Secondly, they insist that the government of the Union and Progress Party which led the Ottoman State into the First World War had a premeditated plan intended to eradicate the Armenian race altogether and that it considered the war as offering the most propitious conditions for the annihilation of the Armenian people.

According to this thesis, The Union and Progress Party Government had planned the deportation of the Armenians as the best way to execute the destruction of the Armenian people covertly and secretively. The execution of this mission has been given to the secret service (Te?kilat-I Mahsusa) and the armed bands under its command.

Thirdly, the premeditated and systematic massacre of the Armenians as a racial, ethnic and religious group are evidenced by authentic and irrefutable archive documents. Due to these characteristics of the crime, it is incontestable that the Turks have committed "genocide" against the Armenians.

The fourth claim of the Armenian propagandists is that as many as 1,5 to 2 million Armenians died as the result of the massacres in Anatolia.

I will now take these claims one by one and analyze them in the light of historical evidence. In this analysis, I will rely mainly on foreign sources and historical archive material the authenticity of which cannot be denied.

Let’s start with the claim that Armenians rebelled and cooperated with the invading Russian armies only after they were subjected to atrocities and mass killings and only after the initiation of deportation.

This claim does not hold water.

Louise Nalbandian, an Armenian Nationalist and historian clearly indicate in her book that the Ottoman entry into war against the Entente powers on November 1, 1914 was regarded by "The Armenian revolutionary committees" as "The most opportune time to begin a general uprising to achieve their goals". The Ottoman Empire being in a state of war would be less able to resist an internal attack (Nalbandian, Louise, Armenian Revolutionary Movement University California Press, 1963, pp 110-111).

Before the war broke out in August 1914, Enver Pasha, the Deputy Commander In Chief of the Ottoman Army, met with the Dashnak leaders at Erzurum in the hope of getting their support for the Ottoman war effort when it came.

Stanford Shaw, Professor of History at the University of California in his book "History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey" describes the event, which occurred in the Caucasus and Eastern Anatolia before the war broke out, in the following way:

"The meeting at Erzurum was unsuccessful. Russia had already promised the Armenians an autonomous state including not only the areas under Russian rule in the Caucasus but also substantial parts of eastern Anatolia... The Armenian leaders told Enver Pasha that they only wanted to remain neutral, but their sympathy for the Russians was evident and in fact soon after the meeting several prominent Ottoman Armenians, including a former member of parliament, slipped away to Caucasus to collaborate with Russian military officials."

Professor Shaw, continues with the following: Czar Nicholas II himself came to the Caucasus to make final plans for cooperation with the Armenians against the Ottomans, with the President of the Armenian National Bureau in Tiflis declaring in response:

"From all countries Armenians are hurrying to enter the ranks of the glorious Russian army, with their blood to serve the victory of the Russian army... Let the Russian flag wave freely over the Dardanel les and the Bosphorus. Let with your will, great majesty, the people remaining under the Turkish yoke receive freedom. Let the Armenian people of Turkey who have suffered for the faith of Christ receive resurrection for a new free life under the protection of Russia."

"Armenians again flooded into the Czarist armies; Preparations were made to strike the Ottomans from the rear, and the Czar returned to St. Petersburg confident that the day finally came for him to reach Istanbul."

"Knowing that their numbers would never justify their territorial ambitions, Armenians looked to Russia and Europe for the fulfillment of their aims. Armenian treachery in this regard culminated at the beginning of the First World War with the decisions of revolutionary organizations to refuse to serve their state, the Ottoman Empire, and assist instead invading Russian armies. Their hope was that their participation in Russian success would be rewarded by an independent Armenian State."

Armenian treason is also documented in the November 1914 issue of the Hunchak Armenian (Revolutionary) Gazette, published in Paris. It was a call to arms, which said.

"The entire Armenian nation will join forces moral and material, and waving the sword of revolution, will enter this world conflict... as comrades of the Triple Entente, and particularly Russia. They will cooperate with the Allies, making full use of all political and revolutionary means for the final victory...."

As soon as Russia declared war on the Ottoman Empire and the Russian forces advanced into Ottoman territory in eastern Anatolia, they were led by units composed of volunteer Ottoman and Russian Armenians, who were joined by the Armenians who had deserted the Ottoman armies and went over to the Russians.

Many of these also formed guerrilla forces with weapons and ammunition, which they had been stocking up for years in Armenian missionary churches and schools.

