Turkish Writer Exposes Persecution of Jews in Turkey

May 4, 2017 By administrator

by Harut Sassounian, Publisher, The California Courier,

Israel National News published an extremely interesting article written by Turkish journalist Uzay Bulut on the discrimination and persecution that Turkish Jews have suffered since the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923.

This is an important exposé since the Turkish government has gone to great lengths for many decades to deceive the international community that there is great tolerance for Jews in Turkish and that Jews lived in a democratic society which protected their civil and religious rights. The aim of this Turkish propaganda campaign was two-fold: To keep Israeli leaders and American Jews happy so they would support Turkish interests in Washington and enlist the political lobbying clout of American Jews in Washington to counter congressional efforts to recognize the Armenian Genocide.

The Turkish government back in 1992 commemorated with a big splash the 500th anniversary of Jews fleeing from Spain and relocating in Turkey. Ankara co-opted many of the Jewish community leaders, including the Chief Rabbi, into propagating this false historical narrative. When I wrote an editorial back then exposing the lies of that celebration, I got a letter from the head of the commemorative events, asking why I wanted to cast a negative light on their celebration.

Interestingly, that Jewish leader did not contest any of the facts in my article on the persecution of Jews in the Ottoman Empire throughout the centuries.

Bulut’s article is significant because it describes the persecution of Jews not centuries ago but during our own times in ‘modern’ Turkey! The article begins with a news item from the Turkish Milliyet newspaper reporting that dozens of historic Jewish synagogues “run the risk of disappearing forever.”

One of the main reasons why these synagogues are disappearing is that the majority of the Jewish community of Turkey has departed from Turkey fleeing from “systematic discrimination and campaigns of forced Turkification and Islamization.” Bulut reports that in 1923, at the beginning of the Turkish Republic, there were 81,454 Jews in Turkey. That number has dwindled to “fewer than 15,000.” The last of Jewish schools was shut down by the Turkish government in 1937, according to Bulut.

Here is the list of the major episodes of Turkish persecution and discrimination against Jews and other non-Turkish minorities in recent decades, as compiled by Turkish journalist Bulut:

— The Turkish Law of Family adopted in 1934 forced Jews and other non-Turks to abandon their ethnic names and adopt Turkish sounding names.

— “Jews were deprived of their freedom of movement at least three times: in 1923, 1925 and 1927.” Bulut also mentions that “during the Holocaust, Turkey opened its doors to very few Jewish and political refugees and even took measures to prevent Jewish immigration in 1937.”

— Hate speech and anti-Semitic comments are very prevalent in Turkish society and the media. Activities in support of Israel by the Jewish community were banned by the Republic of Turkey.

— The Turkish government has assigned secret code numbers to individuals of Jewish, Armenian and Greek descent. That way the government can track them down and expose their background when necessary.

— “Laws that excluded Jews and other non-Muslims from certain professions:” The Republic of Turkey banned these minorities from holding government positions. “Thousands of non-Muslims lost their jobs,” according to Bulut.

— Prohibition of the use in public of all languages except Turkish. The “Citizen Speak Turkish” campaign in the first years of the Republic mainly targeted the Jewish community, according to Rifat Bali, the leading scholar of Turkish Jewry.

— “The Jews of Eastern Thrace were targeted by pogroms from June 21-July 4, 1934. These began with a boycott of Jewish businesses, and were followed by physical attacks on Jewish-owned buildings, which were first looted, then set on fire. Jewish men were beaten, and some Jewish women reportedly raped. Terrorized by this turn of events, more than 15,000 Jews fled the region.”

— The conscription of non-Muslims in the Turkish Army (1941-42). “On April 22, 1941, 12,000 non-Muslims (also known as “the twenty classes”), including Jewish men — even the blind and physically disabled — were conscripted. But instead of doing active service, they were sent to work in labor battalions under terrible conditions for the construction of roads and airports. Some of them lost their lives or caught diseases.”

