Holocaust and Genoade Studies, Vo\ 1,No 2,pp 169-192,1986 Printed in Great Britain

8756-6583/86 $3 00+0 00 Pergamon Journals Ltd

THE ROLE OF TURKISH PHYSICIANS IN THE WORLD WAR I GENOCIDE OF OTTOMAN ARMENIANS
VAHAKN N. DADRIAN
State University of New York Geneseo Abstract The research which has been done into the Turkish genocide of Armenians in World War I has seldom dealt with the identities of the perpetrators. This study reveals the crucial role played by Turkish physicians in planning and carrying out this genocide. These physicians were influential in propagating the nationalist ideological justifications for this cnme, as well as in organizing and leading units which killed Armenians through mass deportations, shooting, medical murder, medical experiments and other means. The evidence raises many disturbing questions regarding medical ethics when wedded to a radical, exclusive nationalist ideology

INTRODUCTION Very little has been written about the World War I Turkish genocide of the Armenians, a crime still denied by official Turkish statesmen and obscured by denial of access to the relevant archival material. This preliminary and incomplete study relies primarily on European material, especially British intelligence reports from the 1918-21 period of their military occupation of Turkey and German eyewitness accounts. Germany's wartime alliance and friendship with the Ottoman Empire lends a particular importance to these accounts. Other sources include American reports, mostly from physicians and nurses,1 and the trial records and documents of the Turkish Military Tribunal of December 1918 to May 1919, which set out to identify and punish the perpetrators. Although there are numerous Armenian accounts which are invaluable to the research of this history, they have not been heavily relied upon in order to avoid any suspicion of bias. All these sources point to the same disturbing facts regarding the framers, organizers and leading perpetrators of the genocide of the Armenians: doctors in particular, and medical personnel in general, played a central role in the entire process. Turkish physicians testifying before the Turkish Military Tribunal, and in public accounts related numerous stories of their colleagues poisoning Armenians, drowning them at sea, having them butchered and performing medical experiments on them (ostensibly for the good of mankind). Such systematic medical murder would today naturally be associated with Nazi doctors dunng the Holocaust. On the strength of the material presented here, it seems they had their precursors in the Ottoman Empire. Turkish doctors were not only involved in medical murder during the Armenian genocide, but also in the very planning of the systematic murder. Foremost among these were Drs. Nazim and Behaeddin Sakir, the two dominant figures of the Supreme Directorate of the Central Committee of the ruling Ittihad party, which came to power in 1908.2 It was the Central Committee which set the ideological tone and political programme of this party, while the Supreme Directorate served as a sort of Pohtbureau charting the course of the Ottoman Empire's external and internal affairs.
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Both Nazim and Sakir had received their medical education in Istanbul, with Nazim getting additional training in Paris where, as political exiles, the two doctors were preparing the ground to overthrow the regime of Abdul Hamid. They helped precipitate the Young Turk revolution in 1908, and thereafter became permanent fixtures in the leadership of the party. They achieved their positions of decisive power in the 1912-18 period, during which time they exercised their authority from behind the scenes (except for three months during which Dr. Nazim served as Minister of Education). During the post-revolutionary period, Dr. Nazim briefly served as Chief Physician at Soloniki Municipal Hospital, while Dr. akir was Professor of Legal (Ethical) Medicine at Istanbul Medical School. In the pre- and post-revolutionary period, they had acquired considerable expenence in forging the Ittihad party into an instrument for the homogenization of Turkey, resolutely combatting various nationalities of the Empire who resisted assimilation and sought to preserve their ethnic identity. That cumulative experience has a bearing upon the conception, organization and implementation of a scheme of wartime genocide aimed at the Armenians, whose selection as a target for comprehensive destruction was influenced by several factors. These included a history of protracted Turko-Armenian conflict, including episodic Turkish massacres, the demographic vulnerability of the Armenian population and the progressive dismantling of the Empire through a series of armed struggles as a result of which a host of nationalities, aided by European powers, extricated themselves from Ottoman oppression. As one student of the period observed, by 1913 'the Albanians, Greeks and Slavs' were no longer subject nationalities: 'only the Armenians and Arabs remained'.3 The sway of the pan-Turanist strain in Turkish nationalism, seeking to unify all Turkic peoples under Ottoman rule, somewhat eclipsed the pan-Islamic aspect of it. This prompted the Ittihadists to focus their attention on eastern Turkey, the Caucasus and beyond, and relegate Arabistan to relative insignificance. Armenians in this respect were the hated roadblock, and the absence of a parent state to intervene on their behalf rendered them even more vulnerable. As the proceedings of the 1919-20 Turkish courts-martial revealed, these two doctors played a pivotal role in the formation, deployment and direction of the Special Organization units, the key, lethal instrument in the destruction of the Armenians. Its ranks were filled almost entirely by 'bloodthirsty murderers', criminals who through special dispensation, issuing jointly from the Ministries of Justice and the Interior, were released from the many prisons of the Empire and were organized into killer units consisting of fifty to two hundred men each under the label of 'cete', denoting a combination of roles associated with volunteers and brigands. They were led by a special group of officers who were graduates of the Ottoman War Academy.4 The series of indictments and verdicts by the Turkish Military Tribunal emphasize this pivotal role played by the two doctors. The key indictment read in court on 28 Apnl 1919, cites Dr. Nazim eight times, seven of which portray him as a principal organizer of the Special Organization killer units.5 Though many of these units initially were employed as guerillas against Russia on the Caucasian border regions, the court maintained in the idictment that "these cnminals and outlaws' were mainly organized for 'massacring and destroying the deportee convoys' of the Armenians and that other claims were pretences 'used to deceive gullible people'. The indictment cites a 15 July 1915 cable from the Governor or Erzurum province describing the 'gendarmes and brigands operating under the name of Special Organization' as perpetrators of 'assaults and attacks'.6 The eighth reference to Dr. Nazim clearly cites him as one of the ultimate decision-makers and architects of the genocide. He is quoted as saying that the anti-Armenian measures were

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'decided upon after extensive and full deliberations by the Central Committee' and that they are intended to 'solve the Eastern Question'.7 In subsequent court sessions, five top Ittihadist leaders, in rigorous cross-examinations, admitted to Nazim's role in organizing the brigands.8 Dr Sakir is also cited eight times in the key indictment in a dual capacity: as the political chief of the Special Organization; and as the Reid Commander of the killer units operating in the eastern provinces.9 The most damning evidence supplied against him is that of the Illrd Army Commander Vehib Paa, who summarized his deposition as follows:
The massacre and destruction of the Armenians and the looting of their properties were the result of the decision of Ittihad ve Terakki. Behaeddin akir was the one who procured the butchers of man in the Illrd Army zone, directed and employed them. The government leaders submitted to Behaeddin akir's orders and directives. All the human tragedies, all the instigations and acts of depravity within the Illrd Army operational zone were the result of his machinations. These involved the recruitment of men of the gallowsbird kind and gendarmes with bloodstained hands and bloodshot eyes.10

After repeatedly underscoring the fact that 'deportations' were a cloak for extermination, the court-martial cited in the key indictment a Sakir cable of which the court had a photocopy. In it Sakir inquired of one of his subordinates, the Responsible Secretary of Harput: 'Are your area's deported Armenians being liquidated? Are they being destroyed9 Or are they being merely deported and exiled? Clarify this point, my brother'.11 In the Responsible Secretaries trial series, the Prosecutor-General in his closing arguments denounced 'the deportations as a pretext for massacres' and, referring to Sakir's cable, stated: 'This established fact is as clear as the equation 2 + 2 = 4'. In the ensuing verdict Sakir was portrayed as the organizer and Commander of the killer units operating in the eastern provinces under the umbrella of the Special Organization. Their chief method of liquidation was 'ambush and extermination of the deportee convoys' 12 Sakir's role was also confirmed by Munir, postwar Governor of Erzurum, who stated that 'the brigands organized by Sakir murdered the deportees in the most savage way'.13 Hasan Tahsin, wartime Governor of Erzurum, at the second sitting of the Harput trial series (2 August 1919), identified Sakir as the operational chief of the Special Organization using 'special codes' when relaying messages to the Ministries of War and the Interior.14 Dr. Nazim's role is discussed by a number of Turkish authors. A prominent Ittihadist, Falih Rifki Atay, who had worked as personal secretary first to Talat and then to Cemal, the two pillars of the Ittihad triumvirate, in his memoirs descnbes his experience with Nazim as an organizer of convicts. While a cadet at the War Academy in Istanbul at the start of the war, he approached Nazim to learn more about the latter's recruiting officers for special duties. He was bluntly told by Dr. Nazim that the duties involved commanding detachments of convicts in secret missions. The author's reaction: 'I am at a loss about this projected army of murderers'.15 The organization of such a vast scale of destruction presupposes not only supreme authority but also complete access to the resources of power, including ministerial infrastructures and military command and control set-ups. A Turkish historian, Sevket Sureyya Aydemir, describes Nazim as 'the wartime Director of Ittihad's terror arm', and in a second work portrays him as a man belonging to the core of Ittihadist power wielders, who was burdened 'with responsibilities on the most bloody stories marking the darkest period of our last Empire'. 16

