Turkish Doctors Role

Holocaust and Genoade Studies, Vo\ 1,No 2,pp 169-192,1986 8756-6583/86 $3 00+0 00Printed in Great Britain Pergamon Journals Ltd

THE ROLE OF TURKISH PHYSICIANS IN THE WORLD WAR IGENOCIDE OF OTTOMAN ARMENIANS

VAHAKN N. DADRIANState University of New York — Geneseo

Abstract — The research which has been done into the Turkish genocide ofArmenians in World War I has seldom dealt with the identities of the perpetrators.This study reveals the crucial role played by Turkish physicians in planning andcarrying out this genocide. These physicians were influential in propagating thenationalist ideological justifications for this cnme, as well as in organizing andleading units which killed Armenians through mass deportations, shooting, medicalmurder, medical experiments and other means. The evidence raises manydisturbing questions regarding medical ethics when wedded to a radical, exclusivenationalist ideology

INTRODUCTION

Very little has been written about the World War I Turkish genocide of the Armenians,a crime still denied by official Turkish statesmen and obscured by denial of access to therelevant archival material. This preliminary and incomplete study relies primarily onEuropean material, especially British intelligence reports from the 1918-21 period of theirmilitary occupation of Turkey and German eyewitness accounts. Germany's wartimealliance and friendship with the Ottoman Empire lends a particular importance to theseaccounts. Other sources include American reports, mostly from physicians and nurses,1

and the trial records and documents of the Turkish Military Tribunal of December 1918 toMay 1919, which set out to identify and punish the perpetrators. Although there arenumerous Armenian accounts which are invaluable to the research of this history, theyhave not been heavily relied upon in order to avoid any suspicion of bias.

All these sources point to the same disturbing facts regarding the framers, organizersand leading perpetrators of the genocide of the Armenians: doctors in particular, andmedical personnel in general, played a central role in the entire process. Turkishphysicians testifying before the Turkish Military Tribunal, and in public accounts relatednumerous stories of their colleagues poisoning Armenians, drowning them at sea, havingthem butchered and performing medical experiments on them (ostensibly for the good ofmankind). Such systematic medical murder would today naturally be associated with Nazidoctors dunng the Holocaust. On the strength of the material presented here, it seems theyhad their precursors in the Ottoman Empire.

Turkish doctors were not only involved in medical murder during the Armeniangenocide, but also in the very planning of the systematic murder. Foremost among thesewere Drs. Nazim and Behaeddin Sakir, the two dominant figures of the Supreme Directorateof the Central Committee of the ruling Ittihad party, which came to power in 1908.2 It wasthe Central Committee which set the ideological tone and political programme of this party,while the Supreme Directorate served as a sort of Pohtbureau charting the course of theOttoman Empire's external and internal affairs.

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WORLD WAR I ARMENIAN GENOCIDE 171

Both Nazim and Sakir had received their medical education in Istanbul, with Nazimgetting additional training in Paris where, as political exiles, the two doctors were preparingthe ground to overthrow the regime of Abdul Hamid. They helped precipitate the YoungTurk revolution in 1908, and thereafter became permanent fixtures in the leadership of theparty. They achieved their positions of decisive power in the 1912-18 period, during whichtime they exercised their authority from behind the scenes (except for three months duringwhich Dr. Nazim served as Minister of Education). During the post-revolutionary period, Dr.Nazim briefly served as Chief Physician at Soloniki Municipal Hospital, while Dr. §akir wasProfessor of Legal (Ethical) Medicine at Istanbul Medical School.

In the pre- and post-revolutionary period, they had acquired considerable expenencein forging the Ittihad party into an instrument for the homogenization of Turkey, resolutelycombatting various nationalities of the Empire who resisted assimilation and sought topreserve their ethnic identity. That cumulative experience has a bearing upon theconception, organization and implementation of a scheme of wartime genocide aimed atthe Armenians, whose selection as a target for comprehensive destruction was influencedby several factors. These included a history of protracted Turko-Armenian conflict,including episodic Turkish massacres, the demographic vulnerability of the Armenianpopulation and the progressive dismantling of the Empire through a series of armedstruggles as a result of which a host of nationalities, aided by European powers, extricatedthemselves from Ottoman oppression. As one student of the period observed, by 1913 'theAlbanians, Greeks and Slavs' were no longer subject nationalities: 'only the Armeniansand Arabs remained'.3 The sway of the pan-Turanist strain in Turkish nationalism, seekingto unify all Turkic peoples under Ottoman rule, somewhat eclipsed the pan-Islamic aspectof it. This prompted the Ittihadists to focus their attention on eastern Turkey, the Caucasusand beyond, and relegate Arabistan to relative insignificance. Armenians in this respectwere the hated roadblock, and the absence of a parent state to intervene on their behalfrendered them even more vulnerable.

As the proceedings of the 1919-20 Turkish courts-martial revealed, these two doctorsplayed a pivotal role in the formation, deployment and direction of the Special Organizationunits, the key, lethal instrument in the destruction of the Armenians. Its ranks were filledalmost entirely by 'bloodthirsty murderers', criminals who through special dispensation,issuing jointly from the Ministries of Justice and the Interior, were released from the manyprisons of the Empire and were organized into killer units consisting of fifty to two hundredmen each under the label of 'cete', denoting a combination of roles associated withvolunteers and brigands. They were led by a special group of officers who were graduatesof the Ottoman War Academy.4

The series of indictments and verdicts by the Turkish Military Tribunal emphasize thispivotal role played by the two doctors. The key indictment read in court on 28 Apnl 1919,cites Dr. Nazim eight times, seven of which portray him as a principal organizer of theSpecial Organization killer units.5 Though many of these units initially were employed asguerillas against Russia on the Caucasian border regions, the court maintained in theidictment that "these cnminals and outlaws' were mainly organized for 'massacring anddestroying the deportee convoys' of the Armenians and that other claims were pretences'used to deceive gullible people'. The indictment cites a 15 July 1915 cable from theGovernor or Erzurum province describing the 'gendarmes and brigands operating underthe name of Special Organization' as perpetrators of 'assaults and attacks'.6 The eighthreference to Dr. Nazim clearly cites him as one of the ultimate decision-makers andarchitects of the genocide. He is quoted as saying that the anti-Armenian measures were


'decided upon after extensive and full deliberations by the Central Committee' and thatthey are intended to 'solve the Eastern Question'.7 In subsequent court sessions, five topIttihadist leaders, in rigorous cross-examinations, admitted to Nazim's role in organizingthe brigands.8

Dr Sakir is also cited eight times in the key indictment in a dual capacity: as the politicalchief of the Special Organization; and as the Reid Commander of the killer units operatingin the eastern provinces.9 The most damning evidence supplied against him is that of theIllrd Army Commander Vehib Pa§a, who summarized his deposition as follows:

The massacre and destruction of the Armenians and the looting of their properties were the resultof the decision of Ittihad ve Terakki. Behaeddin §akir was the one who procured the butchers ofman in the Illrd Army zone, directed and employed them. The government leaders submitted toBehaeddin §akir's orders and directives. All the human tragedies, all the instigations and acts ofdepravity within the Illrd Army operational zone were the result of his machinations. These involvedthe recruitment of men of the gallowsbird kind and gendarmes with bloodstained hands andbloodshot eyes.10

After repeatedly underscoring the fact that 'deportations' were a cloak for extermina-tion, the court-martial cited in the key indictment a Sakir cable of which the court had aphotocopy. In it Sakir inquired of one of his subordinates, the Responsible Secretary ofHarput: 'Are your area's deported Armenians being liquidated? Are they being destroyed9

Or are they being merely deported and exiled? Clarify this point, my brother'.11

In the Responsible Secretaries trial series, the Prosecutor-General in his closingarguments denounced 'the deportations as a pretext for massacres' and, referring toSakir's cable, stated: 'This established fact is as clear as the equation 2 + 2 = 4'. In theensuing verdict Sakir was portrayed as the organizer and Commander of the killer unitsoperating in the eastern provinces under the umbrella of the Special Organization. Theirchief method of liquidation was 'ambush and extermination of the deportee convoys'12

Sakir's role was also confirmed by Munir, postwar Governor of Erzurum, who statedthat 'the brigands organized by Sakir murdered the deportees in the most savage way'.13

Hasan Tahsin, wartime Governor of Erzurum, at the second sitting of the Harput trial series(2 August 1919), identified Sakir as the operational chief of the Special Organization using'special codes' when relaying messages to the Ministries of War and the Interior.14

Dr. Nazim's role is discussed by a number of Turkish authors. A prominent Ittihadist,Falih Rifki Atay, who had worked as personal secretary first to Talat and then to Cemal, thetwo pillars of the Ittihad triumvirate, in his memoirs descnbes his experience with Nazim asan organizer of convicts. While a cadet at the War Academy in Istanbul at the start of thewar, he approached Nazim to learn more about the latter's recruiting officers for specialduties. He was bluntly told by Dr. Nazim that the duties involved commanding detachmentsof convicts in secret missions. The author's reaction: 'I am at a loss about this projectedarmy of murderers'.15

The organization of such a vast scale of destruction presupposes not only supremeauthority but also complete access to the resources of power, including ministerialinfrastructures and military command and control set-ups. A Turkish historian, SevketSureyya Aydemir, describes Nazim as 'the wartime Director of Ittihad's terror arm', and in asecond work portrays him as a man belonging to the core of Ittihadist power wielders, whowas burdened 'with responsibilities on the most bloody stories marking the darkest periodof our last Empire'.16


The corroboration of Dr. Sakir's role by Turkish accounts is even more firm. OneTurkish historian, Do§an AvcioQIu, places him at the centre of the Armenian genocide,asserting, 'the deportations, the execution of which was entrusted to reliable Ittihadists andto the Special Organization, were intended to radically solve the Armenian Question; theywere advocated in the inner councils of Ittihad by B. Sakir'.17 F. R. Atay unequivocallystates in his memoirs that Sakir was bent on 'wiping out the Armenians so as to prevent thefuture formation of an Armenia' in the eastern provinces.18

Three Armenian sources independently divulged the fact that Dr. Sakir was observed,directly and indirectly, in the role of brigand chief, the implication being that he personallywas directing the massacres in the uniform of such a chief.19

German and British evidence also corroborates the primary role of the two physician-politicians in the destruction of Ottoman Armenians. In commenting on Dr. Nazim, TheTimes of London stated the following:

A doctor by profession, and not without medical promise, Dr. Nazim took up the cause of the YoungTurks .. as a political doctrinaire... has repeatedly caused more atrocious suffering tomultitudes of his fellows than professional tyrants or self-seeking politicians.. . Unhappily theexcellent agitator proved a most dangerous politician... Marat and Robespierre are classicalexamples of the type... As soon as the Great War broke out Nazim and his allies bombardedTalat Pasha with anti-Armenian propaganda . and by 1916 half the Armenian community wasdead.20

And, according to the Morning Post of London, 'Dr. Nazim . . . pndes himself on havingcommitted a million murders',21 the reference being to a boastful remark Nazim is said tohave made during the war in Smyrna (Izmir), about the Armenians.

