The Thirty-Year Genocide

by Benny Morris

  up the neighborhood. Riggs, who had personally rescued Armenian women,

  said his life was threatened separately by four Muslim husbands. He began to

  carry “a revolver in [his] hip pocket, ready for business.” Riggs was eventually

  expelled by order of Mustafa Kemal.161

  Sometimes Turks seeking to get back recovered women brandished a more

  general threat. In early 1920 a missionary in Sivas reported that Ala Olu

  (Alaoğlu) Ali, the müdür (an administrator) of Oulash (Ulaş) came to the

  rescue home and spoke privately to an Armenian girl who had been a servant

  in his house during the war. He told her to “accompany him home in order

  to save her[self ] from the massacre of the Armenians that was shortly to take

  place and from which no one was to escape.” She refused.162 Such threats were

  not idle; rescued Armenians were sometimes subjected to fresh atrocities.

  In May 1920 sixty- seven young girls were reported kidnapped from a

  rescue home by Muslims who “used them for the appeasing of their basest

  appetites.”163

  By late summer– autumn 1919, the recovery efforts had begun to stall.

  Western diplomats came to realize that, in the circumstances, the status quo

  was preferable to the alternative. The British high commissioner wrote, “It

  frequently happens that Islamized women and children are . . . better off in

  their pres ent condition than if they were . . . restored to the care of their

  communities. . . . I am driven to the conclusion that, from the point of view

  of humanity as distinct from that of religious feeling, our best course is to

  leave them as they are for the pres ent.”164 By 1922 Bristol was writing that it was

  “unfortunate” that the American missionaries “ever became involved in this

  practice of trying to get Christian women out of Muslim homes. . . . I recom-

  mended against this practice from the very beginning.”165 At that point recovery

  Mustafa Kemal and the Nationalists

  efforts in Nationalist- controlled Asia Minor had virtually ceased. “One of the

  first effects of the Nationalist movement was to bring such work to an end,”

  the Foreign Office concluded.166

  But in Syria, under French rule since July 1920, one notable recovery effort

  was ongoing, albeit in a manner “quiet and unobtrusive.” The French author-

  ities were wary if not downright opposed to it, fearing pos si ble Muslim reac-

  tions. But Karen Jeppe, a Danish missionary who headed the Aleppo branch of

  the League of Nations Commission for the Protection of Women and Children

  in the Near East, started a neutral house in 1921. For three years she clandes-

  tinely ran agents in the greater Aleppo area, where 30,000 Christians were said

  to be living in Muslim house holds. She reported rescuing hundreds.167

  Some of the sorriest tales to emerge concerned orphans. After years in

  Turkish hands, some didn’t even know their real names. According to Emma

  Cushman, the American member of the League of Nations commission on ab-

  ductees, the Turks not only contrived to conceal the children’s identities but

  also turned the children’s minds “so far as to revile the Christians as infi-

  dels.”168 In 1920 a British officer discovered this for himself on a visit to a

  Turkish orphanage near Constantinople. Twelve girls there were said to be

  Armenian. When approached, three wept “bitterly” and said they were

  Muslim. A nine- year- old said her name was Djelile and that her parents had

  been murdered by Armenians.

  “Who told you that . . . ?” the officer asked.

  “I was told so in the orphanage.”

  He asked her name. The girl responded with a question of her own:

  “Do you want to know the whole truth?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you consent to adopt me as your child? Swear in the name of your

  parents and God.”

  “I swear.”

  With this, the girl opened up. She was from Zeytun; the adults, including

  her mother, had been driven from their homes. She was taken to Aleppo

  “where the Turks changed my name ‘Siranush’ to Djelile.” She was compelled

  to pray in Turkish. All twelve girls, Djelile confirmed, were Armenian. Then,

  the officer reported, she “threw herself into my arms.”169

  Turks and Armenians, 1919–1924

  Armenian orphans boarding barges at Constantinople. Many were saved by the

  American Near East Relief organ ization.

  The formal end to the recoveries came at Lausanne, where the Turks re-

  fused to include in the peace treaty any provision concerning the rights of

  abductees.170 The Armenian Red Cross estimated that “about 60,000”