These guerrilla forces operating in close cooperation with the Russians, were savagely at tacking Turkish cities, towns and villages in the east, massacring their inhabitants without mercy, while at the same time working to sabotage the Ottomans Army’s war effort by destroying roads and bridges, raiding caravans, and doing whatever else they could to assist the Russian occupation.

The atrocities committed by the Armenian volunteer forces accompanying the Russian Army were so severe that the Russian commanders themselves were compelled to withdraw them from fighting fronts and to send them to rear guard duties.

The memoirs of many Russian officers who served in the East at that time are filled with accounts of the revolting atrocities committed by these Armenian guerrillas, (Journal de Guerre du Deuxiéme Régiment D’Artillerie du Forteresse Russe d’Erzéroum, 1919).

In March 1915, the Russian forces began to move toward Van. Immediately on April 11, 1915, the Armenians of Van began a general revolt, massacring almost all the Turks in the city and vicinity so as to make conquest easy for the Russians.

There upon Czar Nickolas II sent a telegram of thanks to the Armenian Revolutionary Committee of Van on April 21, 1915, "thanking it for its services to Russia."

The Armenian newspaper Gochnak, published in the United States, also proudly reported on May 24, 1915 that "only 1500 Turks remain in Van", the rest having been slaughtered.

What was the Ottoman response to these developments?

This is explained by the American historian, Professor Justin McCarthy, in his book "Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922" in the following way:

"The Ottoman response to the Armenian revolution was approximately the same as that taken by other twentieth-century governments faced with guerrilla war. Isolate the guerrillas from local support by removing local supporters. The Ottomans knew the Armenian rebels were freely supported by Armenian villagers as well as by the Armenians in the eastern cities that were home to leaders of their revolution. They there fore decided on a radical action. Forced migration of the Armenian population in actual potential war zones. The first orders to that effect went out on 26 May 1915."

"The intentions of Istanbul were clear-to move and resettle Armenian peacefully. Verifiable Ottoman documents on the subject indicate at least a formal concern for the Armenian migrants. Elaborate procedures were written in Istanbul and forwarded to the provinces. These covered the sale of refuge goods, the settling of refugees economic positions similar to those they had left, instructions on health, sanitation and the like, in short, all looked fine on paper."

"Lack of proper security opened the way for subsequent events: Some Ottoman officials were venal and stole from those in their charge. Some officials, particular those who were from Caucasian Moslem groups that had themselves recently suffered the same deprivations, undoubtedly saw the Armenian situation as a chance to equal old scores."

"The greatest threat and cause of the mortality to Armenians came from nomadic tribes who raided Armenian convoys. The gendarmes detailed the convoys could not protect them from armed attack by Kurds. While the tribes did not usually engage in manslaughter of Armenian migrants, they did kill large numbers and abducted their world. They probably caused great mortality by stealing what the Armenians needed to subsist. Despite regulations, little food was provided to the migrants, who expected to feed themselves. But the tribes took their sustenance, and starvation was the result."

"Some Ottoman officials themselves took part in the robbery of the Armenians sometimes even killing of Armenians. The Ottoman government recognized and tried many Turks for their actions against the Armenians. Kâmuran Gürün found documents listing convictions of 1397 persons for crimes against Armenians. Some were executed for their crimes...."

As clearly indicated by the dates of these events and the unquestionable evidence of documents, the first claim of the Armenian propagandists is too baseless.

The incontrovertible historical truth is that Ottoman Armenians together with Czarist Russia planned a general uprising long before the war broke out and with the declaration of the war, they betrayed their own state and joined the ranks of the invading army and resorted to all kinds of action to sabotage Ottoman war effort.

It is upon these developments that the Ottoman government, seven moths after it entered the war was compelled to issue the order of deportation.

Now let us deal with the second claim of the Armenian propagandists. Namely, the assertion that, the government of the Union and Progress party, had a pre-existing plan of eradication of the Armenian race and that deportation was conceived as the appropriate setting for the implementation of this plan.

The evidence, which refuses this claim, is again very strong and unshakable. The Peace Treaty of Serves imposed upon the defeated Ottoman Empire to hand over to the Allied Powers those persons accused of the massacres. As a consequence, the British High Commission in Istanbul arrested 144 high Ottoman officials for trial and deported them to the island of Malta.

The information which led to the arrest was mainly given by local Armenians and the Armenian Patriarchate. So while the deportees were interned on Malta, the British occupation forces in Istanbul which had absolute power and authority in the Ottoman capital, looked frantically everywhere to find evidence in order to incriminate the deportees.