Dr. Sakir's leading role was also confirmed by a German colonel, Stange, under whomand with whom Sakir launched guerilla operations against the Russians in the first threemonths of the war. In attesting to Sakir's extermination campaign against the Armenians,Colonel Stange also confirmed the swift transfer of the bngands employed in guerilla war tomass murder duties. Stange condemned 'the exterminations' being earned out 'withanimal brutality' against the Armenians by these brigands whom he called 'scums',pointing to Sakir, along with then Illrd Army Commander, Mahmud Kamil, as the chieforganizers.22

Finally, British reports also corroborated the above assertions regarding Sakir's role.When reporting to London, Admiral de Robeck, then Bntish High Commissioner atIstanbul, described him as 'a member of the small secret Committee known as TeshkilatiMahsusa [the Special Organization] formed by the Central Committee of Union andProgress [Ittihad ve Terakki] to organize the extermination of the Armenian race'. Anintelligence report has the following summation: Teshkilati Mahsusa was created by theCUP [Committee of Union and Progress] in 1914 for the extermination of the Armeniansand was controlled by the infamous Behaeddin Sakir'.23 Shortly after Armistice, at midnighton 1-2 November 1918, Sakir and Nazim, along with other top Ittihadists, fled Turkeyaboard a German destroyer.

Dr. Nazim was convicted and condemned to death by the Turkish Military Tribunal (5July 1919). Dr. Sakir was likewise convicted and condemned as 'chief accomplice' (13January 1920), both sentences being passed in absentia.2* Sakjr took refuge in Berlinwhere he lived under the alias 'Alp', and occasionally 'Dr. Mehmed", and was assassinatedby an Armenian 'avenger' on 17 April 1922.25 Nazim became panicky after Sakir's death


and requested extra German police protection. He eventually returned to Turkey afterreceiving assurances that all Ittihadist leaders, imperilled by Armenian 'justice comman-dos', were welcome to the fatherland 'as long as they did not oppose the new regime'.26

But Dr. Nazim tried to topple Mustafa Kemal's (Ataturk) regime and to regain power onbehalf of Ittihad. He was tried by the Independence Court in Ankara, condemned to deathand hanged on 26 August 1926 along with other Ittihadist leaders.27

In addition to Sakir and Nazim, several other Turkish doctors and medical personneltook an active role in initiating and organizing massacres of Armenians. Most of these weregraduates of the Imperial Military Medical School in Istanbul, where Ittihad was nurtured.28

They joined the Special Organization together with many medical students and left abloody trail during the war.29

Most prominent among these was Suleyman Numan Pasa, a brigadier-genera) andChief Medical Officer of the Ottoman Armed Forces during the war. He was also ChiefSurgeon of General Staff, Chief of the Army Medical Corps, and Inspector of SanitaryServices. He was arrested by the postwar Turkish government on charges of ordering 'hissanitary staff to murder, by poisoning, the sick among the populations of Erzurum, Sivas,and Erzincan, under the pretext of safeguarding the healthy part of the population againstepidemics and starvation'. He was also accused of authonzing the murder of Armenianphysicians and army medical personnel.30 He was eventually deported to Malta by theBritish for later trial.

Dr. Fazil Berki, a surgeon with the rank of colonel, was a close associate of Dr. Sakir.He combined oratorical skills with organizational talents to mobilize and incite Muslimsagainst the Armenians in the provinces of Kastamonu and Sivas. He rose quickly in theranks of Ittihad to lecturer and party organizer in many major cities. In advance of themassacres in Kastamonu, Sivas and Erzurum, he toured these provinces to organize thesecret 'councils' which were to prepare the mass murder machinery on the local level. Hehad a share in the murder of the two foremost Armenian poets, Varoujan and Sevag, as hecoordinated the logistics of the crime with Cemal 0§uz, Ittihad's Responsible Secretary atCankiri.31 In June 1919 he was also deported by the British to Malta for future trial.

Mehmed Hasan (Ezaci) was a military pharmacist with the rank of captain (later major)charged with Armenian massacres in the area of Erzincan in the province of Erzurum. Hewas accused of leading the murder of two thousand Armenian labour battalion soldiers inSansa Valley, of the ambush and massacre of several large convoys of deportees, and ofthe rape by him and his men of two hundred and fifty women and children. Mehmedwielded such power in the region that even the governor was subordinate to him.Deportees murdered by his men were cast into the river. He was also accused ofwholesale plunder, through which he reportedly amassed a fortune of 300,000 Turkishpounds ($1 .SOO.OOO).32 Mehmed was arrested by the British in April 1919 and later exiledto Malta.

Ahmed Midhat was Ittihad's Responsible Secretary at Bolu, where he organizeddeportations of Armenians from an area which 'was not a theatre of military operations andthe deportations could be justified neither militarily nor in terms of a disciplinarymeasure'.33 He was tned after the war and was found guilty of being 'an accessory to thecrime of massacres'. He fled his ten-year sentence to hard labour, but was eventuallycaptured by the British and exiled to Malta.34

Perhaps the most shocking of this group of physicians was Mehmed Resid, a veteranIttihadist who was appointed Governor of Diyarbekir in 1915. Hundreds of thousands ofArmenians were deported to Diyarbekir from the Empire's eastern and central provinces. In


a memo of 15 September 1915, Resid referred to one hundred and twenty thousandArmenians deported from his province.35

He was nicknamed the 'executioner Governor' for the many murders and tortures heorganized. He was known for nailing horseshoes to victims and then parading them in thestreets, nailing horseshoes to victims' hearts with red-hot nails, smashing skulls andcrucifying victims on makeshift crosses.36 The German consul at Musul, Holstein,persuaded his Ambassador, Wangenheim, to intervene with the government to disciplineRe§id.37 When Resid was finally disciplined in 1916, it was for embezzlement of Armeniancapital, 'depriving the Treasury of several hundred thousand Turkish pounds',38 and not forthe massacres. He then became Governor of Ankara province, where he rounded up thelast Armenians for deportation.39 As a fugitive from justice after the war, he committedsuicide before he could be captured following his escape from prison.

During the course of a wartime conversation with Midhat Sukru (Bleda), Secretary-General of Ittihad, Dr. Resjd outlined his and his party's rationale for murdering theArmenians:

Even though I am a physician, I cannot ignore my nationhood. I came into this world a Turk. Mynational identification takes precedence over everything else. . . Armenian traitors had found aniche for themselves in the bosom of the fatherland; they were dangerous microbes. Isn't it the dutyof a doctor to destroy these microbes? Either the Armenians would liquidate the Turks and becomeproprietors of this land or they would be liquidated by the Turks. I couldn't possibly hesitate as tomy option, and I opted. My Turkishness prevailed over my medical calling. Of course myconscience is bothenng me, but I couldn't see my country disappearing. I shut my eyes and surgedforth without reservation. As to historical responsibility I couldn't care less what histonans of othernations write about me *"

Many other physicians and medical authorities associated themselves with the murderoperations out of their strong identification with the nationalistic goals of Ittihad. Unlike thephysicians and surgeons mentioned previously, these men did not initiate and organizeatrocities but supported the whole enterprise of destruction.

Tevfik Rusdu (Aras) was a brother-in-law and associate of Dr. Nazim and according toone Turkish historian, 'a partisan Ittihadist'.41 He was a member of the High Council ofSanitation that helped organize, whenever and however possible, the machinery fordisposing of the corpses of the Armenian victims. According to a secret depositionprepared for the court-martial by Mustafa Resad, the head of the Political Section of thePolice Directorate, Ru§du actually served as Inspector-General of Health services.

Under the chairmanship of Ali Mumf, Undersecretary in the Ministry of the Intenor, there wasformed a Commission of which Ismail Canbolat, the Chief of Internal Security, and some topIttihadists were members. It sent Ru§du to the Interior with a special mission With the assistanceof a number of physicians, Dr. Ru§du had to proceed to the vanous sites of the massacres wherethousands of kilos of lime were prepared 'bir takim ertiba He katliam vaki olan mahallara gitmi$dir'.The wells were filled with the dead bodies on top of which were put layers of lime covered withearth. Tevfik Ru§du needed six months to perform his task and he returned after six months.42

Following the liquidation of Ittihad as a political party and the flight of its leaders duringthe last days of the war, Dr. Rusdu became a member of the Executive Committee ofTeceddiid, the party replacing Ittihad. He continued to support Ittihad's ideals and leadersthrough the Red Crescent Society, which dunng the war was headed by Dr. Sakir and


during the Armistice had largely become a front organization for Ittihad. Serving as itsTreasurer and assisted by many Ittihadist physicians who comprised Red Crescent'smembership, Dr. Ru§du set out to raise funds needed for Ittihad's clandestine activitiesduring the Armistice. He was arrested on 2 February 1919 by the Tevfik Pa§a Cabinet,along with other Ittihadists, but further details are not available. He eventually joined theKemalists and promptly rose to prominence, serving as Turkey's Foreign Minister from1925 to 1938.

