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''The Memoirs of Naim Bey: Turkish Official Documents Relating to the Deportation and the Massacres of Armenians'', containing the Talat Pasha telegrams, is a book published by historian and journalist Aram Andonian in 1919. Originally redacted in
Armenian Armenian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia * Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent ** Armenian diaspora, Armenian communities around the ...
, it was popularized worldwide through the English edition published by
Hodder & Stoughton Hodder & Stoughton is a British publishing house, now an imprint of Hachette.H ...
of
London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...
. It includes several documents (
telegram Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas pi ...
s) that constitute evidence that the
Armenian genocide The Armenian genocide was the systematic destruction of the Armenians, Armenian people and identity in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Spearheaded by the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), it was implemented primarily t ...
was formally implemented as
Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire (), also called the Turkish Empire, was an empire, imperial realm that controlled much of Southeast Europe, West Asia, and North Africa from the 14th to early 20th centuries; it also controlled parts of southeastern Centr ...
policy. The first edition in English had an introduction by Viscount Gladstone.


Contents

According to Andonian, the documents were collected by an Ottoman official called Naim Bey, who was working in the Refugees Office in
Aleppo Aleppo is a city in Syria, which serves as the capital of the Aleppo Governorate, the most populous Governorates of Syria, governorate of Syria. With an estimated population of 2,098,000 residents it is Syria's largest city by urban area, and ...
, and handed by him to Andonian. Each note bears the signature of
Mehmed Talaat Pasha Mehmed Talât (1 September 187415 March 1921), commonly known as Talaat Pasha or Talat Pasha, was an Ottoman Young Turk activist, revolutionary, politician, and convicted war criminal who served as the leader of the Ottoman Empire from 1913 ...
, the Minister of Interior and later
Grand Vizier Grand vizier (; ; ) was the title of the effective head of government of many sovereign states in the Islamic world. It was first held by officials in the later Abbasid Caliphate. It was then held in the Ottoman Empire, the Mughal Empire, the Soko ...
of the
Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire (), also called the Turkish Empire, was an empire, imperial realm that controlled much of Southeast Europe, West Asia, and North Africa from the 14th to early 20th centuries; it also controlled parts of southeastern Centr ...
. 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."'' The telegrams remain in coded form and are written in
Ottoman Turkish Ottoman Turkish (, ; ) was the standardized register of the Turkish language in the Ottoman Empire (14th to 20th centuries CE). It borrowed extensively, in all aspects, from Arabic and Persian. It was written in the Ottoman Turkish alphabet. ...
. The overall picture emerging from these narrations points to a network of the extermination for most of the deportees.Dadrian, Vahakn. ''The Naim-Andonian Documents on the World War I Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians: The Anatomy of a Genocide''.
International Journal of Middle East Studies The ''International Journal of Middle East Studies'' is a scholarly journal published by the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA), a learned society. See also * Middle East Research and Information Project * Association for ...
, Vol. 18, No.3, August 1986, p.1
It overwhelmingly confirms the fact of what British historian
Arnold J. Toynbee Arnold Joseph Toynbee (; 14 April 1889 – 22 October 1975) was an English historian, a philosopher of history, an author of numerous books and a research professor of international history at the London School of Economics and King's Coll ...
(
LSE LSE may refer to: Education * London School of Economics, a public research university within the University of London * Lahore School of Economics, a private university in Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan * Lincoln Southeast High School, a public gove ...
,
University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a collegiate university, federal Public university, public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The ...
) called "this gigantic crime that devastated the Near East".


