilen ahalinin alka- mlkiyet ve tasarrufu kalmamasn temn ).[19] In other words, the relationship betw eenArmenians and their property needed to be definitively severed to bring about a lasting de-Armenization of the land. Three yearslater, the German consul at Trabzon, Heinrich Bergfeld, correctly noted tha t the most important de cision had bee n dep riving thelandowners of the right to dispose of their immovable property. At the end of the war, he reflected on the fate of the Armeniandeportees: If one believes they cannot be allowed to definitively return to their old homes, one should at least give them the generalpermission to make use of their real estate through sale or rent, and temporarily allow them to go to their homelands for thispurpose. [20] This w ould turn out to be a naive proposition.

Colonization

The appropriation of Armenian property by the Young Turk regime, or to be more precise, the Young Turk regimes mass theft o f

Armenian property, is closely related to the morphology of the organization, coordination, and implementation of the genocide. Recentstudies have challenged the convention that the genocide had a uni-polar pyramid structure. On the contrary, the genocide was amulti-polar process: radicalization came from within and without, and emanated from different perpetrating power centers, such ascivil and military organizations , the pa rty, the nexus Talaat-Enver, and local e lites. [21] Competition and conflict betwee n these sectorsshaped the genocide. As a result, the confiscation of Armenian property and its allocation to Turks became a bone of contentionbetw een the Ottoman army and the Interior Ministry. The army attempted to a cquire movable a nd immovable Armenian property forits military ends, but the ministry followed its ideological prescript of forging a na tional economy and a damantly assigned theprope rty to the ups tart Turkish middle class .

The confiscation of Armenian property was followed and supplemented by the colonization by Ottoman Muslims of the empty spacesthey left behind. As Armenians trudged along the deportation routes southwards, their property was being redistributed by the
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Interior Ministry. Analytically we can distinguish two dimensions to this process: property that ended up in private hands, andproperty that stayed in posses sion of the state.

In 1916, the CUP expanded its existing Turkification campaign to p ractically all sectors of Ottoman society. Starting with ge ography,the CUP began Turkifying place names. On Jan. 5, 1916 Enver Pasha ordered the Turkification of all Armenian, Greek, and Bulgarianplace names, including cities, towns , provinces, districts, villages, mountains, and rivers. This was an a ttempt to w ipe out thegeographical imprints of non-Turkish cultures. Although the decree w as suspended fo r reasons of military practicability, the practicewas picked up after the w ar and continued well into the 1980s and changed tens of thousands of Armenian place names. [22] The2,900 Armenian settlements were now not only emptied of their population, but also stripped of their names. It was as if Armenianshad never lived there.

A day after Envers decree, on Jan. 6, 1916, Talaat ordered an empire-wide decree about the businesses confiscated in the genocide.The order read:

The movable property left by the Armenians should be conserved for long-term preservation, and for the sake of an increase of Muslim businesses in our country, companies need to be established strictly made up of Muslims. Movable property should begiven to them under suitable conditions that will guarantee the businesss steady consolidation. The founder, the management,and the representatives should be chosen from honorable leaders and the elite, and to allow tradesmen and a griculturists toparticipate in its dividends, the vouchers need to be half a lira or one lira and registered to their names to preclude that thecapital falls in foreign hands. The growth of entrepreneurship in the minds of Muslim people needs to be monitored, and thisendeavor and the results of its implementation need to be reported to the ministry step by step. [23]

This order constitutes perhaps the most unequivocal document attesting to the intentions and policies of the CUP. It encapsulates theideology o f Turkification and nationa l economy in a single, explicit, incontrovertible formulation.

The order was followed up by several other prescriptive ones ordering the redistribution of Armenian lands to Muslim merchants. TheCUP sanctioned the complete transfer of business and industrial enterprises to the upcoming Turkish middle class in each and everylocality. Special care was to be taken that the workbenches, implements, and furniture in the many stores and workshops were notdispersed but s tayed in their places. [24] Other decrees were concerned with norms and rules for correct usage. For example,auctioning needed to be properly carried out for the long-term development of the businesses, according to the Jan. 6 decree. Duringan auction in Kayseri, a Turk bought a formerly Armenian workshop for 200 Turkish lira, only to se ll it for 2,000 lira two days late r andpocket the d ifference. The ministry strongly condemned this act and instructed the Abandoned Properties Co mmission to rectify thesituation. [25]

After this event, a circular was wired to all provinces prohibiting similar practices and underlining again the importance o f Muslims familiarization w ith commercial life and the build-up of Muslim-owned business enterprises in our country. [26] Long-term goals hadabsolute priority above short-term benefits. Dilapidation, waste, and negligence were unacceptable too. The ministry admonished the

Abandoned Properties Commissions to take proper care and a ssist the new Muslim owners a s much as possible. If any help wasneeded, the commissions should turn to the ministry. [27] As a result o f this policy, a who le gene ration of Turkish-owned firmsestablished in 1916mushroomed across the empire. [28]

Before the Young Turks seized power in the 1913 coup dtat, hatred of Armenians (and Greeks) was particularly widespread in thecommercial middle class . Curtailing the e conomic livelihood of Armenians w as in their interests . Turkification, therefore, ha dparticularly favorable economic consequences for these (lower) middle-class Turks, as the liquidation of Armenian middle-classenterprises relieved the pressure of economic competition. It foresaw the promotion of a new generation of Turkish businessmen whoenriched themselves from the vulnerability of the persecuted Armenians. The newspaper kdam published an article openly exhortingTurks to get rich in the e conomic revolution:

Pharmaceutics, grocery shops, dentistry, transporta tion, contracting is rapidly spread ing among Turks. Our friends have begun


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competing with many nations in employment branches tha t are a s yet new fields of activity in our country, like electricians work,enginee ring, and similar It is the revolution in this nations society and economy, rathe r than the political changes , that will savethis nation ( bu milleti kurtaracak ) and w ill provide him with an eternal life. [29]

The government offered ordinary Turks incredible prospects of upward social mobility. With a giant leap forward, a nation of peasants,pastoralists, soldiers, and bureaucrats would now jumpstart to the level of the bourgeoisie, the respectable and modern middleclasses. The groups who benefited most from this policy were the landowners and the urban merchants. [30] When shortages arosein 1916, the party leadership allowed that group of merchants close to the party to monopolize import, supply, and distribution.Defraudation and malpractice occurred in this alliance by individual party members and merchants who enriched themselves a t theexpense o f the Istanbulites.

As the genocide was raging in full force, Turkish settlers were on their way. Local preparations were needed in order to lodge thesettlers successfully. The ministry iterated its reque st for economic and geo graphic data o n the emptied Armenian villages. In order tosend settlers to the provinces, the local capacities to absorb them had to be determined. The Interior Ministry requested informationon the number of Armenian households deported, whether the emptied villages were conducive to colonization by settlers, and if so,how many. [31] It also demanded data on the size of the land, number of farms, and potential number of settler households. [32] Thebooks were kept precisely. According to Talaats own notebook, in 1915 the amount of property allocated to settlers was: 20,545buildings, 267,536 acres o f land, 76,942 acres o f vineyards, 7,812 acres of ga rdens, 703,491 acres of olive groves , 4,573 acres o f mulberry gardens , 97 acres o f orange fields, 5 carts, 4,390 animals, 2,912 agricultural implements, and 524,788 planting se eds. [33]

Last but not least, the CUP elite took the cream of the crop of Armenian property for itself. Ahmed Refik observed the colonizationprocess:

Silence reigns in Eskiehir The elega nt Armenian houses around the train station a re bare a s bone. This community, with itswealth, its trade, its superior values, became subject to the governments order, emptied its housesnow all emptied houses,valuable rugs, stylish rooms, its closed doors, are basically at the grace of the refugees. Eskiehirs most modernized and prettyhouses lay around the train station A large Armenian mansion for the princes, two canary-yellow adjacent houses near theSarsu bridge to Talaat Bey and his friend Canbolat Bey, a wonderful Armenian mansion in the Armenian neighborhood to Topalsmail Hakk. All the houses convenient for residing near the train station have all been allocated to the elite of theIttihadists. [34]

Even Sultan Mehmed Read V received his share. This process of assigning the very best property to Young Turks was intensifiedafter 1919 by the Kemalists. Indeed, possibly the most important recipient of the redistribution of Armenian properties was the stateitself.

