I look out the round window (helicopter) and literally recoil from the incredibly scary picture. On the yellow grass of the foothills, where gray cakes of snow, the remnants of winter snowdrifts, still melt in the shade, dead people lie. All this vast area to the near horizon is littered with the corpses of women, old men, old women, boys and girls of all ages, from an infant to a teenager ... The eye pulls out two figures from the mess of bodies - a grandmother and a little girl. The grandmother, with her gray head uncovered, lies face down next to a tiny girl in a blue hooded jacket. For some reason, their legs are tied with barbed wire, and my grandmother's hands are also tied. Both are shot in the head. With the last gesture, little four years old, the girl holds out her hands to the murdered grandmother. Stunned, I don't even immediately remember the camera...
Russian TV reporter Yuri Romanov
Refugees say that hundreds died during the Armenian attack... Of the seven corpses we saw here today, two were children's and three were women's, one of the bodies had a wound in the chest, apparently from close range. Many of the 120 refugees being treated at the Aghdam hospital have multiple stab wounds.
Thomas Goltz Washington Post
Two groups, apparently two families, were killed together - the children were engulfed in the arms of the women. Some of them, including a little girl, had monstrous head wounds: in fact, only the face remained. The survivors said that the Armenians shot them at close range, already lying on the ground.
Anatol Lieven "The Times"
Near Aghdam, on the border of Nagorno-Karabakh, according to Reuters photographer Frederika Langen, she saw two trucks filled with the corpses of Azerbaijanis. “I counted 35 in the first truck and it looks like it was the same in the second one,” she said. “Some had their heads cut off, many were burned. All of them were men, but only a few were in protective uniforms.
The New York Times
“From time to time, the bodies of their victims exchanged for living hostages are brought to Aghdam. But even in a nightmare, this will not be seen: gouged out eyes, cut off ears, scalped, severed heads. Bundles of several corpses, which were dragged along the ground for a long time on ropes behind an armored personnel carrier. There is no limit to bullying."
Correspondent of the newspaper "Izvestia" V. Belykh.
He also cites the testimony of a helicopter pilot Russian Air Force, Major Leonid Kravets:
“On February 26, I took the wounded out of Stepanakert and returned back through the Askeran Gate. Some bright spots on the ground caught my eye. He went down, and then my flight mechanic shouted: “Look, there are women and children.” Yes, I myself have already seen about two hundred dead, scattered along the slope, among whom wandered people with weapons. Then we flew to pick up the corpses. We had a local police captain with us. He saw his four-year-old son there with a crushed skull and was moved by reason. Another child, whom we managed to pick up before they started firing at us, had his head cut off. I saw the mutilated bodies of women, children and old people everywhere.
According to the American magazine Newsweek, many were killed at close range while trying to escape, some had their faces disfigured.
According to Time magazine columnist Jill Smalle,
The simple explanation given by the attacking Armenians, who insist that innocent people were not killed on purpose, is not at all believable.
Russian cameraman Yuri Romanov describes a six-year-old Khojaly girl whose eyes were burned out by cigarette butts.
When I arrived in Agdam on Tuesday evening, I saw 75 fresh graves in one of the cemeteries and four mutilated corpses in the mosque. In the field hospital set up in wagons at the railway station, I also saw women and children with bullet wounds.
Helen Womack, journalist for the British newspaper The Independent
The Museum-Institute of the Armenian Genocide and the Institute of Archeology and Ethnography of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia recommended, and the publishing house "Gitutyun" published the study by Doctor of Philology Verzhine Svazlyan "Armenian Genocide: Eyewitness Testimonies" (scientific editor - Corresponding Member of the National Academy of Sciences Sargis Harutyunyan) in Armenian and English. The voluminous volumes (each over 800 pages) contain a huge amount of historical and factual material gleaned from the testimony of 700 sources. In Turkish, the book will soon be published in Istanbul by the publishing house of prominent human rights activist Ragip Zarakolu "Belge".
THESE VOLUMES ARE THE RESULTS OF THE AUTHOR'S 55 YEARS OF UNTIRED WORK. Amazingly, back in 1955, when any mention of the Genocide was banned, Verzhine Svazlyan, while still a student, realized importance eyewitness testimony as reliable factual material, on her own initiative began to collect testimonies of survivors of the Genocide. Since 1960, she continued the same work in Greece, France, Italy, Germany, USA, Canada, Syria. Lebanon, Egypt, Turkey already as an employee of the Institute of Archeology and Ethnography of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia, and then the Museum-Institute of the Armenian Genocide of the Armenian Academy of Sciences.
In 2000, the first edition of the book under the same title was published. It included the testimonies of 600 eyewitnesses. Not satisfied with what was done, V. Svazlyan continued searching and collecting materials. Participation in international conferences, visits to nursing homes, places of compact residence of Armenians, communication with the descendants of the victims of the Genocide around the world allowed her to bring the number of reliable sources to 700. We note not only the richness of the material covered, but also its genre diversity: for example, recordings of historical songs on Armenian and Turkish languages are generally unique in the literature on the Genocide.
The introduction to the book has independent scientific value. Its first section - "Historical and Philological Research", in turn, is divided into two lengthy subsections: "Genre and typological features of historical evidence reported by surviving eyewitnesses" and "The process of the Armenian Genocide according to eyewitness accounts", in which the author reveals in detail the topic headers.
In the second section - "Historical Primary Sources" - 700 testimonies about the Genocide are divided into the following extensive subsections: "Memories", "Historical Songs". The last subsection also contains notated songs.
V. SVAZLYAN SAYS THIS THING ON THE IMPORTANCE OF THE EVIDENCE COLLECTED BY HER ON THE GENOCIDE: "Just as in the disclosure of any crime, the evidence of eyewitnesses is of decisive importance, so in this case, each evidence has, from a legal point of view, evidentiary value for a fair resolution of the Armenian issue and recognition of the Armenian Genocide." “That is why,” the author concludes, “it is so important to publish and put into scientific use the factual documentary folk eyewitness testimonies collected in this work about the entire historical process of the Armenian Genocide, about the innocent victims and the occupied Country, since genocide is a mass political crime and it must not go unpunished, it must necessarily be revealed, including on the basis of the testimonies of survivors.And the most important witness is the people who, painfully reliving what happened again and again, told and continues to tell, testifying to their tragic past. and the past of the entire Armenian people, its history, its common historical memory which must be presented to the fair judgment of the world and mankind."
