HISTORY AGAINST MYTHOLOGY

In our previous edition, we published the first part of the article "History against Mythology" written by the editorial staff of Region Plus. We touched in detail on some aspects of the myth about the so-called "Armenian genocide", assessed the events of 1915-1918, showed their reasons, cited facts about the subversive role of Anatolian Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in 1915-1923 and quoting authoritative American scientists, gave real, not fictitious figures of casualties among Ottoman Muslims and Armenians. "In Anatolia as a whole, 600,000 Armenians and 2.5 million Muslims had died. If this was genocide, it was a strange genocide indeed, one in which many more killers than victims perished," American scholar Justin McCarthy has said. We cannot but agree with the conclusion of the American scientist: "Those who want to see Muslims as the organizers of the genocide oddly refuse to recognize Muslims as the victims of this genocide... This is a story of human suffering, but that is not the way the story has been told. Instead of the truth of a human disaster, a great myth has arisen, the myth of the Evil Turk and the Good Armenian... The false picture of Armenian genocide has become the only picture seen." We should add - it was the only one until scholars exposed the Armenian falsification of history which was used for a long time - and is still being used in some countries - as a fact just because it is repeated all the time.

On the whole, the events of 1915-1923 were an episode of a wider historical and political context as in the period 1820-1920, more than two million Caucasus Muslims and Turks, first of all Azerbaijanis, were deported to Turkey by force and their land was populated by Turkish and Persian Armenians during the Russian-Turkish and Russian-Persian wars and the colonialist policy of the Russian Empire. "The historical truth is that the expansion of the Russian Empire violated the traditional balance of peoples of the Caucasus and Eastern Anatolia," McCarthy admits. "All peoples suffered, but if we speak in the language of figures - the number of those killed and ousted - those who suffered most of all were Crimean and Caucasus Muslims."

In the second part of our article, we would like to note the goals that Armenian ideologists and perpetrators are pursuing by promoting the myth about the so-called "Armenian genocide". 

First, the strategic goal of this peacekeeping, as we can see from the manifestos of Dashnaktsuyun, a leading Armenian diaspora party and the ruling party in Armenia, which brought the incumbent Armenian president to power, the myth about the pseudogenocide is an important instrument of propaganda, legal and political support for the stage-by-stage territorial expansion of the Armenian state. Armenian ideologists and perpetrators see the recognition of the pseudogenocide as the first step towards the territorial expansion of Armenia by dismembering Turkey (probably federalization in the first stage) as a "genocidal state" and towards the "liberation" of what Armenians say is the "occupied" territory of eastern Turkey. This goal was formulated more specifically in an interview with the chairman of the Armenian National Committee of America, Leo Sarkisian, which was published in the US newspaper "The Armenian Weekly" on 21 March 1987: "The Armenian question implies much more than just the recognition of the genocide. This is also the issue of recovering territories, indemnities and statehood… If the issue of genocide is tackled, then we will be able to switch to these political points." A similar confession is contained in a joint statement issued by leading Armenian political parties operating in the USA on 4 April 1987: "Up to date, about 70 per cent of our historical land has been seized by the Turkish government", and "the struggle to satisfy Armenian territorial demands is still in its initial stage". The statement demands that the great powers "officially recognize the genocide and Armenian territorial rights" and support "the implementation of Armenian territorial demands". In this sense, it is quite logical that Armenia has still not recognized the Turkish-Soviet agreements of 1921 and the territorial integrity of Turkey and Azerbaijan.

