“…Most of those who maintain that Armenian deaths were premeditated and so constitute genocide base their argument on three pillars: the actions of Turkish military courts of 1919-1920, which convicted officials of the young Turk government of organizing massacres of Armenians; the role of the so-called “special organization”, or “Teskilat-i Mahsusa” in Ottoman Turkish, accused of carrying out the massacres; and the “memoirs of Naim Bey” which contain alleged telegrams of interior minister Talât Pasha conveying the orders for the destruction of the Armenians. Yet, when these events and the sources describing them are subjected to careful examination, they provide at most a shaky foundation from which to claim, let alone conclude, that the deaths of Armenians were premeditated…”
Myths and Realities
Add comment