Ibrahim Kurtulus ‘SLAMMED’ New York Post for Racism

NEW YORK, NY

Ibrahim Kurtulus Letter (Turkish-America Community Activist):

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Hagia Sophia in Istanbul ( Ayasofya )
Racism at the New York Post – My letter to New York Post

Michelle Gotthelf, Editor-in-Chief
Sean Giancola, CEO
The New York Post

Dear Ms. Gotthelf, Mr. Giancola and Others of the New York Post (& News Corp),

Greetings from your fellow New Yorkers, I write as a community activist in begin apart of several hundred thousand Turkish-Americans from the New York tri-state region.

Ms. Gotthelf, you have charmingly written on your Twitter page that “News is my jam!,” and the fact that you have impressively worked for two decades at our hometown newspaper would appear to support that contention. This implies you must be beholden to the Journalists’ Code of Ethics, which may principally be summed up as: 1- “Be objective: check your personal biases and emotions at the door,” and, 2- “Be truthful: double-check your facts and the credibility of your sources.” Very much also: “No story is fair if it omits facts of major importance or significance. Fairness includes completeness.”

That last one especially needs to come into play when the factual systematic extermination campaigns — that was indeed an “S,” as in plural — conducted by the Armenians are ignored. That’s going to sound preposterous for the bigoted and the brainwashed, of course, but the “innocent” Armenians factually did away with 529,000 Ottoman “Turks,” including Jews, from 1914-20 and beyond, something hardly anyone knows about (or worse, cares to know about) because 1) Genocide is all about politics, and 2) Turks don’t count as human beings.

(Once the Russians penetrated so deeply between 1914 to 1916, almost the entire eastern region of today’s Turkey was in the hands of the Russians and their Armenian allies. See this map from p. 118 of an Armenian book. The “Turkish” men were all drafted into the army, and the ones left behind were women, children and old men, complete easy pickings for the massacring Armenians, over the course of six years and longer. A 1919 report — suppressed by the U.S. government — of two Turk-hostile Americans, Niles and Sutherland, who investigated on-the-spot.)

The unscrupulous “genocide scholars” also avoid mention of a second systematic extermination campaign committed by Armenians, against the Turkic people called “Tartars” at the time (also including Jews), many known today as Azerbaijanis; when Russia conquered today’s Armenia in 1828, some 80% of the population was Turkic/Muslim, and the CIA Fact Book will inform today Armenia, the most Jew-hating country in the region, is almost 100% “racially pure.” There was also a third campaign the Armenians participated in, when they were often used as death squads in the 1919-22 extermination efforts of invading Greece, referenced below.

Once the one-time genocide believer Prof. Bernard Lewis investigated, he learned that “a massive Armenian armed rebellion against the Turks.. began even before war broke out, and continued on a larger scale,” concluding, “There is no evidence of a decision to massacre. On the contrary, there is considerable evidence of attempt to prevent it.”

The British looked for evidence everywhere between 1919-21 for the abortive Malta Tribunal, meant to be the first Nuremberg. All that was found amounted to hearsay and forgeries, and practically all that is presented as “evidence” today was rejected by no less than the British, the ones who were planning upon the extinction of a Turkish nation. (Under the helm of Prime Minister Lloyd “the Turks are a human cancer” George.)

“Gotthelf” is a Jewish surname. There was a reason why the historian Cecil Roth wrote: “Jewish people must always recall the Ottoman Empire with gratitude.” Turks have arguably been history’s greatest rescuers and protectors of the Jews, from 1324 until the Holocaust. In contrast, the only others in history besides the Nazis who attempted a systematic extermination of the Jews were Armenians. This would be as opposed to episodic killings, as with the Russian pogroms, which Armenians were also only too happy to participate in. WWI Armenians were “bent on destroying anything and anybody remotely Jewish and/or Muslim.” Finally, the Armenians joined the actual Nazis in WWII, continuing with their killings of Jews.

“Giancola” is an Italian surname. If we may put aside Carthage, where an entire civilization was made to cease to exist, Italy did away with perhaps nearly one million Ethiopians, as well as killing many Libyans, interestingly the subject of a movie starring Anthony Quinn, entitled Lion of the Desert. Those who make selective “genocide” choices (immorally without care for evidence) are in fact telling us (in the “Italian” case) that Ethiopians, Libyans (and Carthaginians) are not as worthy as Armenians, and that Italians are more humane than bloodthirsty Turks.