  Christians remained in “Turkish harems” at this time.171 During 1922–1923,

  the Nationalists closed all Christian orphanages in Anatolia and ordered the

  removal from them of girls rescued from Turkish harems.172 In some areas,

  the Turks ordered Christian orphanages to send away all girls and boys older

  than fifteen. The girls were forced to find employment in Muslim homes or

  “starve.”173

  Arresting and Prosecuting Perpetrators

  At the end of World War I, Curzon described Turkey as “a culprit waiting to

  hear the sentence.”174 The Allies sought to punish Turkey— for launching the

  war in the Middle East and for its war crimes, including maltreatment of Al-

  lied war prisoners— and theoretically had two means at their disposal. One

  was territorial dismemberment. The other was to penalize individual war crim-

  inals. The British were the most resolute of the Allies in this regard— partly

  Mustafa Kemal and the Nationalists

  out of a moral sense and partly out of a sense of guilt. Britain had, after all,

  prevented Rus sia’s annexation in 1878 of Turkey’s eastern provinces, where

  the Turks later massacred the Armenians. “History will always hold us cul-

  pable,” Lloyd George declared.175

  On May 24, 1915, a few days after the start of the Armenian deportations

  and massacres, the governments of France, Britain, and Rus sia sent a joint

  letter to the Sublime Porte warning the Turks against committing “crimes

  against humanity.”176 After the war, Gough- Calthorpe, then the British high

  commissioner, cabled the Turkish government, “His Majesty’s Government

  is resolved to have proper punishment inflicted on those responsible for Ar-

  menian massacres.”177 He also called for the “arrest and exemplary punish-

  ment” of Enver, Talât, Şakır, and their like.178 On January 23, 1919, British

  leaders deci ded on the prosecution of war criminals and demanded that the

  Turks arrest those deemed responsible. The British handed over lists of sus-

  pects. But the Turks balked: they reluctantly arrested a handful and refused

  to hand them over. Instead they produced a lengthy folder containing docu-

  ments proving that the Armenians had been at fault and that their “deporta-

  tion” had been justified.179 The British reacted by themselves rounding up

  suspects and shipping them to a detention center in Malta.180

  But who would try them? Allied jurists spent months mulling over the

  matter. London proposed setting up Allied military courts but dropped the

  idea after France and Tu
rkey objected. The possibility of establishing an in-

  ternational criminal court also fell through.

  The buck thus passed to the Constantinople government. In November

  1918 the Turks convened a special court martial, and Enver and Cemal were

  tried in absentia— but not for massacring Christians. The following month,

  they began arresting war crimes suspects and trying them at regular military

  tribunals. Altogether several hundred were taken in, most on the basis of the

  British lists. Some were identified by Christian survivors. In January 1919

  travelling commissions of inquiry were sent to the provinces, and in February

  extraordinary military tribunals were established in Constantinople and the

  provinces to try a portion of the suspects.181

  The first trial with the accused pres ent took place in Constantinople in Feb-

  ruary 1919. The defendants were charged with persecuting Armenians in

  Yozgat. Sixty- two further trials followed. In one, CUP Central Committee

  Turks and Armenians, 1919–1924

  members and Special Organ ization officials were tried. In two others, cabinet

  ministers and CUP responsible secretaries and delegates appeared in the

  dock. But the courts, especially those in the vilayets, handed down few guilty

  verdicts. Indeed, investigating magistrates were either remiss in pursuing

  evidence and suspects or found it impossible to overcome the recalcitrance

  of local officials and police and actually bring suspects to book. For example,

  Setrag Karageuzian, an Armenian investigating magistrate in Trabzon, proved

  unable to bring any suspects to trial despite three and a half months of work

  during winter- spring 1919.182

  The Turks had initially agreed to hold the trials in the hope of softening

  Allied punishment of Turkey itself. But within months they stopped the pro-

  ceedings. In Paris the Allies had ruled that the Turkish people were “guilty

  of murdering Armenians without justification.”183 But the Turkish authorities,

  both in Constantinople and Ankara, rejected the notion of collective guilt. The

  first postwar grand vizier, Ahmet Izzet Pasha, a Talât appointee, during his

  three weeks in office destroyed incriminating documents, helped suspects flee,

  and blocked arrests.184 Izzet’s successors, Tevfik Pasha and Prince Damat

  Ferid Pasha, agreed under pressure from the Allies, the press, and a renascent

  po liti cal opposition to the princi ple of punishing war criminals. But these officials thought that Talât, Enver, and Cemal should be punished rather than

  “the innocent Turkish nation free of the stain of injustice.”185

  The Yozgat trial ended with the conviction and execution in Constantino-

  ple’s Beyazit Square on April 10, 1919, of Kemal Bey, the onetime mutesarrif of

  Boğazlıyan. His funeral the next day, which turned into an anti- Allied demon-

  stration, was conducted with great “pomp and ceremony.” “Numerous Young

  Turks [ were] pres ent,” as well as “many officers and soldiers” and medical stu-

  dents. One of the students, “holding a bunch of flowers,” eulogized: “Hark oh

  people. . . . Hark oh Mussulmen! He whom we leave lying here is the hero

  Kemal Bey. The En glish have been ejected from Odessa, let us drive them out of

  Constantinople. What are you waiting for? . . . With the help of God we will

  soon be able to crush their heads.” Gough- Calthorpe observed that Kemal Bey

  “was treated as a hero and martyr.”186 The popu lar mood no doubt dampened

  the government’s interest in punishing additional perpetrators. “Not one Turk

  in a thousand can conceive that there might be a Turk who deserves to be

  hanged for the killing of Christians,” the Foreign Office commented.187

  Mustafa Kemal and the Nationalists

  The Greek invasion of Smyrna, and the nationwide protests that followed,

  served to reinforce Turkish recalcitrance. On May 17, just after the Smyrna

  landing, the Turks stopped the trials and arrests of suspects. Some were freed.

