"With The Dense Atmosphere Of Illusion We Lost Our Sense Of Reality."
Hovhannes Katchaznouni

After two previous defeats in the U.S. Congress, "friends" of the Armenian-Americans, namely Congressman Bonior of Michigan and others, have again placed a resolution on the floor of the U.S. Congress.(H.Con.Res.55). Every year around April 24, the Armenian population of this country goes on the warpath against the Republic of Turkey. Their cause is an 84 year old lie perpetrated, kept alive from one generation to the next. They claim that the Ottoman Empire adopted an official policy of "Genocide" against its Armenian citizens during the First World War.

The truth of the matter is that Armenians living in the eastern part of the Turkish Empire double-crossed their own government, fought with Russians against their own country's army, massacred tens of thousands of men, women, and children without pity, and in countless ambushes killed scores of Turkish soldiers. These Armenians of eastern Turkey were none other than traitors. In retaliation, the Ottoman Turkish forces fought back and ordered the Armenians of that war-torn area to move, mostly on foot, to the southern parts of the empire away from the war zones, where they could do no more harm, or cause problems. It was a difficult march, not unlike the one in the Middle Ages, 782 A.D., to be exact, when Charlemagne banished the Saxons of his realm, who refused to become Christians, to the eastern frontiers of his empire. This was done following his summary execution of thousands of Saxons in and around the city of Verden,' where the rivers ran red for days, with the blood of Saxons' according to accounts of those times. Congressman David Bonior,(Dem). l0th District, Michigan, without studying the real reasons behind the facts, has been leading an unfair battle against the Turkish government and Turks everywhere. I want him to learn the truth, so I sent him the following letter, which I'd like to share with our readers. This is what I wrote to him:

Dear Congressman Bonior: I am a journalist of Turkish ancestry and a longtime citizen of the United States of America. I have been quite aware of the difficulties confronting the elected officials in the U.S. Congress and the Senate in raising funds for campaign expenses. Your situation is not different than theirs. Therefore, I do sympathize with you in your efforts to solicit and accept the financial backing of constituents of the l0th District of Michigan. Your backers have been predominently Armenian-Americans, and you do side with them, and feel you must follow blindly and defend doggedly every claim they have against the Turkish nation in general and the Turkish-Americans in particular. For this you're being rewarded handsomely by being sent to Washington every two years. Their thinking is that you are beholden to them, and if it weren't for their votes, you'd be out of a job.

I have always had the suspicion that even though you have been defending the group's accusations against the Turks for a long time, you have not been knowlegeable enough to determine whether what you are doing is conscionable or not. It seems that annually around this time in April, similarly to the much dreaded IRS, you show up in the U.S. Congressional circles, clutched in your hand the same old Armenian 'genocide' resolution, a document turned brown with age and with a content as boring as the wording of the IRS' l0-40 tax forms.

This year once again you did what you do best, cuddle up to your constituents, and once more, tried to prove to them your loyalty and obedience. I watched you and felt insulted by your introduction of H.Con.Res.55 on the floor of the U.S. Congress. I realized also that I had reached the limits of my patience, witnessing you and your equally misinformed co-sponsors in the House of Representatives, sheepishly trying to vindicate the false justification of this bogus document, called the Armenian 'Genocide' Resolution. I've been a veteran educator for many years, now a professor emeritus, retired recently. I hope you allow me to lecture you a bit on the essence of this 'genocide' issue, which you have been flounting around all these many years. I don't think you realize the severity and the gravity of the meaning of the word 'Genocide,' because, Congressman, if you did you would not toss it around like an old 'rag' and have it lose all of its inherent significance. I'm sure by now, you've been noticing my unorthodox approach in trying to reach a more susceptible corner of your intellect. By doing so, I hope to impress upon you, and indirectly prove to you, the fallacy of the Armenian claims.