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The corroboration of Dr. Sakir's role by Turkish accounts is even more firm. One Turkish historian, Doan AvcioQIu, places him at the centre of the Armenian genocide, asserting, 'the deportations, the execution of which was entrusted to reliable Ittihadists and to the Special Organization, were intended to radically solve the Armenian Question; they were advocated in the inner councils of Ittihad by B. Sakir'.17 F. R. Atay unequivocally states in his memoirs that Sakir was bent on 'wiping out the Armenians so as to prevent the future formation of an Armenia' in the eastern provinces.18 Three Armenian sources independently divulged the fact that Dr. Sakir was observed, directly and indirectly, in the role of brigand chief, the implication being that he personally was directing the massacres in the uniform of such a chief.19 German and British evidence also corroborates the primary role of the two physicianpoliticians in the destruction of Ottoman Armenians. In commenting on Dr. Nazim, The Times of London stated the following: A doctor by profession, and not without medical promise, Dr. Nazim took up the cause of the Young Turks .. as a political doctrinaire... has repeatedly caused more atrocious suffering to multitudes of his fellows than professional tyrants or self-seeking politicians.. . Unhappily the excellent agitator proved a most dangerous politician... Marat and Robespierre are classical examples of the type... As soon as the Great War broke out Nazim and his allies bombarded Talat Pasha with anti-Armenian propaganda . and by 1916 half the Armenian community was dead.20 And, according to the Morning Post of London, 'Dr. Nazim . . . pndes himself on having committed a million murders',21 the reference being to a boastful remark Nazim is said to have made during the war in Smyrna (Izmir), about the Armenians. Dr. Sakir's leading role was also confirmed by a German colonel, Stange, under whom and with whom Sakir launched guerilla operations against the Russians in the first three months of the war. In attesting to Sakir's extermination campaign against the Armenians, Colonel Stange also confirmed the swift transfer of the bngands employed in guerilla war to mass murder duties. Stange condemned 'the exterminations' being earned out 'with animal brutality' against the Armenians by these brigands whom he called 'scums', pointing to Sakir, along with then Illrd Army Commander, Mahmud Kamil, as the chief organizers.22 Finally, British reports also corroborated the above assertions regarding Sakir's role. When reporting to London, Admiral de Robeck, then Bntish High Commissioner at Istanbul, described him as 'a member of the small secret Committee known as Teshkilati Mahsusa [the Special Organization] formed by the Central Committee of Union and Progress [Ittihad ve Terakki] to organize the extermination of the Armenian race'. An intelligence report has the following summation: Teshkilati Mahsusa was created by the CUP [Committee of Union and Progress] in 1914 for the extermination of the Armenians and was controlled by the infamous Behaeddin Sakir'.23 Shortly after Armistice, at midnight on 1-2 November 1918, Sakir and Nazim, along with other top Ittihadists, fled Turkey aboard a German destroyer. Dr. Nazim was convicted and condemned to death by the Turkish Military Tribunal (5 July 1919). Dr. Sakir was likewise convicted and condemned as 'chief accomplice' (13 January 1920), both sentences being passed in absentia.2* Sakjr took refuge in Berlin where he lived under the alias 'Alp', and occasionally 'Dr. Mehmed", and was assassinated by an Armenian 'avenger' on 17 April 1922.25 Nazim became panicky after Sakir's death

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and requested extra German police protection. He eventually returned to Turkey after receiving assurances that all Ittihadist leaders, imperilled by Armenian 'justice commandos', were welcome to the fatherland 'as long as they did not oppose the new regime'.26 But Dr. Nazim tried to topple Mustafa Kemal's (Ataturk) regime and to regain power on behalf of Ittihad. He was tried by the Independence Court in Ankara, condemned to death and hanged on 26 August 1926 along with other Ittihadist leaders.27 In addition to Sakir and Nazim, several other Turkish doctors and medical personnel took an active role in initiating and organizing massacres of Armenians. Most of these were graduates of the Imperial Military Medical School in Istanbul, where Ittihad was nurtured.28 They joined the Special Organization together with many medical students and left a bloody trail during the war.29 Most prominent among these was Suleyman Numan Pasa, a brigadier-genera) and Chief Medical Officer of the Ottoman Armed Forces during the war. He was also Chief Surgeon of General Staff, Chief of the Army Medical Corps, and Inspector of Sanitary Services. He was arrested by the postwar Turkish government on charges of ordering 'his sanitary staff to murder, by poisoning, the sick among the populations of Erzurum, Sivas, and Erzincan, under the pretext of safeguarding the healthy part of the population against epidemics and starvation'. He was also accused of authonzing the murder of Armenian physicians and army medical personnel.30 He was eventually deported to Malta by the British for later trial. Dr. Fazil Berki, a surgeon with the rank of colonel, was a close associate of Dr. Sakir. He combined oratorical skills with organizational talents to mobilize and incite Muslims against the Armenians in the provinces of Kastamonu and Sivas. He rose quickly in the ranks of Ittihad to lecturer and party organizer in many major cities. In advance of the massacres in Kastamonu, Sivas and Erzurum, he toured these provinces to organize the secret 'councils' which were to prepare the mass murder machinery on the local level. He had a share in the murder of the two foremost Armenian poets, Varoujan and Sevag, as he coordinated the logistics of the crime with Cemal 0uz, Ittihad's Responsible Secretary at Cankiri.31 In June 1919 he was also deported by the British to Malta for future trial. Mehmed Hasan (Ezaci) was a military pharmacist with the rank of captain (later major) charged with Armenian massacres in the area of Erzincan in the province of Erzurum. He was accused of leading the murder of two thousand Armenian labour battalion soldiers in Sansa Valley, of the ambush and massacre of several large convoys of deportees, and of the rape by him and his men of two hundred and fifty women and children. Mehmed wielded such power in the region that even the governor was subordinate to him. Deportees murdered by his men were cast into the river. He was also accused of wholesale plunder, through which he reportedly amassed a fortune of 300,000 Turkish pounds ($1 .SOO.OOO).32 Mehmed was arrested by the British in April 1919 and later exiled to Malta. Ahmed Midhat was Ittihad's Responsible Secretary at Bolu, where he organized deportations of Armenians from an area which 'was not a theatre of military operations and the deportations could be justified neither militarily nor in terms of a disciplinary measure'.33 He was tned after the war and was found guilty of being 'an accessory to the crime of massacres'. He fled his ten-year sentence to hard labour, but was eventually captured by the British and exiled to Malta.34 Perhaps the most shocking of this group of physicians was Mehmed Resid, a veteran Ittihadist who was appointed Governor of Diyarbekir in 1915. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians were deported to Diyarbekir from the Empire's eastern and central provinces. In

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a memo of 15 September 1915, Resid referred to one hundred and twenty thousand Armenians deported from his province.35 He was nicknamed the 'executioner Governor' for the many murders and tortures he organized. He was known for nailing horseshoes to victims and then parading them in the streets, nailing horseshoes to victims' hearts with red-hot nails, smashing skulls and crucifying victims on makeshift crosses.36 The German consul at Musul, Holstein, persuaded his Ambassador, Wangenheim, to intervene with the government to discipline Reid.37 When Resid was finally disciplined in 1916, it was for embezzlement of Armenian capital, 'depriving the Treasury of several hundred thousand Turkish pounds',38 and not for the massacres. He then became Governor of Ankara province, where he rounded up the last Armenians for deportation.39 As a fugitive from justice after the war, he committed suicide before he could be captured following his escape from prison. During the course of a wartime conversation with Midhat Sukru (Bleda), SecretaryGeneral of Ittihad, Dr. Resjd outlined his and his party's rationale for murdering the Armenians:
Even though I am a physician, I cannot ignore my nationhood. I came into this world a Turk. My national identification takes precedence over everything else. . . Armenian traitors had found a niche for themselves in the bosom of the fatherland; they were dangerous microbes. Isn't it the duty of a doctor to destroy these microbes? Either the Armenians would liquidate the Turks and become proprietors of this land or they would be liquidated by the Turks. I couldn't possibly hesitate as to my option, and I opted. My Turkishness prevailed over my medical calling. Of course my conscience is bothenng me, but I couldn't see my country disappearing. I shut my eyes and surged forth without reservation. As to historical responsibility I couldn't care less what histonans of other nations write about me *"

Many other physicians and medical authorities associated themselves with the murder operations out of their strong identification with the nationalistic goals of Ittihad. Unlike the physicians and surgeons mentioned previously, these men did not initiate and organize atrocities but supported the whole enterprise of destruction. Tevfik Rusdu (Aras) was a brother-in-law and associate of Dr. Nazim and according to one Turkish historian, 'a partisan Ittihadist'.41 He was a member of the High Council of Sanitation that helped organize, whenever and however possible, the machinery for disposing of the corpses of the Armenian victims. According to a secret deposition prepared for the court-martial by Mustafa Resad, the head of the Political Section of the Police Directorate, Rudu actually served as Inspector-General of Health services. Under the chairmanship of Ali Mumf, Undersecretary in the Ministry of the Intenor, there was formed a Commission of which Ismail Canbolat, the Chief of Internal Security, and some top Ittihadists were members. It sent Rudu to the Interior with a special mission With the assistance of a number of physicians, Dr. Rudu had to proceed to the vanous sites of the massacres where
thousands of kilos of lime were prepared 'bir takim ertiba He katliam vaki olan mahallara gitmi$dir'. The wells were filled with the dead bodies on top of which were put layers of lime covered with earth. Tevfik Rudu needed six months to perform his task and he returned after six months.42 Following the liquidation of Ittihad as a political party and the flight of its leaders during the last days of the war, Dr. Rusdu became a member of the Executive Committee of Teceddiid, the party replacing Ittihad. He continued to support Ittihad's ideals and leaders through the Red Crescent Society, which dunng the war was headed by Dr. Sakir and

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during the Armistice had largely become a front organization for Ittihad. Serving as its Treasurer and assisted by many Ittihadist physicians who comprised Red Crescent's membership, Dr. Rudu set out to raise funds needed for Ittihad's clandestine activities during the Armistice. He was arrested on 2 February 1919 by the Tevfik Paa Cabinet, along with other Ittihadists, but further details are not available. He eventually joined the Kemalists and promptly rose to prominence, serving as Turkey's Foreign Minister from 1925 to 1938. Professor Mehmed Esad Paa (Isik) graduated from the Imperial Military Medical School in 1889, the very same year that the Ittihad movement was launched at that school and was joined by Dr. Nazim. Like the latter, Esad went to Paris and after receiving a graduate diploma there he returned to Istanbul, becoming a renowned clinician in eye diseases and a professor at the Medical School. As an ardent nationalist who in the Armistice years had founded the National Congress, he was taken into custody and exiled to Malta following the formal occupation of Istanbul by the Allies in March 1920.43 Many other physicians and party representatives are suspected of actively participating in the destruction process, but pertinent details are presently not available.44 There were also physicians who cooperated extensively with the authorities and their executioners to cover up the crimes being perpetrated. A case in point is the behaviour of the municipal physician of the district or Urfa. Following the ambush and murder outside the city of two Armenian members of the Ottoman Parliament by two Special Organization brigand leaders, he issued fake certificates claiming natural causes for their deaths. Upon the request of one of the widows, the government then forwarded such a certificate to her. But at the 28 November 1916 session of the Chamber of Deputies, the same government was obliged to admit that both Deputies were actually murdered, as communicated in a message to that Chamber by the Grand Vizier. The government's hand was forced by the IVth Army commander and 'Viceroy' of Syria and Lebanon, Cemal Pasa, who indiscreetly admitted the double murder to the Armenian Patriarch in Istanbul.45 In Trabzon province, where the Armenian population was quite wealthy, the destruction process was accompanied, as elsewhere, by large-scale pillage and plunder. In this case, only one physician, Dr. Ali Saib, was among the seven defendants at the second series of courts-martial 26 March17 May 1919. He was specifically accused of poisoning countless infants, adults and pregnant women at the Red Crescent Hospital, as well as at several schools serving as temporary shelter for Armenian children whose parents were exterminated, and of drowning them at sea. At the time, Dr. Saib was Director of Trabzan Public Health and Sanitation services.46 Surviving Armenian adults testified that Dr. Saib's regular visits to the hospital would result in the disappearance of scores of people, mostly infants. He was accused of administering poison in the form of liquid medicine, and of ordenng the drowning at sea of patients who refused to take the medicine. Two Turkish witnesses corroborated the essence of this testimony. In addition, Dr. Ziya Fuad, Health Services Inspector in Trabzon at the time of the massacres and Dr. Adnan, Director of Public Health Services in Trabzon, also submitted affidavits corraborating the accusations of poisoning and drowning children.47 Dr. Saib denied the charges and brought witnesses to counter the allegations, including two Armenians. In the end, he was acquitted on the grounds that the charges could not be proven conclusively.48 At the fourteenth session of the tnal (Saturday, 26 April 1919), a young woman, Manning Yerazian, gave a baffling and portentous testimony. She was left with her sisters