Authenticity

In 1983, the Turkish Historical Association published a now discredited work titled "Ermenilerce Talat Pasa’ya Atfedilen Telgraflarin Gercek Yüzü" by Şinasi Orel and Süreyya Yuca. In the introduction to "The Talat Pasha Telegrams: Historical Fact or Armenian Fiction", its English-language edition published in 1985, Orel and Yuca wrote that the term "genocide" and the term "massacres" were being wrongly applied to characterize the
Armenian genocide The Armenian genocide was the systematic destruction of the Armenians, Armenian people and identity in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Spearheaded by the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), it was implemented primarily t ...
(which its authors describe as an Armenian "claim" and a "
calumny Defamation is a communication that injures a third party's reputation and causes a legally redressable injury. The precise legal definition of defamation varies from country to country. It is not necessarily restricted to making assertions ...
directed against Turkey"), and that the documents contained within The Memoirs of Naim Bey were forgeries that had been, for more than 60 years, used as the basis for those charges of genocide and massacre. The French historian Yves Ternon who convened at the 1984 Permanent Peoples' Tribunal contends that these telegrams however, ''"were authenticated by experts… utthey were sent back to Andonian in London and lost."'' Historian Vahakn N. Dadrian argued in 1986 that the points brought forth by Turkish historians are misleading and countered the discrepancies they raised.Dadrian, Vahakn. ''The Naim-Andonian Documents on the World War I Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians: The Anatomy of a Genocide''.
International Journal of Middle East Studies The ''International Journal of Middle East Studies'' is a scholarly journal published by the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA), a learned society. See also * Middle East Research and Information Project * Association for ...
, Vol. 18, No.3, August 1986, p. 550
Scottish historian
Niall Ferguson Sir Niall Campbell Ferguson, ( ; born 18 April 1964)Biography
Niall Ferguson
, professor of history at
Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...
, senior research fellow of Jesus College, University of Oxford, and senior fellow of the
Hoover Institution The Hoover Institution (officially The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace and formerly The Hoover Institute and Library on War, Revolution, and Peace) is an American public policy think tank which promotes personal and economic ...
,
Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...
, and Richard Albrecht among others 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"'', and that "one of the leading scientific experts, Vahakn N. Dadrian, in 1986, verified the documents as authentic telegrams send out by ..Talat Pasha". He adds: Historians
Hans-Lukas Kieser Hans-Lukas Kieser (born 1957) is a Swiss historian of the late Ottoman Empire and Turkey, Professor of modern history at the University of Zurich and president of the Research Foundation Switzerland-Turkey in Basel. He is an author of books and ar ...
and Margaret Lavinia Anderson wrote in 2019 that Dadrian's rebuttal to the charges of forgery "remains convincing". Turkish historian
Taner Akçam Altuğ Taner Akçam (born 1953) is a Turkish-German historian and sociologist. During the 1990s, he was the first Turkish scholar to acknowledge the Armenian genocide, and has written several books on the genocide, such as '' A Shameful Act'' ...
mentions similarities between the telegrams published by Andonian to extant Ottoman documents. In a book published in 2016, named “The Naim Efendi Memoirs and Talat Pasha Telegrams”, he affirmed the authenticity of the memoir and the telegram.


Revisionism

and Süreyya Yuca claimed in their 1983 book ''The Talât Pasha "telegrams": historical fact or Armenian fiction?'' that Naim Bey did not exist, and his memoir and the telegrams were forgeries. According to Turkish historian
Taner Akçam Altuğ Taner Akçam (born 1953) is a Turkish-German historian and sociologist. During the 1990s, he was the first Turkish scholar to acknowledge the Armenian genocide, and has written several books on the genocide, such as '' A Shameful Act'' ...
, their claims "were some of the most important cornerstones of denying the events of 1915" and "the book became one of the most important instruments for the anti-Armenian hate discourse". Akçam wrote a book, '' Killing Orders'', in order to debunk the claims of Orel and Yuca and prove that the telegrams were authentic. In 2017, Akçam was able to access one of the original telegrams, archived in Jerusalem, which inquired about Armenian liquidation and elimination.
Guenter Lewy Guenter Lewy (born 22 August 1923) is a German-born American author and political scientist who is a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His works span several topics, but he is most often associate ...
, a
political scientist Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and Power (social and political), power, and the analysis of political activities, political philosophy, political thought, polit ...
and
genocide Genocide is violence that targets individuals because of their membership of a group and aims at the destruction of a people. Raphael Lemkin, who first coined the term, defined genocide as "the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group" by ...
denier, also states that the telegrams form the "centerpiece" of "the case against the Turks", that the authenticity of the Naim-Andonian documents "will only be resolved through the discovery and publication of relevant Ottoman documents", and calls Orel and Yuca's work a "painstaking analysis of these documents" that makes "any use of them in a serious scholarly work unacceptable". About this position David B. MacDonald wrote that Lewy is content to rely on the work of "Turkish deniers Şinasi Orel and Sureyya Yuca": "Lewy's conception of shaky pillars echoes the work of
Holocaust deniers Denial of the Holocaust is an antisemitic conspiracy theory that asserts that the genocide of Jews by the Nazis is a fabrication or exaggeration. It includes making one or more of the following false claims: *Nazi Germany's "Final Solution" wa ...
, 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". Other opinions include Dutch professor
Erik-Jan Zürcher Erik-Jan Zürcher (born 1953) is a Dutch Turkologist. He is a professor of Turkish studies at Leiden University since 1997. From 2008 to 2012 he served as director of the International Institute of Social History. His book ''Turkey: a Modern Histo ...
(professor of Turkish studies at
Leiden University Leiden University (abbreviated as ''LEI''; ) is a Public university, public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. Established in 1575 by William the Silent, William, Prince of Orange as a Protestantism, Protestant institution, it holds the d ...
); 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 A cup is an open-top vessel (container) used to hold liquids for drinking, typically with a flattened hemispherical shape, and often with a capacity of about . Cups may be made of pottery (including porcelain), glass, metal, wood, stone, pol ...
members. Scholars who share revisionist opinions about the Andonian documents include
Bernard Lewis Bernard Lewis, (31 May 1916 – 19 May 2018) was a British-American historian specialized in Oriental studies. He was also known as a public intellectual and political commentator. Lewis was the Cleveland E. Dodge Professor Emeritus of Near ...
(Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at
Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...
and Genocide denier), who classifies the "Talat Pasha telegrams" among the "celebrated historical fabrications", on the same level than ''
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion ''The Protocols of the Elders of Zion'' is a fabricated text purporting to detail a Jewish plot for global domination. Largely plagiarized from several earlier sources, it was first published in Imperial Russia in 1903, translated into multip ...
'',
Andrew Mango Andrew James Alexander Mango (14 June 1926 – 6 July 2014) was a British BBC employee and author. Life He was born in Istanbul, one of three sons of Alexander Mango, an Italian-Greek barrister and his White Russian wife Adelaide Damonov; the ...
(a biographer of
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk Mustafa Kemal Atatürk ( 1881 – 10 November 1938) was a Turkish field marshal and revolutionary statesman who was the founding father of the Republic of Turkey, serving as its first President of Turkey, president from 1923 until Death an ...
) who speaks of "telegrams dubiously attributed to the Ottoman wartime Minister of the Interior, Talat Pasha", Paul Dumont (Professor of
Turkish studies Turkology (or Turcology or Turkic studies) is a complex of humanities sciences studying languages, history, literature, folklore, culture, and ethnology of people speaking Turkic languages and the Turkic peoples in chronological and comparative c ...
at
Strasbourg University The University of Strasbourg (, Unistra) is a public research university located in Strasbourg, France, with over 52,000 students and 3,300 researchers. Founded in the 16th century by Johannes Sturm, it was a center of intellectual life during ...
) who stated in one of his books that "the authenticity of the alleged telegrams of Ottoman government, ordering the destruction of Armenians is today seriously contested",
Norman Stone Norman Stone (8 March 1941 – 19 June 2019) was a British historian and author. At the time of his death, he was Professor of European History in the Department of International Relations at Bilkent University, Ankara, having formerly been a ...
(
Bilkent University Bilkent University () is a private non-profit research university located in Ankara, Turkey. It was founded by İhsan Doğramacı, the first president of the Council of Higher Education and the head of the prominent Doğramacı family, with th ...
,
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, Turkey), who calls the Naim-Andonian book "a forgery"; and by Gilles Veinstein, professor of Ottoman and Turkish history at
Collège de France The (), formerly known as the or as the ''Collège impérial'' founded in 1530 by François I, is a higher education and research establishment () in France. It is located in Paris near La Sorbonne. The has been considered to be France's most ...
, who considers the documents as "nothing but fakes"."Trois questions sur un massacre", ''L'Histoire'', April 1995.