Professor Mehmed Esad Pa§a (Isik) graduated from the Imperial Military MedicalSchool in 1889, the very same year that the Ittihad movement was launched at that schooland was joined by Dr. Nazim. Like the latter, Esad went to Paris and after receiving agraduate diploma there he returned to Istanbul, becoming a renowned clinician in eyediseases and a professor at the Medical School. As an ardent nationalist who in theArmistice years had founded the National Congress, he was taken into custody and exiledto Malta following the formal occupation of Istanbul by the Allies in March 1920.43

Many other physicians and party representatives are suspected of actively participat-ing in the destruction process, but pertinent details are presently not available.44 Therewere also physicians who cooperated extensively with the authorities and their execution-ers to cover up the crimes being perpetrated. A case in point is the behaviour of themunicipal physician of the district or Urfa. Following the ambush and murder outside thecity of two Armenian members of the Ottoman Parliament by two Special Organizationbrigand leaders, he issued fake certificates claiming natural causes for their deaths. Uponthe request of one of the widows, the government then forwarded such a certificate to her.But at the 28 November 1916 session of the Chamber of Deputies, the same governmentwas obliged to admit that both Deputies were actually murdered, as communicated in amessage to that Chamber by the Grand Vizier. The government's hand was forced by theIVth Army commander and 'Viceroy' of Syria and Lebanon, Cemal Pasa, who indiscreetlyadmitted the double murder to the Armenian Patriarch in Istanbul.45

In Trabzon province, where the Armenian population was quite wealthy, thedestruction process was accompanied, as elsewhere, by large-scale pillage and plunder.In this case, only one physician, Dr. Ali Saib, was among the seven defendants at thesecond series of courts-martial 26 March—17 May 1919. He was specifically accused ofpoisoning countless infants, adults and pregnant women at the Red Crescent Hospital, aswell as at several schools serving as temporary shelter for Armenian children whoseparents were exterminated, and of drowning them at sea. At the time, Dr. Saib was Directorof Trabzan Public Health and Sanitation services.46

Surviving Armenian adults testified that Dr. Saib's regular visits to the hospital wouldresult in the disappearance of scores of people, mostly infants. He was accused ofadministering poison in the form of liquid medicine, and of ordenng the drowning at sea ofpatients who refused to take the medicine. Two Turkish witnesses corroborated theessence of this testimony. In addition, Dr. Ziya Fuad, Health Services Inspector in Trabzonat the time of the massacres and Dr. Adnan, Director of Public Health Services in Trabzon,also submitted affidavits corraborating the accusations of poisoning and drowningchildren.47

Dr. Saib denied the charges and brought witnesses to counter the allegations,including two Armenians. In the end, he was acquitted on the grounds that the chargescould not be proven conclusively.48

At the fourteenth session of the tnal (Saturday, 26 April 1919), a young woman,Manning Yerazian, gave a baffling and portentous testimony. She was left with her sisters


in Trabzon and witnessed the poisoning and liquidation through 'disinfection' of the infants.The site of the killings by poison was not the standard location, the Red Crescent Hospital,but two school buildings serving as collection points for children slated for distribution (ofsome) and destruction (of the rest). Ittihad Representative Nail and Health Inspector Dr.Saib would supply the lists of the victims who were then picked up by the Turkish womenemployed in the schools. In the mezzanine of one of the schools, there was a tiled roompurporting to be a steam chamber (islim). The Turkish women would escort groups ofinfants to that room for a steam bath. 'First we didn't realize what was happening. But oneday we heard cries that abruptly ceased and were followed by a deathly silence. We thenpaid closer attention to what was happening. The baskets at the door of the "disinfection"hall told everything.' It appears that Dr. Saib used the term 'islim' to lure and trap thevictims in a chamber equipped with some kind of toxic gas with fatal effects. Those basketswere used elsewhere, such as at the Red Crescent Hospital, to dispose of the bodies of thedead or dying infants by dumping them in the Black Sea nearby.

The testimony of Dr. Adnan, Director of Trabzon Public Health Services, establishedthat the practice of poisoning children was not limited to the Red Crescent Hospital facilities(liquids, injection), but was maintained 'in the school buildings'; the extermination wasfollowed by 'their disposal in baskets' (Session 3, p.m., 1 April 1919). All efforts to seekmore details and clarification of these references to 'steam chamber' and to 'disinfection'failed.49 Was this steam chamber a precursor of what happened in World War II?

As to the role of the Germans, it should be noted that they were not only the politicaland military allies of the Turks but had joined the latter in making Trabzon a major base fororaganizing, under the umbrella of the Special Organization, guerilla operations in RussianTranscaucasia and Persia, involving, respectively, the contingent of Lieutenant-ColonelStange and the Persian Expeditionary Force under Reserve Cavalry LieutenantScheubner-Richter who temporarily was also Vice-Consul of Erzurum. Both operationswere supervised and financed by the office of Reserve Captain Nadolny, the GermanForeign Office's Representative in the German High Command, and later Ambassador toTurkey.

A British document reveals that Rumanian authonties had intercepted in late May1915 (Trabzon deportations and massacres began late June), a German Foreign Officebag for Istanbul containing

some light cylindrical metal cases about the size and shape of a pom-pom shell, which contain amixture of phosphorus and calcium. It is believed that admixture of water or a violent current of airwould in combination with mixture produce asphyxiating gases, and that admission of one of theseelements would be effected by clearing off of a shutter soldered onto the metal case.50

On 15 December 1918, an Armenian doctor, Mihran Norair, publicly accused hisTurkish colleagues, without naming names, of complicity in the genocide of the Armeniansciting specific cases. This triggered a public debate which was joined by several Turkishsurgeons, the Health and Sanitation Department of the Defence (War) Ministry, and theDirector-General of Public Health. The first response was a flat denial by the Health andSanitation Department of the Defence Ministry.51 Incensed by this denial, a prominentTurkish surgeon, Dr. Haydar Cemal, wrote to a Turkish daily newspaper denouncing thedenial as 'customary for Turkish authorities'.52 He addressed the following open letter tothe Interior Minister, which represents the only such candid admission of guilt to have beenmade by any Turk since the Armistice of 1918:

178 VAHAKN N. OADRIAN

When discussing the Armenian Question I note that the blame is always placed at the doorsteps ofgovernors and military commanders If the orders for the extermination of the Armenians camefrom the central headquarters of Ittihad, as asserted, then the matter of the responsibility of theensuing crimes becomes even more grave. What I would like to bring to your attention are thebarbarities committed against the Armenians in some fashion through scientific methods. It isagainst the conscience to allow this question to lapse and to be consigned to oblivion. Thus I wouldlike to submit to the sense of honour and conscience of the members of the Inquiry Commissionthe facts I personally observed; it is up to them to decide on the measures to adopt against theauthors of these misdeeds.

On the order of the Chief Sanitation Office of the Illrd Army53 in January 1916, when thespread of typhus was an acute problem, innocent Armenians slated for deportation at Erzincanwere inoculated with the blood of typhoid fever patients without rendering that blood 'inactive'. Thisexperiment, suitable only for animals slated for vivisection, resulted in the death of a great numberof unfortunate Armenians who were duped into believing that the injection was for remedialpurposes. When publishing the results in the Journal of Military Medicine, the honorableProfessor54 simply stated that the subjects were men 'condemned to death', without identifyingthem as Armenians. I personally was a witness of the criminal expenment which the Professor inquestion inflicted upon people whose sole guilt was that they belonged to the Armenian nation.Commander Refet, the Chief Physician of Erzincan's Central Hospital, the two Armenian M.D.sassisting him, and Dr. Salaheddin, the Chief of that city's Red Crescent Hospital, have intimateknowledge of this affair.

All doctors are required to record in a register the names of patients they examine. If thisProfessor would reveal his prescriptions applied to these innocent subjects, the government will beable to confirm that they had no previous record of conviction. These atrocities committed againstthe Armenians were at once administrative and scientific. They constitute a stain for the medical'profession. I am ready to furnish details on this affair.

Dr. Salaheddin cited in the above letter was next to respond. He was, he said,unfortunately completely familiar with the events of Erzincan's Central Hospital, and if hecould assist in apprehending the authorities really responsible for these acts, hisconscience would be cleared and the dishonoured medical profession and Turkism wouldhave divested themselves of a large burden. The experiments to which the Armenians,ever anxious about the atrocities surrounding them, were subjected, were fit only forlaboratory animals. They issued from a theory not yet validated by science and wereessentially chance procedures. As

a large number of Armenians succumbed to these inhuman expenments, they hardlycontnbuted to the health of others.... No positive results whatsoever were obtained. Theunfortunate Armenians, whose existence was relegated to levels lower that that of animals, werevictimised in the name of certain obscure points of science. As far as I remember, the bloodtaken from these typhus-infected Armenian subjects was used to inoculate Erzurum's GovernorTahsin—after having been rendered 'inactive', as required by the ad hoc rules of medicine.

When the Ministry of Defence denied these allegations,56 surgeons Cemal andSalaheddin each published a second letter. Cemal reiterated his assertion that 'hundreds'of young Armenians were murdered by the typhus serum experiments and that these haveindelibly stained the reputation of Turkish medicine. He was at a loss as to why so manyother medical faculties and physicians were remaining silent in defence of the honour oftheir profession. Suffice it to point out that the Defence Ministry merely denied theexistence of an order or authorization to conduct such experiments without denying theexperiments themselves.57 Dr. Salaheddin disclosed that 'to his surpnse' he was being


pressured to remain silent on the entire affair while many 'ignorant doctors' were denyingthe facts instead of insisting on the establishment of 'the truth'.58 As the entire controversywas unfolding, Dr. A. Khandjian revealed that Professor Hamdi Suad, the author of theserum experiments, was in psychiatric care as a result of acute psychosis, and that he wasbeing forcibly restrained in the clinic of his Medical School. Not certain whether thispsychotic disorder was contrived or feigned, or the inevitable impact upon him of thenightmares of his Armenian victims, the author urged the Mazhar Inquiry Commission tolook into the matter.59 It is significant that one of Dr. §akir's lieutenants discloses in hismemoirs that Sakir was actively involved in the initiation of measures to combat typhus.60

It appears that in the same city of Erzincan there was another series of serum testsbeing conducted by a military physidan, Captain Hamid. As related by an Armenian officerof the Ninetieth Regiment of the Thirtieth Infantry Division of the Illrd Army, his subjectsincluded some of the cadets of the Reserve Officers' Training School that had openedduring World War I and counted one hundred and fifty Armenians in its student body.According to this witness, the main purpose of Professor Hamdi Suad's experiment wasexamining 'the differential impacts of the serum on such organs as the heart, brain, liver,etc., for which purpose he used Armenian soldiers engaged in labour battalions'.61 Theonly repository of documents of these medical experiments is the Central State HistoricalArchive of Soviet Armenia, where they are said to be indexed and itemized.62

To describe the Turkish doctors involved in the murder of the Armenians as butcherswould not be far from the self-perception of at least some of them. An Arab official, trainedin an Ottoman Civil Service school and with access to some prominent Turks involved inthe enactment of the genocide, i.e. 'superior officers and officials or Notables of Diyarbekirand its dependencies', disclosed such a self-perception by one Turkish physician:

A doctor named Aziz Bey told me that when he was at Merzifun in the vilayet [province] Sivas heheard that a caravan of Armenians was being sent to execution. He went to the Kaymakam [countysub-governor] and said to him: 'You know I am a doctor and there is no difference between doctorsand butchers as doctors are mostly occupied in cutting up mankind. And as the duties of aKaymakam at this time are also like our own—cutting up human bodies— I beg you to let me seethis surgical operation myself.' Permission was given, and the doctor went. He found four butchers,each with a long knife; the gendarmes divided the Armenians into parties of ten, and sent them upto the butchers one by one. The butcher told the Armenian to stretch out his neck; he did so, andwas slaughtered like a sheep. The doctor was amazed at their steadfastness in the presence ofdeath, not saying a word, or showing any sign of fear.63

