| The Memoirs of Naim Bey | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | Aram Andonian |
| Original title | The Memoirs of Naim Bey: Turkish Official Documents Relating to the Deportation and the Massacres of Armenians |
| Country | England |
| Language | English |
| Subject(s) | History |
| Publisher | Hodder & Stoughton |
| Publication date | 1920 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 84 Pages (Hardcover) |
The Memoirs of Naim Bey: Turkish Official Documents Relating to the Deportation and the Massacres of Armenians, also known as the "Talat Pasha telegrams", is a book written by Aram Andonian and published in London by Hodder & Stoughton in 1920, originally in English, and later in a French version. The book lists several documents, the telegrams, which are purported to constitute evidence that the Armenian Genocide was formally implemented as Ottoman Empire policy.
The first publication had an introduction by Viscount Gladstone.
Contents |
The documents were allegedly collected by an Ottoman official called "Naim Bey", working in the Rehabilitation Office in Aleppo, and handed by him to Andonian. Each note bears the signature of Mehmed Talat Pasha, the Ministry of the Interior and later Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire. The contents of these telegrams "clearly states his intention to exterminate all Armenians, outlines the extermination plan, offers a guarantee of immunity for officials, calls for tighter censorship and draws special attention to the children in Armenian orphanages."[1]
These telegrams remain in coded form and are written in Ottoman Turkish.
The overall picture emerging from these narrations points to a network of the extermination of most the deportees.[2] Although it overwhelmingly confirms the fact of what Toynbee called "this gigantic crime that devastated the Near East".[2][3]
Although the extermination of the Armenians had been decided upon earlier than this, circumstances did not permit us to carry out this sacred intention. Now that all obstacles are removed, it is urgently recommended that you should not be moved for feelings of pity on seeing their miserable plight. but by putting an end to them all, try with all your might for obliterate the very name ’Armenia’ from Turkey.[4]
Aram Andonian himself acknowledged some validity to the critiques of his book. In a letter sent on July 26, 1937, mentioning the criticism of former German consul in Aleppo Walter Rössler, who wrote "I believe that the author is not capable of being objective; be is carried away by his passion", Andonian said that "my book was not a historical one, but rather aiming at propaganda. Naturally, my books could not have been spared the errors characteristic of publication of this nature [...] I would also like to point out that the Armenian Bureau in London, and the National Armenian Delegation in Paris, behaved somewhat cavalierly with my manuscript, for the needs of the cause they were defending."[5]
Despite Vahakn Dadrian's claim that the validity of documents from the book is "supported by the official and mostly secret reports of German and Austrian diplomats"[6], "representatives of the Turkish state, her political elite, and her relevant institutions[...] declare these documents either at best as 'Armenian fiction' [...] or at worst as 'forgeries'".[7]
Turkish authors Şinasi Orel and Süreyya Yuca have released their work The Talaât Pasha "telegrams" : Historical fact or Armenian fiction? in 1983. The conclusion of the problems with these documents is given by Orel/Yuca with the following results:
Furthermore, Orel/Yuca could not find the name of Naim Bey neither in various official registers nor any reference to such a person. They conclude "it seems impossible to make a definite judgement on the question of whether or not Naim Bey was an actual person. If not a fictitious person created by Andonian, he clearly must have been a very low-ranking official, who could not have been in a position to have access to documents of a secret and sensitive nature.[9]
This opinion is shared by Dutch professor Erik-Jan Zürcher,[10] Zürcher does however point to many other corroborating documents supporting the Andonian Telegrams assertion of core involvement and premeditation of the killing by the central CUP members.[11] The opinion about the spuriousness of the Andonian documents is also shared by Paul Dumont, professor of Turkish studies at Strasbourg University and director of French Institute of Anatolian Studies from 1999 to 2003, who says that "the authenticity of the alleged telegrams of Ottoman government, ordering the destruction of Armenians is today seriously contested"[12]; by Michael M. Gunter who calls the documents "notorious forgeries"[13]; by Bernard Lewis, who classifies the "Talat Pasha telegrams" among the "celebrated historical fabrications", on the same level than The Protocols of the Elders of Zion[14]; by Andrew Mango who speaks of "telegrams dubiously attributed to the Ottoman wartime Minister of the Interior, Talat Pasha".[15]; by Jeremy Salt, who describes the documents as "the most notorious" of "forgeries [...] produced with the intention of proving what could not otherwise be proved"[16]; by Norman Stone, who calls the Naim-Andonian book "a forgery"[17]; and by Gilles Veinstein, professor of Ottoman and Turkish history at Collège de France, who considers the documents as "nothing but fakes"[18].