The work is accompanied by summaries in 6 languages (including Russian), a dictionary of hard-to-explain and foreign words, detailed comments on historical events and persons. A special table contains information about eyewitnesses (name, surname, year and place of birth) and their materials, the nature of the material (manuscript, audio or video recording), archival fund number, original language, place and time of recording of the material. In the section of indexes - thematic, personal names, toponyms and ethnonyms - for the first time in genocide studies, a thematic analysis of the originals was carried out, which allows researchers to delve into the diverse topics covered in the originals (description of the region, life, resettlement, deportation, pogrom, massacre, abduction, circumcision). , Islamization, methods of torture, intrigues of the great powers, etc.). Of exceptional value are the photographs (288 photographs) of witnesses who survived the Genocide, as well as a map of the Ottoman Empire in 1915-1923 deportations and the Armenian Genocide.
ALSO IN THE ARMENIAN AND ENGLISH EDITIONS documentary video film "Credo of the Svazlyan family", dedicated to the patriotic activities of three generations of the Svazlyan family in the 20th century. The film uses the most valuable archival materials and living testimonies of eyewitnesses of the Genocide.
There is no doubt that eyewitness accounts, historical and political documents, saved from oblivion and presented to the world in three languages (the author hopes that with the support of sponsors, the publication in Russian will also be carried out), will certainly become an irrefutable and significant contribution to the just decision of the Armenian question.
Turkologist, candidate of philological sciences Ruben Melkonyan in the presented article touched upon the topic of testimonies of orphans who survived the Armenian Genocide in Turkish-language documentary memoirs. On the example of two such works, Melkonyan presents a cruel odyssey of Armenian children and women who lost their loved ones during the Genocide and in subsequent years, at the same time showing the efforts of these people to preserve their identity at any cost.
The article was published in the 9th issue of the periodical collection “Issues of Oriental Studies”, which is dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.
According to a number of sources, including Turkish ones, during the years of the Armenian Genocide, numerous Armenian children were not only massacred, but also abducted by Turks and Kurds, after which they were forcibly Islamized and continued to live as slave servants and victims of the harem. The German orientalist Johannes Lepsius considered the exiled Armenian women and children "the true trophy of Islam" (Lepsius I., Germany and Armenia 1914-1918 (collection diplomatic documents) Volume 1, (translated by V. Minasyan), Yerevan, 2006, p. 45). Some of the orphaned children, on the orders and initiative of the Ottoman authorities, were distributed to Muslim families (Başyurt E., Ermeni Evlatlıklar, İstanbul, 2006, p. 36), and also collected in Turkish shelters and Islamized. Documents testifying to this have been preserved in the Ottoman archives, which have found a place in Armenian historiography and literature.
Comparing data from different sources, it can be assumed that the forced Islamization and assimilation of Armenian children during the years of the Armenian Genocide was carried out at two levels: the state and the general public:
Armenian children who lost their parents, miraculously survived the massacre, were homeless and left without care, were Islamized and distributed to Turkish families with the assistance of the government. As an example confirming the above, one can cite an official order dated July 10, 1915, preserved in the Ottoman archive, which states that the Islamized Armenian orphans must be distributed in prosperous Muslim families, in particular in those villages and urban-type villages where no Armenians. If there are many children, they should be given to low-income Muslim families and given 30 kurush per child every month. Then it is necessary to draw up lists of the number and location of these children and send them to the center (Atnur İ., Türkiyede Ermeni Kadınları ve Çocukları Meselesi(1915-1923), Ankara, 2005, p. 65). It is especially noted that children are sent to Muslim families so that they receive a Muslim education.
Wide circles of the Turkish public were also involved in the process of Islamization and Turkishization of Armenian children: during the years of the Armenian Genocide, Turks and Kurds abducted and Islamized numerous Armenian children. Unable to deny this indisputable fact, the Turkish side put into circulation the hypothesis that supposedly “compassionate” people, out of their humane motives, “saved” the exiled Armenian children. Not being supporters of absolute assessments, we consider it possible to accept that sometimes, in extremely rare cases, this hypothesis can not be ruled out, however, in most cases, Armenian children were selected with the help of violence in order to Islamize and Turkify them, and guided not by humane, but by purely personal and economic interests.
As numerous facts testify, Muslims, having received Armenian girls, later gave them in marriage to their sons, thus also avoiding the heavy duty of paying “kalym”. Based on various selfish motives, the Turks and Kurds "saved" numerous Armenian children, and this phenomenon took on a mass character.
As noted in the valuable book of the Armenian Genocide survivor, the intellectual Vahram Minakhoryan, “To have an Armenian child in the family became a mania” (V. Minakhoryan, 1915: days of the catastrophe, Tehran, 2006, p. 328). This book also voices another point of view, according to which the news of the impending victory of the Russians forced many Muslims to “save” Armenian children in order to “prove” their humane motives and avoid possible revenge (Minakhoryan V., p. 327). A terrifying aspect of the issue is the perverted sexual exploitation of Armenian orphans in those and subsequent years.
There are numerous examples of the cruel fate and forced Islamization of Armenian orphans in the Turkish documentary literature of the last period. One of them is the book “Memories of the exile of a child named “MK”, published in 2005 in Turkey, which was written on the basis of the memoirs of Manvel Krkyasharyan, who was born in 1906 in Adana. In 1980, Manvel, who lives in Sydney, wrote down his memoirs about the Genocide and his life in subsequent years, and later, in 2005, the famous Turkish publicist Baskin Oran prepared them for publication.
At the age of nine, Manvel and his family embarked on the path of exodus, during which he witnessed the suicide of his mother Mariam, the death of his father, Stepan, the massacre of their caravan and other horrors. Having miraculously escaped, the 9-year-old child underwent indescribable torment: he was either sold on the slave market, or “adopted” by various Muslims, and finally, after 10 years of wandering, he found his relatives. Baskin Oran noted that the little boy was simply subconsciously looking for his roots, relatives, and finally found (Oran B., “M.K.” Adlı Çocuğun Tehcir Anıları: 1915 ve Sonrası, İstanbul, 2005, p.14). This story is one of those many thousands of examples that Armenian children were subjected to during the years of the Armenian Genocide, but the memoirs of Manvel Krkyasharyan are the most important description of the fear that survived. 
The compiler of the book, Baskin Oran, in his extensive preface, makes explicit or contextual generalizations around the issue of the Genocide, tries to indirectly present the official Turkish position, but the true value of the book is the stories of Manvel Krkyasharyan without comments.
In the book of Manvel Krkyasharyan there are numerous descriptions of the robbery of defenseless Armenian refugees by ordinary Muslim people. Manvel distinctly remembered his mother's suicide, which he recounts twice in the book.
After the death of his mother, little Manvel survived the second blow - the death of his father. In addition to all the hardships and horrors along the way, Manvel witnessed numerous examples of the slave trade and was himself sold in this way.