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in Trabzon and witnessed the poisoning and liquidation through 'disinfection' of the infants. The site of the killings by poison was not the standard location, the Red Crescent Hospital, but two school buildings serving as collection points for children slated for distribution (of some) and destruction (of the rest). Ittihad Representative Nail and Health Inspector Dr. Saib would supply the lists of the victims who were then picked up by the Turkish women employed in the schools. In the mezzanine of one of the schools, there was a tiled room purporting to be a steam chamber (islim). The Turkish women would escort groups of infants to that room for a steam bath. 'First we didn't realize what was happening. But one day we heard cries that abruptly ceased and were followed by a deathly silence. We then paid closer attention to what was happening. The baskets at the door of the "disinfection" hall told everything.' It appears that Dr. Saib used the term 'islim' to lure and trap the victims in a chamber equipped with some kind of toxic gas with fatal effects. Those baskets were used elsewhere, such as at the Red Crescent Hospital, to dispose of the bodies of the dead or dying infants by dumping them in the Black Sea nearby. The testimony of Dr. Adnan, Director of Trabzon Public Health Services, established that the practice of poisoning children was not limited to the Red Crescent Hospital facilities (liquids, injection), but was maintained 'in the school buildings'; the extermination was followed by 'their disposal in baskets' (Session 3, p.m., 1 April 1919). All efforts to seek more details and clarification of these references to 'steam chamber' and to 'disinfection' failed.49 Was this steam chamber a precursor of what happened in World War II? As to the role of the Germans, it should be noted that they were not only the political and military allies of the Turks but had joined the latter in making Trabzon a major base for oraganizing, under the umbrella of the Special Organization, guerilla operations in Russian Transcaucasia and Persia, involving, respectively, the contingent of Lieutenant-Colonel Stange and the Persian Expeditionary Force under Reserve Cavalry Lieutenant Scheubner-Richter who temporarily was also Vice-Consul of Erzurum. Both operations were supervised and financed by the office of Reserve Captain Nadolny, the German Foreign Office's Representative in the German High Command, and later Ambassador to Turkey. A British document reveals that Rumanian authonties had intercepted in late May 1915 (Trabzon deportations and massacres began late June), a German Foreign Office bag for Istanbul containing some light cylindrical metal cases about the size and shape of a pom-pom shell, which contain a mixture of phosphorus and calcium. It is believed that admixture of water or a violent current of air would in combination with mixture produce asphyxiating gases, and that admission of one of these elements would be effected by clearing off of a shutter soldered onto the metal case.50 On 15 December 1918, an Armenian doctor, Mihran Norair, publicly accused his Turkish colleagues, without naming names, of complicity in the genocide of the Armenians citing specific cases. This triggered a public debate which was joined by several Turkish surgeons, the Health and Sanitation Department of the Defence (War) Ministry, and the Director-General of Public Health. The first response was a flat denial by the Health and Sanitation Department of the Defence Ministry.51 Incensed by this denial, a prominent Turkish surgeon, Dr. Haydar Cemal, wrote to a Turkish daily newspaper denouncing the denial as 'customary for Turkish authorities'.52 He addressed the following open letter to the Interior Minister, which represents the only such candid admission of guilt to have been made by any Turk since the Armistice of 1918:

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When discussing the Armenian Question I note that the blame is always placed at the doorsteps of governors and military commanders If the orders for the extermination of the Armenians came from the central headquarters of Ittihad, as asserted, then the matter of the responsibility of the ensuing crimes becomes even more grave. What I would like to bring to your attention are the barbarities committed against the Armenians in some fashion through scientific methods. It is against the conscience to allow this question to lapse and to be consigned to oblivion. Thus I would like to submit to the sense of honour and conscience of the members of the Inquiry Commission the facts I personally observed; it is up to them to decide on the measures to adopt against the authors of these misdeeds. On the order of the Chief Sanitation Office of the Illrd Army53 in January 1916, when the spread of typhus was an acute problem, innocent Armenians slated for deportation at Erzincan were inoculated with the blood of typhoid fever patients without rendering that blood 'inactive'. This experiment, suitable only for animals slated for vivisection, resulted in the death of a great number of unfortunate Armenians who were duped into believing that the injection was for remedial purposes. When publishing the results in the Journal of Military Medicine, the honorable Professor54 simply stated that the subjects were men 'condemned to death', without identifying them as Armenians. I personally was a witness of the criminal expenment which the Professor in question inflicted upon people whose sole guilt was that they belonged to the Armenian nation. Commander Refet, the Chief Physician of Erzincan's Central Hospital, the two Armenian M.D.s assisting him, and Dr. Salaheddin, the Chief of that city's Red Crescent Hospital, have intimate knowledge of this affair. All doctors are required to record in a register the names of patients they examine. If this Professor would reveal his prescriptions applied to these innocent subjects, the government will be able to confirm that they had no previous record of conviction. These atrocities committed against the Armenians were at once administrative and scientific. They constitute a stain for the medical' profession. I am ready to furnish details on this affair. Dr. Salaheddin cited in the above letter was next to respond. He was, he said, unfortunately completely familiar with the events of Erzincan's Central Hospital, and if he could assist in apprehending the authorities really responsible for these acts, his conscience would be cleared and the dishonoured medical profession and Turkism would have divested themselves of a large burden. The experiments to which the Armenians, ever anxious about the atrocities surrounding them, were subjected, were fit only for laboratory animals. They issued from a theory not yet validated by science and were essentially chance procedures. As a large number of Armenians succumbed to these inhuman expenments, they hardly contnbuted to the health of others.... No positive results whatsoever were obtained. The unfortunate Armenians, whose existence was relegated to levels lower that that of animals, were victimised in the name of certain obscure points of science. As far as I remember, the blood taken from these typhus-infected Armenian subjects was used to inoculate Erzurum's Governor Tahsinafter having been rendered 'inactive', as required by the ad hoc rules of medicine. When the Ministry of Defence denied these allegations,56 surgeons Cemal and Salaheddin each published a second letter. Cemal reiterated his assertion that 'hundreds' of young Armenians were murdered by the typhus serum experiments and that these have indelibly stained the reputation of Turkish medicine. He was at a loss as to why so many other medical faculties and physicians were remaining silent in defence of the honour of their profession. Suffice it to point out that the Defence Ministry merely denied the existence of an order or authorization to conduct such experiments without denying the experiments themselves.57 Dr. Salaheddin disclosed that 'to his surpnse' he was being

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pressured to remain silent on the entire affair while many 'ignorant doctors' were denying the facts instead of insisting on the establishment of 'the truth'. 58 As the entire controversy was unfolding, Dr. A. Khandjian revealed that Professor Hamdi Suad, the author of the serum experiments, was in psychiatric care as a result of acute psychosis, and that he was being forcibly restrained in the clinic of his Medical School. Not certain whether this psychotic disorder was contrived or feigned, or the inevitable impact upon him of the nightmares of his Armenian victims, the author urged the Mazhar Inquiry Commission to look into the matter.59 It is significant that one of Dr. akir's lieutenants discloses in his memoirs that Sakir was actively involved in the initiation of measures to combat typhus.60 It appears that in the same city of Erzincan there was another series of serum tests being conducted by a military physidan, Captain Hamid. As related by an Armenian officer of the Ninetieth Regiment of the Thirtieth Infantry Division of the Illrd Army, his subjects included some of the cadets of the Reserve Officers' Training School that had opened during World War I and counted one hundred and fifty Armenians in its student body. According to this witness, the main purpose of Professor Hamdi Suad's experiment was examining 'the differential impacts of the serum on such organs as the heart, brain, liver, etc., for which purpose he used Armenian soldiers engaged in labour battalions'.61 The only repository of documents of these medical experiments is the Central State Historical Archive of Soviet Armenia, where they are said to be indexed and itemized.62 To describe the Turkish doctors involved in the murder of the Armenians as butchers would not be far from the self-perception of at least some of them. An Arab official, trained in an Ottoman Civil Service school and with access to some prominent Turks involved in the enactment of the genocide, i.e. 'superior officers and officials or Notables of Diyarbekir and its dependencies', disclosed such a self-perception by one Turkish physician:
A doctor named Aziz Bey told me that when he was at Merzifun in the vilayet [province] Sivas he heard that a caravan of Armenians was being sent to execution. He went to the Kaymakam [county sub-governor] and said to him: 'You know I am a doctor and there is no difference between doctors and butchers as doctors are mostly occupied in cutting up mankind. And as the duties of a Kaymakam at this time are also like our owncutting up human bodies I beg you to let me see this surgical operation myself.' Permission was given, and the doctor went. He found four butchers, each with a long knife; the gendarmes divided the Armenians into parties of ten, and sent them up to the butchers one by one. The butcher told the Armenian to stretch out his neck; he did so, and was slaughtered like a sheep. The doctor was amazed at their steadfastness in the presence of death, not saying a word, or showing any sign of fear.63