— “On Nov. 11, 1942, the Turkish government enacted the Wealth Tax Law, which divided the taxpayers in four groups, as per their religious backgrounds: Muslims, non-Muslims, converts (‘donme’), i.e. members of a Sabbatean sect of Jewish converts to Islam, and foreign nationals. Only 4.94 percent of Turkish Muslims had to pay the Wealth Tax. The Armenians were the most heavily taxed, followed by Jews. According to the scholar Başak İnce, ‘the underlying reason was the elimination of minorities from the economy, and the replacement of the non-Muslim bourgeoisie by its Turkish counterpart.’”

— “During the 6-7 September 1955 government-instigated attacks against non-Muslim communities in Istanbul, Turkish mobs devastated the Greek, Armenian, and Jewish districts of the city, destroying and looting their places of worship, homes, businesses, cemeteries, and schools, among others.”

— “Murders of Jews: Yasef Yahya, a 39-year-old Jewish dentist was brutally murdered on August 21, 2003 in his office in the Şişli district of Istanbul, many Jewish lawyers and doctors in Istanbul removed the signs on their offices in order not to have the same fate as Yahya.”

This list of continued harassment and persecution of Jews and other minorities should be sent to the international media each time that the Turkish government misrepresents its record of mistreatment of the Jewish community in Turkey.

It is a shame that the Israeli government does not whisper a single word of criticism in the face of such persecution of fellow Jews in Turkey. On the contrary, Israeli officials cowardly buckle under pressure from Turkey to deny the Armenian Genocide and ban this crime against humanity from Israeli TV and academic conferences.

The Last Brick in the Denialist Wall: Akçam Speaks with the Armenian Weekly on His Latest Discovery

May 4, 2017 By administrator

By Dickran Khodanian,

Akçam: ‘My Argument is that Based on the New Documents, it is Now Very Difficult to Deny the Armenian Genocide’

Special for the Armenian Weekly

WATERTOWN, Mass. (A.W.)—As Armenian communities around the world marked the 102^nd anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, a recent revelation by Turkish historian Dr. Taner Akçam has become a central topic of discourse, covered by major news outlets and publications. Akçam—aptly named the “Sherlock Homes of the Armenian Genocide” in a recent New York Times article—has been studying the genocide for years by compiling documents from around the world to combat the Turkish states’ denial.

According to Akçam, his recent discovery—which is he refers to as the “smoking gun” and one of the “last bricks in the denialist wall”—proves the Ottoman government’s awareness of and involvement in the annihilation of the Armenian population. The discovery of these documents was made after they were believed to have vanished following World War I .

The document, acknowledged as authentic by the postwar Ottoman government, helped convict its author, Behaeddin Shakir, one of the founders of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), as one of the masterminds of the Armenian Genocide.

On May 11, the Armenian Museum of America and the National Association of Armenian Studies and Research (NAASR) will present “The Story Behind: ‘The Smoking Gun’,” a presentation of these never-before-seen-documents by Akçam. For the first time, this and other documents will be discussed in public.

The Armenian Weekly recently caught up with Dr. Akçam ahead of his Boston-area talk, to discuss his recent discovery and its significance in combating the Turkish denial of the Armenian Genocide.

Below is the interview in its entirety.

***

Dickran Khodanian: You have called the discovery of the telegram “the smoking gun,” one of the “last bricks in the denialist wall.” What makes this piece of evidence more significant than other proofs that were available in the past?

Taner Akçam: This evidence enhances the evidence that has been compiled over the years. One of the most important sources of the Armenian Genocide is the military tribunal records in Istanbul. Historian Vahakn Dadrian has used these tribunals to break through Turkey’s denialist wall and has used them extensively. However, the evidences from the Court were constantly criticized because they were not the originals.

In fact, when Guenter Lewy published his book entitled The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide, he discredited court martial materials with the argument that we do not have the originals since they don’t exist. In the book, he writes, “the most serious problem affecting the probative value of the 1919–20 military court proceedings is the loss of all documentation of these trials. This means that we have none of the original documents, sworn testimony, and depositions on which the courts based their findings and verdicts,” (p. 80).