What is even more significant is the fact that the Kaymakam of Merzifun (or Marzuvan)was a physician himself, Dr. Faik. At the time of his arrest for court-martial, a Turkish dailynewspaper drew attention to his alleged ferocity in boasting about the fact that he hadslaughtered thousands of Armenians in his jurisdiction.64 Merzifun is located two hundredand fifty miles east of Istanbul, in the province of Sivas. In the hierarchical set-up of theprovincial administration, a Kaymakam is subordinate to a Mutesarrif, District Commission-er. Yet, as German agent Mosel reported to Berlin, Faik, as Merzifun's chief of Ittihad, hadaccess to the provincial Governor Muammer directly, instead of through his immediatesuperior, the Mutesarrif.65 Recognizing the importance of the atrocities at Merzifun, BritishDeputy High Commissioner at Istanbul, Vice Admiral Richard Webb, sent a detailed reportto Balfour on 17 February 1919, in which Dr. Faik was cited several times as a principalorganizer of the extermination and plunder of the approximately thirteen thousandArmenians of the town. Faik's name is placed at the head of the list of chief accomplices.66


In the massive documentary treatise put out by the British Foreign Office during thewar, composed by the historian Arnold Toynbee the massacre at Merzifun is described in aprefatory statement as more fully accounted for 'than any other place where the OttomanGovernment's design against the Armenians was put into execution... there was nointention of forwarding the exiles to their nominal destination. The convoys were butchereden masse as soon as they reached the next town on the road'. In a deposition to the BritishForeign Office, Dr. White, the President of the American Anatolia College at Merzifun, whowas present there throughout the massacres, underiined the fact that 'many of the convictsin the prison had been released' and that the massacres sites were

full of these bands of outlaws.... It is estimated that out of about twelve thousand Armenians inMerzifun, only a few hundreds were lef t . . . . There were also some examples of the greatestheroism and faith, and some started on the journey courageously and calmly, saying in farewell.'Pray for us. We shall not see you again in this world, but sometime we shall meet again '

In narrating his personal experiences, Professor Theodore A. Elmer, another facultymember at the American College, while confirming the role of ex-convicts as roving killerbands, relates the personal observations of the College's Kavass, a Circassian, who wasordered to accompany a convoy.

He returned a day or two afterwards and told how these one thousand two hundred men or morewere roped together in rows of five and were marched towards Amasia . . . they were all led out toa place already prepared Here the pnsoners were halted and led in successive batches of five towhat appeared to be tents.. . . They were butchered with axes.

U.S. Consular Agent at Samsun, Mr. Peter, who vamly tried to avert the deportation anddestruction of the Armenians associated with the College and the hospital at Merzifun,indicated in his 26 August 1915 report that Governor Dr. Faik had considered accepting300 TP (gold pounds) as ransom money in exchange for exempting from deportationsthese Armenians, but 'it seems that the Kaymakam, the Gendarmerie Commander and theBelediye Reis [mayor] could not agree on the sharing of the sum'.

Finally, a Greek professor, Xenidhis, relates the following about the same atrocities.

Axes were used for killing [the deportees who] were stnpped of all but their underclothing and led tothe brink of a great ditch. There they knelt with their hands bound behind their backs and weredespatched by axe-blows on the head. . . . The Armenian priests were killed likewise. One of them,Father Mampre, was killed in the attitude of prayer—praying with his son beside him . . [Gover-nor Faik] told me repeatedly that he and the commandant of the gendarmes were only tools; theyhad to carry out the orders given to them. No Armenian is to be left. Old or young, blind or lame, ordisabled—all had to go away, without any exception being granted.67

In the scheme of Ottoman domination, butchery in the above manner is not entirely outof place. In its broadest sense it is a performance fitting the label 'functional'. As Toynbeeargued within the framework of his challenge-and-response theory, 'The challenge towhich the Ottoman system was a response was . . . treating their new subjects as humanflocks and herds, evdving human equivalents of the sheepdogs of the Nomad'.68 However,flocks and herds exist only for the benefit of their masters; there is no other justification fortheir being and living. As soon as their utility diminishes or ceases, or they are viewed asliabilities rather than assets, they are slaughtered. The human victims' only difference from


animals is that they cease to be of any use after they are killed. The slaughter of theArmenians was functional at another level; it served the ultimate goal of Turkism tohomogenize the ethnic make-up of the nation.

But none of these considerations applies to another kind of treatment to which someTurkish physicians subjected Armenian victims. Ophthalmologists often displayed inordin-ate cruelty, which undoubtedly transcended the functional purposes of the killing. In hisrecent retrospective book, the world renowned portraitist Karsh relates the case of 'ayoung Armenian girl' who was being cared for by his family as an orphan survivor. His'mother... encouraged her to use her hands instead of her eyes, which had been cruellymutilated'.69 The account of a mother who in the spring of 1919 took her newborn baby toan eye doctor in Konya is illustrative not only of the result, but of the source of the cruelty. Inan article bitterly titled, 'The Patriotism of a Turkish Physician', she described overhearingin the waiting-room a conversation in Turkish in which the ophthalmologist was telling hiscolleague: 'This is the way we do it; we ought to blind one of them once every week'. Whenshe returned home and began to apply the solution one eye began to swell and steadilydeteriorated. She went to Istanbul for new treatment but was told the baby's treated eyewas blinded by the solution, with the damage extending to the other eye (which there wasonly a faint hope of saving). Only then did the mother realize the meaning of the words shehad overheard in the waiting room.70

Mabel Evelyn Elliott, an American physician who served in Istanbul dunng theArmistice as Medical Director of Near East Relief and was the representative of theAmerican Women's Hospitals recorded in her memoirs case studies she did at the RescueHome for Armenian girls in Uskudar, a city on the Asiatic side of Istanbul, where FlorenceNightingale had laid the foundation of the Red Cross and the tradition of modern nursing.

You must see them as I remember them, passing, one by one, through my consultation room,gentle, well-bred girls, with brushed hair and shining finger nails, who spoke in tow voices and worewith instinctive taste their borrowed clothes. None of them had discussed with anyone herexperiences during the war. For the first time their reticence was disturbed, necessanly, byprofessional questions, and when they had begun to speak it was as though they could not stop.The whole story poured from them.

The things that I heard were unbelievable. A doctor sees more deeply into the abysses ofhuman society than any other person except a pnest, but I knew only Amenca... It wasincredible, too, that these girls could have seen and endured them, and survived to sit there tellingof them. The stones did not vary greatly; the vanety was in the revealed temperament of the girls.Some sat quietly, with folded hands, talking on and on in a low voice, growing whiter and whiteruntil there was no blood in their lips. Others became excited, little by little lost their self-control, andended screaming and sobbing.

It was better for them to pour out this bitterness that had been so long damned behind theirsilence, and I did not stop them. I sat in the little, white room and listened... . Then there wasanother girt, whose story had a touch of the incredibly fantastic. With eyelids closed, she was themost beautiful girl I have seen among a people renowned for feminine beauty. Her features werelike those preserved for us from antiquity by the chisels of great artists, her skin was like that of achild, and her body was a rhythm of line. But when she opened her eyes, it became painful to lookat her. One eyeball swung outward in its socket so grotesquely that one thought of a gargoyle... Idid not believe it. I had grown as accustomed to hearing of monstrous things as I shall ever be, butthis was incredible. When a knife or a hot iron would have served the purpose, why resort to aninfinitely delicate surgical operation? It is a question I cannot answer; a question whose answer isso deep in Turkish character that only a Turk could answer it. For I examined the eye, and sawbeyond doubt that the story was true The microscopic scars were there, in the minute muscles of


the eye. Some finely trained and skilful Turkish surgeon had used his training at the operating tableto make this girl hideous. He had done this, while hundreds of Turkish soldiers, wounded in fightingfor their country, were dying for lack of surgical help.71

This manifestation of the concentrated hate of the centuries, turned into professionalsadism, cannot be divorced from the social system in which that hatred was nurtured,fueled and, when opportune, rewarded. Dr. Elliott's additional data and her relatedcomments attest to this fact, highlighting at the same time the nature and dimensions of theWorld War I genocide.

CONCLUSION

There are striking similarities between the Armenian genocide and the JewishHolocaust in the behaviour of the perpetrators. In this sense, the Armenian experience canbe seen as a precedent for the subsequent Jewish experience. It cannot be discounted thatthe former in some respects directly influenced, if not stimulated, the latter.

Foremost among these similarities are the incidents of experiments on subjectstreated as guinea-pigs for the development of serums as antidotes against typhus.Moreover, the fear of typhus epidemics seemingly prompted Ottoman and German healthauthorities to respond in like manner. In the section dealing with Professor Numan, a pieceof court-martial testimony was adduced depicting him as the authority ordering thedestruction of certain clusters of population which were feared as agents of epidemiccontagion. This pattern of behaviour is singled out by Robert Jay Lifton, in his analysis ofGerman conduct vis-£-vis their victims. Referring to the general conduct of Germanphysicians, Lifton notes the 'extensive sadism' that was part of the overall scheme of 'massmurder'.72 The contraption purporting to be for purposes of 'disinfection' but causinginstant death to the infant victims in the Trabzon area looks disturbingly like a kind ofprototype for the World War II Nazi gas chamber. Equally if not more important is the factthat both the Turkish and the German physicians were not only identified with but werefunctionaries and leaders of a monolithic political party that was in charge of the State.

The second point to be made is that however exhaustive a study may be, and this oneis not, there should not be explicitly or implicitly any blanket condemnation of aH thephysicians of a system. Turkish physicians who went out of their way to shelter and evenprotect Armenian colleagues and deportees were not lacking; some of them did so atconsiderable personal risk. But in the setting in which they worked, such behaviourrepresented a deviation from the prevalent norms. The brave revelations by the twoTurkish surgeons during the first months of the Armistice on the treatment of youngArmenians as guinea-pigs, and the speed with which they were silenced by Turkishnationalists is a case in point.

Role perception and role performance are often coherent fixtures of a behaviouralpattern essentially responding to their own dynamics. Turkish physicians and surgeons, tothe degree of their involvement in the pursuits of the Ittihad party, did not hesitate tobecome the servants of that party. They felt even less inhibited by the emergencies, andmore emboldened by the opportunities of the global war into which Ittihad had plungedTurkey. This involvement was not free from crass opportunism, nor was it devoid of ameasure of fanaticism that served to substitute what Nietzsche called 'refined cruelty' forthe art and science of healing. The Hippocratic oath could only be discarded or subvertedby invoking higher loyalties through a socio-political system that not only legitimized lethal


role performance but also promoted and rewarded the performers. Next to the military, themedical professionals in Turkey represented the stratum that was the closest to Ittihad andto its aspirations. The more committed ones completely abandoned their profession andbecame provincial commissars and administrators overseeing the macabre details of themass slaughter.