According to the allegations of Armenians in this country, there existed a period of several years in the Ottoman Turkey when a state-sponsored policy of premeditated extermination of the Armenian citizens of the Empire took place. This premise of theirs indicts the leaders of that defunct government of carrying out a most monstrous crime against humanity,(hence the usage of the word GENOCIDE). However, what is rather curious is the fact that these accusers conveniently forget, or deliberately omit, the presence of a puzzling reality. If everything they claim were so, why then did the same cruel and heartless leaders not touch the remaining bulk of the Turkish-Armenians who lived side by side with the Moslem Turks in the central and western provinces of the same empire?

Have you ever posed this question to any of your constituents? Have you ever been bothered by its baffling implications? The group you represent today demands that the modern Republic of Turkey be held responsible for those alleged events which supposedly took place almost 84 years ago.

Do you really believe that our own government, the United States of America, be deemed answerable for, let us say, the massacres of the LITTLE BIG HORN, or THE WOUNDED KNEE or it should be tried for the tens of thousands of deaths resulting from the forced marches during the repatriation of the Indian tribes of the last century? Should the present government in Washington, D.C be damned for having placed the Japanese-Americans in holding-camps all through the war with Japan? Would you be willing to vote for the adoption of a bill to compensate each and every living Native-American and Japanese survivor of those unfortunate days? The Armenian-Americans want just exactly that kind of reparations.

As the end of the Second World War was approaching, German women and children, the descendants of those early Saxons that had been forced to march to the eastern frontiers, were fleeing before the Poles and Russians only to be incinerated in the deliberate fire storms of Dresden. Innocent lives were lost during that war on both sides. We can point to other tragic events in Bosnia, Rwanda, Siri Lanka, East Timor, etc., where on paper no official hostility exists today, whereas, in l9l5 there was a tragic war raging in all of Europe and in Anatolia. Two and one half million Moslem Turks, as well as thousands of insurgent, rebellious Armenians lost their lives unnecessarily. The Armenians in this country can not, and will not admit to themselves that some of their ancestors living in the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Turkey were, to repeat one more time, traitors and became victims of their own crimes.

Unlike the peace-loving Saxons in Charlemagne's time, whose only crime was their own religious beliefs, the remembrance of these Armenians will always live in perfidy. But, the descendants of those Armenians, who live in this country want not only to shift the crimes some of those Turkish Armenians committed then, onto the citizens and the government of the modern-day Turkish Republic of today, but also force the latter to accept the fact that there was a 'genocide' in Turkey and the citizens of the contemporary Turkish government apoligize for it. These dreamers want Turkey to pay reparations. They demand the restitution of 'lost' territories they claim were theirs, and impose several other ridiculous obligations, addressed to these successors of a defunct empire long since gone. Consequently, it is obvious that the Armenian 'Genocide' Resolution, devoid of its historical veracity, can only be called a disaster. Let us compare it to other calamities of equal aggravation.

Earthquakes, floods, tidal waves, tornados, hurricanes, mud slides, draughts, forest fires, blizzards, and avalanches.

The disasters enumerated above are of a natural kind, but the kind of disaster I was referring to earlier is a man-made one. While the protection against the natural ones may not be easy to come by, the man-made ones, on the other hand, can quickly be prevented. There is a simple method for stopping them. The best defense against them is the truth itself. Once the real facts are disclosed these man-made 'houses of cards' are bound to collapse.

Your Resolution has been defeated twice before, and it will again be repudiated by reasonable people, who will be able to see not only a small part of the picture, but the whole picture in its entirety, because it is an affront to a key ally of America, and to the descendants of the glorious nation, who taught the world the true meaning of the word 'tolerance.'