An Armenian scholar, Haig Kahzarian, appointed by the British, conducted a thorough examination of documentary evidence in the Ottoman and British archives. However, Khazarian could not find any evidence demonstrating that the Ottoman government and the Ottoman Officials deported to Malta either sanctioned or encouraged the killings of the Armenians.

Thereupon, the British Foreign Office thought that the American government would doubtlessly be in possession of a large amount of documentary evidence complied at the time of the massacres. Indeed, if the massacres took place in 1915-1917, the Americans must have been in the possession of a mass of material since at the time American diplomatic and consular officials were freely performing their duties in Turkey. Furthermore, the American Near East Relief Society, ubiquitous, institution of missionaries was allowed by the Ottoman government to fulfill its relief functions in Anatolia during deportations. Therefore, they should have witnessed crimes and accumulated a lot of evidence against the criminals.

So, in desperation The British Foreign Office turned to the American archives in Washington. On March 31, 1921, Lord Curzon telegraphed to Sir A. Geddes, the British Ambassador in Washington the following:

‘There are in the hands of His Majesty’s Government at Malta a number of Turks arrested for alleged complicity in the Armenian massacres. There are considerable difficulties in establishing the proofs of guilt... Please ascertain if the United States are in possession of any evidence that would be value for purposes of prosecution.’

On July 13, 1921, the British Embassy in Washington returned the following reply;

‘I have the honor to inform Your Lordship that a member of my staff visited the..... State Department .... He was permitted to see a selection of reports from United States Consuls on the subject of atrocities...

I regret to inform Your Lordship that there was nothing the rein which could be used as evidence against the Turks....’

As the charges against them could not be substantiated, all Turkish deportees of Malta were acquitted and repatriated after two years and four months of detention.

In this context, allow me to inform you that the British Government with the approval of the House of Commons in 1916 published a book under the title "The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire 1915-1916". This publication, which laid the groundwork for the Armenian genocide claims, came to be called the "Blue Book".

It has one sided view of the fights and mutual reprisals that took place between the Muslim and the Armenian people of Anatolia in a climate of civil war. It contains reports and documents to portray the incidents as mass massacres in line with the ethnic liquidation plan by the Ottoman government.

The Blue Book gives the Turks the image of bloodthirsty, inhumanly evil creatures. Historian Justin McCarthy believes that this book has done the most damage to Turkey’s image in the West.

Last week attending a luncheon meeting in London at the House of Lords hosted by Lord Ahmed where I had the opportunity to speak on the Armenian question. I asked the British parliamentarians and guests the following question:

"Why did the British government not use The Blue Book to sentence the Turks exiled in Malta for having deliberately massacred the Armenians?’

The answer to this question is that the Blue Book which today is still most commonly quoted in the British media as a reliable document when accusing Turks of genocide, is full of fake documents and unreliable stories based on dubious and prejudiced sources.

This is the truth... Otherwise, why would the British Prosecutor General have avoided using it to prove the criminality of the deportees of Malta?

It is established that the Blue Book was to a large extent prepared by Arnold Tybee when he was a member of the War Propaganda Bureau at Wellington House.

In fact, Michael Sanderson and Philip Taylor in their book entitled "British Propaganda During the First World War" described Toynbee as "something of a specialist in atrocity propaganda".

Professor Justin McCarhty, an eminent American historian and demographer, in a paper entitled "How Armenian Claims against Turkey Rest on Bogus Information Used by The British as Propaganda in World War 1" says the following:

"The central document used by the Armenian lobbyist against Turkey today is the Blue Book written by Vicount Bryce and Arnold Toynbee in 1916. However, it was one of the productions of Wellington House, a war propaganda unit, officially known as the war Propaganda Bureau. Thanks to the accidental survival of a notebook, it is possible to see that the stories in it do not rest on the reliable sources claimed by them and most are entirely hearsay produced by American missionaries in Turkey. Morgentau and Lepsius and other anti-Ottoman writers relied on identical sources, recycled several times.... The atrocity stories in the Blue Book can be dismissed as untrue."

"In 1916 Lloyd George encouraged Bryce and Toynbee to collect "Turkish atrocity stories’ into the Blue Book which was placed before the parliament and has become the classic document of the Armenian radical nationalists."

One of the main aims, which motivated the British government into making its propaganda office at the Wellington House prepare such baseless documents, was to exploit the American public’s sympathy for the Armenians and thus ensure that Washington would join the war as soon as possible. And the book proved quiet successful in this respect.