  In the interior perpetrators who had gone to ground were emboldened; they

  “walked about fearlessly.”188 In June the Turks officially reconvened the Con-

  stantinople trials, but the British dismissed this as a deception.189 Webb con-

  cluded, “ There are . . . many thousands of Mussulmen in this country who

  deserve to be treated with the most extreme penalties of the law, but, to my

  everlasting regret, it appears impracticable.”190 In October the Nationalists and

  Constantinople secretly agreed that British investigation of Turkish military

  commanders must cease, Turks exiled by Britain be repatriated, and Arme-

  nians be prosecuted for their war crimes.191 After the Allies occupied Constantinople in March 1920, arrested, and exiled to Malta dozens of Nationalist

  figures, including some implicated in war crimes, the Nationalists responded

  by arresting dozens of Britons in Anatolia.

  One more Turk was to be tried, convicted, and executed for war crimes—

  Nusret Bey, a subdistrict governor in Urfa, hanged on August 5, 1920. His pun-

  ishment caused widespread revulsion in Turkey. In 1921 a military court of

  appeals overturned the verdict and put on trial those who had tried him. Gen-

  eral Nemrud Kurd Mustafa Pasha, the chief judge of the Turkish court- martial

  and one of the judges in the Nusret proceedings, was dismissed, charged with

  mishandling the war- crimes proceedings, and sentenced to three months in

  prison.192 At his trial, the general denounced his accusers—in effect, the war time CUP establishment, which was by then back in the saddle under the Nationalist

  label. He blamed them for abominable crimes:

  The pashas who have carried out unpre ce dented and inconceivable

  crimes and who, in ser vice of their personal interests, have thus reduced

  the country to its pres ent straits, continue to cause mischief. They have

  produced vari ous kinds of tyranny, or ga nized deportations and massa-

  cres, burnt breast- feeding infants with petrol, raped women and young

  girls in the presence of their garroted or wounded parents, separated

  young girls from their fathers and mothers, confiscated their movable

  and immovable properties, and exiled them as far as Mosul in a la men-

  ta ble state. . . .

  Turks and Armenians, 1919–1924

  They have thrown thousands of innocents from boats into the sea. They

  have had town criers call upon non- Muslims loyal to the government to

  deny their religion and embrace Islam. . . . They have marched famished

  elders for entire months; they have sent them to forced labor. They have

  had young women thrown into houses of ill repute . . . without pre ce-

  dent in the history of nations.193

  Nusret’s successful, albeit posthumous, appeal and the indictment of

  Nemrud delegitimized the whole war crimes pro cess and, by implication,

  helped subvert the notion that the Turks had massacred the Armenians.194

  There were no further prosecutions. That same year, 1921, the British freed

  all the Malta prisoners in exchange for the Britons the Nationalists had taken

  hostage.195

  The French Arrive

  Most of the postwar deportation, flight, and murder of Armenians in Anatolia

  occurred in Cilicia and northern Aleppo vilayet, under nominal French con-


  trol between late 1919 and 1921. These territories had been part of the Blue

  Area, earmarked for French rule under the secret Sykes- Picot agreement of

  1916. The British handover of these territories to French control three years

  later was, in effect, a fulfillment of the agreement’s provisions.

  Already in December 1918, four battalions of the French Army— the

  4,000- strong Legion d’Orient, later renamed the Legion Armenienne and

  consisting mainly of Armenian volunteers— landed at Mersin and Alexan-

  dretta, serving as part of Allenby’s occupation force. Thousands more

  reached the two ports in June– July 1919, as British units were pulled out to

  contend with anti- British unrest in Egypt.196

  The core of the Legion consisted of young Armenians who had been res-

  cued from Musadağ in September 1915 and temporarily housed in a refugee

  camp in Port Said. Already in early 1915 Armenian nationalists had asked the

  British to help set up an Armenian volunteer corps to serve in British ranks

  or, alternatively, raise insurrection in Cilicia. The War Office dismissed both

  ideas.197 But in 1916 the French pressed the British to establish a volunteer

  corps, specifically to help in the liberation and occupation of Cilicia, destined

  Mustafa Kemal and the Nationalists

  for French rule.198 At the end of the year, hundreds of volunteers began training

  in Egypt and then Cyprus. The Legion, three battalions of Armenian volun-

  teers from the Middle East and United States, and a battalion of Syrian Arab

  exiles, was incorporated in January 1917 into the French Army’s Detachment

  français de Palestine- Syrie, under Lieutenant- Colonel Philipin de Piepape.199

  The Legion saw action in September– October 1918 in northern Palestine and

  Syria.200 After landing in Mersin and Alexandretta, the battalions fanned out to

  Dörtyol, Toprakkale, Islahiye, Pozantı, Tarsus, Adana, Misis, and Cihan.201

  They hoisted the Armenian flag over the government building in Adana and

  ordered the kaymakams of Payas and Dörtyol to expel the Turkish gendarmes

  from their towns.202 The legionnaires liberated women from Turkish homes

  and may have murdered a Turk outside Alexandretta.203 A few months later,