And now we have the original documents with official letterheads that have been deciphered with a certain coding system. The coding system allows for us to authenticate letters that are either related to the killing or the killing operation. It is a major blow to the denialist argument. I will continue to publish more of these kinds of documents from court martial tribunals because it is a very strong addition to the existing scholarship.

D.K.: You have mentioned that you uncovered the document from the nephew of an Armenian Catholic priest, Krikor Guerguerian. Can you provide some background on this? How were you able to finally secure the document?

T.A.: The document is in the private archive of Armenian Catholic priest Krikor Guerguerian in New York. The original document is in Jerusalem Armenian Patriarch’s archive and Guerguerian had visited this archive in the 1960s and had filmed all the materials. It is a very well known document and has been published several times in the form of quotations. In the main tribunal of Istanbul in 1919-1921, it was quoted extensively! Dadrian personally visited Jerusalem and was in contact with Guerguerian; he used this specific telegram and made references to Guerguerian and Jerusalem Archive in his footnotes.

More importantly, the Armenian Assembly microfilmed the entire Guerguerian archive in 1983. These archives have been available since 1983, but nobody could look extensively because there was no proper cataloging system. There were maybe hundred of rolls of microfilm and it would have been almost impossible to go through each roll to find this document. The existence of Guerguerian Archive and copies in the Assembly was public knowledge among scholars. When I first came to the United States in 2000, I approached Guerguerian’s nephew and asked for his permission to look at the originals that are held by him in New York. He rejected, since the materials were all microfilmed in Washington. In 2015, I called the nephew again to ask for permission to see the original materials and this time he allowed me.

D.K.: Could there be more materials to discover?

T.A.: There are still a lot of other materials to discover. This will be one of the main issues I will address in my presentation on May 11. We have several original materials from the Istanbul Tribunal that we know ended up in the archives in Jerusalem and Guerguerian’s personal archives.

In the 1940s, while Krikor Guerguerian was doing research on the extermination of the religious clergy during the Armenian Genocide for his Ph.D in Cairo, he met a former Ottoman judge who was a member of the Istanbul military court tribunal following WWI. The judge told Guerguerian when he was the presiding judge of the court martial, the Armenian Patriarchate was the official representative of the Armenians during the trial. They were given legal rights to have access to the court material and as a result he allowed them to take the court material.

The judge also told Guerguerian that in 1922 Zaven [Der Yeghiayan] Patriarch in Istanbul transferred the materials to Europe, first to Marseilles, then to Manchester, Britain, and then eventually ending up in the Jerusalem archives. So in the 1960s, Krikor Guerguerian went there and took pictures everything.

D.K.: What has made your discovery different? You have mentioned to other publications that you do not believe that this latest discovery will lead to any immediate changes in Turkey’s stance on the issue. Why do you think that is?

T.A.: The important discovery I made is the coding system as well as revealing that the document has an Ottoman letterhead. The Turkish authorities will not be able to claim that it is not authentic. The coding system on the telegram is irrefutable and shows the authenticity of this document.

Today, in the Ottoman Archives, there are hundreds of documents, mainly in the form of telegrams coming from provinces to Istanbul. These are all coded in Arabic numbers. Four or five digit numbers denote each word or plural endings or suffixes. When these coded telegrams arrived Istanbul, the officials wrote the equivalent words or endings on top of each number groups. This is how we are able to read these documents today. I compared the coding system in Bahaettin Şakir’s telegrams with those in the Ottoman archive and I found a match.

Just to give one example: the term for deportation is coded with “4889” on Shakir’s telegram; if you check the Ottoman materials coming to the central government from the provinces in the same period, which have four digit numbers like Shakir’s telegram, you will see that all have the code “4889” for deportation.

Nobody could claim that this telegram is not authentic. Now, the Turkish government has to find an explanation because this argument of “show the original” is not valid. We have the original. They have cornered themselves with their own argument.