The various Ministries (Education, Health, Justice) greatly benefited from the coloniza tion process . The Interior Ministry granted thempermission to choose from Armenian property buildings it wanted to use as their offices. The state, led by the CUP, was lavished withproperty up to the highest levels. A famous example of confiscated Armenian property is the story of the Kasabian vineyard house inAnkara. In December 1921, amidst the Greco-Turkish War, Mustafa Kemal was touring the area when he noticed the splendid houseof the wealthy Ankara jeweler and merchant Kasabian. The house had been occupied by the noted Bulgurluzde family after theKasabians had been dispossessed and deported. Mustafa Kemal liked the house and bought it from Bulgurluzde Tevfik Efendi for4,500 Turkish lira. From then on, the compound has been known as the ankaya Palace ( ankaya Kk ), the official residence o f thepresident of Turkey up to today. [35]

Conclusion

The expropriation of Ottoman Armenians was necessary for the destruction process in general. Dispossessed and uprooted, theOttoman Armenians chances of survival and maintenance gradua lly shrunk to a minimum. Every step in the persecution proces scontributed to the weakening and emasculating of Armenians. It robbed them not only of their possessions, but also of possibilities


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for escape, refuge, or resistance. The more they were dispossessed, the more defenseless they became against Young Turkmeasures.

The structure of this process can be analyzed a t three levels: the macro, meso, and micro-levels, bearing in mind the relevantconnections between the three levels. The macro-level concerns the context and structure of the political elite that led the empire towar and genocide. They launched the policies out of ideological conviction: the war offered an indispensable opportunity to establishthe na tional econo my through Turkification. They create d a universe of impunity in wh ich every institution and individual belowthem could think of Armenians as outlawed and their property as fair game, up for grabs. If it is the opportunity that creates thecrime, then Talaat created an opportunity structure in which ordinary Turks came to plunder on a mass scale.

Now the second level enters into force. Within the structure of national policy were nestled developments such as complex decision-making processes, the necessity and logic of a division of labor, the emergence of specialized confiscation units, and the segregationand destruction of the victim group. This level was characterized by competition, contestation, and clashes over coveted property.Local elites and state institutions such as the army, several ministries, the fiscal autho rities, the provincial government, and the p arty,collaborated for their own reasons. The main agencies were the police, militia, and civil administration. Several ministries w ereinvolved in the e xpropriation process and be nefited grea tly from it, most notably the Ministries of Education, Justice, Finance, Health,and Interior. The Ottoman Bank and the Agricultural Bank exploited the process unscrupulously for their own ends . The effects o f theeconomic war against the Armenians raise questions about the implication of these institutions.

At the micro-level, the proces s facilitated hundreds of thousands of individual thefts o f deported victims, carried out by ordinary Turks.The mechanisms that propelled plunder were horizontal pull-factors and incentives (zero-sum competition with other plunderers), andvertical pressure (the beginning of the process did not contain precise decrees but was open for liberal interpretation). Thus, ordinaryTurks profited in different wa ys: Considerable sections of Ottoman-Turkish society we re complicit in the spoliation. Wherea s in thecountryside a Hobbesian world of unchecked power was unleashed, in the cities, the CUP launched a more careful, restrained pathdue to firmly estab lished and complex social and bureaucratic structures. This level is in particular important to study the materialbene fits that accrued to figures w ithin the Young Turk Party. In an in-depth study of the phenomenon o f class in Turkey, alarKeyder concluded that there wa s usually one-to-one correspondence betw een the roster of the C ommittee of Union and P rogresslocal organization and the sha reholders of new companies. [36] Yusuf Akura too, reflected after the war on the CUPs economicpolicies in the past decade and concluded that in Anatolia, the Muslim real estate owners and business elite have completelyembraced the Committee of Union and Progress. [37] These a rbitrary, corrupt, and nepo tistic activities to ok place beh ind the juridicalfacade of government decree.

But history is full of unforeseen and unintended consequences of policies and ideologies. The great unintended consequence of theYoung Turk governments dispossess ion of Armenians w as the oppo rtunity it offered local Turks for se lf-enrichment. To the InteriorMinistry, this was not acceptable nor accepted: Individual embezzlers were punished by having their rights to Armenian propertyrevoked. Those w ith ties to local Young Turk Party bosses or enough s ocial status and po tential to mobilize p eople got away w iththeir crime within a crime. One can pe rhaps e ven conclude that the Young Turk government bought the d omestic loyalty of the

Turkish peo ple through these practicesinitially irrespons ible, then outright criminal. The Armenian Genocide w as a form of stateformation that married certain classes and sectors of Ottoman society to the state. It offered those Turks a fast-track to upward socialmobility. So the knife had cut both w ays, for the Young Turk movement represented the drive to couple s ocial equality with nationa lhomogene ity and po litical purity.

As Armenians w ent from riches to ruins, Turks went from rags to riches. But Armenian loss es canno t simply be expressed in sums,hectares, and assets. The ideology of national economy did not only assault the target group economically, but also in theircollective prestige, esteem, and dignity. Apart from the objective consequences of material loss, the subjective experiences of immaterial loss were inestimable. Proud craftsmen, who had often followed in their ancestors footsteps as carpenters, cobblers,tailors, or blacksmiths, now lost their livelihoods. The genocide robbed them not only of their assets but also of their professionalidentities. Zildjian, the worlds largest cymbal producer, was headed by two brothers who escaped persecution because during the
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war they happened to be in the United States. [38] The Zildjians are world famous and renowned. But entire generations of otherfamous artisan families disappeared with their businesses, extinguishing the name and quality of certain brands. Gone were theDadians, Balians, Duzians, Demirjibashians , Bezjians, Vemians, Tirpanjians, Shalvarjians, Cholakians, and many other giftedprofessionals.

The assets of these and o ther Armenians we re re-used for various purposes : settling refugees a nd settlers, constructing statebuildings, supplying the army, and indeed, the de portation p rogram itself. This leads me to the grim conclusion that the Ot tomanArmenians financed their own destruction.

More information about the book is available at www.ungor.nl/?page_id=19 .

[1] Mae M. Derdarian, Vergeen: A Survivor of the Armenian Genocide (Los Ange les: Atmus, 1996), p. 38.

[2] Uur mit ngr and Mehmet Polate l, Confiscation and Destruction: The Young Turk Seizure of Armenian Property (London/New York:Continuum, 2011).

[3] For an argument a long thes e lines, see : Donald Bloxham, Internal Colonization, Inter-imperial Conflict and the ArmenianGenocide, in: A. Dirk Moses (ed.), Empire, Colony, Genocide: Conquest, Occupation, and Subaltern Resistance in World History (New York:Berghahn, 2008), pp. 325-42.

