14:56, 28 April 2005

Turkish paper denies genocide

Below is a reproduction of a posting from the Turkish newspaper Hurriyetim in which it denies the 1915-1923 Armenian Genocide in Turkey. This is for the purpose of letting the opposite side have its say.

1915-1916 saw the displacement of not just Armenians but 702,905 Turks
Murat Bardakci
27 April 2005

Ottoman Grand Vizier and Interior Minister Talat Pasha, in black books that he kept from the period he was in office, recorded that in the years between 1915 and 1916, not only Armenians but hundreds of thousands of Turks were displaced from their homes in eastern Turkey.

The notebooks show that up to 800,000 Turks from provinces under invasion threat from Russian forces took to the road as "emigrants," and that a corridor stretching from Izmit to Halep was used to resettle up to 702,905 Turkish citizens. The area most emigrated to was Mosul, with 150,000 resettled, and the least emigrated to was Icel, with only 426 people.

The so-called "black books" from the archives of Grand Vizier Talat Pasha record not only the migrations that took place from the European side to Anatolia during the Balkan War, but also lists of citizens displaced by the Russian invasion of eastern provinces during World War I. The lists of people removed from their homes and out of the way of fighting between Turkish and Russian forces reveal that while Armenians were moved, Turks were also moved.

'Black books' expose genocide