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Armenian, Assyrian and Hellenic Genocide News
Turkey desperate to keep the dead buried
by Paul Daley, The Age - 1 April 2001
Posted: Tuesday, April 03, 2001 03:45 am CST
It's no secret that Turkey wants to become a member of the European Union. It's also no secret that some EU member countries hold serious reservations about Turkey's human rights record.
But right now, Turkey's diplomats are focusing on their country's past as much as its present record. Specifically, they have mounted an international campaign against long-standing allegations that Turkey committed genocide against Ottoman Armenians between about 1910 and 1925.
Debate on this issue began to intensify throughout Europe late last year as opinion leaders and some politicians suggested that Holocaust Memorial Day should be extended to include those Armenians who died at the hands of the Turks in 1915 and 1916.
Turkey's attempts to rebut the allegations come despite well-documented eye-witness accounts and photographs (more on that later) which document the organised "re-settlement" and subsequent deaths of the Armenians during World War 1.
Turkey's embassies throughout the world say the allegations of genocide are being made by "Armenian radicals" who are "engaged in a worldwide defamation campaign against Turkey".
"Jews under Nazi Germany were law-biding, innocent citizens posing no threat to their own country. Ottoman Armenian militants, however, were armed combatants, rising against their own lawful government and inciting the Armenian population to support an invading army during World War 1 in Eastern Anatolia," the website of the Turkish Embassy in London informs us.
"This led to the relocation of the Armenians by the Ottoman Government to other provinces away from the zone of conflict."
It neglects to say, of course, that anywhere between 300,000 and 1.5 million Armenians died after relocation.
Among them were a young woman and two children, who were photographed by the German photographer, Armin T. Wegner, who was part of Germany's military mission to the Ottoman Empire. It is a deeply disturbing image: the emaciated woman lies naked, flanked one one side by a baby. On the other side, an older, similarly wasted child lies, mouth agape.
Wegner's photographs are among the archives of the Hulton Getty picture library in London. When debate reignited about the alleged genocide, the picture was published again. Turkey objected strenuously to the caption, which said the trio had been massacred.
Hulton Getty spokesman Brien Lautman said: "They questioned the authenticity of the caption on the image. We held a full investigation and we are satisfied, absolutely and completely, that the caption was accurate."
Dr Tessa Hofmann, of the Berlin-based Centre for Information and Documentation on Armenia, has been given the right to copies of Wegner's photographs relating to the Armenian genocide. She told me how Wegner came to take the photographs.
"In 1915 he accompanied Field Marshall von der Goltz Pasha from Constantinople to Baghdad. After troubles with his superiors he was dismissed and had to return to Constantinople. On his journey back, he had contact with Sister Beatrice Rohner from a German Protestant relief station at Aleppo. She told him about the starving Armenian deportees in the concentration camps.
"Wegner visited several such camps,took, illegally, photographs - there was a strict prohibition on photographing and (the) death penalty applied.
"Therefore the number of genocide photographs is relatively small ... Due to German military censorship on the Armenian genocide - Turkey was and is Germany's ally - Wegner met immense difficulties publishing during the war time.
"Our photograph collection has been used by numerous journalists, TV and film producers all over the world to document the Armenian genocide ... we intend to continue our work despite all Turkish declarations and threats."
Dr Hofmann now wonders if Turkey will take legal action to stop organisations such as hers and Hulton Getty - on whose website the pictures remain posted from passing the images around the world.
"I reckon this is ridiculous," she says.
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