[4] For a study o f Young Turk rule in Diyarbekir, see: Uur mit ngr, The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia, 1913-1950 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).

[5] Politisches Archiv Auswrtiges Amt (German Foreign Ministry Archives, PAAA), Botschaft Konstantinop el 98, Bl. 1-3, Deutsche BankIstanbul branch to Germany embassy, Nov. 17, 1915.

[6] PAAA, Botschaft Konstan tinopel 96, Bl. 98-105, Hohenlohe-Langenburg to Erzurum, Sept. 3, 1915.

[7] Andr Mandelstam, La Socit des Nations et les Puiss ances devant le problme armnien (Beirut: Association Libanaise desUniversitaires Armniens, 1970), pp. 489-3.

[8] PAAA, Botschaft Konstan tinopel 98, Bl.4, Vice-Consul Ziemke to Istanbul Co nsulate, Nov. 16, 1915.

[9] Babakanlk Osmanl Arivi (Ottoman P rime Ministerial Archives, BOA) DH.FR 55/330, Interior Ministry to all provinces, Aug. 29,1915.

[10] BOA, DH.FR 57/241, Interior Ministry to all provinces, Nov. 1, 1915.

[11] BOA, DH.FR 57/61, Interior Ministry to Eskiehir, Oct. 17, 1915.

[12] BOA, DH.FR 57/37, Interior Ministry to Aleppo, Oct. 16, 1915.

[13] Quoted in: Ara Sarafian (ed.), United States Official Records on the Armenian Genocide 1915-1917 (London: Gomidas Institute,2004), p. 154.

[14] BOA, DH.FR 70/79, Interior Ministry to Diyarbekir, Nov. 23, 1916.

[15] BOA, DH.FR 54/301, Interior Ministry to Sivas, Diyarbekir, Mamuret-ul Aziz, July 5, 1915.
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[16] BOA, DH.FR 56/269, Interior Ministry to Canik, Oct. 3, 1915.

[17] BOA, DH.FR 55/280, Interior Ministry to all provinces, Aug. 28, 1915.

[18] Kaiser, Armenian P roperty, p. 68.

[19] BOA, DH.FR 55/66, Interior Ministry to Karesi, Aug. 17, 1915.

[20] PAAA, R14104, Trabzon consul Bergfeld to Reichskanzler Hertling, Sept. 1, 1918.

[21] Hilmar Kaiser, Genocide at the Twilight o f the Ottoman Empire, in: Donald Bloxham & A. Dirk Moses (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 365-85.[22] Kerem ktem, The Nations Imprint: Demographic Engineering and the Change of Toponymes in Republican Turkey, in: European

Journal of Turkish Studies , vol.7 (2008), at: http://ejts.revues.org/index2243.html.

[23] BOA, DH.FR 59/239, Interior Ministry to all provinces, Jan. 6, 1916.

[24] BOA, DH.FR 60/129, Interior Ministry to Trabzon, Jan. 26, 1916.

[25] BOA, DH.FR 60/275, Interior Ministry to Kayseri, Feb. 8, 1916.

[26] BOA, DH.FR 61/31, Talaat to all provinces, Feb. 16, 1916.

[27] BOA, DH.FR 64/39, Interior Ministry to all provinces, May 16, 1916.

[28] According to one study, the CUPs economic Turkification official, Kara Kemal, set up 70 firms during the w ar. Osman S.Kocahanolu, ttihat-Terakkinin Sorgulanmas ve Yarglanmas (Istanbul: Temel, 1998), p. 33.

[29] Ey Trk! Zengin ol, in: kdam , Jan. 11, 1917.

[30] alar Keyder, mparatorluktan Cumhuriyete Geite Kayp Burjuvazi Aranyor, Toplumsal Tarih , vol.12, no.68 (1999), pp. 4-11.

[31] BOA, DH.FR 53/113, Interior Ministry to all provinces, May 25, 1915.

[32] BOA, DH.FR 59/107, Interior Ministry to Ankara, Bursa, Kayseri, Konya, and Sivas, Dec. 27, 1915.

[33] Murat Bardak, Talt Paann Evrak- Metrkesi (Istanbul: Everest, 2008), p. 95.

[34] Ahmed Refik, Kafkas Yollarnda: ki Komite ki Ktl (Istanbul: Temel, 1998), p. 136.[35] Soner Yaln, ankaya Kknn ilk sahibi Ermeniydi, Hrriyet , March 25, 2007.

[36] alar Keyder, State and Class in Turkey: A Study in Capitalist Development (London: Verso, 1987), p. 63.

[37] Yusuf Akuraolu, Siyaset ve ktisad Hakknda Birka Hitabe ve Makale (Istanbul: Yeni Matbaa , 1924), p. 27.

[38] See ww w.zildjian.com/en-US/about/timeline.ad2.
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57 Comments To "Confiscation and Colonization: The Young Turk Seizure of Armenian Property"

#1 Comment By Perouz On April 22, 2011 @ 9:53 am

This very valuable article raises the following question: Finally, wha t wa s the scope of the dispos sess ion pro cess ? In other words , how wide w as the circle of pro fiteurs? It also makes the following statement:

Young Turk government bo ught the domes tic loyalty of the Turkish peo ple th rough these p ractices There is no question that the Young Turk government bought the domestic loyalty of not only the Turkish people, but also that of the Kurds. Reigning ashtarabids directed the best cattle and crops of villages into their own stables. The rest were distributed toneighbouring Kurdish village rs. The descendants of thos e Kurds today still occupy my village. Their cattle roam my fathers fields. Theirwomen pick the apples and pears from the seedlings of the trees my grandfather planted. On the de portation route, our women we reasked to list the property that they had been forced to leave behind. The Armenian women were then beaten by Kurdish guards untilthey revealed any money they had hidde n on themselves. If they insisted that they had none , their their children were b rutally killedin front of the mothers. The churches d istributed all their money among the w omen before they we re forced out o f their villages. Thismoney was also taken from them by the caravan guards. Each of us must document and give to our children and grandchildren everysingle thing we know. Our day will come.

#2 Comment By Bob Kay On April 22, 2011 @ 10:22 a m

This is a very interesting article. Howe ver, wha ts to be done with this information? We knew more or less these type of confiscations took place. Now what?

#3 Comment By Perouz On April 22, 2011 @ 11:00 am

Bob Kay: You are right, of course. The burning question is: Why have we not gone to international courts? This book is valuable inthat it further documents our claims. However, it does not address the most important question you have raised. I have longwondered if the Armenian Bar Association has considered addressing this issue.

#4 Comment By arm_k On April 22, 2011 @ 1:11 pm

The burning question is: W hy have w e no t gone to international courts? So many commentators have raise d it on these pa ges, bitnoone cares to answer. Could any columnist explain as to what prevents us from submitting lawsuits in the international courts?!After all, genocide recognition and reparations is a legal, not genuinely political issue

#5 Comment By Murad A. Meneshian On April 22, 2011 @ 1:53 pm

We still read that Jewish familes are successful in having art work returned to them, either though court orders or arbitration. Thesecases have been through the court systems of countries where the confiscated properties reside. In our case, going through


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the Turkish court system is futile, unless we do it for propaganda purposes. It is time now that we make similar demands. We needArmenian lawyer to study our case and take action accordingly. BUT leave compansation for land alone. That falls under a separateand more important issue.