Once, in an unfamiliar place on the deportation route, unable to walk any longer, Manvel decided to stay in that place. After some time, the Kurds and Circassians killed some of the Armenians who remained there, and the children were distributed among themselves. Manvela took the Kurd from a nearby village and wanted to take him home, but on the way he changed his mind and decided to rob the boy. He even took away the last clothes that were on 9-year-old Manvel and left him half-naked on the road. After that, Manvel hid in a cave, where a Muslim found him the next day and took him to him. A few days later, the Kurds came from the neighboring village of Sarmrsank, which today is on the border of Syria and Turkey, and took the boy as a servant. On the way, Manvel saw dead or half-dead people, and realized that it was their caravan, which the Circassians brought and handed over to the Kurds, and after the robbery they killed all the Armenians. In the evening of the same day, a commotion broke out in the village. It turned out that one Kurd noticed a 14-15-year-old completely naked Armenian youth who survived during the massacre. The villagers went and stoned him to death (Oran B., p. 60).
This and many other scenes described in the book are the best evidence that representatives of different strata and age groups of the Muslim community were involved in the process of carrying out the Armenian Genocide. It is horrifying that Kurds, Arabs, Turks easily killed Armenians just because of their clothes. Having survived all these horrors and miraculously survived, Manvel began to live in a Kurdish village, served in the houses of peasants, but used every opportunity to find his relatives. During 10 years of torment in the matter of preserving his national and religious identity, Christian upbringing played an important role for Manvel.
In a small child, Armenianness was associated with Christianity, and he cautiously began to wonder where there are Christians, in order to find his loved ones in this way. As a result, the search led Manvel to Mosul, and the priest of the local Armenian church promised to help him. Indeed, after some time it turned out that several relatives of Manvel were in Aleppo, and after 10 years of torment and wandering, he finally found them. Then Manvel found out that one of his sisters, Ozhen, lives in Cyprus, and the other, Sirui, in the USA. In 1925, Manvel left for Cyprus, settled there, married, had children, and already in 1968 moved to Australia. In the end, it is worth adding that the desire to search and find his relatives accompanied Manvel throughout his life, and already 79-year-old Manvel visited his sister, who was in the United States, who in last time seen at 2 years of age.
Not all eyewitnesses of the Genocide and their descendants dared to write about what they experienced and saw, so they often resorted to the help of other people. In 2008, a memoir titled “Sargis loved these lands” was published in Turkey, in which Sargis Imas, an Armenian living in Germany, recounts his family’s memories of the Genocide. He sent the recorded material to the Turkish journalist and publicist Faruk Boldiriji, asking for it to be edited and prepared for publication. Correspondence and telephone communication were established between Sargis and Faruk, and the Turkish journalist began to publish his memoirs, however, unfortunately, Sargis Imas died before the publication of the book.
Despite the fact that the compiler of the book made some equivalent comments in the preface and tried, in particular, to show the calls for friendship and brotherhood present in the memoirs of Sargis Imas, however, the book adds to the list of works on the Armenian theme in the memoir genre of Turkish literature and, in addition, is of source value for the history of the Genocide.
Asatur, the maternal grandfather of Sargis Imas, was a miller in the village of Konakalmaz, Kharberd region, and it was this circumstance that saved him from exile. After the death of his wife, Asatur mostly lived at the mill, which was located outside the village, and when the police broke into the village and evicted everyone, he was not in the village. His family - his mother, 7-year-old daughter Shushan, 3-year-old son Andranik, together with other fellow villagers, were deported and headed towards the city of Maden. In the evening of the same day, after endless walking, the exhausted 70-year-old mother of Asatura asked the policeman accompanying them to kill her, because she could no longer walk. “Having met” the request of an elderly woman, the policeman stabbed her to death in front of her grandchildren and left her bloody body on the road (Bildirici F., Serkis Bu Toprakları Sevmişti, İstanbul, 2008, p. 18). Two young children remained near the grandmother's lifeless body and did not understand what had happened. Until late at night, the children asked their grandmother to get up and continue on their way, since the caravan had already left, and they were left alone. So until dawn, the children, shivering from the cold, waited next to the body of their grandmother.
At dawn, Shushan, together with her brother, was forced to look around in an unfamiliar area in search of food. When they reached the nearest river, three Kurds came out to meet them. Seeing defenseless children, the Kurds began to talk. Later it turned out that the military doctor Sami Bey, who lives in the city of Maden, asked these Kurds to find a 7-8-year-old Armenian girl so that they could become a friend for his 3-year-old daughter. In return, the doctor promised to pay the Kurds. And so, when they saw Shushan and Andranik, the Kurds realized that they had found a girl, but they were told to bring only a girl, so 3-year-old Andranik was not needed.
At that moment, an incident occurred, the memories of which accompanied Shushan all his life: while two Kurds were talking to each other, the third one approached the children: “A short Kurd approached the children. Without saying a word to Shushan, he roughly grabbed Andranik by the arm and dragged him towards the river. Kurd began to drown the boy. Shushan, terrified, could not scream and run. She froze and watched her brother's death. This man was a real killer, for him her handsome brother had no value. He was so calm that it seemed as if he was doing ordinary business. It was obvious that this was not the first time he had killed a man. When the child was quiet, the Kurd carried his body out of the water and took off all his clothes. And the small body no longer interested him: he again threw it into the water ”(Bildirici F., p. 19).
The robbers took Shushan to a large house located in the city and gave it to a man who paid the Kurds-murderers. It was the military doctor Sami-bey who adopted Shushan and named her Susan. According to Sargis Imas, Shushan was treated well in that house, and she stayed there for 5-6 years. Years later, an Armenian merchant who visited Maden noticed that the girl understood Armenian well. And before that, the father of Shushan-Asatur was looking for his family and asked this merchant to inform him in case of any news. After talking with the girl, the merchant asked her name, to which the girl replied that now her name is Susan, but in her native village she was called Shushan.
The merchant informed Asatur about this, who, heading to the city of Maden, visited Sami Bey and described the situation, asking him to return his daughter. Doctor Sami took pity, but said that he would give the girl to Asutura only if she recognized her father. Sami and Asatur went home, and when they saw their father, Shushan immediately recognized him. She screamed "father, father" and hugged him. After that, Sami Bey returned Shushan to his father, and they went to the village of Konakalmaz, which had changed a lot: new people owned the property and houses of the Armenians.
A few years later, Shushan was married to an Armenian Martiros from the village of Tilk in Kharberd, who was also an Armenian child who had escaped the Genocide.
