[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 148 (Friday, October 16, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E2215-E2216]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
ARMENIAN GENOCIDE
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HON. GEORGE P. RADANOVICH
of california
in the house of representatives
Friday, October 16, 1998
Mr. RADANOVICH. Mr. Speaker, on May 15, 1996, this testimony on the
Armenian Genocide was submitted to the House Committee on International
Relations by Levon Marashlian, Professor of History at Glendale
Community College, California:
Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, thank you for this
opportunity to speak before you on an issue which is
intimately tied to American History and directly related to
the welfare of Turkey and to the success of the United States
policy in a region of the world which is critically important
economically and strategically.
In 1919, a political body called The National Congress of
Turkey confirmed the overwhelming American evidence that the
Armenians of the Ottoman Empire were victims of a mass
destruction during World War I. The National Congress of
Turkey declared that the ``guilt'' of the Turkish officials
who ``conceived and deliberately carried out this infernal
policy of extermination and robbery is patent,'' those
officials ``rank among the greatest criminals of humanity.''
The official Turkish gazette Takvimi Vekayi published the
verdict of the post-war Ottoman trials of those officials.
The Turkish court ruled that the intention of the Ottoman
leaders was :``the organization and execution'' of the
``crime of massacre.''
German Ambassador Johann Bernstorff, whose country was
allied with Turkey, wrote about ``Armenia where the Turks
have been systematically trying to exterminate the Christian
population.'' Raphael Lemkin, who coined the word genocide in
1944, specifically cited the ``genocide of the Armenians.''
Those who today deny the Armenian Genocide are resorting to
academically unsound revisionism, in order to prevent the
moral act of remembering this crime against humanity. In the
process, the deniers are doing a disservice to the majority
of today's Turkish people. By keeping the wounds open with
their stonewalling tactics, by making it necessary to have
hearings like this, they force the Turkish people to continue
wearing like an albatross the negative image earned by a
circle of officials who ruled eight decades ago.
A consideration of House Con. Res. 47, which remembers
``the genocide perpetrated by the governments of the Ottoman
Empire from 1915 to 1923,'' would provide a good opportunity
to draw a distinction between the guilty and the innocent
Turks, to remember also the Turks of decency who opposed
their government's policy of inhumanity.
At a time today when so many people in our society too
often shirk their individual responsibility to make personal
choices based on principles and values, it is a good lesson
for us to recall the years when American witnesses and
Turkish civilians made the personal choice to resist a wrong
and save human lives, when a few Turkish officials even chose
to object, even though doing so could have endangered their
own lives.
One was an Ottoman Senator, Ahmed Riza. In December 1915 he
courageously condemned the policy to destroy and deport
Turkey's two million Armenian citizens and expropriate their
assets, which authorities were carrying out under the cover
of a legislative fig leaf euphemistically called the
Abandoned Properties Law.
``It is unlawful to designate'' Armenian properties as
abandoned, declared Senator Riza, because they did not leave
their properties voluntarily. They were ``forcibly'' removed
from their homes and exiled. ``Now the government is
selling'' their possessions. ``Nobody can sell my property if
I am unwilling to sell it. This is atrocious. Grab my arm,
eject me from my village, then sell my goods and properties?
Such a thing can never be permissible. Neither the conscience
of the Ottomans nor the law can allow it.''
[[Page E2216]]
Mr. Chairman, during a debate on the Senate floor in
February 1990, your colleague Robert Dole championed another
resolution commemorating the Armenian Genocide (S.J. Res.
212), and declared, ``it's finally time for us to do what is
right. Right. We pride ourselves in America'' for ``doing
what's right, not what's expedient.''
In this case, doing what is right does not exact a big
price. The frequently heard argument that a commemorative
resolution will harm American-Turkish relations is not
credible. It ignores the fact that the relationship is much
more in Turkey's favor than America's. Not doing what is
right, on the other hand, is tantamount to rejecting
mountains of documents in our National Archives, testimonies
that refute the denial arguments generated in Ankara and,
most disturbingly, promoted in prestigious academic circles
here in America.
This denial recently spurred over 100 prominent scholars
and intellectuals, including Raul Hilberg, John Updike,
Norman Mailer, Kurt Vonnegut, and Arthur Miller, to sign a
petition denouncing the ``intellectually and morally corrupt
. . . manipulation of American institutions'' and the
``fraudulent scholarship supported by the Turkish government
and carried out in American Universities.''
A typical example of the powerful evidence in the US
Archives is a cable to the State Department from Ambassador
Henry Morgenthau: ``Persecution of Armenians assuming
unprecedented proportions. Reports from widely scattered
districts indicate systematic attempts to uproot peaceful
Armenian populations and through arbitrary arrests'' and
``terrible tortures,'' to implement ``wholesale expulsions
and deportations from one end of the Empire to the
other,'' frequently accompanied by ``rape, pillage, and
murder, turning into massacre . . .''
And the persecutions continued even after World War I ended
in 1918. ``It was like an endless chain,'' reported Edith
Woods, an American nurse, in 1922. ``The children would often
be dead before I had taken their names. Forty to fifty of the
older women died each day. . . . Their mouths were masses of
sores, and their teeth were dropping out. And their feet,
those poor feet, bleeding feet. . . . Deportation is sure
death--and a far more horrible death than massacre. Unless
one sees these things it is difficult to believe that such
monstrous cruelty and barbarity exist in the world.''