I am sure they will continue to deny the genocide because denialism has nothing to do with academic research; it is a political problem. My argument is that based on the new documents, it is now very difficult to deny the Armenian Genocide. The arguments that they have been bringing up over the years will no longer work. Therefore, they will have to resort to something new.

D.K.: Are historians not allowed to research at the archive in Jerusalem?

T.A.: Yes, scholars do not have access. I was declined over the years several times. I had wanted to check Krikor Guerguerian’s material to see whether he really filmed everything. I couldn’t get access. And they have a standard answer: “We are in the process of cataloging,” I am not sure whether this is true. There is no specific reason to my knowledge for why historians do not have access to the archives in Jerusalem. I don’t want to speculate on this.

D.K.: You will be in Watertown, speaking at the Armenian Museum of America on May 11. Tell us a little about what you will be covering during your talk.

T.A.: My presentation on May 11 will mainly be about the contents of Krikor Guerguerian’s archives that are related to the materials of the Istanbul military tribunal. There are a lot more materials in the archives but I will only focus on the tribunal and the materials that were collected during this time.

***

Taner Akçam is the Robert Aram and Marianne Kaloosdian and Stephen and Marian Mugar Chair in Armenian Genocide Studies at Clark University.

He is the author of The Spirit of the Laws: The Plunder of Wealth in the Armenian Genocide, with Ümit Kurt (Berghahn Books, 2015), The Young Turk’ Crime Against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton University Press, 2012), Judgment at Istanbul: The Armenian Genocide Trials with Vahakn Dadrian (Berghahn Books, 2011), A Shameful Act: Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility (Metropolitan Books, 2006), and From Empire to Republic: Turkish Nationalism and the Armenian Genocide (Zed Books, 2004).

He has also authored other works in German and Turkish, including most recently Naim Efendi’nin Hatıratı ve Talat Paşa Telgrafları: Krikor Gergeryan Arşivi [Naim Efendi’s Memoir and the Talat Pasha Telegrams: The Krikor Guerguerian Archive] (İletişim, 2016), forthcoming in English translation.

Akçam will present his talk at the Armenian Museum of America on May 11, at 7 p.m. Click here for further details about the presentation

Armenian school marks 150th anniversary in Istanbul

May 3, 2017 By administrator

Armenians in Istanbul have celebrated the 150th anniversary of Kalafyan School, the cradle of national identity and culture, Agos reports.
Students in national costumes performed ethnic songs and dances at the ceremony which featured also a video reel telling about the school’s foundation and history.
“Today, Kalafyan is the only school which, apart from Istanbul-Armenian students, admits also children from different corners of Western Armenia as a boarding school. For them, Kalafyan it is the source of revealing their Armenian identity, culture and language,” said Diana Kamparosian, the chairperson of the school’s orphanage foundation.
Founded in 1887, the school initially pursued a mission to educate and give safe haven to orphans.

Angela Sarafyan, Oscar Isaac technically gotten married by Armenian priest

May 3, 2017 By administrator

Angela Sarafyan, who plays the role of Maral in The Promise, a new movie about Armenian Genocide, has revealed an unknown fact about this film. It turns out that she and Oscar Isaac, who plays Mikayel in the movie, were technically gotten married in Spain.

The actress posted some footage and photos on her Instagram account and wrote as follows: “The priest on the set of @thepromisefilm was a real Armenian priest from Armenia that happened to live in Spain. Etchmiadzin, one of the oldest cities in Armenia, has three sister churches and this is where he was ordained. He actually married us on set, with the true Armenian prayer they would do at any traditional Armenian wedding. Those prayers were true in 1915 and remain the same to this day. In the end, he told us, ‘I need to divorce you, because you are technically married in the eyes of God.’”

The premier of the Promise has been held in Yerevan, the capital city of Armenia, and in the major cities of several other countries.

Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors slams Trump for not recognizing Armenian Genocide

May 3, 2017 By administrator

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has urged the White House to recognize the Armenian genocide.

Supervisor Kathryn Barger recommended sending a letter to President Donald Trump, mynewsla.com reported.