Role perceptions are inextricably interwoven with self-images. In the enactment ofgenocide, the self-images of the physicians involved were not only stimulated by theresurgence of an atavistic nationalism but, more importantly, they were nurtured in theconspiracy of a political party investing these physicians with a elitist mind-set. Theythought of their destructive role performance as a pioneering service both to their nationand to the party they considered to be the focus of the chosen ones. The explosiveness ofsuch twin attitudes, intertwined as they are, came into full relief in the Armenian genocide,and in more amplified form in the Holocaust of the Jews. This kind of elitist and at the sametime brutal embrace of party and nation is the most important aspect of these twocastastrophes, and as such, a major factor in the genocidal process. For any suchenterprise, all other things being equal, the chief warrant for success is inexorableness inthe pursuit of the goals, and therefore, of the victims; tight party control and discipline, anda high level of party cohesiveness are supposed to be the indispensable prerequisites forsuch inexorableness.73 In other words, genocide, in order to justify itself, is to be enactedwith ruthless severity, with its authors remaining oblivious to cost, another phenomenon inwhich the Armenian and Jewish experiences seem to converge remarkably.74

One type of such cost involved the consequences of destroying Armenian medicalpersonnel when the Ottoman Army and the destitute civilian population were in dire need ofhealth care. As a Swiss chronicler of the war stated, 'Armenian military physicians, who inthe lazarettes day and night were serving with great sacrifice, were taken away andliquidated'.75 Included in this category were the Armenian nurses.76 The Armenian medicalprofession with its auxiliary services sustained losses proportionate to the losses of thetotal population. Many of them vanished from the scene without a trace; others fell victim toepidemics or battle. But for those who are known to have been massacred or killedindividually, mostly by the complicity of fellow physicians, Armenian sources supply thefollowing breakdown: sixty-seven physicians and surgeons, fifty-four pharmacists, tendentists and five medical students.77 This decimation in part affected the poor healthconditions of the Turkish troops, as 'lack of sanitary arrangements and of sufficient medicalhelp is decimating the ranks of the Turkish soldiers in a manner unthinkable under Germanconditions'.78

The participation of medical professionals in the murder sometimes led to the deathsof victim and victimizer alike. According to the testimony of a Turkish staff captain in theOttoman army, this is what happened in Bitlis.

All Armenians had been deported from the region, and there remained in Bitlis only some threehundred young girls, belonging to the best Armenian families in the town, who had been compelledto remain. All were kept under close supervision in the Armenian church, and were reserved for theuse of the army. Soldiers and officers alike visited the church, which soon became a hotbed ofdisease. Each regiment that passed through the town on its way to the front left its traces, so after atime all these unfortunate gin's became infected. The commandant of the town, seeing this state ofaffairs, ordered that 'all these women shall be punished for exhausting the vital forces of theOttoman army and poisoning with their infection the children of the Fatherland', and as a result themilitary commandant decided to get nd of them. Some were poisoned, others were executed.79


A German medicaJ officer focused on this phenomenon of sexual assault in a two-volume study, 7770 Moral History of World War I, describing scenes of 'incredible bestiality'perpetrated on Armenian girls and young women in a scheme of

deportation which Turkish rulers justified through a trumped-up charge of armed Armenianuprisings and which unquestionably represents the greatest crime of World War I with its 1.2 millioncivilian victims. It is at the same time a singular instance in world history of aggregate cases ofrobbery slayings, sex murders, theft, rape, pimping, and white slavery.80

Even in the throes of defeat, the momentum of murder was sustained as if to register asense of frustration for incomplete results. Dr. Sakir, sensing impending defeat, asked thewartime American Acting Consul at Erzurum, Stapleton, to tell the Russian Commanderabout to capture the city that should Russian soldiers 'touch a single hair of a Turk',whatever is left of the Armenian nation will be wiped out in retaliation. §akir added:

It is imperative that from Istanbul to India and China there be only one unitary Muslim populationwith Syna serving as a nexus between the Muhammedan worlds of Asia and Africa. This vastproject will be accomplished through the scientific genius and organizational talent of the Germansand the valiant arm of the Turks.81

In the final analysis, there was very little racism in the ideology that authonzed andlegitimized the genocide of the Armenians. Not only were a large number of childrenadopted, not only were young girls and women encouraged to convert in order to escapeextermination, but quite a few doctors, dentists, pharmacists and nurses were virtuallycompelled to opt for apostacy as the only path to deliverance and salvation. It is evidentthat not only was there a marked absence of racism, but a pronounced effort to mingleArmenian blood with the gene-pool of the new, homogenized Turkish nation. It isnationalism which emerges as the proper frame of reference for the Armenian genocide.

The fact that not a single member of the Turkish medical personnel has beensubjected to retributive justice (rather than to a pro-forma prosecution through a series ofindictments) is a telling commentary on the pervasive links between justice and might. Theextensive preparations by the victorious Allies for an International Tribunal to try Turkishwar criminals accused of massacres' were aborted, and Turkish courts-martial weresidetracked by the advent of Kemalism that rose to defy the feuding, discordant and wearyAllies, and ultimately imposed its will upon them in the July 1923 Lausanne Treaty,82 inwhich, as Winston Churchill scornfully put it, 'history will search in vain for the word"Armenia"'.83

NOTES

1. Some of these medical personnel could not endure what they had witnessed and lost theirminds and died. For the stories of two such people, Charlotte Ely and Henry Atkinson, see Grace HKnapp, The Tragedy of Bitlis (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1919), pp. 74-5, and Harriet H Atkinson,'Mrs. Harriet H. Atkinson's Eyewitness Account of the Massacres at Harpoot', The Armenian ReviewXXIX (Spring 1976), 18-19.

2. In terms of membership in the Central Committee, two additional M D.s need to bementioned. One of them was Dr. Rusuhi (elected in 1912, 1916 and 1917) who lived with Talat inBerlin where the latter had taken refuge under the alias of Sai and was assassinated by an Armenianstudent for his role in the massacres. Dr. Rusuhi escaped assassination about a year later when two


of his companions, Dr. §akir and former Trabzon Governor Cemal Azmi, were likewise gunned downin the streets of Berlin for the same reason. Shortly thereafter he requested from the Germangovernment, through the intermediary of the Swiss Embassy in Berlin, extra protection, i.e. theassignment of a special police detail. German Foreign Ministry Archives, Bonn. Politische AbteilungIII Turkei, PO 11 No. 3, Bd. 1, No. 577, 4 May 1921 Swiss Embassy Note. The other wasHuseyinzade Ali, from Azerbaidjan in the Transcaucasus (elected in 1911). After receiving his M.D.from the Istanbul Medical School, he plunged into political philosophy and in a celebrated poem,Turan (under the pen-name A. Turani), he exalted the conquests of Genghiz Khan and Tamerlane,portraying them as shining examples of pan-Turanian superiority Zarevand, United and IndependentTurania. Aims and Designs of the Turks (Leiden: Brill, 1971), pp. 9, 24-5, 38.

3. Feroz Ahmad, The Young Turks (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), p 154.4. Journal de Geneve, 25 August and 13 October 1915; Sabah, 12 December 1918;

Documents of the Mazhar Inquiry Commission's pre-court-martial investigations into the perpetratorsof the Armenian genocide. Jerusalem Armenian Patnarchate Archive, Series 21, File M, No. 301.

5. Takvimi Vekayi (hereafter cited as T. V.), No 3540, pp. 5,6. This was the official gazette ofthe Ottoman Parliament which most of the time earned the court proceedings in the form ofSupplements.

6. Ibid., p. 67. Ibid., p. 88. The confirmations were in the following sessions of the court: second,!. V., 3543; third, T. V.,

3547, fourth, TV., 3549; fifth, T V, 3553 -A; sixth, TV., 3557; seventh, TV., 3561.9. TV, 3540, pp. 5-8.

10. Ibid, p. 7. General Vehib's duties started in February 1916 when most of the Armenians ofthe six provinces comprising the Illrd Army's command zone were already destroyed under the aegisof Mahmud Kamil Pasa, Vehib's predecessor. The full text in onginal Ottoman Turkish is in thedepositones of the Armenian Patnarchate of Jerusalem, Senes 17, File H, No. 171.

11. T. V., 3540, p. 6. This cable is cited also in the Harput tnal senes verdict. T. V., 3771, p 1.12. TV, 3772, p. 4.13. T V, 3540, p. 7.14 Renaissance, 5 August 1919. In the key indictment he is described as having pnvileged

access to automobiles, funds and a special code TV., 3540, p. 6.15. Falih Rifki Atay, ZeytmdaQt (Istanbul. Ayyildiz, 1981), p. 36. Dr Nazim's role extended

beyond recruitment and embraced agitation and incitement of the local population as well. Accordingto a Turkish eyewitness Nazim had helped organize a mass meeting of ten thousand at K6sk Pasa,outside Erzurum city in May 1915. When a unanimous resolution on the total annihilation of all theArmenians was passed, Dr Nazim urged that the killing be done not in towns, cities and villageswhere corpses could rot, causing epidemics, but in remote, uninhabited areas. The resolution wasthen wired to the Central Government in Istanbul This testimony is in a Soviet archive documentidentified as Senes 57, Ust 1, File 632, pp 17-18. It is quoted in John Kirakossian, AratcheenHamashkharayeen Baderazmu yev Arevmudahayoutiounu 1914-1916 (Yerevan: Hayasdan, 1965),pp. 286-7.

16 The first remark is in Sevket Sureyya Aydemir, IkinciAdam, Vol. 1 (Istanbul. Remzi 1973), p45, the second is in Sevket Sureyya Aydemir, Suyu Arayan Adam, 7th edn (Istanbul: Remzi, 1979), p.23.

17. Dogan Avcidglu, Milli Kurtulus Tanhi, Vol. 3 (Istanbul. Istanbul Publications, 1974), p. 113518. Dunya, 17 December 1967. Atay's account was made in connection with a tram trip to

Aleppo §akir had boarded the train at Adana and in the course of the ride had presumably boastedabout his achievements in the organization of the Armenian massacres in the East.

