The historian Taner Akçam reveals another important document. In the telegrams sent by the Commander of the Third Army Mahmut Kamil Pasha to the regions from which the Armenians had been deported, it was indicated that the houses of those who hide Armenians would be burnt.

The historian Taner Akçam reveals a new document of prime importance after the telegram of Behaettin Shakir which can be regarded as the document of the Genocide of the Armenians. The telegram sent by the Commander of the Third Army Mahmut Kamil Pasha to the regions from which the Armenians had been deported is terrible. Mahmut Kamil Pasha wrote there that the houses of those who hide Armenians would be burned. We are still wondering how long the authorities will remain silent after the publication of all these documents. We have the microfilm of the original version of the telegram of the Commander of the III Army Mahmut Kamil Pasha written on letterhead from the Ministry of the Interior. At the foot of the telegram, there is the seal of the ministry: “in conformity with the original text”. In this letter, Mahmut Kamil Pasha informed that the houses of those who hide Armenians would be burned and that they themselves would be executed in front of their house, that the soldiers or officials who had done so would be immediately dismissed and tried in a military commission.

Here is the modern Turkish version of the telegram dated 24 July 1915: “It is understood that Muslims hide Armenians in some villages and towns whose residents have been deported. The houses of their proprietors, who hide and protect Armenians contrary to the orders of the government, shall be burned, and they shall be executed before their house. Make sure there are no Armenians who have not been deported and inform us of your diligence. Armenians who have converted to Islam will also be deported. If there are members of the armed forces protecting [the Armenians], they will be denounced to the competent ministry, and immediately dismissed to be tried later. If they are part of the administrative authorities, they will also be dismissed and referred to a military commission. “

Like the telegram of Behaettin Shakir of July 4, 1915, this telegram is also part of the file of trials of the Union and Progress Committee, which took place in Istanbul in 1921-22. In the indictment of the leaders of the CUP, this telegram is quoted many times and it was indicated that this document is referenced “section 13, document 1” [tertib 13 vesika1]

Armenian Transliteration of the First Telegram of Mahmut Kamil Pasha

Second telegram

Ahmut KamilPacha wrote another telegram on the same issue. On August 1, 1915, he sent a second order to the regions to explain the one issued on July 24. In his second telegram he wrote that the execution order does not apply to “those who house women or children who were officially assigned [to Muslim houses] by the government.” He noted that the punishment “applies to those, whoever they are, who hide Armenians without informing the government” and that these persons will be executed.

This order reveals a fact: in the villages and towns, many Muslims hid Armenians from their homes and the government wanted to prevent them. This was the aim of the fire threats of houses and execution.

All these documents revealed during the trials of the Istanbul CUP are still kept confidential and secret in the secret coffers of the state! As these documents have not been visible for years, they have been described as “invalid in the absence of originals”. For years, a strange alliance has reigned. The state hid the documents and some authors defended the thesis that “insofar as there is no original document, they can not be considered as evidence”.

The American historian Guenter Lewy was at the head of the promoters of this assertion. In his book published in 2004, he wrote: “Since the originals of these documents can not be found, we have no right to consider this claim as reliable in the light of the sciences of history.” In 2005, shortly after the publication of his book, he was invited to Turkey and received a reward. The person who bestowed this distinction was Bulent Arinç, president of the Turkish Assembly at the time.

The comedy of “the blind man guiding another blind” must now end. The documents of which Behaettin Shakir and Mahmut Kamil Pasha are the authors are only the beginning. We have plenty of original documents from the Istanbul trials. More than a hundred telegrams obtained by a commission of inquiry in November 1918: telegrams sent from the regions, procedures for the investigation of certain suspects, as in the case of the governor of Yozgat Kamil, testimonies of Ottoman soldiers and officials of the administration, Reports of police commissioners … all documents that will be made available in a short time. I hope that the government will put an end to this senseless game that has been played for over a hundred years and that serves no purpose other than to harm us. Truth has the unfortunate habit of revealing itself one day or another. Hiding, denying, makes no sense. The time has come to do in front of the history of Turkey; It is more than time. Once this confrontation has begun, many problems of democracy and human rights will emerge.

How were these documents brought together?