Other scholars have at least raised questions about the documents. Christopher J. Walker has argued in 1997 that "doubts must remain until and unless the documents or similar ones themselves resurface and are published in a critical edition".[19] Austrian scholar Wolfdieter Bihl has called them "controversial".[20] Guenter Lewy writes that "the demonization of Talat Pasha in Andonian's work, it should be noted, represents an important change from the way in which many Armenians regarded Talat Pasha character before 1915", and that "the controversy over the authenticity of the Naim-Andonian documents will only be resolved through the discovery and publication of relevant Ottoman documents, and this may never come to pass". Lewy argues that "until then Orel and Yuca's painstaking analysis of these documents has raised enough questions about their genuineness as to make any use of them in a serious scholarly work unacceptable".[21] According to David B. MacDonald, Lewy is content to rely on the work of "Turkish deniers Sinasi Orel and Sureyya Yuca": "Lewy's conception of shaky pillars echoes the work of Holocaust deniers, who also see Holocaust history resting on pillars... This is a dangerous proposition, because it assumes from the start that genocide scholarship rests on lies which can easily be disproved once a deeper examination of the historical 'truth' is undertaken".[22]
Armenian sociologist Vahakn N. Dadrian has argued in 1986 that the points brought forth by Turkish historians are misleading and has countered the discrepancies they have raised.[23] Others (Niall Ferguson, Richard Albrecht, etc.) who support Dadrian's thesis also point to the fact that the court did not question the authenticity of the telegrams in 1921–which, however, were not introduced as evidence in court–and that the British had also intercepted numerous telegrams which directly "incriminated exchanges between Talaat and other Turkish officials"[24], and that "one of the leading scientific experts, the US-scholar Vahakn N. Dadrian, in 1986, verified the documents as authentic telegrams send out by [...] Talat Pasha".[7] V. Dadrian's analysis was criticized as misleading by Michael M. Gunter[25] and Guenter Lewy[26]. Guenter Lewy added later:
"the alleged thirty-one telegrams of Talât Pasha contained in the Naim-Andonian volume, some of which order the killing of all Armenians, are rejected as crude forgeries not only by Turkish historians but also by almost all Western students of Ottoman history. Hilmar Kaiser, cited by Dadrian and the one exception to this rule, did say documents from the Ottoman Ministry of the Interior 'confirm to some degree' two telegrams, but he concluded that "further research on the ‘Naim-Andonian' documents is necessary. [...] Hilmar Kaiser, on whom Dadrian relies for his defense, has drawn attention to "misleading quotations" and the 'selective use of sources' in Dadrian's work, and he has concluded that 'serious scholars should be cautioned against accepting all of Dadrian's statements at face value.'"[27]
Norman Stone argued: "However, the chief Turkish ally of the Armenian diaspora historians, Taner Akçam, remarks that “there are important grounds for considering these documents fake” (see his Turkish National Identity and the Armenian Question, note 8, p 119, Istanbul, 1992). There are, too: the paper, the dating, the calligraphy, the signature of the governor, the absence of any back-up copies in the archives, and the refusal of British and German lawyers to use them. Dadrian had a wonderful time trying to salvage the documents, and I vastly admired the prestidigitation involved – for instance, if the paper was of the type used in French schools, and not the type used in government offices, this can be explained by the paper shortage, he says. But if he cannot convince his major ally, who knows the Ottoman documents, well, there we are."[28]
Michael M. Gunter wrote:
"Although Dadrian had the audacity to argue incongruously that “the presence and easy detection of such defects in the material under review militate against that charge [of forgery]” (p. 176), common sense would seem to argue the opposite. The manifest inconsistencies in the Naim-Andonian documents indicate that they are likely forgeries. Indeed, in all fairness to the Armenian position in the hoary controversy over whether the Ottomans intended to commit genocide against them, one would think that the Armenians and their supporters could come up with a better smoking pistol."[29]
The French surgeon Yves Ternon who convened at the 1984 Permanent Peoples' Tribunal contends that these telegrams however, "were authenticated by experts…[but] they were sent back to Andonian in London and lost."[30] The French philologist Jean-Louis Mattei, on the other hand criticized Yves Ternon's analysis as wrong.[31]
The alleged documents were subject of debate during the trial of Orly airport attack in 1985. The defense used the telegrams as argument, the plaintiffs, represented by lawyer Jean Loyrette (actually principal of Gide Loyrette Nouel firm law), rejected the authenticity[32]. The verdict makes no mention of the debate and refuses the attenuating circunstances to the main perpetrator, V. Garbidjian, sentenced to life.