She noted that Trump, like past presidents, stopped short of describing the 1915 events as “genocide”.

Supervisor Hilda Solis said officials should not be “intimidated by the threats that are made by the Turkish government,” which has long denied that a genocide occurred.

The board will also urge the county’s congressional delegates to support House Resolution 220, sponsored by Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Burbank, which would formally recognize the genocide.

Representative of the Armenian community Peter Darakjian, told the board there were no local survivors left to share the horror of the genocide, now that a 101-year-old woman had died.

“History seems to repeat itself if it goes unrecognized. Genocide seems to do the same,” Darakjian said. “Enough already, after 102 years.”

Los Angeles County is home to more than 200,000 Armenians.

Armenians in Zakho in Iraqi Kurdistan mark anniversary of genocide

May 2, 2017 By administrator

Armenians residing in the Kurdish city of Zakho, near the border with Turkey, massively mobilized to commemorate the 102nd anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. They themselves came from the families of the displaced and deported dispersed in the Ottoman Empire by the Turkish authorities of the time and who found refuge in these mountainous regions populated mainly by Kurds and confining with the Autonomous Kurdistan of Iraq . There are currently some 200 Armenian families in the town of Zakho, who feel safe in this town about 200 km north-west of Erbil, the capital of autonomous Kurdistan, which in recent years has hosted a large number Christians, including Armenians, but also members of other religious minorities, such as the Yezidis, who had to flee the persecution and massacre perpetrated in other parts of Iraq by the jihadists of the Islamic state. “We are only a handful in Kurdistan. But thanks to God, we enjoy most of our rights, “said Ishkhan Milko, an Armenian member of the Duhok Provincial Council.

The Armenians have a seat in this Regional Council and a seat in the Parliament of Autonomous Kurdistan. Although Armenians are few in number, they still hold the painful memory of a history marked by the genocide of 24 April 1915. “The Armenians emigrated from Bitlis, Erzurum, Van, Mush, And other localities in Northern Kurdistan [in Turquoise], “said Dr. Hogir Mohammed, a Kurdish researcher on the Armenian genocide, referring to the fate of the inhabitants of the Turkish cities to the east and South-eastern region of Turkey, a region more commonly referred to as Kurdistan than Armenia by the Kurds. “They have traveled on different roads, some passing through the Syrian desert, and some of them have chosen to settle in Syria, others to Jordan and Egypt. Some others came to settle in Iraqi Kurdistan, where the city of Zakho was the gateway, “said the Kurdish researcher who recalled that Zakho has an Armenian school, which was founded in 1969.” Many Muslims frequented The school of the Church. We were studying alongside the Armenians, and then they came here, “said Fahmi Ahmad, the director of the Armenian school, talking nostalgically about the time when the Armenians and Muslims were studying side by side. Islam, Muslims to Christianity “.

Tuesday, May 2, 2017,
Gari © armenews.com

‘Abdulhamid and Sherlock Holmes’: a novel story

April 29, 2017 By administrator

Abdulhamid and Sherlock Holmes

Sevan Değirmenciyan,

Agos, An interesting presentation on Yervant Odyan’s novel Abdulhamid and Sherlock Holmes in the “Armenian Novel” session at the international conference “The Roma of Istanbul” under the roof of the Research Center of the University of Strasbourg, on 12-13 April, the literary historian and Agos writer Sevan Değirmenciyan made. The novel, especially in the axis of Abdulhamid’s period of istibdat and political turbulence, translated into many languages in a popular, gripping issue addressed Değirmenciyan, the unchanging facts of the country draws attention.