What is even more significant is the fact that the Kaymakam of Merzifun (or Marzuvan) was a physician himself, Dr. Faik. At the time of his arrest for court-martial, a Turkish daily newspaper drew attention to his alleged ferocity in boasting about the fact that he had slaughtered thousands of Armenians in his jurisdiction.64 Merzifun is located two hundred and fifty miles east of Istanbul, in the province of Sivas. In the hierarchical set-up of the provincial administration, a Kaymakam is subordinate to a Mutesarrif, District Commissioner. Yet, as German agent Mosel reported to Berlin, Faik, as Merzifun's chief of Ittihad, had access to the provincial Governor Muammer directly, instead of through his immediate superior, the Mutesarrif.65 Recognizing the importance of the atrocities at Merzifun, British Deputy High Commissioner at Istanbul, Vice Admiral Richard Webb, sent a detailed report to Balfour on 17 February 1919, in which Dr. Faik was cited several times as a principal organizer of the extermination and plunder of the approximately thirteen thousand Armenians of the town. Faik's name is placed at the head of the list of chief accomplices.66

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In the massive documentary treatise put out by the British Foreign Office during the war, composed by the historian Arnold Toynbee the massacre at Merzifun is described in a prefatory statement as more fully accounted for 'than any other place where the Ottoman Government's design against the Armenians was put into execution... there was no intention of forwarding the exiles to their nominal destination. The convoys were butchered en masse as soon as they reached the next town on the road'. In a deposition to the British Foreign Office, Dr. White, the President of the American Anatolia College at Merzifun, who was present there throughout the massacres, underiined the fact that 'many of the convicts in the prison had been released' and that the massacres sites were
full of these bands of outlaws.... It is estimated that out of about twelve thousand Armenians in Merzifun, only a few hundreds were l e f t . . . . There were also some examples of the greatest heroism and faith, and some started on the journey courageously and calmly, saying in farewell. 'Pray for us. We shall not see you again in this world, but sometime we shall meet again '

In narrating his personal experiences, Professor Theodore A. Elmer, another faculty member at the American College, while confirming the role of ex-convicts as roving killer bands, relates the personal observations of the College's Kavass, a Circassian, who was ordered to accompany a convoy.
He returned a day or two afterwards and told how these one thousand two hundred men or more were roped together in rows of five and were marched towards Amasia . . . they were all led out to a place already prepared Here the pnsoners were halted and led in successive batches of five to what appeared to be tents.. . . They were butchered with axes.

U.S. Consular Agent at Samsun, Mr. Peter, who vamly tried to avert the deportation and destruction of the Armenians associated with the College and the hospital at Merzifun, indicated in his 26 August 1915 report that Governor Dr. Faik had considered accepting 300 TP (gold pounds) as ransom money in exchange for exempting from deportations these Armenians, but 'it seems that the Kaymakam, the Gendarmerie Commander and the Belediye Reis [mayor] could not agree on the sharing of the sum'. Finally, a Greek professor, Xenidhis, relates the following about the same atrocities.
Axes were used for killing [the deportees who] were stnpped of all but their underclothing and led to the brink of a great ditch. There they knelt with their hands bound behind their backs and were despatched by axe-blows on the h e a d . . . . The Armenian priests were killed likewise. One of them, Father Mampre, was killed in the attitude of prayerpraying with his son beside him .. [Governor Faik] told me repeatedly that he and the commandant of the gendarmes were only tools; they had to carry out the orders given to them. No Armenian is to be left. Old or young, blind or lame, or disabledall had to go away, without any exception being granted.67

In the scheme of Ottoman domination, butchery in the above manner is not entirely out of place. In its broadest sense it is a performance fitting the label 'functional'. As Toynbee argued within the framework of his challenge-and-response theory, 'The challenge to which the Ottoman system was a response was . . . treating their new subjects as human flocks and herds, evdving human equivalents of the sheepdogs of the Nomad'.68 However, flocks and herds exist only for the benefit of their masters; there is no other justification for their being and living. As soon as their utility diminishes or ceases, or they are viewed as liabilities rather than assets, they are slaughtered. The human victims' only difference from

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animals is that they cease to be of any use after they are killed. The slaughter of the Armenians was functional at another level; it served the ultimate goal of Turkism to homogenize the ethnic make-up of the nation. But none of these considerations applies to another kind of treatment to which some Turkish physicians subjected Armenian victims. Ophthalmologists often displayed inordinate cruelty, which undoubtedly transcended the functional purposes of the killing. In his recent retrospective book, the world renowned portraitist Karsh relates the case of 'a young Armenian girl' who was being cared for by his family as an orphan survivor. His 'mother... encouraged her to use her hands instead of her eyes, which had been cruelly mutilated'.69 The account of a mother who in the spring of 1919 took her newborn baby to an eye doctor in Konya is illustrative not only of the result, but of the source of the cruelty. In an article bitterly titled, 'The Patriotism of a Turkish Physician', she described overhearing in the waiting-room a conversation in Turkish in which the ophthalmologist was telling his colleague: 'This is the way we do it; we ought to blind one of them once every week'. When she returned home and began to apply the solution one eye began to swell and steadily deteriorated. She went to Istanbul for new treatment but was told the baby's treated eye was blinded by the solution, with the damage extending to the other eye (which there was only a faint hope of saving). Only then did the mother realize the meaning of the words she had overheard in the waiting room.70 Mabel Evelyn Elliott, an American physician who served in Istanbul dunng the Armistice as Medical Director of Near East Relief and was the representative of the American Women's Hospitals recorded in her memoirs case studies she did at the Rescue Home for Armenian girls in Uskudar, a city on the Asiatic side of Istanbul, where Florence Nightingale had laid the foundation of the Red Cross and the tradition of modern nursing. You must see them as I remember them, passing, one by one, through my consultation room, gentle, well-bred girls, with brushed hair and shining finger nails, who spoke intowvoices and wore with instinctive taste their borrowed clothes. None of them had discussed with anyone her experiences during the war. For the first time their reticence was disturbed, necessanly, by professional questions, and when they had begun to speak it was as though they could not stop. The whole story poured from them. The things that I heard were unbelievable. A doctor sees more deeply into the abysses of human society than any other person except a pnest, but I knew only Amenca... It was incredible, too, that these girls could have seen and endured them, and survived to sit there telling of them. The stones did not vary greatly; the vanety was in the revealed temperament of the girls. Some sat quietly, with folded hands, talking on and on in a low voice, growing whiter and whiter until there was no blood in their lips. Others became excited, little by little lost their self-control, and ended screaming and sobbing. It was better for them to pour out this bitterness that had been so long damned behind their silence, and I did not stop them. I sat in the little, white room and listened... . Then there was another girt, whose story had a touch of the incredibly fantastic. With eyelids closed, she was the most beautiful girl I have seen among a people renowned for feminine beauty. Her features were like those preserved for us from antiquity by the chisels of great artists, her skin was like that of a child, and her body was a rhythm of line. But when she opened her eyes, it became painful to look at her. One eyeball swung outward in its socket so grotesquely that one thought of a gargoyle... I did not believe it. I had grown as accustomed to hearing of monstrous things as I shall ever be, but this was incredible. When a knife or a hot iron would have served the purpose, why resort to an infinitely delicate surgical operation? It is a question I cannot answer; a question whose answer is so deep in Turkish character that only a Turk could answer it. For I examined the eye, and saw beyond doubt that the story was true The microscopic scars were there, in the minute muscles of

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the eye. Some finely trained and skilful Turkish surgeon had used his training at the operating table to make this girl hideous. He had done this, while hundreds of Turkish soldiers, wounded in fighting for their country, were dying for lack of surgical help.71 This manifestation of the concentrated hate of the centuries, turned into professional sadism, cannot be divorced from the social system in which that hatred was nurtured, fueled and, when opportune, rewarded. Dr. Elliott's additional data and her related comments attest to this fact, highlighting at the same time the nature and dimensions of the World War I genocide. CONCLUSION There are striking similarities between the Armenian genocide and the Jewish Holocaust in the behaviour of the perpetrators. In this sense, the Armenian experience can be seen as a precedent for the subsequent Jewish experience. It cannot be discounted that the former in some respects directly influenced, if not stimulated, the latter. Foremost among these similarities are the incidents of experiments on subjects treated as guinea-pigs for the development of serums as antidotes against typhus. Moreover, the fear of typhus epidemics seemingly prompted Ottoman and German health authorities to respond in like manner. In the section dealing with Professor Numan, a piece of court-martial testimony was adduced depicting him as the authority ordering the destruction of certain clusters of population which were feared as agents of epidemic contagion. This pattern of behaviour is singled out by Robert Jay Lifton, in his analysis of German conduct vis--vis their victims. Referring to the general conduct of German physicians, Lifton notes the 'extensive sadism' that was part of the overall scheme of 'mass murder'.72 The contraption purporting to be for purposes of 'disinfection' but causing instant death to the infant victims in the Trabzon area looks disturbingly like a kind of prototype for the World War II Nazi gas chamber. Equally if not more important is the fact that both the Turkish and the German physicians were not only identified with but were functionaries and leaders of a monolithic political party that was in charge of the State. The second point to be made is that however exhaustive a study may be, and this one is not, there should not be explicitly or implicitly any blanket condemnation of aH the physicians of a system. Turkish physicians who went out of their way to shelter and even protect Armenian colleagues and deportees were not lacking; some of them did so at considerable personal risk. But in the setting in which they worked, such behaviour represented a deviation from the prevalent norms. The brave revelations by the two Turkish surgeons during the first months of the Armistice on the treatment of young Armenians as guinea-pigs, and the speed with which they were silenced by Turkish nationalists is a case in point. Role perception and role performance are often coherent fixtures of a behavioural pattern essentially responding to their own dynamics. Turkish physicians and surgeons, to the degree of their involvement in the pursuits of the Ittihad party, did not hesitate to become the servants of that party. They felt even less inhibited by the emergencies, and more emboldened by the opportunities of the global war into which Ittihad had plunged Turkey. This involvement was not free from crass opportunism, nor was it devoid of a measure of fanaticism that served to substitute what Nietzsche called 'refined cruelty' for the art and science of healing. The Hippocratic oath could only be discarded or subverted by invoking higher loyalties through a socio-political system that not only legitimized lethal