The book also describes the story of Shushan's stepmother - Yekhsai. During the genocide, she lost her husband and was exiled along with her little daughter Martha. Later, in her memoirs, Yehsai described various episodes of the slave trade on the way out. “On the way, any Muslim could easily pick up the woman and girl he liked. They paid a few pennies to the policemen accompanying the caravan and took them away like a watermelon or melon. A similar fate awaited Yekhsai, who was bought by a Muslim peasant, after which he became a Turk and married her. It is noteworthy that Yekhsai does not even mention the name of her “husband” and it is obvious that she is also tormented by moral questions: “These two months seemed like an eternity to me. Only God and I know how those months passed. I told myself that only my body was defiled, and the soul would remain completely clean ”(Bildirici F., pp. 137-139).
It also reveals the issues of reintegration of Armenian women abducted and with the help of violence who became Muslim wives, how they will overcome themselves and, after marrying murderous kidnappers, return to their former environment. This is what forced many Armenian women to refuse the real possibility of liberation from Muslim slavery. Yehsan took her daughter Marta with her, whom she left under the care of relatives of her “Muslim husband”. After some time, the girl was raped by the head of the family, after which she barely got to her mother. Together they fled and took refuge in the mill of their distant relative Asatur.
Later, Yehsan and Asatur got married, had two children, and Marta migrated to Soviet Armenia and started a family.
Thus, we can conclude that the testimonies of the survivors of the Armenian Genocide, in this case, children, uniquely reveal the stories that became the basis for the publication of memoirs in Turkish. Being eyewitness testimonies and written in a bit of a fictional genre, they become more readable, and being in Turkish can be a small, albeit positive, step towards revealing the truth to an ignorant and victimized Turkish public policy of denial.
The Turks do not limit themselves to denying the fact of the genocide - they would like to erase the very memory of the Armenians in modern Turkey.
Behind the desire of the Turks to deny everything and everything, there are, first of all, fears that world public opinion may require Turkey to compensate for material damage or return territories to Armenia. Indeed, according to the UN Convention “On the non-applicability of the statute of limitations to war crimes and crimes against humanity” (dated November 26, 1968), genocide is a crime for which liability does not expire, no matter how much time has passed since the events occurred.
GENOCIDE. RACHIL CRYS ABOUT HER CHILDREN AND DOES NOT WANT TO BE COMFORTED, FOR THEY ARE NOT ... (Matthew 2, 18) However, the Turkish government passed a law in 1927 banning Armenian survivors of deportation from entering Turkey, and since then has always officially denied genocide survivors and their descendants the right to return to their lands and repossess their property or receive appropriate compensation.
GENOCIDE. ARMENIAN CHILDREN. AHEAD OF THEM - DEATH FROM HUNGER OR FROM THE TURKISH SABER The Armenian Genocide was the first in a series of such crimes; it was undoubtedly the longest. But its main difference from the Holocaust is that Mets Yeghern took place in the historical homeland of the persecuted people, in Western Armenia, where the Armenians lived for more than three thousand years. (Before the invasion of Poland, on August 22, 1939, Hitler told the leaders of the Third Reich: “Our strength lies in speed and cruelty. Genghis Khan deliberately and with a light heart sent thousands of women and children to death. And history sees in him only the great founder of the state. (…) I gave the order special units The SS, without regret and compassion, send to death men, women and children of Polish origin and who speak Polish. Only in this way can we get the vital space we need. Who still remembers the extermination of the Armenians today?”) One of the results of the genocide, in addition to the extermination of the population, was the loss by Armenia of about nine-tenths of its lands, as well as the forced dispersion around the world of the few survivors.
ANI IS THE ANCIENT CAPITAL OF ARMENIA. CATHEDRAL OF THE MOTHER OF GOD Western Armenia is the cradle of the ancient Armenian civilization and has always been its homeland; Mount Ararat rises here, under the shadow of which it arose, the ancient capitals of Tushpa, Van, Tigranakert, Ani flourished here. This means that the Armenian people were not only almost completely destroyed, but also forced to leave the land on which they had always lived for centuries.
The genocide uprooted, trampled down the three-thousand-year-old culture of Armenia. The disappearance of Armenians from their historical homeland also meant the disappearance of their cities, churches, schools, libraries, monasteries, and universities. The genocide inflicted enormous damage on Armenian and world literature: during the robberies and fires that followed the deportation, the most ancient and unique manuscripts were destroyed.
ANI - THE ANCIENT CAPITAL OF ARMENIA Thanks to the reverent attitude of the Armenians towards their writing, only a small part of the ancient books was saved: sometimes the deportees secretly buried them deep in the sand, moving along their terrible path in the desert.
Since 1920, Turkey has converted hundreds of Armenian churches and monasteries into mosques, destroyed or allowed centuries-old monuments of Armenian culture to be turned into ruins. By the time the Ottoman Empire entered the war in 1914, the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople had 210 monasteries, 700 cathedrals and 1639 parish churches. According to the statistics of 1974, out of 913 Armenian churches still known in Turkey, 464 were completely destroyed, 252 were turned into ruins, and only 197 were left in a relatively good condition. In the following decades, many other monuments of Armenian art that remained on Turkish territory were destroyed.
Turkey is afraid of the silent evidence of the masterpieces of Armenian architecture. Therefore, she created areas closed to tourists. Since the 20s of the last century, the study of Armenian architectural monuments on Turkish territory has been practically prohibited or very difficult. The Turkish authorities are consistently destroying the traces of the presence of Armenians in the territory of Western Armenia. Churches are turned into mosques or completely destroyed, khachkars are set on rubble. Local historians and art historians resort to shameless lies, attributing to the Turkish people the authorship of even the world-famous masterpieces of Armenian architecture.
So, the Armenian genocide at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries not only barbarously took the lives of two million people, forcing them to endure unthinkable suffering, dispersed the survivors around the world, deprived the people of nine-tenths of the territory of their historical homeland, but also caused enormous damage to Armenian and world culture. And therefore, too, it should be regarded as a crime against all mankind.
Finally, in addition to the death of a huge part of the Armenian intelligentsia of Constantinople in April 1915, these terrible events also had more distant consequences. So, in 1935, the Armenian composer Komitas, who lost his mind from the horrors he saw during the genocide, died in Paris. As the years passed, he became another victim of the atrocity; and who knows how many people, unknown to historians, suffered a similar fate ...
MONUMENT TO KOMITAS IN ST. PETERSBURG
The Armenian Church is considering the canonization of the composer Komitas. “The people have long since ranked him among the saints, but the church canonization procedures, especially for individuals, are much longer and more complicated,” Archbishop Natan Hovhannisyan, chairman of the commission for organizing the canonization rite, said in an interview.
The soul wants nothing
And without opening your eyes
Looks at the sky and mutters,
How crazy, Komitas.
Lights go slowly
In a spiral above
As if they spoke
The power that sleeps in me.
