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The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915-1916

Documents presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon by Viscount Bryce

The Christian Holocaust of 1915

THE TREATMENT OF ARMENIANS IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE, 1915-1916
Documents presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon by Viscount Bryce
Uncensored edition published by Gomidas Institute/Taderon Press, Reading, UK
Paper. 677 page. £32.

Readers might recall my article in November EN recounting my address to the Association of Muslim Social Scientists in September on the issue of 'Westophobia' - anti-Western and anti-Christian attitudes among Muslims.

One part of my talk was to recall Jay Smith's debate with Omar Bakri Muhammad in 1999, when Smith exposed the Ottoman genocide, ethnic cleansing and gang rape of two million Christians in 1915, which Omar - and other Muslims - failed to condemn. Sheikh Omar was heavily criticised by every Christian I interviewed at the event for this evasion.

Unfortunately, such evasion or downright denial is to be found among many other Muslims, and, especially, the Turkish State to this day denies that the genocide occurred. Recently, an Assyrian clergyman was arrested for publicising the genocide. Imagine if Germany were to deny the truth of the Second World War Holocaust - and imagine the reaction it would face for so doing. Yet Turkey is supported in its denial not only by Muslims, but by the US and British Governments!

Our Government refused calls for the 1915 genocide to be commemorated on Britain's first ever Holocaust Day on January 27, because of 'a lack of evidence'. Yet this book was originally published by the British Foreign Office in 1916, painstakingly detailing such evidence for the genocide of Armenian and Assyrian Christians by the Ottomans. The real reason for the Government's attitude is that Turkey is a major ally, whose bases are essential for patrolling Iraq.

British propaganda?

A critical, uncensored edition of this work has now been published by the Gomidas Institute under the editorship of Ara Sarafian, a young British-Armenian historian, and was launched at the House of Lords by Lord Avebury on December 11, with Baroness Cox of Christian Solidarity Worldwide in attendance. Sarafian refutes holocaust-denial by Turkish state intellectuals, who claim that the Blue Book was a British propaganda fabrication. He demonstrates exactly how testimonies were collected, authenticated, and then used in the book. The great historian, Arnold Toynbee, one of the original authors of the 1916 book, wrote in 1967: 'My study (of the Armenian Genocide) ... left an impression on my mind that was not effaced by the still more cold-blooded genocide, on a far larger scale, that was committed during the Second World War by the Nazis ... My study of the genocide that had been committed in Turkey in 1915 brought home to me the reality of Original Sin.'

Despite its nature, the book is eminently readable for the layman, not at all heavy. However, it is not bed-time reading material: its subject is horrific. For example, on p. 117 we read the eye-witness account of how 'In the Armenian villages, the whole male population above the age of 12 was led out in batches and shot before the eyes of the women and children.' In Sairt, the Armenian and Chaldean bishops were burned to death in the public square, p. 120. In Harpourt, among other horrific tortures, Ottoman troops hammered nails in the feet of Christians, exclaiming 'Now let your Christ help you', p. 126. The sectarian nature of the genocide is clear from the attempts of the Government to force the Christians to convert to Islam, pp. 126-127. When the Ottomans occupied Iranian Aserbaijan, they turned on the Assyrians, many of them Protestants, p. 137. About 17,000 Assyrians escaped massacre by taking refuge in the compounds of the American Presbyterian Mission, whose US flag deterred the Ottomans from assault. Elsewhere, Christian women were abducted, enslaved and violated, and forced to convert to Islam, p. 183. Similar stories fill the book.

Denials continue

Clearly, the genocide was as much sectarian as ethnic, and as Muslims approach Christians today in pursuit of improved relations, it must be impressed upon them that the denial of this genocide is an insuperable barrier to that goal. The UK Armenian community is planning major commemorations of the genocide this year, and has invited Britain's evangelicals to join them, especially in popularising knowledge of the massacres and gang rapes. Certainly, when we consider that Armenian and Assyrian Evangelicals were slaughtered alongside the Catholics and Orthodox, totalling two million people between 1915-18, the genocide deserves to be called 'the Christian holocaust' and Christian advocacy groups would be well-advised to employ this term in future. Although at £32 the price of the book is steep, it is well worth it, and when we consider how Christians are treated today in some Muslim countries - especially when Muslims are evasive in condemning the 1915 genocide - the book's theme is very relevant.

Anthony McRoy