!á��="justify">In a serial article that appeared in the April 8, 9 and 10, 2005 issues of daily Radikal, columnist Murat Belge referred to the trial of a number of people on charges related to the Armenian incidents. These courts were set up in foreign-occupied Istanbul at the end of World War I. In his article Belge provided excerpts from the defendants’ testimony.

  In a serial article that appeared in the April 8, 9 and 10, 2005 issues of daily Radikal, columnist Murat Belge referred to the trial of a number of people on charges related to the Armenian incidents. These courts were set up in foreign-occupied Istanbul at the end of World War I. In his article Belge provided excerpts from the defendants' testimony.

  Taner Akcam and Vahakn Dadrian, Armenian historians, have used these court records in their books in an effort to prove that a genocide had happened.

  The fact that the Armenian incidents were tragic has never been denied. It may be said that the kind of writings on history that have sometimes been derided as the “official history” began with the late Ambassador Kamuran Gurun's book “Armenian File.” Contrary to what some seem to believe, Mr. Gurun wrote that book not after he went into retirement but in 1982, that is, at a time he was serving as the undersecretary of the Turkish Foreign Ministry. He recognized in this book that around 300,000 Armenians may have lost their lives in the course of the relocation.

  The first Martial Law Court concerning crimes related to the relocation of the Armenians was set up on Dec. 16, 1918. It was thought that the court was working too slowly. So when Damat Ferit Pasha became prime minister, he made Mustafa Nazim Pasha (called Nemrut because of his cruelty) the presiding judge. The court took prompt action, condemning to death Bo?azlayan County Governor Kemal Bey on April 8 and Bayburt County Governor Nusret Bey on July 8, in spite of the absence of material evidence.

  The cases related to the Armenian problem made up only a small part of the court's business. The main aim of the Freedom and Accord government was to have its arch-enemy, the Unity and Progress Party, liquidated thanks to those trials. For this reason the defendants' right to a defense was consistently violated. Terrorized by the atmosphere thus created, the defendants accused one another to save their own lives, giving the kind of testimony the judges wanted.

  The way it ruled in two cases gives an idea about the nature of the court. In its ruling that appeared in the June 25, 1920 issues of the newspapers, the court described the “National Forces” as forces of dissension and treachery; and it referred to “National Forces” figures such as generals and members of Parliament including Col. Ismet (Inönü) as “bandits affiliated with Unity and Progress.” The court condemned these persons to death and seized their property. In the same ruling the court accused the Ankara-based Turkish Grand National Assembly of being a gathering of “ambitious and malicious rebels.”

  The second ruling in question appeared in the newspapers on May 11, 1920. In that ruling the court condemned to death Mustafa Kemal “and his accomplices,” that is, Kara Vasif, Ali Fuat Pasha, Ahmet Rustem Bey (who was a man from Poland who embraced Islam and later became the Republic of Turkey's ambassador to Washington), Adnan Adivar and Halide Edip Adivar.

  The British thought that the court acting so unfairly could harm their own position. They took to Malta 144 defendants, some of them accused in relation to the Armenian incidents. However, the British royal prosecutor there said that there was no way he could arrange for an Istanbul-type trial and that he would need sound evidence and witness accounts for a British-type trial. When these were not provided, he released the defendants from custody.

  That says a lot for the nature of the Martial Law Court of Nemrut.

  In reality there has been much more meaningful court cases one should take into consideration when trying to determine whether the Armenian incidents were genocide. Courts created during the Unity and Progress era due to the crimes committed against the Armenians in the course of their forced relocation meted out sentences to a total 1,397 people. (Some of these people were condemned to death.) Of these convictions, 648 were in Sivas, 223 in Mamuretu'l Aziz, 70 in Diyarbakir, 25 in Bitlis, 29 in Eskisehir, six in Sebinkarahisar, eight in Nigde, 33 in Izmit, 32 in Ankara, 69 in Kayseri, 27 in Syria, 12 in Hudavendigar, 12 in Konya, 189 in Urfa and 12 in Canik.

  Among those punished were Konya military governor Aziz Bey, some officers and gendarmerie privates and an Armikyan that had stolen fellow Armenians' jewels.

  Punishing those that have done wrong to the very people you have subjected to genocide would have been something as strange and as gross as the Germans punishing SS officials.

  Note: In this article I made use of a study made by Associate Professor Süleyman Beyo?lu.