Everest Publications probably did not realize that Yervant Odyan’s ‘Abdulhamid and Sherlock Holmes’ was published in Istanbul in 2014, but in fact he brought together an unprecedented Ottoman novel as read. The publishers underlined that this novel, which was published over 900 pages, was published in the light of day thanks to a research project supported by TÜBİTAK titled “The Historical Development of the Police Novel in Turkish Literature 1884-1928” and published the Ottoman novel in Latin letters for the first time. Seval Şahin signed the preamble, Yervant Odyan, who brought together Red Silent Abdulhamid and Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional character detective Sherlock Holmes in their novels today, which are very popular in Turkey, and at the same time Fehim Pasha, Ebülhüda, Necip Melhame, Talat Pasha and so on. Political actors in the novel by giving place II. We learn that the environment of the era which predates the declaration of the Constitutionalism presents readers by blending the adventure-detective novel with documentary-novel features. Once again by Odyan from the publishers, the mentioned novel also contains the photographs of the real heroes in the exhibition.

Yervant Odyan’s ‘Abdulhamid and Sherlock Holmes’ novel attracted attention of the novelist historian Erol Üyepazarcı in Turkey. Üyepazarcı, who described the original of the 1278-page original and described Odyan’s novel as “a phénomène by the words of Frenkulas” ^[3] , emphasized that Odyan took his work as Turkish but not Turkish. Üyepazarcı, who said that “the turnaround is full of inadequate mistakes that intellectual readers will not tolerate” ^[4] , believes that “Odyan Efendi is beyond Abdülhamid enmity”. Noting that Odyan did not hesitate to use the most insulting expressions for the old Sultan, Üyepazarcı also mentions the fact that the author is a person who knows the novel technique of the novel. ^[5] Üyepazcı who does not hesitate to emphasize that Odyan wrote his work in the Ottoman language personally finds it interesting to write his next work in Armenian. ^[6] “I suppose some of them have warned him about the inadequacy of the Turk …” ^[7]

Both Yervant Odyan’s ‘Abdülhamid and Sherlock Holmes’ novels and other writings published under the title of the book emphasized the importance of the work and emphasized that it was written in Ottoman and published as a separate book.

There will probably be no room for talking about the subject or structural features of the novel, as it is already said by the novel Üyepazarcı that phénomène is not these features, but II. After the Constitutional Monarchy, it is the story of the short period extending from the 1908 to the 1915 Armenian Genocide, or perhaps even continuing to enrich the pluralistic culture that can not be imagined when an entire empire is looked at from time to time, and to keep its secrets in it.

The Dildilian photography collection: Glimpse of a lost Armenian home

April 29, 2017 By administrator

Tsolag Dildilian (L) photographed with his family at his studio in 1912.

William Armstrong – william.armstrong@hdn.com.tr

‘Reimagining a Lost Armenian Home: The Dildilian Photography Collection’ by Armen T. Marsoobian (IB Tauris, 224 pages, $30)

For nearly a century, members of the Dildilian family practiced photography in the Ottoman Empire, Greece and the United States. Unlike the best known Armenian photographers who practiced in Istanbul during the final decades of the Ottoman Empire, the Dildilians worked primarily in Central Anatolia and on the Black Sea coast. The archive they left behind gives a vivid glimpse into provincial life at a time of rapid change and brutal tragedy.

“Reimagining a Lost Armenian Home” brings together over 200 extraordinary photographs from the Dildilian archive. It also includes text and notes written by Armen Marsoobian, a professor at Southern Connecticut State University who has organized exhibitions based on the collection in Turkey, Armenia, the U.S., and the U.K. He is the grandson of Tsolag Dildilian, the founder of the family business in Sivas in central Turkey in 1882.

Joined by his brother Aram, Tsolag’s photography business developed rapidly and he was able to open studios over a period of 30 years in towns like Amasya, Konya and Adana. The book features photos from these studios, as well as from the family’s travels across Anatolia. More than 900 photographs and glass negatives survived, along with family memoirs describing life during this tumultuous era. It is amazing that so many photos were preserved, and most of the ones reprinted in the book are in top condition.

The photos have added poignancy because we know the cataclysm to come. We see local Armenians’ ordinary life in Anatolian cities; life that could not be further from the great power political intrigue that led to the genocide of 1915. The Dilidians’ photography business developed rapidly, and the collection presents a strange contrast: Unprecedented educational, cultural, and commercial success at a time when tragedy – which would ultimately destroy the family’s presence in its ancestral homeland – was building.