19 Among the evidence of this: a group of Erzurum deportees saw him with a bngand uniformatop a mountain near Malatya and pleaded with him to be merciful. He is reported to have chasedthem away, calling them 'infidel dogs' Puzantion, 4 November 1918 See also "Geographical andStatistical Notes on the Vilayet of Erzuroum', Jerusalem Annenian Patnarchate Archive, Series 8,


File E, No. 358. A Turkish general and colonel also bitterly remarked on Sakir's power. The generaJdenounced Sakir's role in Turkey's entry into the war, the 1914-15 Sarikamis battle disaster, his pan-Turanist ideology, and his lack of grasp and plain incompetence in military affairs. Ali Ihsan Sabis,Harb Hatiralarim, Vol. 1 (Istanbul: Inkilab, 1943), pp. 64-5; Ibid, Vol. 2 (Ankara; Gunes, 1951), pp.68, 91-2, 99. See also Arif Baytin, Ilk Dunya Harbinde Kafkas Cephesi (Istanbul: Vakrt, 1946), pp.49-51, for the colonel's complaints.

20. 777e Times of London, 28 August 1926.21. London Morning Post, 5 and 7 December 1918.22. Report No. 3481, dated 23 August 1915, Botschaft Konstantinopel 170/23.23. The first one is in the British Foreign Office Archives (FO), FO 371/5089B/E949, 18

February 1920 report. The second is in FO 371/5171/E1228, p. 7 of the 26-page intelligence report of29 August 1920.

24. Nazim's conviction was in the category of Cabinet Ministers that included the Ittihad leadersTalat, Enver and Cemal. T. V., 3604, pp. 217-20. Sakir was convicted through the Harput trial senesverdict. T.V., 3771, pp. 1-2.

25. Arshavir Shiragian, 7776 Legacy, Memoirs of an Armenian Patnot (Boston: Hairenik, 1976),pp. 176-7 (pp. 290-1 in the original Armenian version). See also Ahmed Bedevi Kuran, OsmanhImparatoriug'unda ve Turkiye Cumhunyetinde Inkilip Hareketlen (Istanbul: Celtut, 1959), p. 680.

26. The invitation to return was issued on 27 Apnl 1922, i.e. ten days after the assassination ofSakir, by then Interior Minister Fethi (Okyar). FO 371/7863/E4700, folio 119. See also FO 371/7869/E7840, folio 262. On Dr. Nazim's expected return to Turkey, British High Commissioner HoraceRumbold commented,'it would be a fact of great importance as he was formerly perhaps the mostimportant of all the Committee of Union and Progress leaders who worked in the background'. FO371/7869/E7840, folio 262, 1 August 1922 report.

27. FO 371/11528/E4929, E5141, folios 61-4. Commenting on the direction of the trial, theDa;7y Telegraph of London, in its 16 August 1926 issue, declared, 'an outstanding piece of evidenceis that extracted from Dr. Roussouhi [Rusuhi], who formed, with Enver, Talat, Nazim, and some half-dozen others, the all-powerful and secretive executive of the C U.P., a veritable "Council of Ten"which ruled Turkey for close upon ten years, down to 1918'.

28. Wrote one student of Ittihad, 'From the beginning Ittihad had been strongly representedespecially among military doctors (it had, after all, been founded at the Military Medical School) andseveral doctors had been members of the inner circle of the Committee (Dr. Rusuhi, Dr Nazim andDr. Behaeddin Sakir for instance).' Enk Zurcher, 7776 Unionist Factor (Leiden: Bnll, 1984), p. 76.

29. This information is furnished in the work of one of Sakir's Armenian students at the MedicalSchool. S. Zarevant, Antzortee Dubavoroutiunner. Deghahanoutian yev Tchartee Aradner (NewYork: Duvalian, 1924), p. 73. On the Medical School and revolutionary ferment see Kuran, OsmanliImparatoriugunda pp. 154-9.

30. FO 371/6500, folios 170-4, FO 371/6509, folio 51, Appendix C, p. 931. Zarevant, Antzortee Dubavoroutiunner, pp. 53-61; Le Bosphore, 5 May 1920. For details of

the murders, including the trial testimony of one of the Turkish coachmen who carried the victims totheir death, see Knkoris Balakian, Hat Koghkotan, Vol. 1 (Vienna: Mechitanan, 1922), pp. 146-51,Les Persecutions contre les m6deans Armenians pendant la guerre gdndrale en Turquie (IstanbulUnion of Armenian Physicians 1919), pp. 34-7. For more on Cemal Oguz, his tnals and fate, seeTV., 3540, p. 7; T.V., 3867, p. 1; FO371/6501, folios 227-8; FO371/6500, folios 133, see also FO371/247/8109.

32. FO 371/4233, folios 61-72.33. T. V., 3540, pp. 5-6. Dismissing as unfounded the claim that the Muslim population of the

province 'adored' Ittihad, the court counterposed to it the evidence of Muslims of Kastamonuprovince (of which Bolu was one of the four distncts) in the role of begging the Governor of theprovince to spare the Armenians the slaughter that was being carried out. By way of citing a specificdocument, the resident Muslim jurist, the mufti, along with §eyhs and Notables, is singled out aspleading with Governor Re§id as follows:


We heard that the Armenians of the neighbouring provinces are treated like animals as if theywere being driven to the slaughterhouse. In the company of their women and children they are saidto be driven up the mountain tops and massacred there. We don't want anything like that to happenin our area as we are afraid of the wrath of God. No government can last long by resort to atrocitiesHelp, please. Don't allow such operations in our province.

Fully in accord with this attitude, the Governor reassured them that under no circumstances wouldsuch events be allowed in their province, and 'the petitioner suppliants left with tears in their eyes'.The indictment states also that Dr. Midhat equated 'the future happiness and prosperity' of theMuslims of Bolu with the disappearance of the Armenians. Ibid.

34. T.V., 3772, pp 1-6. Characteristically, the verdict focuses also on the fate of the Governorof Kastamonu who, for refusing to 'dip my hands in blood', was eventually replaced by Atif, the newintenm Governor, who organized the deportation and decimation of the Armenians of both Bolu andKastamonu. When Damad Ferid was temporanly out of power, and Kemalist influence was inascendancy in the Ottoman capital during the Armistice, a military court of Cassation quashedMidhat's sentence. But the sentence was reimposed later on and the case was being assessed whenhe was taken to Gumussu hospital for treatment. Aided by Major Talat, the Chief Physician, and Dr.Ekrem Cadi, from the hospital's medical staff, he escaped from the hospital, along with CankinResponsible Secretary Cemal Oguz who was likewise being treated there, and Dr. Bosnak Ismayil,another military physician in custody there. To the previous charges for which he was convicted, anew charge of aiding 'the rebels', i.e. Kemalists, was added at the second court-martial thatsentenced him and Dr. Ismayil to death. Chief Physician Talat was sentenced to a pnson term of sixmonths, and Dr. Cadi of two months for assisting in the escape For the Malta exile of Dr. Midhat seeFO 371/4175/163689, folio 11.

35 T.V., 3540, p. 7. An Arab author who had served as Ottoman Governor in Harput provincebefore being exiled to Diyarbekir as an Arab nationalist relates the information, conveyed by 'one ofthose charged with the conduct of Armenian massacres' that, 'in Diyarbekir alone by August 1915,five hundred and seventy thousand had been destroyed, those being people from other provinces aswell as those belonging to Diyarbekir itself. Faiz El-Ghusein, Martyred Armenia (translation fromongmal Arabic, no translator indicated) (New York: George H. Doran, 1918), p. 41.

36 Thomas Mugurditchian, Dikranagerdee Nahankee Tcharteru, Aganadesee Badmoutiun(Cairo: Djihanian, 1919), pp. 54-6. The author was British Vice-Consul at Diyarbekir, where he hadlived nineteen years The litany of tortures descnbed by the author is corroborated by an admissionmade to Amencan Ambassador Morgenthau by

a responsible Turkish official who was descnbing the tortures inflicted. He made no secret of thefact that the government had instigated them; and, like all Turks of the official classes, heenthusiastically approved this treatment of the detested race. This official told me that all thesedetails were matters of nightly discussion at the headquarters of the Union and ProgressCommittee Each new method of inflicting pain was hailed as a splendid discovery, and the regularattendants were constantly ransacking their brains in the effort to devise some new torment. Hetold me that they even delved into the records of the Spanish Inquisition and other historicinstitutions of torture and adopted all the suggestions found there. Henry Morgenthau,Ambassador Morgenthau's Story (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Page, 1918), p. 307.

For unknown reasons the name of the official has been deleted in this Amencan edition of theAmbassador's memoirs, which are based on entries of a regularly kept diary (as noted on pp. 37,181,184, 239). In the Bntish edition the official is identified as 'Bedn Bey, the Constantinople Prefectof Police', a rank and authority equal to that of a Minister, who was one of the closest collaborators ofTalat. The Ambassador's remark that 'with a disgusting relish Bedri descnbed the tortures inflicted', islikewise deleted in the Amencan edition. Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, Secrets of the Bosphorvs(London: Hutchmson, 1918), p. 202. An example of Resid's ferocity is provided by the correspondentof the Bntish newspaper Morning Post according to whom Dr. Resid 'took 800 children, enclosedthem in a building and set light to if, 7 December 1918. The relationship between Resid's avowed


patriotism and his zest for plunder is cast into special relief by testimony from many sources; here aretwo. In an article taking the denials of his countrymen to task, a Turkish author, Hasan Amca,declares that Resjd went to his post in Diyarbekir with only two chests but returned to Istanbul withwagons loaded with goods plundered from his Armenian victims. Alemdar, 5 and 6 April 1919 issues.Dr. Hyacinth Fardjalian, a Catholic Armenian M.D., describes that loot as including jewellery andprecious stones, a pile of carpets and an assortment of antiquities, adding, 'I myself saw Rechid Beyarrive at Aleppo by a train bound for Constantinople with 43 boxes of jewellery and 2 cases full ofprecious stones.1 FO 371/4172/24597, folio 304. See also Dikran Mugunt, Amidayi Artzakankner,1950 (n.p.), pp. 249-52.

37. Holstein's report of 10 July 1915, is in Botschaft Konstantinopel 169, folio 162, No. 8;Wangenheim's Note of 12 July 1915 is in ibid, folio 164, No. 8. In a personal exchange with aVenezuelan officer, serving as a German officer in the Turkish Army dunng the war, Dr. Resid isdirectly quoted as having admitted the existence of the extermination scheme and its ongin withInterior Minister Talat. Rafael de Nogales, Four Years Beneath the Crescent (New York: London:Scnbner's, 1926), pp. 146-7.

38. The Interior Minister's statement is in NorGiank, 29 January 1919. See also FO 371/4172/24597, folio 303; Jhamanag, 5 and 6 December 1918 and 6 April 1919; and the Turkish dailynewspaper Alemdar, 5 Apnl 1919.