My shirt is covered in blood
Because me too
Blown by the wind of fear
Ancient Massacre.
And Hagia Sophia again
The stone walks before me
And the ground bare feet
Burns me with ashes.
Lazarus came out of the tomb
And he doesn't care
What flies into his eye sockets
White apple blossom.
Until the morning in the larynx air
Peeling off like mica
And stands in the crimson stars
Krivda of the Last Judgment.
(Arseny Tarkovsky; 1959)
In connection with the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire, in the summer of 2015 a monument to the great Armenian composer Komitas will be erected in the cultural capital of Russia. The monument will be erected on the initiative of Yerevan Mayor Taron Margaryan, who personally visited the studio of Levon Bebutyan in St. Petersburg and got acquainted with the process of creating the monument.
The three-meter monument will be erected in the central square of the Vasileostrovsky administrative district, which will be renamed Yerevan Square. By the way, Armenian khachkars have already been installed in the square, and the monument to Komitas will complement the Armenian corner of the Northern capital.
EYEWITNESS EVENTS OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE IN TURKEY
ARMIN WEGNER - JUNIOR LIEUTENANT OF THE MEDICAL SERVICE OF THE GERMAN ARMY. 1915 The photographs published in the selection were taken by a young Prussian officer of the German Red Cross who witnessed the Armenian Genocide Armin Wegner (1886-1978) in 1915-1916. Photos from his archive, letters and diaries will forever remain in history as a convincing document that reveals the events of that terrible time.
“Armin Wegner realized the responsibility that lies with him as a witness from the very beginning of his stay in the Middle East, while still in Mesopotamia. Here is how he writes about it: “The spectacle of massacres against the backdrop of the pale horizon of the scorched desert involuntarily gave birth in me to the desire to at least partially tell what torments me, to tell not only my close friends, but also a wider, invisible circle of people ... "
ARMIN WEGNER (1886 - 1978) - DOCTOR OF LAW, WRITER, POET The moral duty of any eyewitness to violence requires a testimony, but when the testimony relates to the fate of an entire nation that became a victim of genocide, we are already talking about a debt to the whole of human history. The purpose of witnessing is not only to prevent such atrocities from happening again. By testifying, the eyewitness of the violence gives the victims the opportunity to speak through his mouth; not forgetting once seen, he allows them to live in his memory.
During his long life, he will empathize with all his being with those unfortunate people with whom he communicated and could not help, over whom monstrous atrocities were committed, and he was powerless to stop them ”(Giovanni Guyta).
In his poem The Old Man, Armin Wegner wrote:
My conscience calls me to testify
I am the voice of the exiled, crying out in the wilderness...
In 1968, the Catholicos of All Armenians Vazgen I presented Wegner with the Order of St. Gregory, Enlightener of Armenia, in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, where one of the streets of the city bears the name of Wegner.
Armin Wegner died in Rome at the age of 92 on May 17, 1978. In 1996, part of his ashes were transferred to Armenia and buried near Yerevan in Tsitsernakaberd, in the wall of the Memorial dedicated to the victims of the genocide.
Kirakosyan Arman Jonovich
Safrastyan Ruben
The Armenian Genocide carried out by the Young Turkish government of the Ottoman Empire during the First World War is an indisputable fact of historical reality. As a result of this heinous crime, Western Armenia completely lost its autochthonous population, the surviving part of the Western Armenian people scattered around the world, forming numerous colonies in the countries of Europe, America, the Middle East, Australia - the Armenian diaspora.
The genocide left a deep mark on the memory of the Armenian people and became a part of the spiritual life of every Armenian. Today, the entire Armenian people, the society of many countries of the world demand the condemnation and recognition by the world community of the fact of the Armenian genocide, the restoration of historical justice. Committed in 1988-90. in Azerbaijan, the crimes against the Armenian population, which were a response to the just demands of the Armenians of Artsakh for reunification with Armenia, resurrected the terrible pictures of the past in the people's memory and made it even more urgent to condemn the policy of genocide against ethnic groups and entire peoples, regardless of the time and place of its implementation. The law of the Armenian SSR dated November 22, 1988 “On the condemnation of the Armenian genocide of 1915 in Ottoman Turkey” was an expression of the just demands and feelings of the Armenian people.
The Armenian Genocide fully falls under the definition of the Convention “On the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide” adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1948. It states that genocide is “acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, any national, ethnic, racial or religious group as such.” If we judge the massacre and deportation of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire based on the two main points of Article 6 of the Charter of the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal, then the identity of the crimes committed by the Young Turks and the Nazis becomes obvious: murder, torture, enslavement of the civilian population, mass robbery and vandalism . The Armenian Genocide was condemned by the World Peace Congress held in Helsinki in July 1965.
The problem of the Armenian genocide remains a subject of discussion in the UN body - the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of National Minorities of the Commission on Human Rights. It took a special place in the 30th paragraph of the preliminary special study on the prevention and punishment of genocide, presented to the subcommittee by the representative of Rwanda, Nikodem Rukhashiankiko in 1973. It qualified the mass extermination of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as “the first genocide of the 20th century” . During the discussion of the report at the 26th session of the committee, then at the 30th session of the UN Commission on Human Rights, the representative of Turkey demanded to drop the reference to the Armenian genocide. From the final version of the report, presented in 1878 to the 31st session of the subcommittee, the entire historical part was excluded along with the mention of the Armenian genocide. The study was submitted to the 35th session of the UN Commission on Human Rights (February - March 1979). During the discussion, the vast majority of delegations were in favor of restoring the reference to the Armenian genocide in the study. The sub-commission commissioned British representative Benjamin Whitaker to prepare a new study on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide. At a meeting of the subcommittee in Geneva in 1985, B. Whitaker's report on this issue, however, as a result of discussions, for a number of reasons, the sub-commission rejected the draft resolution and limited itself to taking note of the report. At the same time, in the historical part of the report, a special place was given to the massacre of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during the First World War - the first genocide of the 20th century. It was noted that there is extensive documentation on this issue.
Since 1983, the problem of the Armenian genocide has been considered in the European Parliament. On June 18, 1987, the European Parliament adopted a resolution “On the political solution of the Armenian question” by a majority of votes. For the first time, a representative international body voted for a resolution in which the crime of the Young Turk government was definitely qualified as genocide against the Armenian people. The preamble of the resolution noted that "the Turkish government, refusing to recognize the 1915 genocide, thereby continues to deprive the Armenian people of the right to their own history." Thus, the European Parliament condemned not only the anti-Armenian policy of the ruling circles of modern Turkey, but also the falsified version of the Armenian genocide, widely promoted by Turkish historians in Lately.