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role performance but also promoted and rewarded the performers. Next to the military, the medical professionals in Turkey represented the stratum that was the closest to Ittihad and to its aspirations. The more committed ones completely abandoned their profession and became provincial commissars and administrators overseeing the macabre details of the mass slaughter. Role perceptions are inextricably interwoven with self-images. In the enactment of genocide, the self-images of the physicians involved were not only stimulated by the resurgence of an atavistic nationalism but, more importantly, they were nurtured in the conspiracy of a political party investing these physicians with a elitist mind-set. They thought of their destructive role performance as a pioneering service both to their nation and to the party they considered to be the focus of the chosen ones. The explosiveness of such twin attitudes, intertwined as they are, came into full relief in the Armenian genocide, and in more amplified form in the Holocaust of the Jews. This kind of elitist and at the same time brutal embrace of party and nation is the most important aspect of these two castastrophes, and as such, a major factor in the genocidal process. For any such enterprise, all other things being equal, the chief warrant for success is inexorableness in the pursuit of the goals, and therefore, of the victims; tight party control and discipline, and a high level of party cohesiveness are supposed to be the indispensable prerequisites for such inexorableness.73 In other words, genocide, in order to justify itself, is to be enacted with ruthless severity, with its authors remaining oblivious to cost, another phenomenon in which the Armenian and Jewish experiences seem to converge remarkably.74 One type of such cost involved the consequences of destroying Armenian medical personnel when the Ottoman Army and the destitute civilian population were in dire need of health care. As a Swiss chronicler of the war stated, 'Armenian military physicians, who in the lazarettes day and night were serving with great sacrifice, were taken away and liquidated'.75 Included in this category were the Armenian nurses.76 The Armenian medical profession with its auxiliary services sustained losses proportionate to the losses of the total population. Many of them vanished from the scene without a trace; others fell victim to epidemics or battle. But for those who are known to have been massacred or killed individually, mostly by the complicity of fellow physicians, Armenian sources supply the following breakdown: sixty-seven physicians and surgeons, fifty-four pharmacists, ten dentists and five medical students.77 This decimation in part affected the poor health conditions of the Turkish troops, as 'lack of sanitary arrangements and of sufficient medical help is decimating the ranks of the Turkish soldiers in a manner unthinkable under German conditions'.78 The participation of medical professionals in the murder sometimes led to the deaths of victim and victimizer alike. According to the testimony of a Turkish staff captain in the Ottoman army, this is what happened in Bitlis.
All Armenians had been deported from the region, and there remained in Bitlis only some three hundred young girls, belonging to the best Armenian families in the town, who had been compelled to remain. All were kept under close supervision in the Armenian church, and were reserved for the use of the army. Soldiers and officers alike visited the church, which soon became a hotbed of disease. Each regiment that passed through the town on its way to the front left its traces, so after a time all these unfortunate gin's became infected. The commandant of the town, seeing this state of affairs, ordered that 'all these women shall be punished for exhausting the vital forces of the Ottoman army and poisoning with their infection the children of the Fatherland', and as a result the military commandant decided to get nd of them. Some were poisoned, others were executed.79

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A German medicaJ officer focused on this phenomenon of sexual assault in a twovolume study, 7770 Moral History of World War I, describing scenes of 'incredible bestiality' perpetrated on Armenian girls and young women in a scheme of deportation which Turkish rulers justified through a trumped-up charge of armed Armenian uprisings and which unquestionably represents the greatest crime of World War I with its 1.2 million civilian victims. It is at the same time a singular instance in world history of aggregate cases of robbery slayings, sex murders, theft, rape, pimping, and white slavery.80 Even in the throes of defeat, the momentum of murder was sustained as if to register a sense of frustration for incomplete results. Dr. Sakir, sensing impending defeat, asked the wartime American Acting Consul at Erzurum, Stapleton, to tell the Russian Commander about to capture the city that should Russian soldiers 'touch a single hair of a Turk', whatever is left of the Armenian nation will be wiped out in retaliation. akir added: It is imperative that from Istanbul to India and China there be only one unitary Muslim population with Syna serving as a nexus between the Muhammedan worlds of Asia and Africa. This vast project will be accomplished through the scientific genius and organizational talent of the Germans and the valiant arm of the Turks.81 In the final analysis, there was very little racism in the ideology that authonzed and legitimized the genocide of the Armenians. Not only were a large number of children adopted, not only were young girls and women encouraged to convert in order to escape extermination, but quite a few doctors, dentists, pharmacists and nurses were virtually compelled to opt for apostacy as the only path to deliverance and salvation. It is evident that not only was there a marked absence of racism, but a pronounced effort to mingle Armenian blood with the gene-pool of the new, homogenized Turkish nation. It is nationalism which emerges as the proper frame of reference for the Armenian genocide. The fact that not a single member of the Turkish medical personnel has been subjected to retributive justice (rather than to a pro-forma prosecution through a series of indictments) is a telling commentary on the pervasive links between justice and might. The extensive preparations by the victorious Allies for an International Tribunal to try Turkish war criminals accused of massacres' were aborted, and Turkish courts-martial were sidetracked by the advent of Kemalism that rose to defy the feuding, discordant and weary Allies, and ultimately imposed its will upon them in the July 1923 Lausanne Treaty,82 in which, as Winston Churchill scornfully put it, 'history will search in vain for the word "Armenia"'. 83

NOTES
1. Some of these medical personnel could not endure what they had witnessed and lost their minds and died. For the stories of two such people, Charlotte Ely and Henry Atkinson, see Grace H Knapp, The Tragedy of Bitlis (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1919), pp. 74-5, and Harriet H Atkinson, 'Mrs. Harriet H. Atkinson's Eyewitness Account of the Massacres at Harpoot', The Armenian Review XXIX (Spring 1976), 18-19. 2. In terms of membership in the Central Committee, two additional M D.s need to be mentioned. One of them was Dr. Rusuhi (elected in 1912, 1916 and 1917) who lived with Talat in Berlin where the latter had taken refuge under the alias of Sai and was assassinated by an Armenian student for his role in the massacres. Dr. Rusuhi escaped assassination about a year later when two

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of his companions, Dr. akir and former Trabzon Governor Cemal Azmi, were likewise gunned down in the streets of Berlin for the same reason. Shortly thereafter he requested from the German government, through the intermediary of the Swiss Embassy in Berlin, extra protection, i.e. the assignment of a special police detail. German Foreign Ministry Archives, Bonn. Politische Abteilung III Turkei, PO 11 No. 3, Bd. 1, No. 577, 4 May 1921 Swiss Embassy Note. The other was Huseyinzade Ali, from Azerbaidjan in the Transcaucasus (elected in 1911). After receiving his M.D. from the Istanbul Medical School, he plunged into political philosophy and in a celebrated poem, Turan (under the pen-name A. Turani), he exalted the conquests of Genghiz Khan and Tamerlane, portraying them as shining examples of pan-Turanian superiority Zarevand, United and Independent Turania. Aims and Designs of the Turks (Leiden: Brill, 1971), pp. 9, 24-5, 38. 3. Feroz Ahmad, The Young Turks (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), p 154. 4. Journal de Geneve, 25 August and 13 October 1915; Sabah, 12 December 1918; Documents of the Mazhar Inquiry Commission's pre-court-martial investigations into the perpetrators of the Armenian genocide. Jerusalem Armenian Patnarchate Archive, Series 21, File M, No. 301. 5. Takvimi Vekayi (hereafter cited as T. V.), No 3540, pp. 5,6. This was the official gazette of the Ottoman Parliament which most of the time earned the court proceedings in the form of Supplements. 6. Ibid., p. 6 7. Ibid., p. 8 8. The confirmations were in the following sessions of the court: second,!. V., 3543; third, T. V., 3547, fourth, TV., 3549; fifth, T V, 3553 -A; sixth, TV., 3557; seventh, TV., 3561. 9. TV, 3540, pp. 5-8. 10. Ibid, p. 7. General Vehib's duties started in February 1916 when most of the Armenians of the six provinces comprising the Illrd Army's command zone were already destroyed under the aegis of Mahmud Kamil Pasa, Vehib's predecessor. The full text in onginal Ottoman Turkish is in the depositones of the Armenian Patnarchate of Jerusalem, Senes 17, File H, No. 171. 11. T. V., 3540, p. 6. This cable is cited also in the Harput tnal senes verdict. T. V., 3771, p 1. 12. TV, 3772, p. 4. 13. T V, 3540, p. 7. 14 Renaissance, 5 August 1919. In the key indictment he is described as having pnvileged access to automobiles, funds and a special code TV., 3540, p. 6. 15. Falih Rifki Atay, ZeytmdaQt (Istanbul. Ayyildiz, 1981), p. 36. Dr Nazim's role extended beyond recruitment and embraced agitation and incitement of the local population as well. According to a Turkish eyewitness Nazim had helped organize a mass meeting of ten thousand at K6sk Pasa, outside Erzurum city in May 1915. When a unanimous resolution on the total annihilation of all the Armenians was passed, Dr Nazim urged that the killing be done not in towns, cities and villages where corpses could rot, causing epidemics, but in remote, uninhabited areas. The resolution was then wired to the Central Government in Istanbul This testimony is in a Soviet archive document identified as Senes 57, Ust 1, File 632, pp 17-18. It is quoted in John Kirakossian, Aratcheen Hamashkharayeen Baderazmu yev Arevmudahayoutiounu 1914-1916 (Yerevan: Hayasdan, 1965), pp. 286-7. 16 The first remark is in Sevket Sureyya Aydemir, IkinciAdam, Vol. 1 (Istanbul. Remzi 1973), p 45, the second is in Sevket Sureyya Aydemir, Suyu Arayan Adam, 7th edn (Istanbul: Remzi, 1979), p. 23. 17. Dogan Avcidglu, Milli Kurtulus Tanhi, Vol. 3 (Istanbul. Istanbul Publications, 1974), p. 1135 18. Dunya, 17 December 1967. Atay's account was made in connection with a tram trip to Aleppo akir had boarded the train at Adana and in the course of the ride had presumably boasted about his achievements in the organization of the Armenian massacres in the East. 19 Among the evidence of this: a group of Erzurum deportees saw him with a bngand uniform atop a mountain near Malatya and pleaded with him to be merciful. He is reported to have chased them away, calling them 'infidel dogs' Puzantion, 4 November 1918 See also "Geographical and Statistical Notes on the Vilayet of Erzuroum', Jerusalem Annenian Patnarchate Archive, Series 8,