#6 Comment By Perouz On April 22, 2011 @ 1:54 pm

Re: Could any columnist explain as to what prevents us from submitting lawsuits in the international courts? How about the Armenian Bar Association? Can we hear from them?You are right, arm_k, this is a legal issue . Our rights, including land bo rders, can only be resto red through the internationa l courts.

#7 Comment By Robert On April 22, 2011 @ 4:10 pm

Oh please, do go to the International Courts!! Youve had almost 100 years to do so . Do you know WHY you cant, nor have beenunable to do so before? Its because in ANY court of law (ANYWHERE), the court is going to ask one main questionPLEASE PRESENTALL UNALTERED DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE!!! Good luck with that happe ning any time soon! Oh, BTWCan you all say

COUNTERSUIT?

#8 Comment By Ananoon On April 22, 2011 @ 10:45 pm

Robert, where are the Armenians of the Armenian Plateau?

#9 Comment By Hutch On April 23, 2011 @ 2:30 am

We have not s ued in International court because w e are totally disorganized, indifferent and unprepared group of peo ple who thinkthat we are best at everything but are nothing in reality.Eventually a few law yers will get together and try and sue, just as we see w hat the few self proclaimed lawyers of our community didrecently and now are fighting among themselves to see who will get a few more chump change.In Armenia, our so called leaders are either trying to see how much money they can stash away or the few decent people around arefaced with insurmountable difficulties of their own. In the Diaspora, we are a joke; we do not even have leaders. We have individualswho are desperately holding on to their positions and the concept of collective good or advantage is the last thing on their mind.

The Turks w ere very successful in getting rid of our cream of the crop intelligentsia and left us with the idiots of today, the Armeniansaround that do not know a nd are incapable of organizing to a pproach our issues in a professional manner. So please do not ask whywe have not done what w e we re supposed to do long time ago, we a re not capable to do it as a collective group

#10 Comment By Sylva-MD-Poetry On April 23, 2011 @ 6:28 am

WE did not only lost our LandsLike Indian AmericansTurks Turkified Us


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From Hamsin till AntalyaThey Changed our Identity(Language , Religion, Names)But can they change o r DNA!?

We dont need their landsIf we buildThey will destroy once againThey dont understand artsTheir IQ used to de stroy and prayFrom Our churchesWhich changed to minarets

Every one well-come Us in their landsThey trust Us from depth of their hea rtsThey love Our BeautyOur HonestyOur FriendshipThey know it Will Last

We cant betray anyEven they betray UsWe ha ve a faithFaith as our Gomidas

He-Who gave us Music

No one can vanish his notesBy their blood-filled handsHis music is carved in our HeartsAnd our cohortsWill sing Gomedass SymphonyFrom this AprilTill the Ea rth unthrives

Every one Love usFrom Arabia till Bora-Bora

We do nt want our lands backLet they stay thereAnd build their gravesUnderneath that placeOur souls shall breathe yvendlessAnd will make them sick

We do nt need any placeBecause we can live and leave the EarthOur kindnessOur artfullness

Hence the Earth belongs to UsTo Armenian Race


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As with ou r ArtsWith our Gifted HeartsWe can live in every sand

All nations Doors are opened for UsAnd always we ll-coming UsIn their landsWhich is our Land

Sylva_MD-Poetry

24, April 2011

#11 Comment By Seervart On April 23, 2011 @ 11:36 am

Unfortunately but sad ly and truthfully Hutch raises some points that I must agree w ith. Although Hutch, the Ittihadist governmentthat hijacked the throne of Turkey were not entirely Turks but much smarter bunch of people that knew exactly what they weredoing. They cleans ed the e ntire Armenian race (almost all) and then the rest in destitute s tarved skeleto ns (mainly women and littlechildren) were left without the heads o f the nation as they we re mostly massacred. Like Talaat the de vil said; it will take 50 years forthe Armenians to be a ble to rais their heads and say something to the w orld. And that is exaclty what has happened. Thus cancelthe first 50 years, which was in 1965. Anything we w ere able to do and that sho uld be counted, it is after 1965. Thus we should saythat w e didnt do o r achieve much collectively to do our job right and demand o ur rights from international law is 46 years only.

#12 Comment By Alex Postallian On April 23, 2011 @ 11:43 am

The international courts are a farce,you see how the world is undecided about the Armenian Genocide.Turkey is the biggestliar.Germany at least had the integrity to admit the Houlacast.The only way to win is to be politically strong in representation andmanipulate the system.

#13 Comment By Seervart On April 23, 2011 @ 12:38 pm

Although in 46 years our people have worked and achieved for at least 22 nations to accept the Armenian Genocide and more than45 states in the US to accept it as we ll as the League of Nations, and a dignified team of scholars w ho w orked for 30 years to recordit and proved to the world on the veracity of the Armenian Genocide, it is high time now for our leaders and a team of our lawyers tocome together to demand our rights in terms of our economic losses from 1915 through 1923 as well as our Western Armenianhomeland through the International Law, the Hague.

#14 Comment By Arx On April 23, 2011 @ 3:59 pm

Excellent job! Hutch you sa id everything. All we know is to demonstrate o urselves every year, with flags and yell. It is unbelievable


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that we are standing at the same spot s ince hundred years. When I hear the speeches I w ant to laugh instead o f cry.You are right,we dont have really intelligent people a s leaders. We are too late to so lve anything.As soon a s pos sible w e need to form acommittee with scholars,politicians and social philosophers. We dont need patriotic but uneducated people who are wasting our timeand their energy. Why are we wasting our time to convince this or that president in order to say G word. This is ridiculous! Theyoung and educated Armenians are very upset with this situation. Genocide is a fact and if someone has any doubt about that, it istheir problem. We need to concentrate ourselves on other important issues.We need to wa ke up and ge t rid of idiot leaders.

#15 Comment By Arx On April 23, 2011 @ 4:16 pm

Robert, we dont need to alter anything since we have your pashas own note book written in Turkish. Take time and read it. You canfind all kind of details in that book. He knew what he was doing. By the way, living in denial is a big burden on your shoulder. Take off that heavy load and live your life without guilt. This is just a little advice to you.

#16 Comment By arm_k On April 23, 2011 @ 7:42 pm

Robert the Turk,

An unaltered documentary evidence of the genocide committed by the Ottoman Turks against the Armenians exists in the nationalarchives of your makeshift country, built on the blood a nd bone s of indigenous Christian na tions of Asia Minor, in the form of theverdicts of your own Courts Martial of 1919-1920. Have you ever familiarized yourself with this evidence before po pping up in thesepages? An advice: avoid making yourself a laughingstock before all those foreign governments, international organizations,professional associations, genocide scholars and Nobel Prize laureates, including Turkeys own Orhan Pamuk, who admit the massmurders of Armenian as a sheer act of genocide.

Someone here asked a question. Be a man, answer it: where are the 2 million Ottoman Armenians now? If you answer it in anunaltered, i.e. non-brainwashed manner, you will come to no other conclusion, as do many in the world, that they were subjected tothe classical case o f deliberate race e xtermination, read: GENOCIDE. Can you all say GENOCIDE? Ready, set, go

#17 Pingback By Confiscation and Coloniza tion: The Young Turk Seizure o f Armenian P roperty Azad Alik On April 25, 2011 @ 11:50 pm

[...] http://ww w.armenianwe ekly.com/2011/04/22/confiscation-and-colonization-the-young-turk-seizure-of-arm [...]