At the center of the book are a series of photos taken in the area around Anatolia College in Merzifon, an American missionary school, theological seminary, and hospital. Some of these photos feature historic moments, including celebrations on the restoration of the constitution in 1908 and Ottoman soldiers marching on campus at the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. Anatolia College also played an important role in the recovery after the Hamidian massacres of 1894, in which up to 300,000 Armenians were killed. Exemplifying the conflicted nature of the era, the tragedy of the massacres was followed by a period of spectacular growth for the school. New buildings were built, enrollments soared, and new faculty members were hired, primarily Armenians and Greeks but also Russians and Turks.

Students of the Anatolia College in Merzifon, c. 1904. Sumpad Dildilian, holding the palette, later managed a branch of the Dildilian Brothers Art Photographers in Samsun on the Black Sea coast. He and his family perished in 1915.

Many Dildilians perished during the massacres and deportations of Armenians in 1915, but some family members were able to survive. Tsolag knew the commander of the local gendarmerie and had himself worked as a photographer for the Ottoman army. He and other family members were allowed to remain in Merzifon if they converted to Islam and assumed Turkish identities, which they did.

Tsolag continued to take photos, which capture the shell-shocked years after 1915. At one point over 2,000 orphans were being looked after on the college campus grounds, and we see photos of groups of children with heads shaved against lice. When the First World War ended in 1918, the surviving Dildilians reclaimed their Armenian identities with the hope of rebuilding their lives in Anatolia. But things got difficult once again with the Turkish War of Independence and they finally ended up leaving Turkey in November 1922.

The Dildilians rebuilt their photography business first in Greece and then in the U.S., but the vast majority of photos included in “Reimagining a Lost Armenian Home” are from the Anatolian heartland. Taken together, the collection is a rich, moving chronicle of a vanished world.

Park in Cyprus in memory of genocide victims

April 29, 2017 By administrator

In Paphos city of Cyprus, Armenian Genocide Park will be opened.

The park project, that will be opened with a ceremony on April 30, was launched with the initiation of Vartkes Mahtesian, representative of Armenian society in Cypriot Parliament.

Speaking to Agos, Mahtesian said that Armenian Genocide Park was suggested in 2016 and then turned into a project. Accepted unanimously by Paphos Municipal Council, the project was launched with the approval of Mayor of Paphos Phedonas Phedonos. Deputy Mahtesian said, “This green area crossing the streets of Charalambos Mouskos and Evagoras Pllikarides is named as ‘Armenian Genocide Park” for commemorating and honoring 1.5 million innocent people who were killed in 1915 Genocide.” Also, a cross-stone (khachkar), which is in UNESCO cultural heritage list and considered as a symbol of Armenian land, will be put in the park. Mahtesian also said, “This park will also be the symbol of friendship and mutual respect of Armenian and Greek societies in Cyprus.”

Deciphered telegram reveals the Armenian genocide

April 29, 2017 By administrator

BY Taner Akçam 04.26.2017,

Historian Taner Akçam decpihred the telegram by executive of Teşikilat-ı Mahsusa (Secret Organization) and Commitee of Union and Progress Bahaettin Şakir dated July 4, 1915. The telegram is about coordination of deportation and annihilation of Armenians. The letterhead on the telegram proves that it is indeed original.

We have a telegram written by Bahaettin Şakir on July 4, 1915, which was sent to Governor Sabit Bey for delivering it to Elağız (Harput/Kharpet) Inspector of CUP Nazım Bey. The purpose of the telegram was to coordinate deportation and annihilation of Armenians. The telegram reads: “Are the Armenians who were deported from there being evacuated? Are the troublesome individuals whom you have reported as being exiled are being annihilated or merely sent off and deported? Please report back honestly.”

Pay attention to the letterhead!

On the upper right corner of the telegram, there is the original letterhead of Ministry of Interior. The text is coded in Arabic lettering; four-digit numbers denoted words. On the top of these four-digit numbers, words or affixes are noted. The letterhead on the telegram proves that it is indeed original.