In fact, members of the British government of the time announced that the book was a major factor behind President Wilson’s decision to go to war (M. Anderson, Noel Buxton, A Life, London, 1952, p. 81).

Another distinguished scholar, Professor Sonyel in his book entitlied "Falsification and Disinformation - Negative Factors in Turco-Armenian Relations" deals also with the false and fictitious nature of the Blue Book.

Sonyel, basing himself on Toynbee’s book entitled "Acquaintances", narrates the circumstances under which the Blue Book was prepared. In view of Toynbee, the British govern m e n t decided to publish the Blue Book in order to divert the attention from atrocities committed by the Russians against the Jews in the Polish-Lithuanian frontier region in the spring of 1915. As expected, the Germans tried to exploit this situation. The news of the carnage reached the US in February 1916 and thereupon the newspaper "The New York American" urged the American people to demand that "Christian England and Christian France restrain the savagery of their barbarous allies."

According to Toynbee, this incident worried the British government, which thought that the American Jewry as a retaliation may use its political weight to prevent US’s entry in the war. So according to Toynbee Turco-Armenian conflict in Anatolia had provided the British government with countless propaganda material against the Central powers. (Toynbee, Acquaintances, p.149-152)

I shared these historical realities with my audience at the House of Lords and cited the following sentence from Arthur Ponsonby’s book, "Falsehood Wartime":

‘The injection of the poison of hatred into men’s mind by means of falsehood is greater evil in wartime than the actual loss of life, the defilement of human soul is worse than the destruction of the human body.’

Thereafter, stating that the Blue Book as an official publication of the British Government caused enormous evil by falsely according authenticity and credibility to the claims of the deliberate extermination of the Armenians, and that it is still doing its poisonous work against Turkey and its people, I said:

Poisoning the minds of nations, turning them into one another’s arch enemies causing feelings of hate and obsession with avenging to the relayed from one generation to another, is a crime against humanity.

For this reason it is the most natural right of the Turkish people to expect British government and the House of Commons, to discredit the Blue Book, which is a phoney, bogus, fake document, the falseness of which has been proven, as it could not be used as evidence in a British court of law.

I would now like to dwell on the third claim of Armenian propagandists, namely that what Turks have done in 1915 is incontestably genocide.

The term genocide refers to a well -defined crime, the definition of which has been given in the "Convention for the Prevention and the Repression of the Crime of Genocide" which has been approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1948 and went into effect in 1951.

The Convention was ratified by Turkey in 1951 and by Armenia by 1991.

According to the Convention, the definition to describe a crime by the name of genocide the existence of three elements is necessary.

The first is that there has to be a targeted national, ethnic, racial and religious group.

The second element is that this group has to be subjected to certain inhuman acts listed in the Convention. Acts, such as "the murder of members of the group, and forced to transfer of the children of one group into another group, and subjecting the members of a group to conditions which eventually bring about their physical destruction.

The third element is the existence of conclusive proof that there has been "an intent of destroying" the group in part or in whole.

During the long deliberations for the elaboration of the Convention at the U.N., it was decided that the convention was not the proper instrument for the protection of political groups.

So, the Convention as adopted on 9 December 1948, limited genocide to the destruction of national, ethnical, racial or religious groups.

Therefore, the U.N. Secretary General, while presenting the Convention for ratification emphasized two points.

First, genocide is a crime of "specific intent", requiring conclusive proof that members of the group are targeted because they were members of that group.

Second, he warned that political groups are not granted protection by the Convention.

It is clear that under these criteria Armenian allegation of genocide irrefutably falls.

Indeed, for the last 85 years Armenians were not able to disclose any direct evidence demonstrating that the Ottoman government or members of the government took action against the Armenians with the intent to destroy them partly or wholly.

Equally, Ottoman Armenian Dashnak and Hunchak guerrillas by their own admission were organized as political revolutionary groups waging war against their own government in collaboration with Czarist Russia.

Armenian leaders went even further than that and asserted that as a political group they had launched an insurrection against the Turks and fought side by side with the Entente countries they deserve belligerent status.

Indeed, the leader of the Armenian delegat ion in the attendance at the Paris Peace Conference after World War 1, Boghos Nubar Pasha, in an open letter he sent to the Times of London on January 30, 1919, stated:

‘The unspeakable sufferings and the dreadful losses that have befallen the Armenians by reason of their faithfulness to the Allies are now fully known. But I must emphasize the fact, that ever unhappily known to few, since the beginning of the war the Armenians fought by side of the Allies on all fronts.... The Armenians have been belligerent de facto since they indignantly refused to side with Turkey.