#18 Comment By Karekin On April 28, 2011 @ 8:19 am

Yesit was all given to the elite of the Ittihadists. Lets check the facts and the names and see how many of these elite peoplewere actually Turks. Taner Akcam and others have spelled it out. Most were imports from Salonika. Connect the dots. This was thefton a grand scale orches trated during the dep ths of a world war. What a perfect scheme, a perfect cover for the ultimate crimeand,the de scendan ts of these non-Turkish criminals still run Turkey on the foundations of the Armenian nation. It is disgusting. Po inting itout is not. Until people are w illing to call a spade a spade, not much will change. Remove the blinders. See the o bvious. It is in plainsight.
http://www.armenianweekly.com/2011/04/22/confiscation-and-colonization-the-young-turk-seizure-of-arm


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#19 Comment By arm_k On May 6, 2011 @ 9:30 am

Only half true, Karekin. Some in the elite of the Ittihadists are believed to be non-Turks, even non-Muslims, affiliated w ith somesinister secret so cieties. Howe ver, most o f the CUP functionaries, central and local government employees , army commanders, thegenda rmes, army officers and soldiers, the Chettes , the Special Operations executives, and ordinary people who partook in murder,mutilation, rape, theft and re-sett lement were ETHNIC TURKS. There can be no doubt about it. Had the plan o f exterminating theArmenian race designed by the elite of the Ittihadists some of whom were not Turks not been close to the Turkish nation as a whole,could it have bee n implemented in the wider society? Hardly. Genocide was not only a theft, it was a de sign to salvage a s much landsas possible from the crumbling empire on the expense of Armenians living on their ancestral lands. It was also a grand project of Turkification of w hat w as to remain from the Ottoman Empire: no more Greeks, no more Assyrians, no more Armenians. Turks only.Turks actually stole our Homeland for themselves by meams of annihilating the Armenian race. A class ic barbarian behavior

#20 Comment By gayzag pa landjian On May 8, 2011 @ 6:00 pm

TO MENESHIAN AND ALL OF YOU,I am lucky that w e have at home 3 Armenian t.v. channels, the SHANT, the H1 (govt.)and USArmenia. toda y on H1 fromYerevan/victory day,our boys captured SHUSHI and defea ted the aze ris,also victory day-coincidence of WWII .Anyhow, they wereshow ing all about Shushi ,a documentary, OH My god111 how the azeris in the 1920s burnet the city down and the murderedmore than 3000 armenians therethen in 1927 ,when Mandelshtein visited and saw the city that had thrived as the capital of the

caucauses /for arts etc., was taken aback.then this is very intersting a diehard /famous armenian communist Ms. MarrietaShahinian visited it and it so depressed her, that she spoke up to the other commies.but guess what? the aliev baba and

others the n in the Po litbureau , silenced such -even communist high ranking members- cause they were w ell connected.IT ISFAMOUS THAT LATTER W AS BRIBING BRESHNEV WITH PRECIOUS STONES JEWELLERY AND LOTS OF CAVIARwhile our Armenianprtisans were no match for the azeris. bygones are bygones. But wait, then a footage of the real Mccoy was shown thatenlivened me my spirits that isHow our boys fought tooth and nails and threw the azeri barba rians out of shushi and NK.

HoweverI am not one of those that sleep on victories/especially over such poisonous-sespent type people that are grudgeing preparingto overcome their defeat, we ll suppo rted by their oil revenues plus great turkish back up.wha t we must do is keep resal alert wa tch and put aside our paltry differences,begin to MOBILIZE like they are doingwe cannot stay ina petrified manner ,just by making speeches and writing what otherwise is non-real.the real thing is to materiallyORGANIZE, BOTH PHYSICALLY AND ESPEC IALLY ECONOMIC WISE.

WE NEED TO HAVE THE HUGE COLLECTIVITIES OF OUR WORKING PEOPLE IN 16 FIELDS OF PROFVESSIONS CLASSIFIED INGROUPINGS-5 ON THE SCENE ALREADY , THEN INTERCONNECT THESE AND THROUGH THEIR ELECTED ELITE 3 PERSON FROM EACHFORM THE TOWNSHIP CENTREAL BODY ,ASKING THE POLITCO AND SPIRITUALS TO JOIN IN,THUS REAL PARTICIPATION ANDREPRESENTATION , ON TO CENTRAL COUNCIL OF EA DIASPORA COUNTRY AND THEN TO A SUPREME COUNCIL WITH 5 DEPTRTMENTS.LEGAL POLITICAL IN STARASBOURG -NEST TO RA REP, EXECUTIVE IN NY, ECONOMIC IN GENEVA, WITH 16 OFFICE FOR EACH OF THEPROF FIELDS,SOCIAL SERVICES& EMIGRATION ORBGANIZING IN MOSCOW, THE SPIRITUAL ST. ETCMIADIZ(WE HAVE) but inconjunctions with great house of cilicia.next move is through a nucleus of our magnates some 5/6 to esta blish the NATIONALINVESTMENT TRUST FUND IN GENEVA ,THEN ALL THE WAY DOWN FROM MILLIONARIES TO THE PCAS TO CHIPIN.GO FIGURE OUTWHAT CAPITAL THAT WILL AMOUNT TO,.

FIRST AID TO PORGANIZE THE EMIGRATION, THEN LOANS YTO SMALL AND MEDIUM SIZE PLANTS ENTREPRENEURS AND FARMERS.NEVER MIND WHAT THE GOVT. IN YEREVAN IS DOING WITH BIG LOANS FORM OVERSEA GOVT.S THAT IS LIKE ANYWHERE IN THEWORLD OFFICIAL BUSINESS GOVT. BUSINESS..HOPE THEY SLOW DOWN WITH THE CUTTING IN ON IT THOUGHBUT WHAT ,THIS SSERVANT OF ALL ARMENIANS IS SUGGFESTING IS FUND FOR ALL ARMENITY IN GENEVA, WE MAY HELP ARMENIANS INCA OR BEYROUTH WHEREVER NEED BE AND WHILE OUR MAGNATES APPOINTED MONETARY EXPERTS REINVEST IN SECURE FOREIGN


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GOVT. BONDS NOT FUNDS. WHICH RFENDER 5/6%,pay us the investo r half the other to be adde d to capital make it big real big.I YOU DO NOT BELIEVE IN THIS THEN GO ON HOPING THAT GOVT. EXEC. WILL PERFORM AS WE THE NON SO WOULD,ESPECIALLYTHAT DIASPORA IS THERE TO STAY I DO NOT CHEW W ORDS OR TELL LIES.MAJORITY IS THERE TO STAY ,IF WE CAN AT LEAST LURE

/CONVICNE ABOVE ALL SHOW W ITH LOANS ABOVE MENTIONED THAT WE C AN HELP THEM GO BACK WE C AN SAME SOME ONEMILLION RECENT IMMIGRANTS OVEDRSEAS.BST ANDHAMA HAIGAGANI SIROE&O.EXCEPTED..I TYPE FAST, PLEASE FORGIVE ME

#21 Comment By Karekin On May 8, 2011 @ 11:03 pm

Arm K you might want to denigrate what you see as barbarian behavior, which the genocide undoubtedly was, butI submit to youthat those barbarians are not the same people who built and ran an empire, rather successfully, for 600+ years, with alot of Armenianhelp and suppo rt. I have sa id this before, if you want to place blame for this ho rrific crime, you must, as w ith any other criminalactivity, follow the money. There you w ill find your culprits. The sa me crowd, now known a s the deep state , is still profiting from theArmenian spoils.