39. German Ambassador Mettemich's 10 July 1916 report in Turkei 183/43, A17310.40 Interview with Ittihad party Secretary-General Midhat Sukru (Bleda) in Resimli Tarih, 5 July

1953, and in Imparatorlug'un Cdkusu(Istanbul: Remzi, 1979), pp. 57-9. Dr Resid is said to have kepta diary, recording 'with great care' the daily events and his reflections. During the war he hadpublished a booklet, 'How to Deal with the Armenians', advocating their extermination. JhogovourteeTzain, 25 January 1919.

41. Avaoglu, Milh Kurtulus, Vol 2, p. 469.42. Jerusalem Armenian Patriarchate Archive, Series 21, File M, No. 24943. FO 371/6509, folio 52, Appendix C, to an Armenian physician serving in the central military

hospital of Gurhushane in Istanbul with the rank of captain Professor Esad in the early days ofIttihad's 1908 revolution reportedly complained that 'the ongoing plight of Turkey was chiefly due to"the damn (kdrolsun) Seyhuhslam [the highest Islamic legal authority] who averted the annihilation ofthe Chnstians of the Empire by denying the required fetva [a juridical decision sanctioning animpending official act] to Sultan Selim the Gnm [1512-1520]"'. Jhamanag, 21 May 1919. TheArmenian physician was Avedis Nakashian who was among the hundreds of Armenian political andcommunity leaders whose summary arrest on 24 Apnl 1915 ushered in the World War I genocide Hewas eventually saved through the personal intervention of Amencan Ambassador Morgenthau. Dr. A.Nakashian, A Man Who Found A Country (New York. Crowell, 1940), pp. 201-24.

44. (1) Dr. Ibrahim Tali (Ongdren), Special Organization leader with the rank of lieutenant-colonel, and a prominent Ittihadist, was in Erzurum in December 1914 assisting Dr. §akir in theorganization of brigands. (2) Dr. Fuad Sabit, chief of Erzincan Special Organization branch. (3) DrHuseyin Riza, organizer of bngands, went to Ardahan with Special Organization President SuleymanAskeri on a secret mission in connection with which he requested the court to arrange a closedsession so that he could supply testimony in his defence. (4) Dr. Rifki was in charge of Konyadeportations. (5) Dr. Servet was in charge of labour battalion Armenian soldiers in the same city. (6)Dr Hilmi was the Adjutant and physician of brigand leader Major Yakub Cemil's detachment (7) Dr.Sidki, one of Samsun's Ittihadist leaders, boasted to an Armenian in custody that 'the ArmenianQuestion is finally being solved' (8) Dr Esref, Sanitation Inspector, involved in the 1909 Adanamassacre, was arrested on 26 August 1919 on charges of complicity in World War I massacres. (9)Dr. Izzet Bin Emin, Major, surgeon of Tokat hospitals, was taken to the Military Pnson on 17 January1919 (10) Dr. Abdullah, Ittihadist leader at Haymana (Ankara province), (11) Dr Rusdi Bey Bin HaciHuseyin, arrested on 17 February 1919 (12) Dr. Besim Zuhdi, Responsible Secretary, AfyonKarahisar (13) Dr. Midhat, Responsible Secretary of Eskisehir (14) Dr. Ertogrul, from Kaleicihospital at Edirne, assisted in local deportations. (15) Dr Ziya, municipal physician of Gumleyik


(Bursa province), zealously helped cam/ out local deportations. (16) Dr. Fethi, Chief Physician of themilitary hospital at Silvan (Diyabekir province) raped and infected with his venereal disease a dozenArmenian nurses serving in the hospital. (17) Dr. Abdul Salem, surgeon, was arrested on 14 May1920 on charges of massacres. (18) Captain Halil, Medical Officer at Harput hospital, was likewisearrested. Furthermore the following physicians are known to have personally aided in the murder ofArmenian surgeons, optometrists and dentists. (1) Dr. Mehmed Asaf, from Mus, Bitlis province. (2)Dr. Mehmed Refi, Chief Physician of Transport and Supplies at Erzurum and Professor of Pharmacy.(3) Dr. Sevket, from Erzincan's Azizjye hospital. (4) Dr. Sani, the same hospital's Chief physician. (5)Dr. Feridun, Chief Physician of Erzincan's Military Hospital.

45. The Armenian Deputies were Zohrab and Vartkes; the two brigand chieftains were CerkezAhmed, a Special Organization major, and lieutenant Halil who later were court-martialled andhanged in Damascus by Cemal Pasa. Emekli Orgeneral Ali Fuat Erden, Birina Dunya HarbindeSuriye Hatiralari (Istanbul: Halk Matbaasi, 1954), pp. 216-18. In the death certificate dated 7 July1331 (i.e. 20 July 1915), Dr Tahsin, the municipal physician of Urfa, stated: 'Upon hearing that hehad died en route I proceeded to the spot where his body was, and identified it as that of KnkorZohrab. My examination showed that he had succumbed to a heart attack.' But Turkish captain,military intelligence officer, and later in the Armistice History Professor of Istanbul University, AhmedRefik (Attinay) in his memoirs relates Maior Ahmed's own account of the murder of the two Deputies'I blew up the brains of Vartkes with my Mauser pistol, then I grabbed Zohrab, and having trampledhim, I smashed and smashed his head with a big rock until I killed him off.' Ikdam, 29 December1918; Ahmed Refik, Iki Komite-lki Kital (Istanbul- Orhaniye, 1919), p. 39. The details of thegovernment's initial deceptions and the subsequent disclosure by Cemal Pa§a and Grand Vezir'scommunication to the Chamber of Deputies setting the record straight are in Arshag Alboyadjian,Anhedatzogh Temker Knkor Zohrab (Istanbul: Der Nercessian, 1919), pp. 246-50; the facsimile ofDr. Tahsin's fake certificate is on p. 247; the Ottoman text of Grand Vezir's communication is on p.249; the session at which that communication was read was the third 28 November 1916, and is onp. 99 of the respective transcripts. Grand Vezir's communication to the Ottoman Parliamentconfirming the murder of the two Armenian Deputies is also mentioned in Tank Zafer Tunaya,Turkiyede Siyasi Partner, 2nd edn, Vol. 1 (Istanbul: Hurnyet Vakfi, 1984), p. 579, n. 60

46. The trial of Dr. Saib was the outgrowth of an Armenian's letter in the local press accusing aHealth Inspector of mass poisonings and drownings of children at Trabzon. Two Turkish surgeons,claiming they were trying to absolve the reputation of Turkish medicine, had disclosed theperformance of medical experiments on Armenians in Erzincan, and this had prompted thenewspaper letter on Trabzon. See Mugurditch Gabrash, 'Keedoun Djivagh Mun Al', Djoghovourt, No.56, 28 December 1918.

47 Dr Ali Saib was also accused of having organized the murder of Trabzon's municipalphysician, a Dr. Levon Aslanian, in order to appropnate his wife, said to be of exceptional beauty.Having barely recovered from typhus, Dr Aslanian was given a fictitious assignment at Erzurum andon his way there with his brother, also an M.D , was ambushed and mutilated by bngands At the sixthsession of Trabzon trial senes (7 Apnl 1919, a.m ), a French national, Louis Vidal, chief of SingerCompany's Trabzon branch, testified about his contact with Dr. Saib and the latter's covetousness ofMrs. Aslanian, whose sister happened to be Vidal's wife He insisted on Dr Saib's complicity in themultiple murders of the two Armenian physicians, and eventually of Mrs. Aslanian, who seeminglyrepeatedly rebuffed Dr. Saib. He had made these charges publicty in a statement published inRenaissance, 14 February 1919.

48. The data and sources for this section were culled from a host of Armenian, French andTurkish daily newspapers covenng the tnals daily as they unfolded, mainly the following: Nor Giank,Jhamanag, Jhogovourtee Tzain, Djagadamard [Armenian], Renaissance, Le Bosphore, Le Specta-teur d'Orient [French] Ikdam, Sabah, Alemdar, Tasviri Efkir, Hadisat [Turkish]. Especially relevant isan article detailing the various procedures for eliminating Armenian children separated from theirmurdered parents at Trabzon. Armen Pokhanan, 'Unger Ghazar yev Huranouysh MagountzinerouHousheren', Hairemk XII No. 8 (June 1934), 75-83 Dr. Saib subsequently entered the Turkish


Consular Service. When an Armenian survivor recognized him in Aleppo, where he was a consul, hetransferred to Saloniki where he died. Les Memoirs de Mgr. Jean Naslian. EvSque de Trebizonde,Vol. I (Vienna: Mechitariste, 1955), p. 175.

49. Only two Armistice newspapers could be located which in their coverage of this sitting of theMilitary Tnbunal reported the details of the Yerazian testimony about the steam chamber. Jhamanag,No. 3506, 27 Apnl 1919, p. 2, cols. 1 and 2; Renaissance, 27 Apnl 1919.

50. FO 371/2489/75753. 7 June 1915, Sir Barclay, Bucharest to London.51. Mihran Nora'ir, Tourk Pujhishgnem al Meghsagitz1. Anamard (temporarily substituting for

Azadamard, the paper's actual name), No. 26 (1836), 15 December 1918; the French translationappeared next day in Rennaissance, 16 December 1918. The Turkish daily newspaper Yeni Gazetaearned the Turkish translation in its 17 December 1918 issue. In its 21 December 1918 issue,Anamard published the response of the Health Services Administration challenging Dr. Norair to bespecific, to name names, etc.

52. Tun\ce Istanbul, No. 45, 23 December 1918, French translation in Renaissance, 26December 1918.

53. He was Colonel Tevfik Salim (later General Saglam) who held the same position with thellnd Army before being transferred to the Illrd to combat typhus. Later in the year, he was promoted toInspector of Army Group East. After becoming Professor of Medicine at the Medical School ofIstanbul University, he was first promoted to Dean of that school, and later to Rector (president) of theUniversity. Colonel Dr. Guse, the German Chief of Staff of Ottoman Illrd Army, praising Dr. Salim's'long years of work' in Germany, extolls in his memoirs 'the distinctly efficient personality he broughtwith him as Army physician'. Felix Guse, Die Kaukasusfront im Weltkrieg (Leipzig. Koehler &Amelang, 1940), p. 58.