In fact, researchers and people interested in this issue have known about the content of this document before; so, this is not an unknown or newly discovered document. In order to understand the document and its content better, we have to mention Bahaettin Şakir’s personality, duties and responsibilities.

Who is Şakir?

Bahaettin Şakir was a member of CUP and one of the chief executives of Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa. Before Ottomans went to war officially, Şakir was sent to Erzurum (August 1914) in order to carry out the activities of Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa. His main duty was to organize Muslim revolts in Caucasus. We have a lot of Ottoman documents showing that Şakir was coordinating the activities of Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa in the region. All these documents can be found in Ottoman archives. Some documents mention him directly as “Erzurum official of Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa”. After Caucasus campaigns failed, Şakir completely focused on annihilation of Armenians. He had a car and was using the codes of ministries of interior and defense.

After the war, between 1919 and 1921, Şakir was tried as part of the cases against executives of CUP in Istanbul. He was a suspect both in the “main case” of CUP executives and “Mamüretülaziz (Elazığ-Harput)” case. Şakir was sentenced to death in his absence in Mamüretülaziz case.

Criminal evidence

The telegram dated July 4, 1915 was one of the most important evidences in this case. In the indictments of main case and Mamüretülaziz case, this document was referred and quoted. In the indictment of main case, the prosecution fully quoted the telegram and defined it as a “coded telegram”. It was stated that the “image” of the telegram was in the file.

According to the indictment, Istanbul-based Teşkilat-ı Mahsus gave Bahaettin Şakir a considerable amount of money, explosives and a car, as well as encryption key for using confidential correspondences before he went to Erzurum. Governor of Erzurum Tahsin Bey also confirmed that one of the keys belonged to ministry of interior. Heard as a witness in Mamüretülaziz case, Tahsin Bey stated that “Bahaettin Şakir had two encryption keys for communicating with Bab-ı Ali (Sublime Porte) and ministry of war”. The telegram was read during the hearing on January 10, 1920.

Given these facts, the document we have is not unknown. The letterhead showing that it belonged to ministry of interior is original. However, we found another information that also proves the originality of this telegram.

Code of the document

As you can see in the picture below, the document consists of four-digit numbers. This is the coded version of the text. Deciphered words are written on top of the related groups of numbers.

In Ottoman archive, there are lots of coded documents belonging to ministry of interior, most of which are telegrams from other provinces to Istanbul. A considerable amount of telegrams dated July 1915 were written in four-digit numbers. In these telegrams with four-digit numbers, 9 different types of coding were used. Generally, the type of coding used in the telegram was noted at the beginning of the telegram. As noted in the telegram, Bahaettin Şakir was used the coding number 5.

We compared Şakir’s telegram to other documents from the archive that were coded with number five and written with four-digit numbers. Comparison is very easy, since deciphered words were written on the documents. As a result of this comparison, we revealed an important fact: Bahaettin Şakir used the encryption key no. 5 which belonged to ministry of interior. In 25 telegrams we checked, we determined that words and suffixes used in Şakir’s telegram were used 34 times. Words and suffixes we identified and the groups of numbers denoting them are as follows:

Sevk (send off) [4889]: 18 documents;

Yalnız (merely) [4632]: 3 documents;

Bey [2469]: 5 documents;

leri [plural suffix- 9338]: 3 documents

Oradan (there) [7837]: 1 document;

İzam (exaggeration) [3962]: 1 document

Kardaş (brother) [8299]: 1 document;

im/ım eki [first person possesive suffix: 7749]: 1 document;

Ermeni (Armenian) (8519): 1 document.

There is another important point we should note: these documents we have found in Ottoman archive were opened to researchers by 2010. Thus, before 2010, nobody knew about these codes.

The document is certainly original. And this document clearly shows that CUP executives subjected Armenians to a systematic annihilation. It’s about time ending denialism which causes nothing but more and more harm!

code for Armenian