It is noteworthy that the resolution is not limited to unfounded condemnation of the policy of the Turkish authorities; it specifically notes that the admission of Turkey to the European Economic Community is directly dependent on the position of its government on the issue of recognizing the fact of the Armenian genocide. This is a rather serious means of putting pressure on Turkey, because for many years it has been seeking entry into this community, of which it has been an associate member since 1963.
One of the new trends recent years is to increase the interest of the world community in the problem of the Armenian genocide, which finds expression in its discussion at various international scientific and public forums, conferences, symposiums. Let us note, for example, the session of the Permanent Tribunal of Peoples in Paris (April 1984), which was specially devoted to this problem, international conference“The Armenian Question and Turkish Expansionism” (Athens, May 1987). In May 1989, the convention of the World Council of Churches was held in the American city of San Antonio. The congress unanimously (350 representatives) adopted a resolution containing an appeal to all churches - members of the council, "to appeal to the governments of their countries with a call to put pressure on Turkey in order to recognize the fact of the Armenian genocide." The resolution demanded that Turkey “liberate the captured Armenia and ensure the right of the Diaspora Armenians to return to their homeland”, “start restoration and reconstruction of over two thousand temples and churches destroyed in the country over the past 75 years.”
The issue of recognition and condemnation by the world community of the fact of the Armenian genocide is supported by some states, such as France, Greece, Argentina, etc. Over the past few years, resolutions on the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire have been regularly put on the agenda of the Senate and the House of Representatives of the US Congress. The resolutions on the Armenian Question put forward in previous years for consideration by the Congress did not gain the required number of votes here and were rejected at different stages of the hearings. Usually the decisive role was played by the position of the State Department, the Department of Defense and the President of the United States, who consistently opposed the adoption of the resolution.
The leaders of the Turkish state constantly warn the US government about the possibility of serious complications in Turkish-American relations, up to and including withdrawal from the NATO military bloc if a resolution is adopted. At the same time, they emphasize the strategic importance of Turkey in the Western policy system as a “bastion of the southern flank of NATO”, protecting one third of the 3,600-mile border with the Warsaw Pact countries, indicating that Turkey has the largest army among the European members of the bloc, controls the Bosphorus and Dardanelles.
On December 7, 1987, the US House of Representatives once again rejected a resolution submitted by members of the US Democratic Party to hold April 24 of each year “ international day memory of the victims of the inhuman treatment of man to man and the Armenian massacres”. In September 1989, a similar resolution was submitted to the US Senate by the Republican party, Senator Robert Dol. Despite the fact that in October the legislative committee of the US Senate approved the submitted resolution, US President George W. possible consequences adoption of the resolution. On February 27, 1990, the US Senate refused to discuss and vote on the resolution on the Armenian genocide.
A massive propaganda campaign to discredit and falsify the problem of the Armenian Genocide is being carried out today in Turkey. Its foundations were laid immediately after the implementation of the program of extermination of Armenians. It has noticeably intensified since the mid-1970s, when it was elevated to the rank of Turkish state policy. An emphatically tendentious policy that runs counter to historical reality is occupied by many Turkish scientific organizations(for example Turkish historical society, the Institute for the Study of Turkic Culture, the Faculty of History and Literature of Istanbul University, etc.), press organs (newspapers stand out in particular Tercuman, Hürriyet, Milliet), television and radio of this country. A whole group of “scholars” has formed among Turkish historians, which, forgetting their former predilections, switched to the problem of the Armenian genocide. The names of Turkkay Ataev, Salakhi Soniel, Kamuran Gyuryun, Mumtaz Soysal and others should be noted. It was through their efforts that the falsified concept of genocide was formulated. Here are its main provisions: 1) there was no Armenian genocide, there was only the expulsion of part of the Armenian population from the front line; 2) on the way, an insignificant part of them died due to hunger, disease and other wartime hardships; 3) during the First World War, the Turkish people gave significantly more victims than the Armenians; at the same time, most of the peaceful Turkish inhabitants died at the hands of Armenian murderers; 4) Numerous facts, documents, eyewitness accounts are fabricated by the Armenians themselves.
Let us dwell in more detail on the last provision of the Turkish concept, which is directly related to the main topic of this article - the opening of the Ottoman archives in Turkey.
During the more than seven decades that have passed since the First World War, big number archival documents pertaining to the Armenian genocide. The first 52 documents, which are Talaat's secret decrees regarding the eviction and extermination of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire, were first published in 1920 in London by the Armenian writer and publicist Aram Antonyan. The documents were handed over to him by Naim Bey, chief secretary of the Aleppo eviction committee. Modern Turkish historians Turkkaya Ataev, Shinasi Orel, Surrey Yudzh and others do not recognize the authenticity of these documents, considering them to be “fake fabricated by the Armenians”. However, recently the historian Vahagn Dadrian (USA) convincingly proved their authenticity.
Both Soviet and foreign archives contain a large number of documents (diplomatic correspondence, eyewitness accounts, etc.) related to this problem. Unfortunately, only some of them have been published. Thus, from the collections published in Moscow, which contain documents related to the Armenian question, one can note “International Relations in the Epoch of Imperialism. Documents from the archives of the tsarist and provisional governments. 1878-1917” (M., 1931-40), “Partition of Asiatic Turkey. According to the Secret Documents of the Former Ministry of Foreign Affairs” (M., 1924), etc. The collections “Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire” (ed. by M. Nersisyan, Yerevan, 1966), “Armenia in Documents of International Diplomacy and Soviet Foreign politics” (ed. by J. Kirakosyan, Yerevan, 1972), “Armenian Genocide based on materials litigation over the Young Turks” (compiled by A. Papazyan, Yerevan, 1989), dozens of monographs and numerous articles have been published on the basis of archival documents.
Lately France, Germany, the USA, Great Britain, Argentina, Uruguay and other countries have been doing a lot of work to reveal and publish documents related to the problem of the Armenian genocide. Among the collections of documents published abroad, it should be noted “Armenian genocide” (according to the materials of the American press during the First World War, compiled by T. Kloyan, New York, 1980), “Great powers, the Ottoman Empire and Armenians in the archives of France. 1914-1918” (compiled by A. Beyleryan, Paris, 1983), two volumes “Armenian Genocide” of the Institute of the Armenian Question (Munich, 1987, 1988), the second of which contains only Austro-Hungarian documents from the period of the First World War, etc. A brief enumeration of the published main collections of documents on this issue leads to a natural question: does the Turkish side really believe that today it can convince the world community that the Armenians managed to fabricate so many archival materials stored in the archives of various countries of the world?