#22 Comment By Boyajian On May 9, 2011 @ 12:36 pm

Karekin, the Salonika gang could not and did not carry out the genocide on their own. Countles s ethnic Turks, the ancestors of

todays Turks, committed the murders, rapes, pillaging and theft that const ituted the Armenian Genocide. There really is no wayaround this. So, while I agree that the re is much to be lea rned abo ut who our enemy is by following the money as you say, it cantbe reduced to this. If it was this straight forward, I would expect that Turkey would have long ago admitted to and dista nced itself from the crimes of CUP interlopers. But this is not the case . Millions of ethnic Turks willingly participated in the rampage unleas hedaga inst Armenians. (This fact makes tho se Turks who actually helped save Armenians e ven more heroic.) There is much guilt to goround, much to come to terms with, and many who toda y who are s till directly bene fitting from the theft of our homeland. The onlyway forward is w ith the truth, as hard and as ugly as it is.

I dont hold todays average Turk responsible for the genocide, but I do hold them responsible for participating in the denial of a crimetheir ancestors committed and for its long-lasting effects on the Armenian nation.

#23 Comment By arm_k On May 9, 2011 @ 1:41 pm

Karekin those barbarians a re not the same peo ple who built and ran an empire, rather successfully, for 600+ years. Success fully for whom? For themselves, perhaps. Why would indigenous nations of Asia Minor consider is successful? Can theirsubjugation to the Ottoman empire as a result of Seljuk and Mongol incursions to the area be considered a successful turn of events? Also, who w ere Seljuks and Mongols in their origin if not class ic barba rians? Sedenta ry, highly-civilized, and creative nations?Were not thos e who built and ran the empire the des cendants of those who invaded the area? Is building and running the empireby giving the humiliating status o f Millet to the owne rs of those lands considered a successful governance? Is the wide-spreadoppression of those minorities, unequal taxation, lower social status, and constant pillages, murders, and abductions of the villagersconsidered a successful governance? For the Turks perhaps , but definitely not for the ancient inhabitants o f Asia Minor.


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#24 Comment By Karo On May 9, 2011 @ 5:29 pm

Karekin, I think you constantly devalue yourself with your ill-conceived argument that the actual perpetrato rs of the Armeniangenocide were not ethnic Turks. The fact that some of the leade rs in the CUP are known to have bee n the Dnmeh and Freemasonsfrom Salonika doe s not d iminish the role that masses of ethnic Turks and Kurds have played in de liberately annihilating the Armenian,Greek, and Assyrian national and religious groups. Its like saying that since Stalin was a Georgian than it was not Russian masseswho perpetrated the 1930s purges (for which modern Russian government has apologized, by the way). Or because Hitler had

Jewish blood it was not the Germans who annihilated the Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, etc.


What e veryone se ems to overlook is the fact that anyone, anywhere can be p rovoked, pushed, bribed or o therwise encouraged to doevil things. There are countless psychological studies that prove this over and over again. However, it takes a catalyst and a goodpush, along w/ a good dose of propaganda. In the midst of a three front war, fiscal bankruptcy and lots of additional issues, anyonecould go down that route. Germany, which w as w ell known to be technologically sophiticated a nd we ll educated went down thatroute because of one psychotic madman. Do not underestimatge the power of greed, combined with malice to cause great pain andsuffering. It can happen anywhere.


I, as fact of the matter, cannot be provoked and pushed anywhere into slitting pregnant womens bellies and crush newborns headsagainst the walls, as Turks didCan you, Karekin?

#27 Comment By Sylva-MD-Poetry On May 10, 2011 @ 5:16 am

Genetics of Killing

If someone provide on this siteMillion dollars to killCan a ny one kill

Not everyone can killHence there is a gene of Killing

Which exist in someAnd not the othersThat gene in some nations transmitsAnd not the others

ScientistsInstead of finding DNAOf few inherited diseaseMost cant be treated


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Because started be fore birthStarted when the eggUnited w ith the spermAnd nothing can be done abo ut it

But the DNA of killingShould soon be detectedAnd be genetically treated

And that person should be informedThat he has tende ncy to killShould be trained not to commitThus to stop genocidesWhich still continue to prevailCant be prevented yet

Sylva

#28 Comment By Karekin On May 10, 2011 @ 8:25 am

No Karo, I cannot, but again, that is not what psychological studies show about humanity,and education level has nothing to do withit. Humanity, unfortunately, can be all good , but also, a t time, all evil. The te ndency exists in every human be ing. Lets face it, for manycenturies, the European powers enslaved millions of other human beings, causing unmeasurable sufffering, destroying societies andkilling millions. The American government, in its ques t for continental do minance, des troyed a lmost every native American nation thatexisted in north America for tens of thous ands o f years. More recently, George Bush invade d and o ccupied Iraq, killing at leas t amillion innocent human be ings and displacing up to 4 million, to the cheers of yahoos in bars all across America. The motivations fordeath and destruction are many, and can be easily justified by those who have power and lust for more. The point is that for athousand years, Armenians and others lived under Turkish rule, and before that, under Arab, Persian and even Greek rule. Theoutright and who lesale slaughter of the genocide was so extreme, we ha ve to ask how and why and w ho wo uld formulate such ascheme? If youve ever worked in any kind of business or organiza tion, you wo uld know that almost nothing se rious canbe accomplished unless there is a strong leader at the helm. This can be for good or bad. The Nazis had Hitler, the CUP had Talaat,who were persuasive madmen w ho w ere able to sell their crackpot ideas to their closest asso ciates, either thru coercion orsalesmanship, and encourage them to foster these ideas to a larger audience. In the midst of war and suffering, its easy to find aconvenient scapegoat and foster ruthless hatred in their direction, especially if it is based on fear and the promise of somethingbette r, particularly if you follow the leader. In Turkey, the CUP created plenty of incentives for people to coope rate w ith them, andpenalized severely those who did not. They still arrest people for using a single word genocide. Think of what the behavioralchanges that little detail can cause. So, in other words, it is not that difficult to get masses of people, particularly uneducated masses,to conform to a w ay of thinking or acting, especially if you provide incentives for the bad be haviors.



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Germany, which was well known to be technologically sophisticated and well educated went down that route [ doing e vil things ] because of one psychotic madman. Not quite so. Germany as a people did not physically exterminate, the Nazis did. Whereas it is known thatnot only the Ittihadists but ordinary Turks and Kurds involved in mass murders and rape of the Armenians, as well as looting, theft of their properties and resettlement in their houses. Do not underestimate the power of greed, combined with malice to cause great pain and suffering. It can happen anywhere. Not quite so.Great pain and suffering caused by wars, interethnic clashes, and foreign occupation can theoretically happen anywhere. However,deliberate extermination of a race happened only in a few places and perpetrated only by a few nations, Turks certainly being one of them.

#30 Comment By Perouz On May 10, 2011 @ 9:36 am

Bravo, Karo, Bravo!

#31 Comment By Boyajian On May 10, 2011 @ 9:45 am

Karekin,you say: anyone, anywhere can be provoked, pushed, bribed or otherwise encouraged to do evil things.

Not true. Not anyone. Please dont spread this propaganda. It devalues the acts of courage and moral fortitude by the manyOttoman Turks who resisted the evil and helped Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, etc., and suffered the consequences, even to thepoint of losing the ir lives. While the many Genocides of the last century wo uld seem to indicate tha t evil can spread o ver a society likea contag ious virus, it is a mistake to reduce it to this. To remove persona l agency only makes it that much easier to excuse thebehavior that smooth the way to repetitions.