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File E, No. 358. A Turkish general and colonel also bitterly remarked on Sakir's power. The generaJ denounced Sakir's role in Turkey's entry into the war, the 1914-15 Sarikamis battle disaster, his panTuranist ideology, and his lack of grasp and plain incompetence in military affairs. Ali Ihsan Sabis, Harb Hatiralarim, Vol. 1 (Istanbul: Inkilab, 1943), pp. 64-5; Ibid, Vol. 2 (Ankara; Gunes, 1951), pp. 68, 91-2, 99. See also Arif Baytin, Ilk Dunya Harbinde Kafkas Cephesi (Istanbul: Vakrt, 1946), pp. 49-51, for the colonel's complaints. 20. 777e Times of London, 28 August 1926. 21. London Morning Post, 5 and 7 December 1918. 22. Report No. 3481, dated 23 August 1915, Botschaft Konstantinopel 170/23. 23. The first one is in the British Foreign Office Archives (FO), FO 371/5089B/E949, 18 February 1920 report. The second is in FO 371/5171/E1228, p. 7 of the 26-page intelligence report of 29 August 1920. 24. Nazim's conviction was in the category of Cabinet Ministers that included the Ittihad leaders Talat, Enver and Cemal. T. V., 3604, pp. 217-20. Sakir was convicted through the Harput trial senes verdict. T.V., 3771, pp. 1-2. 25. Arshavir Shiragian, 7776 Legacy, Memoirs of an Armenian Patnot (Boston: Hairenik, 1976), pp. 176-7 (pp. 290-1 in the original Armenian version). See also Ahmed Bedevi Kuran, Osmanh Imparatoriug'unda ve Turkiye Cumhunyetinde Inkilip Hareketlen (Istanbul: Celtut, 1959), p. 680. 26. The invitation to return was issued on 27 Apnl 1922, i.e. ten days after the assassination of Sakir, by then Interior Minister Fethi (Okyar). FO 371/7863/E4700, folio 119. See also FO 371/7869/ E7840, folio 262. On Dr. Nazim's expected return to Turkey, British High Commissioner Horace Rumbold commented,'it would be a fact of great importance as he was formerly perhaps the most important of all the Committee of Union and Progress leaders who worked in the background'. FO 371/7869/E7840, folio 262, 1 August 1922 report. 27. FO 371/11528/E4929, E5141, folios 61-4. Commenting on the direction of the trial, the Da;7y Telegraph of London, in its 16 August 1926 issue, declared, 'an outstanding piece of evidence is that extracted from Dr. Roussouhi [Rusuhi], who formed, with Enver, Talat, Nazim, and some halfdozen others, the all-powerful and secretive executive of the C U.P., a veritable "Council of Ten" which ruled Turkey for close upon ten years, down to 1918'. 28. Wrote one student of Ittihad, 'From the beginning Ittihad had been strongly represented especially among military doctors (it had, after all, been founded at the Military Medical School) and several doctors had been members of the inner circle of the Committee (Dr. Rusuhi, Dr Nazim and Dr. Behaeddin Sakir for instance).' Enk Zurcher, 7776 Unionist Factor (Leiden: Bnll, 1984), p. 76. 29. This information is furnished in the work of one of Sakir's Armenian students at the Medical School. S. Zarevant, Antzortee Dubavoroutiunner. Deghahanoutian yev Tchartee Aradner (New York: Duvalian, 1924), p. 73. On the Medical School and revolutionary ferment see Kuran, Osmanli Imparatoriugunda pp. 154-9. 30. FO 371/6500, folios 170-4, FO 371/6509, folio 51, Appendix C , p. 9 31. Zarevant, Antzortee Dubavoroutiunner, pp. 53-61; Le Bosphore, 5 May 1920. For details of the murders, including the trial testimony of one of the Turkish coachmen who carried the victims to their death, see Knkoris Balakian, Hat Koghkotan, Vol. 1 (Vienna: Mechitanan, 1922), pp. 146-51, Les Persecutions contre les m6deans Armenians pendant la guerre gdndrale en Turquie (Istanbul Union of Armenian Physicians 1919), pp. 34-7. For more on Cemal Oguz, his tnals and fate, see TV., 3540, p. 7; T.V., 3867, p. 1; FO371/6501, folios 227-8; FO371/6500, folios 133, see also FO 371/247/8109. 32. FO 371/4233, folios 61-72. 33. T. V., 3540, pp. 5-6. Dismissing as unfounded the claim that the Muslim population of the province 'adored' Ittihad, the court counterposed to it the evidence of Muslims of Kastamonu province (of which Bolu was one of the four distncts) in the role of begging the Governor of the province to spare the Armenians the slaughter that was being carried out. By way of citing a specific document, the resident Muslim jurist, the mufti, along with eyhs and Notables, is singled out as pleading with Governor Reid as follows:

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We heard that the Armenians of the neighbouring provinces are treated like animals as if they were being driven to the slaughterhouse. In the company of their women and children they are said to be driven up the mountain tops and massacred there. We don't want anything like that to happen in our area as we are afraid of the wrath of God. No government can last long by resort to atrocities Help, please. Don't allow such operations in our province. Fully in accord with this attitude, the Governor reassured them that under no circumstances would such events be allowed in their province, and 'the petitioner suppliants left with tears in their eyes'. The indictment states also that Dr. Midhat equated 'the future happiness and prosperity' of the Muslims of Bolu with the disappearance of the Armenians. Ibid. 34. T.V., 3772, pp 1-6. Characteristically, the verdict focuses also on the fate of the Governor of Kastamonu who, for refusing to 'dip my hands in blood', was eventually replaced by Atif, the new intenm Governor, who organized the deportation and decimation of the Armenians of both Bolu and Kastamonu. When Damad Ferid was temporanly out of power, and Kemalist influence was in ascendancy in the Ottoman capital during the Armistice, a military court of Cassation quashed Midhat's sentence. But the sentence was reimposed later on and the case was being assessed when he was taken to Gumussu hospital for treatment. Aided by Major Talat, the Chief Physician, and Dr. Ekrem Cadi, from the hospital's medical staff, he escaped from the hospital, along with Cankin Responsible Secretary Cemal Oguz who was likewise being treated there, and Dr. Bosnak Ismayil, another military physician in custody there. To the previous charges for which he was convicted, a new charge of aiding 'the rebels', i.e. Kemalists, was added at the second court-martial that sentenced him and Dr. Ismayil to death. Chief Physician Talat was sentenced to a pnson term of six months, and Dr. Cadi of two months for assisting in the escape For the Malta exile of Dr. Midhat see FO 371/4175/163689, folio 11. 35 T.V., 3540, p. 7. An Arab author who had served as Ottoman Governor in Harput province before being exiled to Diyarbekir as an Arab nationalist relates the information, conveyed by 'one of those charged with the conduct of Armenian massacres' that, 'in Diyarbekir alone by August 1915, five hundred and seventy thousand had been destroyed, those being people from other provinces as well as those belonging to Diyarbekir itself. Faiz El-Ghusein, Martyred Armenia (translation from ongmal Arabic, no translator indicated) (New York: George H. Doran, 1918), p. 41. 36 Thomas Mugurditchian, Dikranagerdee Nahankee Tcharteru, Aganadesee Badmoutiun (Cairo: Djihanian, 1919), pp. 54-6. The author was British Vice-Consul at Diyarbekir, where he had lived nineteen years The litany of tortures descnbed by the author is corroborated by an admission made to Amencan Ambassador Morgenthau by a responsible Turkish official who was descnbing the tortures inflicted. He made no secret of the fact that the government had instigated them; and, like all Turks of the official classes, he enthusiastically approved this treatment of the detested race. This official told me that all these details were matters of nightly discussion at the headquarters of the Union and Progress Committee Each new method of inflicting pain was hailed as a splendid discovery, and the regular attendants were constantly ransacking their brains in the effort to devise some new torment. He told me that they even delved into the records of the Spanish Inquisition and other historic institutions of torture and adopted all the suggestions found there. Henry Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau's Story (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Page, 1918), p. 307. For unknown reasons the name of the official has been deleted in this Amencan edition of the Ambassador's memoirs, which are based on entries of a regularly kept diary (as noted on pp. 37, 181,184, 239). In the Bntish edition the official is identified as 'Bedn Bey, the Constantinople Prefect of Police', a rank and authority equal to that of a Minister, who was one of the closest collaborators of Talat. The Ambassador's remark that 'with a disgusting relish Bedri descnbed the tortures inflicted', is likewise deleted in the Amencan edition. Ambassador Henry Morgenthau, Secrets of the Bosphorvs (London: Hutchmson, 1918), p. 202. An example of Resid's ferocity is provided by the correspondent of the Bntish newspaper Morning Post according to whom Dr. Resid 'took 800 children, enclosed them in a building and set light to if, 7 December 1918. The relationship between Resid's avowed