The existence of extensive documentation on the problem of the Armenian genocide, the demands of the Armenian people and the public of many countries of the world to recognize and condemn the fact of the genocide that took place, especially the adoption by the European Parliament of the resolution “On the political solution of the Armenian question”, forced the Turkish authorities to think about the need to open the Ottoman archives. However, at the same time, as we will see later, the task was set in advance to show the whole world that there are no documents testifying to the systematic policy of genocide against the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire in the Turkish archives and cannot be. This behavior of the Turkish side can be seen as an attempt to mislead world public opinion, as an example of international demagogy.
Speaking at the beginning of January 1989 on the Turkish television program “32nd Day”, former Turkish Foreign Minister Mesut Yilmaz stated that they were preparing to open access for researchers to Ottoman archival documents relating to the Armenian Question, in particular, the period of the First World War. He emphasized that the purpose of opening the archives is that “the scientific truth about the Armenian question is finally recognized” ( Milliet, 1989, January 4). A similar statement was also made by the representative of the Turkish Foreign Ministry, Inal Batu: “The Turkish government is opening archives in order to gain clarity on the scientific side of the genocide problem” ( Milliet, 1989, January 7).
So what are the Ottoman archives? First of all, it is necessary to clarify that the expression “Ottoman archives” should be understood as the central state archives of the Ottoman Empire, containing documentation related to the activities of higher public institutions(offices of the sultan, sadrazam, various ministries and departments, their correspondence with provincial governments, personal archives of sultans and individual high dignitaries, etc.). All these documents are stored in seven buildings located in Istanbul. Them total number is 100-150 million storage units. To this number, it is necessary to add another 120 thousand documents located in the museum of the Sultan's Topkapi Palace. Part of the documents of the military department in the republican period was transported to Ankara. A large number of Documents are kept in the museums of various cities that were at one time the centers of the vilayets of the former Ottoman Empire. However, these collections are not included in the concept of “Ottoman archives”.
The Ottoman archives are considered to be among the richest in the world. They are of great value not only from the point of view of the history of Turkey itself, but also of many peoples that were part of the Ottoman Empire at different times.
Can Ottoman archives contain documents on the problem of the Armenian genocide? To answer this question, the following factors must be taken into account:
- The decision on the mass extermination and deportation of Armenians was made by a narrow group of people belonging mainly to the leading core of the Unity and Progress party during a series of secret meetings. These meetings were of an unofficial nature, so their minutes in the Ottoman state archives should, in all likelihood, be absent.
- Deportation and massacres were carried out mainly by the so-called. “special organization” (“teshkilat-i maksuse”) and the army. The "Special Organization" was created by the Young Turks to conduct secret subversive work abroad. Immediately before the start of the deportation in the structure “ special organization“A top-secret unit was created to carry it out. It reported directly to the Central Committee of the Unity and Progress Party, and some members of the Central Committee did not even know about its existence. So the main part of the documentation on the deportation and extermination of the Armenians passed through the channels of party communications and most likely settled in the archives of the Central Committee of the Young Turks. And the archives of the Ministry of War, as already noted, are stored in Ankara and are considered secret. Access to them is closed.
- In 1931, the Turkish government sold part of the Ottoman archives to Bulgaria as plain paper. There they were transferred to the library to them. Cyril and Methodius, forming the basis of the collections of oriental manuscripts of this library. At present, they are already mostly classified and intensively studied by the Bulgarian Ottomanists. Among the documents there are those that are of considerable interest for studying the history of the Armenian people in the Middle Ages, but there are no documents on the issue of genocide among them. Some of the Ottoman documents sold to Bulgaria ended up in the Vatican, but even there it is unlikely that direct evidence of the 1915 genocide will be found.
The foregoing considerations, while making it unlikely that the Ottoman archives might contain relevant documents, should not completely exclude this possibility. In our opinion, traces of this crime by the Young Turks can be found in the correspondence of the central authorities with the governors of the vilayets and in other funds. The Turkish government already in 1986 had accurate information about the presence in the Ottoman archives of documents that shed light on the circumstances of the Armenian genocide. It was in that year that all these documents were revealed, collected in the building of the General Directorate of State Archives in Istanbul and placed in special steel safes, which, as the Turkish newspaper reported, “ Gunesh” (1986, August 10) are under continuous surveillance by special electronic tracking devices for 24 hours. It can be assumed that at present some of these documents - the most "dangerous" from the government's point of view - have already been destroyed.
However, the truth that the Ottoman archives may represent Turkey in a negative light, the government realized quite early. This explains his striving since the 1960s. sharply limit the access of specialists to the Ottoman archives. Only a few of them were given the right to work in them.
It should be noted that in Turkey there is practically no research in the field of history and culture of the national minorities of the Ottoman Empire, in particular the Armenian people. Appeal to this issue is not only undesirable, but actually prohibited. According to a Turkish scholar who wished to remain incognito, some researchers “constantly felt the proximity of the sword of Damocles hanging over them, and feared that the publication of anti-Turkish materials would once and for all deprive them of the right to study scientific activity” (Guardian, 1989, January 17). Such "selectivity" of the Turkish authorities caused legitimate dissatisfaction in international scientific and public circles and dealt a serious blow to the authority of the country. Milliyet newspaper columnist Mehmed Ali Birand recently admitted that “we put up such barriers to those wishing to use the archives that we were called a country that seeks to hide the truth” ( Milliet, 1989, January 13).
Already in the early 80s. a number of Turkish figures called for the opening of Turkish archives to foreigners. So, a well-known scientist and journalist, newspaper columnist “ Milliet” Mümtaz Soysal wrote in 1981 that opening the archives would add “respect” to Turkey ( Milliet, 1981, May 30). Turkish President Kenan Evren and Prime Minister Turgut Ozal also spoke about the need for this step ( Milliet, 1989, January 13).
Processing of the Ottoman archives began as early as 1981 ( Milliet, 1989, January 13). However, years passed, and the archives were still under lock and key. What is the reason? The veil was lifted by the publication of a report by Jean Howard from Ankara in the English newspaper “ guardian". It described in detail how, under the leadership of the Director General of the Main Archive Department of Turkey, Ismet Miroglu, the work on the selection and classification of archival documents began. About 400 people were involved in this work, trained to read in the Ottoman language, as well as “a good dozen archivists” ( Guardian, 1989, January 17). It is not difficult to guess what goals were set for them. After all, M. Yilmaz himself, in his above-mentioned statement, emphasized that “only a part of the documents relating to the Armenian question will be made available to scientists in order to expose the Armenian version of the 1915 genocide.” Thus, from the very beginning, archival specialists were given the goal of “exposing the Armenian version”. If we compare this with the message that flashed through the pages of the Turkish democratic press, published in exile in Western Europe, that containing truthful information about the events of 1914-18. documents and books of the libraries and archives of Istanbul, Ankara and Erzurum were burned in steam heating furnaces, and this “operation” was carried out under the leadership of officer ranks in uniform ( Turkic posts, 1984, January 13), it will become clear that the opening of the archives is another action of the Turkish government in its wide-ranging campaign aimed at misleading the world community.