Editions

* ''The Memoirs of Naim Bey: Turkish Official Documents Relating to the Deportation and the Massacres of Armenians'', compiled by Aram Andonian,
Hodder and Stoughton Hodder & Stoughton is a British publishing house, now an imprint of Hachette.H ...
, London, ca. 1920 * ''Documents sur les massacres arméniens'', Paris, 1920 (incomplete translation by M. S. David-Beg) * ''Մեծ Ոճիրը'' (The Great Crime), Armenian language edition,
Hairenik ''Hairenik'' ( meaning "fatherland") is an Armenian language weekly newspaper published by the Hairenik Association in Watertown, Massachusetts, United States. The newspaper belongs to the Armenian political party – Armenian Revolutionary F ...
, Boston, 1921 Note: Although the Armenian edition was published after the other two versions, historian
Vahakn Dadrian Vahakn Norair Dadrian (; 26 May 1926 – 2 August 2019) was an Armenian- American sociologist and historian, born in Turkey, professor of sociology, historian, and an expert on the Armenian genocide. Life Dadrian was born in 1926 in Turkey to ...
states that the Armenian text constitutes the original that Aram Andonian wrote back in 1919. Taking into account the delay in its publication helps to explain some "errors" identified by some Turkish authors in dating the documents.


See also

*
Witnesses and testimonies of the Armenian genocide Witnesses and testimony provide an important and valuable insight into the events which occurred both during and after the Armenian genocide. The Armenian genocide was prepared and carried out by the Ottoman government in 1915 as well as in th ...
* Johannes Lepsius


References


Bibliography

* * * * * *


External links

*
Enquête sur la négation d'un génocide
'. An analysis of the Andonian telegrams

- Translated versions of these telegrams * {{DEFAULTSORT:Memoirs of Naim Bey History books about Armenia Non-fiction books about the Armenian genocide Books about the Ottoman Empire Naim Bey Forgery controversies 1920 non-fiction books Hodder & Stoughton books Talaat Pasha