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patriotism and his zest for plunder is cast into special relief by testimony from many sources; here are two. In an article taking the denials of his countrymen to task, a Turkish author, Hasan Amca, declares that Resjd went to his post in Diyarbekir with only two chests but returned to Istanbul with wagons loaded with goods plundered from his Armenian victims. Alemdar, 5 and 6 April 1919 issues. Dr. Hyacinth Fardjalian, a Catholic Armenian M.D., describes that loot as including jewellery and precious stones, a pile of carpets and an assortment of antiquities, adding, 'I myself saw Rechid Bey arrive at Aleppo by a train bound for Constantinople with 43 boxes of jewellery and 2 cases full of precious stones.1 FO 371/4172/24597, folio 304. See also Dikran Mugunt, Amidayi Artzakankner, 1950 (n.p.), pp. 249-52. 37. Holstein's report of 10 July 1915, is in Botschaft Konstantinopel 169, folio 162, No. 8; Wangenheim's Note of 12 July 1915 is in ibid, folio 164, No. 8. In a personal exchange with a Venezuelan officer, serving as a German officer in the Turkish Army dunng the war, Dr. Resid is directly quoted as having admitted the existence of the extermination scheme and its ongin with Interior Minister Talat. Rafael de Nogales, Four Years Beneath the Crescent (New York: London: Scnbner's, 1926), pp. 146-7. 38. The Interior Minister's statement is in NorGiank, 29 January 1919. See also FO 371/4172/ 24597, folio 303; Jhamanag, 5 and 6 December 1918 and 6 April 1919; and the Turkish daily newspaper Alemdar, 5 Apnl 1919. 39. German Ambassador Mettemich's 10 July 1916 report in Turkei 183/43, A17310. 40 Interview with Ittihad party Secretary-General Midhat Sukru (Bleda) in Resimli Tarih, 5 July 1953, and in Imparatorlug'un Cdkusu(Istanbul: Remzi, 1979), pp. 57-9. Dr Resid is said to have kept a diary, recording 'with great care' the daily events and his reflections. During the war he had published a booklet, 'How to Deal with the Armenians', advocating their extermination. Jhogovourtee Tzain, 25 January 1919. 41. Avaoglu, Milh Kurtulus, Vol 2, p. 469. 42. Jerusalem Armenian Patriarchate Archive, Series 21, File M, No. 249 43. FO 371/6509, folio 52, Appendix C, to an Armenian physician serving in the central military hospital of Gurhushane in Istanbul with the rank of captain Professor Esad in the early days of Ittihad's 1908 revolution reportedly complained that 'the ongoing plight of Turkey was chiefly due to "the damn (kdrolsun) Seyhuhslam [the highest Islamic legal authority] who averted the annihilation of the Chnstians of the Empire by denying the required fetva [a juridical decision sanctioning an impending official act] to Sultan Selim the Gnm [1512-1520]"'. Jhamanag, 21 May 1919. The Armenian physician was Avedis Nakashian who was among the hundreds of Armenian political and community leaders whose summary arrest on 24 Apnl 1915 ushered in the World War I genocide He was eventually saved through the personal intervention of Amencan Ambassador Morgenthau. Dr. A. Nakashian, A Man Who Found A Country (New York. Crowell, 1940), pp. 201-24. 44. (1) Dr. Ibrahim Tali (Ongdren), Special Organization leader with the rank of lieutenantcolonel, and a prominent Ittihadist, was in Erzurum in December 1914 assisting Dr. akir in the organization of brigands. (2) Dr. Fuad Sabit, chief of Erzincan Special Organization branch. (3) Dr Huseyin Riza, organizer of bngands, went to Ardahan with Special Organization President Suleyman Askeri on a secret mission in connection with which he requested the court to arrange a closed session so that he could supply testimony in his defence. (4) Dr. Rifki was in charge of Konya deportations. (5) Dr. Servet was in charge of labour battalion Armenian soldiers in the same city. (6) Dr Hilmi was the Adjutant and physician of brigand leader Major Yakub Cemil's detachment (7) Dr. Sidki, one of Samsun's Ittihadist leaders, boasted to an Armenian in custody that 'the Armenian Question is finally being solved' (8) Dr Esref, Sanitation Inspector, involved in the 1909 Adana massacre, was arrested on 26 August 1919 on charges of complicity in World War I massacres. (9) Dr. Izzet Bin Emin, Major, surgeon of Tokat hospitals, was taken to the Military Pnson on 17 January 1919 (10) Dr. Abdullah, Ittihadist leader at Haymana (Ankara province), (11) Dr Rusdi Bey Bin Haci Huseyin, arrested on 17 February 1919 (12) Dr. Besim Zuhdi, Responsible Secretary, Afyon Karahisar (13) Dr. Midhat, Responsible Secretary of Eskisehir (14) Dr. Ertogrul, from Kaleici hospital at Edirne, assisted in local deportations. (15) Dr Ziya, municipal physician of Gumleyik

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(Bursa province), zealously helped cam/ out local deportations. (16) Dr. Fethi, Chief Physician of the military hospital at Silvan (Diyabekir province) raped and infected with his venereal disease a dozen Armenian nurses serving in the hospital. (17) Dr. Abdul Salem, surgeon, was arrested on 14 May 1920 on charges of massacres. (18) Captain Halil, Medical Officer at Harput hospital, was likewise arrested. Furthermore the following physicians are known to have personally aided in the murder of Armenian surgeons, optometrists and dentists. (1) Dr. Mehmed Asaf, from Mus, Bitlis province. (2) Dr. Mehmed Refi, Chief Physician of Transport and Supplies at Erzurum and Professor of Pharmacy. (3) Dr. Sevket, from Erzincan's Azizjye hospital. (4) Dr. Sani, the same hospital's Chief physician. (5) Dr. Feridun, Chief Physician of Erzincan's Military Hospital. 45. The Armenian Deputies were Zohrab and Vartkes; the two brigand chieftains were Cerkez Ahmed, a Special Organization major, and lieutenant Halil who later were court-martialled and hanged in Damascus by Cemal Pasa. Emekli Orgeneral Ali Fuat Erden, Birina Dunya Harbinde Suriye Hatiralari (Istanbul: Halk Matbaasi, 1954), pp. 216-18. In the death certificate dated 7 July 1331 (i.e. 20 July 1915), Dr Tahsin, the municipal physician of Urfa, stated: 'Upon hearing that he had died en route I proceeded to the spot where his body was, and identified it as that of Knkor Zohrab. My examination showed that he had succumbed to a heart attack.' But Turkish captain, military intelligence officer, and later in the Armistice History Professor of Istanbul University, Ahmed Refik (Attinay) in his memoirs relates Maior Ahmed's own account of the murder of the two Deputies 'I blew up the brains of Vartkes with my Mauser pistol, then I grabbed Zohrab, and having trampled him, I smashed and smashed his head with a big rock until I killed him off.' Ikdam, 29 December 1918; Ahmed Refik, Iki Komite-lki Kital (Istanbul- Orhaniye, 1919), p. 39. The details of the government's initial deceptions and the subsequent disclosure by Cemal Paa and Grand Vezir's communication to the Chamber of Deputies setting the record straight are in Arshag Alboyadjian, Anhedatzogh Temker Knkor Zohrab (Istanbul: Der Nercessian, 1919), pp. 246-50; the facsimile of Dr. Tahsin's fake certificate is on p. 247; the Ottoman text of Grand Vezir's communication is on p. 249; the session at which that communication was read was the third 28 November 1916, and is on p. 99 of the respective transcripts. Grand Vezir's communication to the Ottoman Parliament confirming the murder of the two Armenian Deputies is also mentioned in Tank Zafer Tunaya, Turkiyede Siyasi Partner, 2nd edn, Vol. 1 (Istanbul: Hurnyet Vakfi, 1984), p. 579, n. 60 46. The trial of Dr. Saib was the outgrowth of an Armenian's letter in the local press accusing a Health Inspector of mass poisonings and drownings of children at Trabzon. Two Turkish surgeons, claiming they were trying to absolve the reputation of Turkish medicine, had disclosed the performance of medical experiments on Armenians in Erzincan, and this had prompted the newspaper letter on Trabzon. See Mugurditch Gabrash, 'Keedoun Djivagh Mun Al', Djoghovourt, No. 56, 28 December 1918. 47 Dr Ali Saib was also accused of having organized the murder of Trabzon's municipal physician, a Dr. Levon Aslanian, in order to appropnate his wife, said to be of exceptional beauty. Having barely recovered from typhus, Dr Aslanian was given a fictitious assignment at Erzurum and on his way there with his brother, also an M.D , was ambushed and mutilated by bngands At the sixth session of Trabzon trial senes (7 Apnl 1919, a.m ), a French national, Louis Vidal, chief of Singer Company's Trabzon branch, testified about his contact with Dr. Saib and the latter's covetousness of Mrs. Aslanian, whose sister happened to be Vidal's wife He insisted on Dr Saib's complicity in the multiple murders of the two Armenian physicians, and eventually of Mrs. Aslanian, who seemingly repeatedly rebuffed Dr. Saib. He had made these charges publicty in a statement published in Renaissance, 14 February 1919. 48. The data and sources for this section were culled from a host of Armenian, French and Turkish daily newspapers covenng the tnals daily as they unfolded, mainly the following: Nor Giank, Jhamanag, Jhogovourtee Tzain, Djagadamard [Armenian], Renaissance, Le Bosphore, Le Spectateur d'Orient [French] Ikdam, Sabah, Alemdar, Tasviri Efkir, Hadisat [Turkish]. Especially relevant is an article detailing the various procedures for eliminating Armenian children separated from their murdered parents at Trabzon. Armen Pokhanan, 'Unger Ghazar yev Huranouysh Magountzinerou Housheren', Hairemk XII No. 8 (June 1934), 75-83 Dr. Saib subsequently entered the Turkish

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Consular Service. When an Armenian survivor recognized him in Aleppo, where he was a consul, he transferred to Saloniki where he died. Les Memoirs de Mgr. Jean Naslian. EvSque de Trebizonde, Vol. I (Vienna: Mechitariste, 1955), p. 175. 49. Only two Armistice newspapers could be located which in their coverage of this sitting of the Military Tnbunal reported the details of the Yerazian testimony about the steam chamber. Jhamanag, No. 3506, 27 Apnl 1919, p. 2, cols. 1 and 2; Renaissance, 27 Apnl 1919. 50. FO 371/2489/75753. 7 June 1915, Sir Barclay, Bucharest to London. 51. Mihran Nora'ir, Tourk Pujhishgnem al Meghsagitz1. Anamard (temporarily substituting for Azadamard, the paper's actual name), No. 26 (1836), 15 December 1918; the French translation appeared next day in Rennaissance, 16 December 1918. The Turkish daily newspaper Yeni Gazeta earned the Turkish translation in its 17 December 1918 issue. In its 21 December 1918 issue, Anamard published the response of the Health Services Administration challenging Dr. Norair to be specific, to name names, etc. 52. Tun\ce Istanbul, No. 45, 23 December 1918, French translation in Renaissance, 26 December 1918. 53. He was Colonel Tevfik Salim (later General Saglam) who held the same position with the llnd Army before being transferred to the Illrd to combat typhus. Later in the year, he was promoted to Inspector of Army Group East. After becoming Professor of Medicine at the Medical School of Istanbul University, he was first promoted to Dean of that school, and later to Rector (president) of the University. Colonel Dr. Guse, the German Chief of Staff of Ottoman Illrd Army, praising Dr. Salim's 'long years of work' in Germany, extolls in his memoirs 'the distinctly efficient personality he brought with him as Army physician'. Felix Guse, Die Kaukasusfront im Weltkrieg (Leipzig. Koehler & Amelang, 1940), p. 58. 54. He has Hamdi Suad, Munich-trained Professor of Pathology. 55. Turkge Istanbul. No. 46, 24 December 1918, French translation is in Renaissance, 26 December 1918. 56. Ikdam, 26 December 1918. 57. Istiklal, 3 January 1919. 58. Alemdar, 8 January 1919. 59. Nor Giank, 3 January 1919. 60. A Bil, 'Umumi Harpte Teskilati Mahsusa', Vakit, instalment No. 79 from a series of articles on the Sakir-led bngands on the eastern borders of Turkey (2 November 1933-7 February 1934). The source used here is taken from the Armenian translations of this senes which V. Ishkanian published day by day in the Pans Armenian daily newspaper Haratch, presumably with identical instalment numbers. It is most probable that A. Bil is a pseudonym for one of the bngand leaders assisting Sakir. 61. Djagadamard, No. 68 (1884), 1 February 1919. According to this source those cadets not expenmented upon were executed in batches of ten, with their hands tied. He also states that the forty Armenian students of another institution, the Military Academy of Erzincan, were likewise liquidated. Ibid. 62. H S.S.HJB.G B.A. or Haigagan Sovetagan Sotzialisdagan Hanrabedoutiun-Bedagan Getronagan Badmagan Archiv (Armenian SSR Central State Historical Archive), Yerevan, Senes 200, List 1, File 273, No. 2. 63. Faiz El-Ghusein, Martyred Armenia, pp. 27,28. While in exile in Diyarbekir for seven months during the war (as stated in note 35). he availed himself of his friends and contacts, for the author was himself a Kaymakam in the province of Harput before being exiled as an Arab nationalist. He later served with the same title and rank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The use of axe blows in this particular instance is confirmed in the German document contained in Turkei 183/44 A24663. 64 The Turkish daily newspaper was Alemdar from which the Armenian daily Djoghovourtee Tzain of 13 May 1919 quoted. 65. Weltkneg 11d seer. Bd. 11, enclosure No. 3 of A5775, 3 February 1916 report, folio 122. 66. FO 371/247/5779, folios 68-73. Similar reports abound in other files of FO, e.g. FO 371/