The announcement of the opening of the Ottoman archives received a wide response both in Turkey and abroad. Turkish newspapers published many articles on this topic, the authors of which unanimously declared that now justice would finally prevail and "... the shameful charge of organizing genocide will be dropped from Turkey." From these publications, two articles by M.A. Milliet, 1989, January 13) and “Such an opening of the archives will not help the cause” ( Milliet, January 14). The author is forced to admit that "the opening of the Ottoman archives is the last trump card in our hands." Therefore, he urges to take this with all possible seriousness and not to make any mistakes, which would greatly complicate the task of confronting “Armenian allegations of genocide.” In his opinion, the Turkish side is close to making a number of mistakes. He refers to the first one the circumstance that in 1989 the archives of the period 1691-1894 will be opened, then in subsequent years access to documents relating to 1894-1922 will be opened. This circumstance, in the opinion of the Turkish journalist, will enable the Armenians to assert that the Turkish government thereby seeks to hide the truth. In order to avoid this danger, he proposes immediately, this year, to open for access to researchers precisely those documents that relate directly to the problem of genocide. At the same time, he makes the following “profound” conclusion: “In any case, this is how it is: the first impression is the most important. If you miss this moment, then no matter what you do, you still won’t achieve a good result.”
M.A. Birand believes that it is necessary to provide access to the documents for anyone, including an Armenian.
Most notable is his proposal to create a special commission of Turkologists from the USA and England, known for their Turkophile works, and to set them the task of selecting the necessary documents and publishing them as a separate book. According to Birand, this will have a much more favorable effect than if the collection is published and distributed by the Turkish government and scientists standing close to it.
Based on the considerations outlined above, Birand draws the following conclusion: it is not enough to open archives, one must also be able to “present” and “sell” documents well. Well, you can't say it any clearer. You cannot deny sincerity to a Turkish journalist. Approximately the same thoughts are expressed in the articles of the columnist for the Milliyet newspaper Hassan Pulour ( Milliet, 1989, January 2) and Retired Ambassador Sajit Somel ( Jumhurriet, 1989, January 27).
On May 16, 1989, the Turkish government officially announced the opening of the Ottoman archives. As previously noted in the Turkish press and official statements, researchers were only allowed access to documents about Armenians dating back to the period of history from 1691 to 1984. Moreover, out of 7 million archival units classified by a special commission during 1987-1989, access is open to only 10 thousand documents. It was also announced that over the next three years, another 20 thousand documents relating to the period of history from 1894 to 1922 will be opened to researchers. ( Mond, 1989, May 19). It should be noted that this decision applies only to government documents. As for the military archives, where most of the documents relating to this problem are located, access to them still remains possible only with special permission.
During the solemn opening ceremony of the archives, Miroglu addressed the Armenians with a demagogic call to also open their archives in order to finally solve the problem of the genocide ( Arminian Update, 1989, May-June, p. 3).
The opening of the archives was timed to show on Turkish television two documentaries. The first of them, a multi-part series, “Memory of States - Archives,” tells about the Ottoman archives, about the conditions for storing documents in them and using them by scientists. The scientists who speak in it complain in particular that the procedure for obtaining permission to work in the archive is very complicated and that each researcher has the right to receive photocopies of no more than 100 units.
The second film, 12 minutes long, is dedicated specifically to the documents on the history of the Armenian people, which are in the Ottoman archives. This film is intended to support the official point of view and is part of a propaganda campaign for the opening of the Ottoman archives. However, the film does not contain any specific information that sheds light on the content of these documents.
In June 1989, Orel, the coordinator of the research commission of the archives of the Turkish government, issued a statement in which he again recalled that the Turkish side opened the Ottoman archives of the period 1691-1894 to foreign researchers, including Armenian scientists. According to him, access to the documents, which are collected in 17 volumes under the general title “Armenians in Ottoman Documents”, is open, and in three years the number of such documents will increase to 55. He also stated that the Armenian question is not political, but historical, and therefore, it should be discussed among scientists, but not among politicians. Orel also noted that the initiative of the Turkish side to open the relevant archives "became a good response to the allegations of genocide."
Soon, on June 29, 1989, representatives of the Turkish Embassy in the United States were not slow to present to the US Library of Congress in Washington microfilms of open archival documents ( Arminian Update, 1989, May-June).
In an interview with journalist Emin Cholashan, Turkish historian Ataev stated that in the archives opened by Turkey of the period 1691-1894. not a single (?) document was found that testifies to the cruel policy of the Turkish authorities towards the Armenian population. At the same time, he noted that the Turkish side, even with a strong desire, allegedly will not be able to hide any document from the public, since they are all interconnected with each other. The Turkish historian reiterated that not a single document previously published by the Armenians is true, is a fake ( Ashkhar, 1989, October 3). Let us remind Ataev that back in 1982 in Ankara, the Turkish historian Bilal Shimshir published a two-volume collection of documents “British documents on the Ottoman archives (1856-1890)”, which, despite some tendentious approach of the compiler, contains a significant number of documents (messages from the British consuls , testimonies of missionaries, etc.), testifying to the cruel attitude of the Turkish authorities towards citizens of Armenian origin.
In the aforementioned interview, Ataev claims that the Armenian side is strong only in its propaganda, has great connections in Western countries, a rich lobby, with the help of which he carries out his anti-Turkish campaign ( Ashkhar, 1989, October 3). We are not going to comment on the statements of Turkish historians regarding the “anti-Turkish campaign” allegedly carried out by Armenians. We only note that the demands of the Armenian people are directed not at all against the Turkish people, but against the official position of the Turkish side.
Armenian scholars both in Armenia and abroad are ready to accept the offer of the Turkish side to grant the right to work in the Ottoman archives. Moreover, back in May 1989, the Zoryan Institute (USA) officially applied to the Turkish authorities about their readiness to send a number of specialists to Turkey (including one of the authors of this article) to study the open Ottoman archives. However, there has been no response so far. At the same time, it was recently announced on Turkish television that a large number of foreign researchers had already visited the archives of Turkey, but there were no Armenian scientists among them, which allegedly testifies to the falsity of the Armenian version of events.
It is possible that sooner or later access to the Ottoman archives will be opened for specialists on the problem of the Armenian genocide. There can hardly be any doubt that the documents confirming the guilt of the Turkish authorities in this crime will no longer be there. However, this in no way can cast doubt on not only the very fact of the Armenian Genocide, but also the responsibility of the Turkish government for its organization and implementation.