But the pitiable individuals you represent have been living every hour of each day of their mortal lives, just to be able to hate Turks. They've been trying to prop up an untenable lie, they, themselves fabricated eight long decades ago. The whole thing was devilishly concocted from some shamefully fraudulent reports which began to emanate from the office of Henry Morganthau. He was the US Ambassador in Istanbul in l9l4. He was a Jew. However, not being a Sefardic one, he did not have much affinity toward Turks and was not on good terms with the Ottoman Turkish Jewery. In l923 he wrote an autobiographical book. He called it ALL IN A LIFETIME. It didn't sell many copies. However, a review published in the New York Times then intimated a sense of remorse of conscience on his part, about the clamor that followed the false reports filed earlier by the Armenian civil service personnel working in the Embassy. His son, Henry A. Morganthau, Jr., the Secretary of the Treasury under Franklin D. Roosevelt, did not like to discuss the Armenian issues much. Nevertheless, when these lies were being invented, the grandfathers of today's Armenians were mere babies.

You, Congressman Bonior, and your constituents are trying to keep this dying subject on life support up to the day when the Armenian 'Genocide' Resolution is adopted. But until then, neither you, nor they, will mind if these accusations have been categorically repudiated by the likes of Admiral Mark L. Bristol, the American High Commissioner, or by eminent historian Arnold Toynbee, or by the investigatory arm of the then British Government, or the old League of Nations, or by more than 60 renowned US and international writers, historians, and finally by the recently de-classified archives of the old Ottoman Empire. Therefore, I shall remain convinced that none of the Armenians will ever lend credence to the following document. But hopefully you may, Congressman Bonior. The May l5, l99l issue of the Washington-based English language newspaper The TURKISH TIMES had a revelatory column which is being quoted below verbatim:

ARMENIANS ON ARMENIANS
A "Dense Atmosphere of Illusion"
And Services Rendered to the Russians

Ottoman Armenians had decided to betray their own government in l9l5 and stab it in the back by collaborating with the Czarist Russia, hoping to establish a separate Armenian state in Eastern Anatolia. The Armenian leaders played a gamble that cost both innocent Turkish and Armenian lives, and they lost this wild gamble, something they still cannot admit.

With such an adventurous leadership that played with the lives of their own people, such an admission should not come easy. We understand that perfectly well. But the truth needs to be told over and over again. There are Armenians who of course know the real story of the Turkish Armenian conflict of l9l5, but their voices of truth are suppressed today in the hollow din of the well-orchestrated anti-Turkish campaign.

We at the Turkish Times, will present these differing views on an occasional basis lest we forget how the Ottoman Armenian leaders betrayed their very own people as well as their government, the very same government that provided them all the opportunities in the preceding 600 years to excel at all levels of the Ottoman society in peace and security. Let us listen now to HOVHANNES KATCHAZNOUNI who was the Prime Minister of the Soviet Armenian Republic at that time:

"At the beginning of the fall of l9l4, when Turkey had not yet entered the war but had already been making preparations, Armenian revolutionary bands began to be formed in Trans- caucasia with great enthusiasm and, especially, with great uproar... "It would be useless to argue today whether our bands of volunteers had entered the field or not. Historical events have their irrefutable logic. "In the fall of l9l4 Armenian volunteer bands organized themselves and fought against the Turks because they could not refrain themselves from fighting. "This was an inevitable result of a psychology on which the Armenian people nourished itself during an entire generation that mentally should have found its expression and it did so... "We had created a dense atmosphere of illusion in our minds. We had implanted our own desires into the minds of others. We had lost our sense of reality and were carried away with our dreams... "We overestimated the ability of Armenian people, its political and military power, and importance of the services our people rendered to the Russians. And by overestimating our very modest worth and merit we were naturally exaggerating our hopes and expectations..." HOVANNES KATCHAZNOUNI.

The Armenian Revolutionary Federation, the DASHNAGTZUTIUN, has nothing left to do any more, New York, l955,p.5-7 *

The Prime Minister's statement was dated l955. The ASALA, a wing of the infamous DASHNAGTZUTIUN murdered 75 Turkish diplomats between the Seventies and Eighties, and they're still active and are co-operating with the Marxist-Leninist PKK Kurdish terrorists, who, like the Armenians, covet a piece of Turkish land.