Each act of evil is done by a perso n who in a split second could have decided not to take the a ction. It is true that circumstances can provoke, push or bribe some to commit heinous acts, but what about those who choose not to? They live under the samecircumstances , in many cases, but are still able to resist. Obviously, they posses s something that helps them remain immune to the

virus.

The sad thing is that because of the official denial of the Armenian Genocide, Turkish society can not explore and honor those heroesamong them who e xemplified true humanity and courage during a time of extreme crisis. These w ould make much better role modelsto children in Turkey than the glorification of the wa r-mongering murderers w ho founded the modern republic on the bloo d of millionsof Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, etc But you cant honor those who res isted taking part in something that never happened .

To follow the metaphor of the virus further, we can say that the sick man of Europe has not yet fully recovered and is in need of thehealing medicine that only truth and justice can provide. I am tired of Armenians being a ccused of being w hiny complainers by Turks,and sadly by other Armenians, as we ll, because we w ont just get over it. We nee d to reframe the w ay we look at our quest for

justice . It is a noble act that has the p otential to cure the ills that plague both our societies. Those who commit to this fight areserving Turks and Armenians.

#32 Comment By Avery On May 10, 2011 @ 1:02 pm

well said Boyajian: Indeed, what w e Armenians are do ing is Noble: a se rvice to Humanity. And we must and sha ll continue in spite


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of and to spite the naysayers. Throughout human history, those who have made positive changes for humanity have always been persuaded no t to rock the boat, not to make wa ves, to go along to get a long. By all rights, all righteous humanity worldw ideshould have joined us en mass by now to force the Turks to Recognize, pay Reparations, and Return our lands. If we have to getthere only by ourselves, so be it: it was our brothers and sisters that were murdered. Wed have anywhere from 40-50 million morebrothers a nd siste rs if not for the extermination of 2 million Armenians from 1800s to 1923: and most likely the be st and mostArmenian of us a ll were those 2 million. Imagine ho w much better the World would be if there were 50 million creative, industrious,cultured, educated, peaceful Armenians living where now live hateful warmongers.


Karekin,

I think Boyajian gave an excellent and eloquent answer to your reply to me. Ive got just a few observations to add. The problem of your mode of thinking seems to lie inside of your own psyche rather than in the realm of human experience that you seem to explainonly by the role of a person/leader in history. The role is, undoubtedly, great and no one would object to it. To conform the masses of people to a way of thinking or acting is also doable as we learn from history, and no one would object to that, too. But to conformmasses of people to kill cannot be as all-encompassing as you tend to represent. Taking the life of a person lies in the realm of apersons relationship with the Creator and his or her own conscience. Even if my leader had been a double Dnmeh and a tripleFreemason, I wo uld have never sinned my soul to perdition by killing a human being. Many ordinary Turks and Kurds did. A few, asBoyajian pointed out, with courage and moral fortitude, resisted the e vil. It troubles me to s ee a ttempts popping up here and there to put the blame for the Armenian genocide on the Jews because several

CUP high-ranking members were Sabbatean Messianic Jews (the Dnmeh ). Some of them, indeed, were, namely: Emmanuel Ca rasso (aka Emanuel Karasu or Ca rasso Efendi), a member of the prominent Sepha rdic Jewish Caras so family, chief propagandist for the Young Turks, headed the delega tion to inform Abdul Hamid II that The nation has removed you from your office Mehmed Talat (Talat Pasha ), CUP Minister of the Inte riorMehmet Cavit (Djavid) Bey, CUP Minister o f FinanceMessim Russo, Assistant to Mehmet Cavit (Djavid) BeyVladimir Jabo tinsky, a Russian Zionist, the ed itor of The Young Turk newspaperRefik Bey (aka Refik Syadam Bey), editor of the Young Turk newspape r Revolutionary Press , became Prime Minister of Turkey in 1939Alexander Helphand (aka Parvus), financier/liaison o f the Rothschilds of the Young Turks revolutionMarcel Samuel Raphae l Cohen (aka Tekin Alp), one o f the founding fathe rs of Turkish nationa lism and a n ideologue of Pan -Turkism But the fundamental question is if just a load of people could provoke, push, bribe or otherwise encourage masses of Turks to doindescribable s adistic killings of innocent Armenians. If for the most of o rdinary Turks killing of a human be ing wo uld have beenunacceptable, repugnant, and satanic thing to do, could those few on the top have succeeded in perpetrating as massive thegenocide as the Turks did? I have hard time admitting that they could. Another question, of course, is if some in the top echelon of power did not belong to a countrys native (or at least majoritarian)ethnic background, can we put the blame on an ethnicity they belonged to? I have hard time admitting that, too. With the same logic,because Stalin was a Georgian, his closest associates Felix Dzerzhinsky was a Pole, Lavrentiy Beria was a Georgian Mingrelian, LazarKaganovich was a Jew, Georgy Malenkov was of a Macedonian extraction, and Anastas Mikoyan was an Armenian, can we imply thatthe 1930s purges that took millions (if not tens of millions) Soviet lives a re the w ork of Georgians, Poles , Mingrelians, Jews,Macedonians, and Armenians only ? I think we cant, because the actual oppressors throughout the Soviet Union were the SovietRussians. Of course, there is a difference here in that the Stalin purges were not directed at deliberately annihilating a particular


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ethnic, national, racial, or religious group, as in the case of the Turks in regard to the Armenians. Lastly, the genocide of Armenians started by the Young Turks, whoever they were ethnicity-wise, was completed by the drunkardMustafa Kemal, who , after exte rminating the remaining non-Turks (for instance Greeks and Armenians in Smyrna in 1922), in 1923established his Turkish republic. It is widely known that Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk) was a Jew of Sephardic origin, attended the Jewishelementary schoo l in Salonika, called Semsi Effendi School, run by a Jew Simon Zvi. But Kemal is referred as a founde r of the mode rnTurkish state. Would it be correct to say that their state has been founded by the Jews? Besides, in Kars, Ardahan, Alexandropol, andSmyrna Kemal exterminated the remaining Armenians as a Jew o r as a Turkish leader? After all, he is the leader who , you think, can

confo rm the masses of people to a wa y of thinking or acting. In w hat e thnic capa city should we take him when we know that hisofficial capacity was the leade r of the Turkish w ar of independence, as Turks call it, and the first pres ident of the Republic of Turkey?


KaroI will repea tanyone, anywhe re is capable of doing horrible things. This does not diminish the Armenian geno cide one bit. Yes,Stalin wiped out at lea st 10 million people, Mao ano ther 20 million, Pol Pot over 2 million. Each of these criminals followe d in the ste psof the CUP. If, as you suggest, the Turks were/are so perpetually barbaric, they had 1000 years to wipe out the Armenians who livedunder their thumb. They had their chance and one o f the most powe rful armies on earth to do it. Why didnt they? It could be arguedthat this was because the sultans themselves and most Turks had some deep, blood connection to the Armenian natives of Anatolia.You dont wipe out your relatives. Thats a basic principle of humanity. It was only when those who had none of those deepconnections to Armenians came to pow er that the y felt they could conduct a genocide w ith impunity and, most importantly, withoutguilt. If the goal was to rid Turkey of non-Turks and non-Muslims, there were a lot of candidateswhy were some allowed to stay,profit and succeed, while Armenians were completely decimated? Just connect the do ts in a logical way. The tendency is to push all

the blame on all Turks and let others off the hookbut, for many, many reasons, that is just wrong and makes no logical sense.