Second, the recognition of the pseudogenocide is meant to justify Armenia's regional expansionism from a historical point of view not just towards Turkey, but first of all towards Azerbaijan and probably Georgia in the long-term. In other words, the most important goal of peacekeeping is to provide Armenian diplomacy with more favourable propaganda and political conditions for legalizing the annexation of Nagornyy Karabakh and for a more favourable scenario of the Nagornyy Karabakh settlement. Indeed, can the victim of genocide be wrong? Can a country that "suffered" from "the Evil Turks" be an aggressor? In the common choir condemning the pseudogenocide and sympathizing with its pseudo-victims, no-one will be thinking about the historical truth, about Armenia's aggression against Azerbaijan, about the occupied Azerbaijani territories, about the deportation and genocide of Azerbaijanis in the 20th century and other issues that are "unpleasant" to Armenia and do not fit into the picture of "the history of a long-suffering nation" painted by Armenian scholars and politicians. As for ideological support for the expansion, the political manifesto of the Dashnaktsutyun party (we repeat that it is exactly this party that the incumbent Armenian president represents) dated 11 December 1985 says that "the borders of united Armenia must include the Armenian territories of Naxcivan, Akhalkalaki (in Georgia - author's note) and Karabakh". The longer-term Armenian agenda also includes the creation of autonomous Armenian entities in Russia itself - in Krasnodar, Rostov and Stavropol regions where the Armenian minority is more and more actively demanding more rights, more property and more territory.

Third, one of the most important goals of the myth about "the genocide of Armenians" is to divert the attention of the world community from the brutal murders of more than 70 Turkish diplomats by Armenian terrorists from 1973 to 1985, i.e. from the presence of such an unpleasant image of Armenia as "Armenian terrorism", as well as from facts of true genocide, deportation and terror carried out by the authorities of the three Armenian republics - Dashnak Armenia (1918-1920), the Armenian SSR (1920-1991) and the Republic of Armenia (from 1991) - against the Azerbaijani population of Armenia and Azerbaijan. "Over the last two years, Armenians in Russian Caucasus have shown no ability to govern themselves and especially no ability to govern or handle other races under their power," the US ambassador in Istanbul, Mark Bristol, said in the letter which we quoted earlier, examining the "achievements" of the independent Armenian Republic in 1919-1920. "I cannot believe in the idea of the establishment of an independent Armenia in a country where not 25 per cent of the people are Armenians. I do not believe the Armenians are able to govern themselves, and especially should not be allowed to govern other people; and certainly, if any of the other races here in this part of the country are under the Armenians, they are going to be submitted to oppression and outrage," he went on to say. You can hardly find any conscientious historian who would be able to deny this assessment in which the historic forecast coincides with the realities of the modern regional situation so accurately and tragically.

Fourth, the myth about the pseudogenocide is being promoted in order to substantiate from a historical point of view the thesis, invented in Armenian diaspora circles, about a "Turkic threat" to Europe, Russia and other countries of the region. In an article published in the Armenian newspaper Azg on 25 April 2005, the head of the Union of Armenians of Russia links the pseudogenocide and "the threat of pan-Turkism" in the following way. "The crime was committed with the political aim of eliminating the Armenian ethnic wedge that served as an obstacle to the implementation of the pan-Turkist programme of territorial expansion - the unification of the Turkic-populated eastern, northern and southern Caucasus, Central Asia, southern Azerbaijan and other territories as far as Xintian under the rule of the Turkish state. The implementation of these plans was an integral part of the dismantling of the Russian state". This quote will surprise even those who are aware of Armenian authors' masterly ability to direct the course of history in the "necessary" direction. What "pan-Turkist programme of territorial expansion" are they talking about if it was the Azerbaijani population of Armenia that was deported and terrorized in those years and shrank from 575,000 in 1918 to 72,000 by the early 1920s? As for Turkey, in 1915-1923 it fought for its survival and confronted attempts to split the country under the 1920 Treaty of S?vres (under which Turkey was to be split into six zones of occupation) and aggression from five countries - Greece, Italy, France, Britain and Dashnak Armenia which carried out active military operations against Turkey (mainly against the civilian population) in 1919-1920 until its capitulation under the Treaty of Alexandropol on 2 December 1920. Incidentally, assessing this period of Armenian-Turkish relations, Russian Foreign Minister Chicherin said in his letter in mid-December 1920 that "the Soviet government agrees that the Dashnak government carried out atrocities which could not leave the Turkish army command indifferent on the Armenian border". Only after the signing of the final act of the Conference of Lausanne on 24 July 1923, did the Entente countries legally recognize the sovereignty of Kemalist Turkey, its territorial integrity and independence.