Ms. Woods' testimony ripped to shreds the web of denial
being woven by Turkish officials in the early 1920's. She
also exposed the new atmosphere of intensitivity at the
American Embassy in Instanbul which contradicted the
overwhelming sentiment of American public opinion and the
spirit of Congressional resolutions in favor of Armenians
that were passed during those days. This American woman made
the personal choice to speak up against the response at her
own Embassy, a policy imposed by acting ambassador Admiral
Mark Bristol, who, driven obsessively by commercial
interests, was colluding in a cover-up crafted by Turkish
authorities.
Allen Dulles, the State Department's Near East Division
chief (and later CIA Director), found it hard to keep things
under wraps as Bristol requested. ``Confidentially the State
Department is in a bind,'' Dulles cautioned in April 1922.
Our task would be simple if the reports of the atrocities
could be declared untrue or even exaggerated but the
evidence, alas, is irrefutable and the Secretary of State
wants to avoid giving the impression that while the United
States is willing to intervene actively to protect its
commercial interests, it is not willing to move on behalf of
the Christian minorities.
And the evidence mounted. In May 1922, four American relief
workers, Major Forrest D. Yowell of Washington DC, Dr. Mark
Ward of New York, Dr. Ruth Parmalee of Boston, and Isabel
Harely of Rhode Island, were all expelled from their posts in
Turkey because they too chose to do what is right, they
protested the ongoing persecutions. Major Yowell said
Armenians in his district were ``in a state of virtual
slavery,'' with ``no rights in the courts.''
Dr. Ward quoted Turkish officials. One Turk declared: ``We
have been too easy in the past. We shall do a thorough job
this time.'' another remarked: ``Why do you Americans waste
your time and money on these filthy Greeks and Armenians? We
always thought that Americans knew how to get their money's
worth. Any Greeks and Armenians who don't die here are sure
to die when we send them on to Bitlis, as we always choose
the worst weather in order to get rid of them quicker.''
Not all Turks were so cruel. A British diplomat reported
that another American in Turkey, Herbert Gibbons, knew of
prominent Turks who protested the ``unparalleled
inhumanity:'' but they were ``beaten and sent away'' for
intervening. The Mayor of the Black Sea city of Trabzon had
no sympathy with the government's policy and did what little
he could. The Governor also opposed the ``massacres and
persecutions,'' but was powerless to stop it. His predecessor
tried and was removed.
Gibbons thought the government's policy was ``a calumny
upon the good Turks, of whom there are many.'' Massacres
never broke out spontaneously, since ``Christians and Moslems
ordinarily get along very well.'' The massacres were ordered,
as part of a plan ``to make Turkey truly Turkish.''
Yet there are ``humane and kind hearted Turks,'' Gibbons
stressed, and there are ``Mohammedans who fear God and who
are shocked by the impious horrors of the extermination
policy.''
Revisionists today say in effect that Americans like
Forrest Yowell, Mark Ward, Ruth Parmalee, Isabel Harely,
Edith Woods, Herbert Gibbons, and Ambassador Henry Morgenthau
were either liars or misguided.
Remembering the atrocities against the Armenians would show
respect for those Americans who spoke up, and respect as well
for Turks like Senator Riza who also chose to oppose the
injustice. A recognition of the Armenian Genocide by the US
Congress would be a step toward helping erase this important
ally's image problem, which Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet
described in 1951 as ``this black stain on the forehead of
the Turkish people.''
Encouraging Turkey to face the facts of its history would
help lift the cloud of controversy which haunted it for
decades. It would help eliminate the deep roots of Armenian-
Turkish enmity, paving the way to normalized relations, and
it would give Armenia the sense of security many Armenians
feel is necessary if they are to respond to Russia's regional
policies with more independence and balance. The prospects
for American commerce and regional stability would be
strengthened by a recognition of the Armenian Genocide.
Acknowledging the Armenian Genocide also would show that
Congress cannot condone the brazen contradiction of its own
Archives and the dangerous corruption of America's academic
institutions. It would send a strong signal to all deniers of
genocide, especially to deniers of the Holocaust. Mr.
Chairman, taking a stand against the denial of the Armenian
Genocide would be entirely consistent with the successful
resolution ``Deploring Holocaust Deniers'' which you so
wisely introduced last December, in which you too did what is
right, by calling denial efforts ``malicious.'' Such language
is applicable to the denial of the Armenian Genocide as well.
Mr. Chairman, when weighing the merits of the arguments on
both sides of this issue, it would be useful to keep in mind
a letter sent to Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes in
1924 by Admiral Bristol, a man who was called ``very pro-
Turk'' by Joseph Clark Grew, Washington's first Ambassador to
Ankara. Even the pro-Turk Admiral acknowledged ``the
cruelties practiced upon the Armenians by Turks acting under
official orders, and in pursuance of a deliberate official
policy.'' For that policy, wrote Admiral Bristol, ``there can
be no adequate excuse.''
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