54. He has Hamdi Suad, Munich-trained Professor of Pathology.55. Turkge Istanbul. No. 46, 24 December 1918, French translation is in Renaissance, 26

December 1918.56. Ikdam, 26 December 1918.57. Istiklal, 3 January 1919.58. Alemdar, 8 January 1919.59. Nor Giank, 3 January 1919.60. A Bil, 'Umumi Harpte Teskilati Mahsusa', Vakit, instalment No. 79 from a series of articles

on the Sakir-led bngands on the eastern borders of Turkey (2 November 1933-7 February 1934).The source used here is taken from the Armenian translations of this senes which V. Ishkanianpublished day by day in the Pans Armenian daily newspaper Haratch, presumably with identicalinstalment numbers. It is most probable that A. Bil is a pseudonym for one of the bngand leadersassisting Sakir.

61. Djagadamard, No. 68 (1884), 1 February 1919. According to this source those cadets notexpenmented upon were executed in batches of ten, with their hands tied. He also states that theforty Armenian students of another institution, the Military Academy of Erzincan, were likewiseliquidated. Ibid.

62. H S.S.HJB.G B.A. or Haigagan Sovetagan Sotzialisdagan Hanrabedoutiun-Bedagan Get-ronagan Badmagan Archiv (Armenian SSR Central State Historical Archive), Yerevan, Senes 200,List 1, File 273, No. 2.

63. Faiz El-Ghusein, Martyred Armenia, pp. 27,28. While in exile in Diyarbekir for seven monthsduring the war (as stated in note 35). he availed himself of his friends and contacts, for the author washimself a Kaymakam in the province of Harput before being exiled as an Arab nationalist. He laterserved with the same title and rank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The use of axe blows in thisparticular instance is confirmed in the German document contained in Turkei 183/44 A24663.

64 The Turkish daily newspaper was Alemdar from which the Armenian daily DjoghovourteeTzain of 13 May 1919 quoted.

65. Weltkneg 11d seer. Bd. 11, enclosure No. 3 of A5775, 3 February 1916 report, folio 122.66. FO 371/247/5779, folios 68-73. Similar reports abound in other files of FO, e.g. FO 371/


4175/163689, folio 9, 6 December 1919, High Commissioner de Robeck report; FO 371/6503, folio38, Oliphant's 16 June 1921 communication to Sir Geddes in Washington, D.C.

67. Viscount Bryce-Amold Toynbee, 7770 Treatment of the Armenians in the Ottaman Empire1915-16, Documents..., Miscellaneous No. 31 (London: H.M.S.O., 1916). The observation in theprefatory statement is on p. 331; Dr. White's account is in Doc. No. 86, pp. 334-5; Professor Elmer'sin No. 87, p. 342; U.S. consular Agent Peter's in No. 90, p. 364; Greek Professor Xenidhis' in No. 93,pp. 373, 376. This British [Blue Boo/c] dealing with the massacres in Dr. Faik's zone of authority hasaltogether nine lengthy deposition-documents, pp. 331-79, involving mainly Amencan authorities(one college president, one girl's school director, one consular agent and one professor)supplemented by the testimony of a Greek professor at the same U.S. Anatolia College, and of anunspecified German. See also the testimony of a Turkish newspaper editor published in the ArmisticeTurkish daily newspaper Ikdam and translated in Jhogovourt, 15 November 1918.

68. Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History (abridgement of Vol. Vll-X) (New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1957), p. 362.

69. Yosuf Karsh, A Fifty Years Retrospective by YosufKarsh (Boston. Little Brown, 1985), p. 7.70. Djagadamard, 5 April 1919.71. Mabel Evelyn Elliott, Beginning Again at Ararat (New York Fleming H. Revell, 1924), pp.

20-6.72. Robert Jay Lifton, 'Medicalized Killing in Auschwitz', Psychiatry 45 No. 4 (November 1982),

288, 289, 297. Lifton published a massive volume on this subject after the present study went topress. See The Nazi Doctors. Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide (New York: BasicBooks, 1986). References to this author and the Armenian genocide are in Chapter 21, and on pp.470-80, 492-3.

73. At the third sitting of Harput trial senes Special Organization Colonel Husameddin Erturktestified to the fact that Dr. §akir recruited his assistants for that organization from the local cells ofthe Ittihad party. Renaissance, 7 August 1919.

74. In his impressive study of the Jewish case, Hilberg, after making some rough computationsabout overall German gains and losses, concluded that, 'This figure [the losses] swamps the entireincome denved from the destruction process'. He also cites from a circular, issued by the Nazi PartyChancellery, 'confidentially' exhorting its agents to act with 'ruthless seventy'. Raul Hilberg, TheDestruction of European Jews (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1961), pp. 646,651. As to the Armeniancase, if one disregards the overall figures computed by the Armenians, Amencan Ambassador,Abram Elkus, Morgenthau's successor, addressing just the matter of tax revenues told the StateDepartment, 'it is estimated three millions annually [Turkish pounds, then 1 TP was worth about $9 inpaper, as assessed by Elkus] in taxes have been lost, because of the Armenian massacres'. PapersRelating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, The Lansing Papers, 1914-1920, p. 785, 17November 1916 report. As to the losses to the Turkish war effort, French military histonan Larcher,despite his sympathies for the Turks, concedes that the Armenian deportations 'deprived the IllrdArmy of the valuable services of many skilled and educated men, eliminating a large part of theresources in the operational zone'. Commandant M. Larcher, La Guerre Turque dans la guerremondiale (Paris: Chiron, 1926), p. 396.

75. S Zuriinden, Der Weltkrieg, Vol. 2 (Zurich: Art. Institut Orell Fussli, 1918), p. 640.76. Professor Elmer of Anatolia College on Merzifun related that 'the nurses were canng for the

sick soldiers of the Ottoman Army under the auspices of the American Red Cross Society . . nearlyall the nurses of the hospital were Armenians . . . [they] were driven away by the gendarmes just likethe rest of their unfortunate sisters'. Bryce-Toynbee, The Treatment, pp. 336-7. According to thetestimony of two Amencan nurses employed in the Military Hospital of Bitlis, 'All the Armeniannurses, druggists and orderlies in the hospital were also taken. It mattered not that they were themost intelligent and faithful helpers, and that there was no one left to prepare medicines for theTurkish patients—all had to go". Knapp, The Tragedy, p. 54.

77. Les persecutions centre les medians Arm^mens, pp. 26-58; a large, comprehensivevolume in Armenian is offered by T. M. Garoyan, Medz Yegemee Nahadag Hai Pujhishgneru(Boston, n p., 1957).


78. Liman von Sanders (General of Cavalry), Five Years in Turkey (Annapolis: U.S. NavalAcademy, 1927), p. 89.

79. Ararat VI, No. 66 (Summer 1919), 422; in the Jerusalem Armenian Patriarchate Archive,Series 7, File H, No. 107, the captain is identified as Nabil Bey, the son of Sakir Pasa, andAdjutant to then Commandant de la Race of Istanbul, Esad. The wholesale slaughter of Bitlisprovince was observed in its aftermath by a Venezuelan officer with German affiliations who hadtaken part in the military operations against the Armenians at Van. See Rafael de NogaJes, FourYears Beneath the Crescent, p. 124.

80. Magnus Hirschfeld and Andreas Gaspar, Sittengeschichte des I. Weltkrieges, Vol. 2(Leipzig, 1929-30), pp. 289-90; 2nd edn. (Hanau: Schustek, 1964), pp. 510-11.

81. J. de Morgan, Contre les barbares de I'Orient (Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1918), p. 188. Seealso Journal d'Orient, 11 May 1919, p. 2, col. 3. Following the declaration of 'holy war' against theinfidel Allies (14 November 1914), the large crowd had proceeded to the German Embassy from thebalcony of which Dr. Nazim, consistent with this affinity for Germany, held a speech depictingGermany as the genuine friend of three hundred million Muslims for whom Kaiser Whilhelm II hadsworn his allegiance. Deutsche Tageszeitung, 16 November 1914. Nazim repeated his exaltation ofGermany at the 1910 annual congress of Ittihad (31 October/1 November-13 November), andespecially of the Kaiser. Turkei 158/11, A15682, Saloniki Consul Dr. Schworbel's 14 September 1910report.

82. Ismet Pasa's deputy who headed the Turkish delegation at Lausanne, Dr. Riza Nur, was amember of the opposition party (Itilaf), with some personal expenence of persecution, includingtorture, inflicted upon him by Ittihad in the prewar years. Still he shared Ittihad's views on theArmenians. In his memoirs he recounted how he mocked the Allies' request to grant the Armenians anational home in some part of Turkey, then being formed by the Kemahsts. Alluding to the humanityand comforts of America, Dr. Nur suggested that such a home should be offered by the UnitedStates. 'Everyone laughed.' When Giulio Cesare Montagna, the session chairman, appealed to DrNur's magnanimity by reminding him of the approaching Christmas season, the latter retorted sayingit was a western and Christian holiday. 'Again they laughed, and we laughed too. The matter wasclosed and my remarks were not included in the official transcripts'. When the massacres werebrought up on 6 January 1923, he denied them, and blaming the deaths on disease, hunger anddeportations, he walked out. Kissing his cheek, Ismet, his chief, thereupon congratulated him,declaring, 'You buned the Armenian Question. I congratulate you'. Dr. Nur also issued a threat to anArmenophile American in Lausanne 'Should the Armenians take the life of a single Turk, the peopleare sworn to massacre in his place ten thousand Armenians remaining in Turkey'. Dr. Riza Nur,Hayat ve Hatiratim, Vol. Ill (Istanbul. Altindag\ 1968), pp. 1058-74. This penchant for threateningresort to wholesale murder as a means of punishment or deterrence was evident in Dr. Riza Nur's 25May 1921 letter to the Commander of the Eastern Front regarding suspicions that Soviet histonanswere spying on the Turks by pretending to study the ruins of Ani, the mediaeval centrepiece of thearchitectural treasures of the Armenian Church. He suggested that 'the relics and traces of themonuments of Ani be wiped off the face of the earth. You will be rendering a great service to Turkeywhen you accomplish this goal' Kazim Karabekir, Istiklal Harbimiz (Istanbul: Turkiye, 1969), p. 905.

83. Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty (1911-15), and later the Secretary of State for War(1919-21), observed: 'There is no reasonable doubt that this cnme was planned and executed forpolitical reasons. The opportunity presented itself for clearing Turkish soil of a Chnstian race opposedto all Turkish ambitions . . . and planted geographically between Turkish and Caucasian Moslems'.Winston S. Churchill, The World Crisis: The Aftermath (London: T. Butterworth, 1929), pp. 405, 407.Uoyd George who was part of the Allied front repeatedly making solemn promises of justice andredemption to the Armenians denounced the behaviour of the Allies, the signatories of the LausannePeace Treaty, as 'abject, cowardly and infamous'. Stephen Bonsai, Suitors and Suppliants, The LittleNations at Versailles (New York- Prentice, 1946), p 198.