And I will reiterate, Karekin, that NOT anyone, anywhe re is capable o f doing horrible things. You yourself admitted that you canno t be provoked, pushe d, bribed or otherw ise encouraged to do evil things w ith fellow human be ings . Me, too, whoever they are: Turks,Azeris, or Gypsies . So cant Boyajian, So couldnt those few brave Turks who saved Armenians during the genocide. You contradictyourself. Besides, by acknowledging that some Turks saved Armenians at the risk of their own lives, do I or anyone here sound likewe blame ALL Turks for the genocide? Of course, not. How ever, to blame only a handful of top CUP o fficials of a certain ethnicity orsecret a ffiliation, disregarding the fact that the prevailing majority of murderers, torturers, mutilators, rapists , and thieves w ere ethnicTurks is fundamentally wrong. Another blunder: Stalin wiped out at least 10 million people, Mao ano ther 20 million, Pol Pot over 2 million. Each of these criminalsfollowe d in the steps of the CUP. No, they didnt follow the steps o f the CUP. Whereas the Ittihadists deliberately annihilated manyOTHER, non-Turkic nations (Greeks, Assyrians, Armenians, etc.) in the acts o f genocide, Stalin, Mao, and Pol P ot killed THEIR OWNrespective nations for ideological purposes. This is not an identical situation. Next blunder and a slander, too. I never suggested that Turks were/are so perpetually barbaric. As for why they didnt wipe outArmenians since they had a thousand years Why would they? Armenians have made considerable contributions in business andtrade, banking and finance, arts, literature, architecture, etc. Why not use the skills of a ta lented peop le for the Turks benefit? I dontthink their blood connection w ith the Armenians, which Im only aw are in the case of Abdul Hamid, was the factor. Follow ing your logic,Abdul Hamid should have treated the Armenians as iconic people, but instead he was the mastermind behind horrible massacres of up


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to 300,000 Armenians in 1894-96. Last b lunder. The goal at the final years o f the Ottoman Empire WAS to rid Turkey of non-Turks and non-Muslims. It is evident in whathappened to the Christian Greeks, Assyrians, and Armenians. Kurds remained largely intact because they were Muslims. As for othernationality that, as you sa y, was allowed to stay, profit and succeed, they never we re concentrated, and thus posed a threat b ytheir geographical concentration, in such vast a territory as the Armenians, and close (though in only a few p laces, like Van) toRussian advances. As even the notorious genocide-denier Bernard Lewis admitted, For the Turks, the Armenian [national-liberation]movement was the de adliest of all threats [to yield to it] wo uld have meant no t the truncation, but the dissolution of the Turkishstate. Does this make a logical sense for you?

#36 Comment By Boyajian On May 10, 2011 @ 10:34 pm

Karekin, your logic does nt hold up for me. Yes, humans a re complicated creatures t hat are capa ble of all kinds of evil. That is to saythat, as a s pecies there are those among us who are capable of incredible extremes of depravity, but that does not mean all peopleare capable of being turned into murderers by influential mad men, given the right circumstances . I do not accept this as sertion. TheDonmeh Jews that planned our extermination couldnt have succeeded to turn a nation into murderers without their willingcoope ration. And the reasons they were so coope rative had to do with many different factors, not leas t being the multiple centuriesof living in a society that pos ited one group as superior to the others. It was only when the dominant group saw humiliating defea tsin the Balkans and found itself in danger of losing its dominance that the madness wa s able to take hold.

Yes, we lived for centuries under foreign domination and never faced blanket annihilation until the the CUP came on the scene. Doesthis mean that the CUP cast a Svengali spell on the masses? I doubt it. They may have taken advanta ge of a ripe moment to carry

out their agenda of greed, pow er and Turkish domination, but the society was sick with vengea nce to begin with. Yes, follow themoney, follow the slick trail of oil and follow the fou l smell of racism and religious intolerance, too. The truth is ugly, but it cant betransformed without the Turks facing the truth of what they allowed to take place. Then perhaps the peo ple will stand up to theDeep State criminals that have usurped their nation and bartered away their human dignity.

#37 Comment By Avery On May 11, 2011 @ 9:07 am

More counter-examples for Karekin :re: Germany, which was well known to be technologically sophiticated and well educated went down that route because of one psychotic madman. Partially true (e.g. SS Einsatzgruppen ). Yet how do we explain the indisputable fact that Fascism wa s bo rn in Italy; Italian black-shirtswere marching in lockstep long before Hitlers brown-shirts; as an orator and manipulator of masses Mussolini was head andshoulders above Hitler (historical tidbit: the infamous Nazi raised-hand salute was copied from Italian Fascistswho got it from theirRoman forebears). Yet Italians could not be induced by their Fascists to commit Genocide, and Germans w ere. Italians, allies of Germans, even refused to hand over Jews in their areas of control to Nazis.

Azeri Tata rs massacred hundreds of de fenseles s Armenians in Sumgait and Baku: the re was a bso lutely no re ason o ther than e thnichatred and blood lust. Armenians had do ne abs olutely no harm to Azeris in Sumgait or Baku. At the same time, Azeris living inArmenia were allowed to leave and return to Azerbaijan in peace: not a single one harmed. Armenias government even gave

i d i A i f h i l


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compensation to departing Azeris for their real-estate.During the Artsakh War of Survival and Libera tion, while liberating our native lands , Armenian troops w ould surround Azeri villageson three sides and would always leave one side open for the unarmed Azeri villagers to leave unmolested. The Azeri Tatar troopshad fled da ys before. The unarmed, defenseless villagers w ere at the complete mercy of Armenian military units. Note that by thistime Armenian troops had known what Azeris had done to their grandparents, mothers, sisters, children..they knew about theMaraga Village massacre, sawing o ff of heads, a nd mutilations: can w e not appreciate the difference betw een nationalities who semembers by and large cannot be induced to murder unarmed civilians no matter the justification, and those who need just a nodfrom an authority figure to unleash their bloodlust ?


Karekin Bloody Assass in Sultan Abdulhamid II was no t a Dnmeh Jew. Hes believed to have been born to Verjineh, an Armenianmother. Yet, it is estimated tha t he had murdered 100,000 to up to 300,000 Ottoman Armenians during the so -called Hamidianmassacres of 1894-1896. Based on your logic, shall we go ahead and blame Armenians for massacring Armenians?


Also, before the Dnmeh Jew-infiltrated CUP came on the scene there was non-Dnmeh Jew Abdulhamid massacring Armenians. Howwould you explain that?


Boyajian I totally agree. Turkey and its population need to op en up, allow the truth to surface and the masses to be educated onthis hidden chapter of their history. Translating written history on the genocide, published outside of Turkey, would be a great start.Of course, we are still discussing how this could have happened and many of us have theories, all of which are valid contende rs. Inaddition to a standard motivation like greed, we should not underestimate the power of psychological factors, used in unsavory ways,to produce the desired effect in a large population. It happens all the time. In the US, we are subjected to all kinds of mind alteringinformation everyday in the form of propaganda , advertising, etc.So, before denigrating the power of psychology, lets illuminate a few methods that probably came into play for the genocide to haveoccurred:SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY: ON ORDINARY PEOPLE AS TORTURERS

The following po ints are made by S.T. Fiske et a l (Science 2004 306:1482):1) Initial reactions to the events at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were shock and disgust. How could Americans be doing this to anyone,even

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