And finally, the last and important goal is the domestic political aim of the myth about the genocide, which has become almost the only means of mobilizing the Armenian nation on the basis of feelings of groundless revenge and hostility against Turkic peoples, first of all against Turks and Azerbaijanis.

The pseudogenocide has become a tool which, in the absence of other positive motives for consolidation, ideologically unites and directs the political will of the Armenians worldwide against Turkey and especially, Azerbaijan, which has become the main target of Armenian expansionism due to its proximity to Armenia and greater vulnerability. "People who write their own history tend to glorify their past and avoid objective examination of controversial features of it. Armenians have been more prone to do this than most peoples and the trend has become accentuated during the latter half of the 20th century. It has resulted in emotional dramatization of Armenians as a martyr nation unique in their virtues from time immemorial and unique in their sufferings in both ancient and modern times. They have projected much of their modern history into their past-and have thus transformed it into mythology," Paul Henze says in the letter quoted earlier.

A historical lie remains until it is taken for the truth. For this reason, the scientists of all countries should urge impartial research into history. Support for the false historical version promoted by representatives of the Armenian lobby might become an award for Armenian national chauvinists and justify their inhuman policy of terrorism, genocide, ethnic cleansing and deportation to which hundreds of thousands of Turkish and Azerbaijani Muslims and Armenians, as well as Kurds and Russians fell victim in the 20th century. Historical facts and impartial assessments by authoritative scientists show that Armenian suffering cannot be considered as a unique phenomenon of the early 20th century. This is only part of the war-time tragedy that affected all strata of the population in Eastern Anatolia. This is also a result of an armed revolt by Armenians who tried to create, with support from Tsarist Russia, a state on a territory dominated by the Turkish population. Finally, this is a civil war within a world war which was mainly provoked by the Armenian leaders treacherously betraying the state of which they were citizens.

"As is the case with the presumed existence of Armenia, the common opinion about what happened to the Armenians is not true. The lesson that we have to learn is ancient: history must be impartial. It is time for us to examine the events of 1912-1922 the way they happened -  a misfortunte for all mankind. It is time to stop labelling it as sectarian suffering that requires reprisal," McCarthy says in his book "Armenians in the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey (1912-1926)". Although historians have already made impartial and qualified assessments of these events, a fuller picture of the causes of the death and resettlement of a great number of the east Anatolian population, both Christian and Muslim, has yet to be clarified. For this reason, the countries whose parliaments are considering this issue (first of all, the USA, France and others) will take the right position if they grant all historians access to their own archives and the archives of other interested countries (Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia) and make accusations only after all events are clarified.

The main conclusion and lesson that we have to learn from the unhindered "march" of the campaign to ensure the international recognition of the pseudogenocide is that if the whole truth about the real events and the real role of Armenians in Eastern Anatolia and Azerbaijan in the 19th and 20th century was widely known, there would be no ideology and practice of regional expansionism because it is exactly the myth about "Armenian genocide" that feeds it.

For this reason, apart from restoring historical justice, the exposure of the Armenian falsification is of special preventive and "prophylactic" importance. The basis of Armenian national chauvinism and regional expansionism of the Yerevan government is bad history, which is why only good history can cure this illness in the end. The main weapon in the fight against it is the truth made widely known to the world community. McCarthy prophetically wrote in 1984: "In considering Armenian violence, history cannot be ignored, for history is both the cause of Armenian terrorism and its only cure. Armenian terrorism is rooted in a false view of history and only by correcting that view will Armenian terrorism be defeated. I therefore wish to suggest a method not usually used to combat terrorism - the study of history."