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4175/163689, folio 9, 6 December 1919, High Commissioner de Robeck report; FO 371/6503, folio 38, Oliphant's 16 June 1921 communication to Sir Geddes in Washington, D.C. 67. Viscount Bryce-Amold Toynbee, 7770 Treatment of the Armenians in the Ottaman Empire 1915-16, Documents..., Miscellaneous No. 31 (London: H.M.S.O., 1916). The observation in the prefatory statement is on p. 331; Dr. White's account is in Doc. No. 86, pp. 334-5; Professor Elmer's in No. 87, p. 342; U.S. consular Agent Peter's in No. 90, p. 364; Greek Professor Xenidhis' in No. 93, pp. 373, 376. This British [Blue Boo/c] dealing with the massacres in Dr. Faik's zone of authority has altogether nine lengthy deposition-documents, pp. 331-79, involving mainly Amencan authorities (one college president, one girl's school director, one consular agent and one professor) supplemented by the testimony of a Greek professor at the same U.S. Anatolia College, and of an unspecified German. See also the testimony of a Turkish newspaper editor published in the Armistice Turkish daily newspaper Ikdam and translated in Jhogovourt, 15 November 1918. 68. Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History (abridgement of Vol. Vll-X) (New York: Oxford University Press, 1957), p. 362. 69. Yosuf Karsh, A Fifty Years Retrospective by YosufKarsh (Boston. Little Brown, 1985), p. 7. 70. Djagadamard, 5 April 1919. 71. Mabel Evelyn Elliott, Beginning Again at Ararat (New York Fleming H. Revell, 1924), pp. 20-6. 72. Robert Jay Lifton, 'Medicalized Killing in Auschwitz', Psychiatry 45 No. 4 (November 1982), 288, 289, 297. Lifton published a massive volume on this subject after the present study went to press. See The Nazi Doctors. Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide (New York: Basic Books, 1986). References to this author and the Armenian genocide are in Chapter 21, and on pp. 470-80, 492-3. 73. At the third sitting of Harput trial senes Special Organization Colonel Husameddin Erturk testified to the fact that Dr. akir recruited his assistants for that organization from the local cells of the Ittihad party. Renaissance, 7 August 1919. 74. In his impressive study of the Jewish case, Hilberg, after making some rough computations about overall German gains and losses, concluded that, 'This figure [the losses] swamps the entire income denved from the destruction process'. He also cites from a circular, issued by the Nazi Party Chancellery, 'confidentially' exhorting its agents to act with 'ruthless seventy'. Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of European Jews (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1961), pp. 646,651. As to the Armenian case, if one disregards the overall figures computed by the Armenians, Amencan Ambassador, Abram Elkus, Morgenthau's successor, addressing just the matter of tax revenues told the State Department, 'it is estimated three millions annually [Turkish pounds, then 1 TP was worth about $9 in paper, as assessed by Elkus] in taxes have been lost, because of the Armenian massacres'. Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, The Lansing Papers, 1914-1920, p. 785, 17 November 1916 report. As to the losses to the Turkish war effort, French military histonan Larcher, despite his sympathies for the Turks, concedes that the Armenian deportations 'deprived the Illrd Army of the valuable services of many skilled and educated men, eliminating a large part of the resources in the operational zone'. Commandant M. Larcher, La Guerre Turque dans la guerre mondiale (Paris: Chiron, 1926), p. 396. 75. S Zuriinden, Der Weltkrieg, Vol. 2 (Zurich: Art. Institut Orell Fussli, 1918), p. 640. 76. Professor Elmer of Anatolia College on Merzifun related that 'the nurses were canng for the sick soldiers of the Ottoman Army under the auspices of the American Red Cross Society . . nearly all the nurses of the hospital were Armenians . . . [they] were driven away by the gendarmes just like the rest of their unfortunate sisters'. Bryce-Toynbee, The Treatment, pp. 336-7. According to the testimony of two Amencan nurses employed in the Military Hospital of Bitlis, 'All the Armenian nurses, druggists and orderlies in the hospital were also taken. It mattered not that they were the most intelligent and faithful helpers, and that there was no one left to prepare medicines for the Turkish patientsall had to go". Knapp, The Tragedy, p. 54. 77. Les persecutions centre les medians Arm^mens, pp. 26-58; a large, comprehensive volume in Armenian is offered by T. M. Garoyan, Medz Yegemee Nahadag Hai Pujhishgneru (Boston, n p., 1957).

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78. Liman von Sanders (General of Cavalry), Five Years in Turkey (Annapolis: U.S. Naval Academy, 1927), p. 89. 79. Ararat VI, No. 66 (Summer 1919), 422; in the Jerusalem Armenian Patriarchate Archive, Series 7, File H, No. 107, the captain is identified as Nabil Bey, the son of Sakir Pasa, and Adjutant to then Commandant de la Race of Istanbul, Esad. The wholesale slaughter of Bitlis province was observed in its aftermath by a Venezuelan officer with German affiliations who had taken part in the military operations against the Armenians at Van. See Rafael de NogaJes, Four Years Beneath the Crescent, p. 124. 80. Magnus Hirschfeld and Andreas Gaspar, Sittengeschichte des I. Weltkrieges, Vol. 2 (Leipzig, 1929-30), pp. 289-90; 2nd edn. (Hanau: Schustek, 1964), pp. 510-11. 81. J. de Morgan, Contre les barbares de I'Orient (Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1918), p. 188. See also Journal d'Orient, 11 May 1919, p. 2, col. 3. Following the declaration of 'holy war' against the infidel Allies (14 November 1914), the large crowd had proceeded to the German Embassy from the balcony of which Dr. Nazim, consistent with this affinity for Germany, held a speech depicting Germany as the genuine friend of three hundred million Muslims for whom Kaiser Whilhelm II had sworn his allegiance. Deutsche Tageszeitung, 16 November 1914. Nazim repeated his exaltation of Germany at the 1910 annual congress of Ittihad (31 October/1 November-13 November), and especially of the Kaiser. Turkei 158/11, A15682, Saloniki Consul Dr. Schworbel's 14 September 1910 report. 82. Ismet Pasa's deputy who headed the Turkish delegation at Lausanne, Dr. Riza Nur, was a member of the opposition party (Itilaf), with some personal expenence of persecution, including torture, inflicted upon him by Ittihad in the prewar years. Still he shared Ittihad's views on the Armenians. In his memoirs he recounted how he mocked the Allies' request to grant the Armenians a national home in some part of Turkey, then being formed by the Kemahsts. Alluding to the humanity and comforts of America, Dr. Nur suggested that such a home should be offered by the United States. 'Everyone laughed.' When Giulio Cesare Montagna, the session chairman, appealed to Dr Nur's magnanimity by reminding him of the approaching Christmas season, the latter retorted saying it was a western and Christian holiday. 'Again they laughed, and we laughed too. The matter was closed and my remarks were not included in the official transcripts'. When the massacres were brought up on 6 January 1923, he denied them, and blaming the deaths on disease, hunger and deportations, he walked out. Kissing his cheek, Ismet, his chief, thereupon congratulated him, declaring, 'You buned the Armenian Question. I congratulate you'. Dr. Nur also issued a threat to an Armenophile American in Lausanne 'Should the Armenians take the life of a single Turk, the people are sworn to massacre in his place ten thousand Armenians remaining in Turkey'. Dr. Riza Nur, Hayat ve Hatiratim, Vol. Ill (Istanbul. Altindag\ 1968), pp. 1058-74. This penchant for threatening resort to wholesale murder as a means of punishment or deterrence was evident in Dr. Riza Nur's 25 May 1921 letter to the Commander of the Eastern Front regarding suspicions that Soviet histonans were spying on the Turks by pretending to study the ruins of Ani, the mediaeval centrepiece of the architectural treasures of the Armenian Church. He suggested that 'the relics and traces of the monuments of Ani be wiped off the face of the earth. You will be rendering a great service to Turkey when you accomplish this goal' Kazim Karabekir, Istiklal Harbimiz (Istanbul: Turkiye, 1969), p. 905. 83. Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty (1911-15), and later the Secretary of State for War (1919-21), observed: 'There is no reasonable doubt that this cnme was planned and executed for political reasons. The opportunity presented itself for clearing Turkish soil of a Chnstian race opposed to all Turkish ambitions . . . and planted geographically between Turkish and Caucasian Moslems'. Winston S. Churchill, The World Crisis: The Aftermath (London: T. Butterworth, 1929), pp. 405, 407. Uoyd George who was part of the Allied front repeatedly making solemn promises of justice and redemption to the Armenians denounced the behaviour of the Allies, the signatories of the Lausanne Peace Treaty, as 'abject, cowardly and infamous'. Stephen Bonsai, Suitors and Suppliants, The Little Nations at Versailles (New York- Prentice, 1946), p 198.