In the Caucasus, without mentioning the 150.000 Armenians in the Russian Armies about 50.000 Armenian volunteers under Andranik, Nazarbekoff and others not only fought for the cause of the Entente, but after the breakdown of Russia they were the only forces in the Caucasus to resist the advance of the Turks , whom they held in check until the Armistice was signed.’

Boghos Nubar’s assertion that the Armenians were a belligerent party in the war, necessitates that the Armenian question be dealt with the purview of the laws and the customs of war...

Professor Michael Gunter, an American scholar, in his book entitled "Pursuing the Just Cause of their People", displays a logical analysis of the tragedy that befell both the Turks and Armenians in Anatolia in the following way:

‘The Armenian claim that they were victims of premeditated genocide does not ring true.... Decades of what the Turks saw as armed revolutionary activity between the wars, the creation of Russian-Armenian guerrilla groups in the invading Russian army during the present war, the defection of certain Ottoman Armenians to the enemy. Incidents of revolutionary acts and sabotage in the countryside, all led the Turks to conclude they were in real danger from a fifth column...’

‘In addition, of course, the Ottoman Empire in 1915 was a badly decaying institution nearing the end of its long existence. In the throes of fighting a losing war, it was pushed beyond its capacities and lost control of the situation.... Under such widespread conditions of wartime disorganization, the nomadic Kurds were able to attack the deportation columns with relative impunity or even with the connivance of the gendarmerie. An unpopular minority whom the Moslem majority considered traitors, the Armenians received little sympathy from the local population, which itself was suffering grievously from wartime conditions.’

‘In Constantinople, however, where the governments capacities were stronger, the vast majority of the Armenian population continued to exist throughout the war. In fact their descendant still live in Istanbul today. Could anyone conceive of Hitler allowing the Jews to continue living in Berlin while he implemented his genocide against them elsewhere?’

‘.... It should be clear from the above analysis that there have been two sides of the question, and we in the west have largely heard only the Armenian. At tempts to demonstrate the Turks committed premeditated genocide have proven either likely forgeries or declarations based on mere faith. To accuse Turks of genocide is to ignore these elementary facts.’

‘Furthermore the Armenian deaths do not constitute genocide since they were subject to relocation not because of race, ethnicity or religion, but because they took arms against their own government, they joined the ranks of the invading Russian army resorted to mass killings and sabotaged the defense effort of the Turkish armies fighting the massive Russian invasion.’

Professor Gunter’s conclusions are realistic and truthful.

So Armenians’ portrayal of themselves as the helpless victims of "the 20th century’s first genocide" is without any basis.

As a last point let me dwell on the Armenian allegation that as many as 1.5 to 2 million Armenians died as a result of the massacres in Anatolia.

Armenian propagandists have a tendency to grossly exaggerate the size and scope of their wartime losses. For this purpose, they over inflate the number of the Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire when the war broke out. Their claim is that the Armenian population at that time was over 2 million.

The American historian and demographer, Professor Justin McCarthy, having exhaustively examined the population statistics for the period in quest ion determined that the Armenian population of the Empire was 1,5 million.

McCarthy uses the figure 1.295.000, which is the number of the Armenian population according to Ottoman Empire’s official census report, as a basis for his calculations. Then taking into consideration that census was not effectively carried out in the mountainous regions, uses demographic techniques to adjust the Ottoman official figure and concludes that the Armenian population before the war 1.5 million.

Other Western estimates vary between 1.056.000 and 1.555.000 which more or less corresponds with McCarthy’s calculations.

So, as hundreds of thousands Armenians immigrated to other countries and tens of thousands of them lived in Turkey after the war, Armenian claim is that as many as 1.5 to 2 million Armenian died in Anatolia is totally false.

Justin McCarthy calculates the Armenian losses as slightly less than 600.000.

The figure agrees with those provided by British historian Arnold Toynbee and by most early editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Boghos Nubar, at the Paris Peace Conference declared that after the war, 280.000 Armenians were living in Turkey and 700.000 Armenians have immigrated to other countries. He estimated that the total number of the Armenian population before the war was 1.300.000, therefore, according to Boghos Nubar the number of the Armenian losses was around 300.000.

This analysis leads us to conclude that the Armenian losses during the war were something between 300.000 and 600.000, which is far below the Armenian claims.