In view of the Istanbul trials of 1921-22 a commission of inquiry was set up in November 1918. The commission visited the regions and collected documents concerning the deportations and massacres of Armenians in 1915-17. The court having begun work and new facts revealed, he regularly addressed the Ministry of the Interior to provide him with additional documents. As a follow-up to this request, the Department wrote to the regions asking them to submit to the Department the documents relating to these various subjects. On examination of documents in the court records, it can be concluded that some of the telegrams sent in 1915 were sent from many areas to Istanbul at the same time. For example, the province of Sivas sent copies of the telegrams of Mahmut Kamil Pasha dated 24 July and 1 August 1915 to Istanbul on 8 January 1919.

The Ministry sent these documents and telegrams from the regions to the court. For example, in a letter to the court martial on 2 April 1919, the Ministry of the Interior informed him that he had received 42 telegrams from Ankara and that these documents had been forwarded to the court.

The documents Mahmut Kamil Pasha and Behaettin Shakir are among those obtained during the investigations. In some of the indictments and decisions, many documents were cited in parallel to these two telegrams. To the extent that the accusations and decisions were published in the official gazette of the time, we were aware of these documents and not necessarily of their originals which had never been published so far.

The documents are in the archives of the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem

An important part of the documents contained in the Istanbul case files was at one time at the Armenian Patriarchate in Istanbul. In 1922, the Patriarchate sent them to Marseilles. Subsequently, they were sent to Manchester and then to the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem. This route can be traced back to Mahmut Kamil Pasha and Behaettin Shakir. On the top right corner of the documents is a seal and a number at the Ottoman header. The seal is that of the Armenian Diocese of Marseilles. It was written “Armenian Prelature of Marseille” in French around the stamp and [յոցաԱռ ջնորդարանաՄ րսելիարսելի], in Armenian at the center of the stamp. Since the archives of Jerusalem are not open to researchers, it is impossible to access these documents for the moment.

We found this document in the archives of the Catholic priest Krikor Guergueryan, who died in 1988. Detailed information about Guergueryan and his archives can be found in Naim Effendi’nin Hatirati ve Talat Pacha Telgrafla (Iletisim, 2016) Effendi and Telegrams of Talat Pasha. The manner in which Guergueryan obtained these documents is explained in the following.

How did Guergueryan get these documents?

Life is full of coincidences. Krikor Guergueryan, who lost his parents and six brothers and sisters and many members of his family in the Armenian Genocide, was from Sivas; He settled with his brother in Cairo. After his studies at the seminary in Rome, he decided to make a thesis on the assassination of the Armenian religious leaders and began to gather documents. In the 1940s, he met the Kurd (Nemrut) Mustafa Pasha in Cairo, one of the judges of Istanbul’s court-martial. In 1922, the Kurdish Mustafa Pasha fled to Cairo, fearing to be arrested, following the entry in Istanbul of the nationalists who had taken office in Ankara. Pacha gave Guergueryan an important piece of information: during the Istanbul trials, the Armenian Patriarchate had been admitted to the trial as a complainant, and legally, the right to have copies of the documents of the trial files had been recognized . Pasha also reported that these documents were in the archives of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem. Afterwards, Guergueryan went to Jerusalem and took photographs of the documents there. He shared what he had with many researchers. In 1983, the Armenian Assembly micro-photographed the entire archives of Guergueryan. These microfilms are theoretically available to researchers, but difficult to study due to the non-existence of a satisfactory catalog. Krikor Guergueryan died in 1988 and his nephew, Dr. Edmund Guergueryan, took charge of his archives. In April 2015, Dr. Edmund allowed me to see these archives, giving me the opportunity to access the majority of documents from the Istanbul trials. These documents will be available online as soon as possible.

After years of concealing the truth, destroying or hiding evidence, Turkey is at the end of the road. This insane policy of negation, which serves only to harm the country and prevents Turkey from becoming a civilized nation, must end. We hope that these documents that we have published will be used for the future. The elimination of Holocaust denial and the confrontation with historical truth will be the precursors of a good start for this country and its people.

1] In the course of our research, we discovered that a copy with reduced legibility of Behaettin Shakir’s telegram had been published by Vahakn Dadrian in Journal of Political and Military Sociology, Vol. 22, No. 1 Summer 1994 (s.69) .

Taner Akçam

May 3, 2017

Gilbert Béguian translation

Weekly Agos