!áH€ ="justify">The post-World War I Turkish Government indicted the top leaders involved in the “organization and execution” of the Armenian Genocide and in the “massacre and destruction of the Armenians.”

trations in front of the United Nations to protest the French bill that banned denying the so-called Armenian genocide.

The third article of the resolution asserts that the Ottoman Empire tried those responsible for massacres and thereby implicitly accepted criminal responsibility during the court-martials. Justin McCarthy, a leading American expert on the Ottoman history, describes those courts as “kangaroo courts” and recalls that they were established by a corrupt administration which was eager for retribution. The British High Commissioner S.A.G. Calthorphe wrote to London on Aug. 1, 1919, that the “trials were proving to be a farce and injurious to our own prestige and to that of the Turkish government” (FO 371/4174/118377). According to Dr. Ferudun Ata, the author of a book titled “Deportation Courts in Occupied ?stanbul,” the Ottoman government of the time had established the court-martials to better its conditions in the Paris Peace Conference and also to take revenge against the regime of the “Young Turks.”

The interrogations in the courts-martial were not duly conducted, many witnesses were faked and only testified against the defendants. For example, a certain Artolos, a shoemaker, who testified against Maj. Tevfik during the trials in Yozgat, was brought to ?stanbul and was paid to speak against the defendant. According to Dr. Ata, he later appeared before the court in another trial as a Muslim convert. Dr. Ata’s book reveals many false witnesses like this. Those who spoke in favor of the suspects were not brought to court. The chairmen of the courts never charged those false witnesses, although they were sometimes revealed in court. Dr. Ata also found that some false witnesses, before bearing testimony at the court, had been trained and instructed in the “Armenian-Greek Branch” established at the offices of the British High Commissioner. What is most important to note about the decisions of these courts is that the Court of Appeal declared the verdicts null and void. Unfortunately, among such cases was the verdict of Nusret Bey, who had been executed upon his death sentence. Such facts about the nature of the post war courts-martial become more meaningful when we read that the then US high commissioner, Lewis Heck, reported on April 4, 1919 that “many here regard executions as necessary concessions to Entente rather than as punishment justly meted out to criminals,” and that “it is popularly believed that many of them are made from motives of personal vengeance or at the instigation of the Entente authorities, especially the British.” (NARA 867.00/868; M 353, roll 7, fr. 448). Lastly we should remember that England also arrested 144 outstanding politicians of the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) for crimes against Armenians and took them to Malta for trial, but later released all of the detainees without charge.

(Article 5) In a series of courts-martial, officials of the Young Turks regime were tried and convicted, as charged, for organizing and executing massacres against the Armenian people.

Besides the findings of Dr. Feridun Ata, historians like Justin McCarthy and Gunter Lewy stated that post war courts-martial were a travesty of justice, the findings of these courts were unreliable, interrogations were not legal, the right of defense for the arrested was denied and the presiding officer, when questioning the defendants, often acted more like a prosecutor than like an impartial judge. As Lewy stated, “The legal procedures of Ottoman military courts, including those operating in 1919-20, suffered from serious shortcomings when compared to Western standards of due process of law.” The court did not listen to any testimony during judgment and the decisions were made by relying solely on false witnesses without considering the answers of the defense.

(Article 6) The chief organizers of the Armenian Genocide, Minister of War Enver, Minister of the Interior Talaat and Minister of the Navy Jemal were all condemned to death for their crimes; however, the verdicts of the courts were not enforced.

The courts-martial operating in the occupied Istanbul tried Enver, Talat and Cemal and convicted them to capital punishment in absentia. Yet, they were not found guilty of “organizing and performing massacres against Armenians,” as stated in the resolution, but they were found guilty of political crimes for dragging the country into a terrible war. The fact that the verdicts of the courts were not enforced has nothing to do with ignorance or being indifferent to the suffering of Armenians, but that the guilty parties had fled the country after the war. Anyhow, the untold verity about these people is that they were assassinated by a secret Armenian organization called “Nemesis” in the countries where they sought refuge. Sadly, the Nemesis organization also killed some statesmen like Sait Halim Pasha, Bahaeddin Takir and Cemal Azmi without judgment although the courts found them innocent.

(Article 7) The Armenian Genocide and these domestic judicial failures are documented with overwhelming evidence in the national archives of Austria, France, Germany, Great Britain, Russia, the United States, the Vatican and many other countries, and this vast body of evidence attests to the same facts, the same events, and the same consequences.

This is also untrue. I have personally dug out the documents preserved at the US National Archives and Research Foundation and found no concrete evidence in the documents that can be qualified for use in court. The documents in the archive contain reports by the consul and the testimony of the missionaries who were biased toward the Muslims and the Turks and reported information that they had not witnessed, but rather heard through secondary sources. It can safely be claimed that an overwhelming amount of these documents and reports are based on hearsay. There are also large amount of documents, or rather statements, from the Patriarchate and Ta?naksutyun political propaganda offices. As a matter of fact, documents and reports from the United States consuls had been examined by the officials “for any mention of forty-five Malta detainees accused of outrages against Armenians and other Christians” and found no information that could “be employed in a court of law.” Thus, one cannot help thinking that this might be the reason why the proposal of the Turkish government to set up an international committee of historians have so far been refused by the Republic of Armenia.

TO BE CONTINUED