Why does the genocide industry, while hiding behind “morality” and “human rights” to avert criticism, never speak of Italy’s crimes? Similarly, why never, or almost never, France for Algeria, the Dutch for Indonesia, Portugal for India, post-conquistador-Spain for Cuba, the USA for the Philippines, Belgium for the Congo, British-ruled Australia for Tasmania which resulted in a virtual extinction, as well as Britain and Russia for cases too many to be mentioned here. (As one example, there was a reason why President Obama, another “Armenian genocide” affirmer, removed Churchill’s bust from the Oval Office.)

The second most popular case of genocide in the 1960s was Vietnam. Legitimate historians and other scholars who defend the truth (sixty-nine historians from our country who attempted to set Congress straight on yet another absurd “Armenian genocide” resolution, in 1985) then started getting targeted, among others, by 1970s-90s Armenian terrorists (through violence and death threats; FBI chart pointing to the second worst terror group in our nation between 1980-86). These terrorists killed 70 and wounded 524 in 239 global acts of violence for the cause of “genocide,” in the knowledge that Turk-hating Westerners would be showering them with sympathy. Crime paid, and the strategy worked; now when the word “genocide” is mentioned, we only think about the Holocaust and the Armenian tale.

The charlatans known as “genocide scholars” (frauds for beginning with conclusions, instead of arriving at conclusions) chased the rest of the historians away with smear campaigns, to enjoy the clear field they do today (“Armenian genocide” articles that vouch for how there is a consensus of opinion among historians neglect the key fact these agendists are not “historians.” No real historian can agree on this hateful conclusion; true scholars, as true journalists, care about nothing but the facts).

Armenian Assembly of America Exec. Dir. Brian Ardouny, Washington Times, Oct. 16, 2007, admitting the lack of evidence: “We don’t need to prove the genocide historically, because it has already been accepted politically.” The primary reason why the hatred-inducing charge has been so accepted is because people have been conditioned to just know in their hearts that Turks cannot refrain from killing, as the worst negative racial stereotype in existence (and the one that is still being permitted, since the prejudice has been so irretrievably instilled) has taught Westerners, over the course of centuries.

Those who vouch for an “Armenian genocide” without care for the evidence are reinforcing this worst of all stereotypes; nothing creates hatred more effectively than comparisons with Nazis, and the idea is to target the “denier” Turks and those of Turkish heritage of today. When these hateful advocates also leave out the Armenians’ genocidal crimes, they make one “race” out to be better, and worse, than another “race,” which is the definition of racial supremacism.

We are contacting you, Ms. Gotthelf and Mr. Giancola, because you have allowed for the publication of an extremely hatred-inducing article featuring a headline that begins with, “Turkish Islamist Tyrant.” The reference is to Erdogan, who certainly has been guilty of abuses (let’s not forget there was a 2016 coup, which would have led any nation to adopt excessive measures), but if he were a “tyrant,” a June 2019 Time Magazine article could not have written: “Turkey is not Russia. It’s a legitimate multiparty democracy with genuinely contested elections.” In addition, let’s say someone who dislikes Mike Pence uses “Christian” as a curse word to describe him. Would that be correct?

After decades of doing everything our nation has asked for (always there whenever we needed a hand; Turkey was the first nation to sign up for the Gulf War, participated in Bosnia and Afghanistan, critically warded off the Soviets for decades, and saved U.S. regiments from annihilation in Korea, what no other ally had done or has done), Turkey refused to join our illegal war against Iraq, in 2003.

Suddenly, whatever goodwill there was (and there wasn’t much; Americans are still influenced by 1977’s hit movie, Midnight Express) toward Turkey vanished, and the “Terrible Turk” hatred surfaced with a vengeance. This hatefulness reached a fever pitch late last year, when Turkey intervened in Syria to check those who have killed so many Turks (40,000, proportionate to 160,000 Americans; when 3,000 of our own were killed by terrorists, history changed), the PKK-dominated Kurds, as well as to repatriate at least some of the 3.7 million whom the humanitarian Turks have been taking care of at a cost of tens of billions (for 2018, by April, our country took in eleven). Gone was the fact that our other ally on the ground, Turkey, also fought ISIS, and the nation’s opinion-molders reacted in hysteria; for example, CNN’s Erin Burnett proclaimed the intent was to “murder” the Kurds. Sen. Bernie Sanders stated the idea was “slaughter,” and Mayor Pete Buttigieg actually used the word, “genocide.”

This article was written by Toufic Baaklini, the president of “In Defense of Christians,” and he is out-of-control with hatefulness. He began his article with the mindless boilerplate claims, “From 1915 to 1923, the Ottoman Empire, the forerunner of modern Turkey, systematically killed more than 2 million Christians — 1.5 million ­Armenians and half a million (other Christians).”

If only the New York Post believed in fact-checking, it would have been quickly discovered that, putting the necessity to prove “intent” aside, his claim was mathematically impossible. See this Frenchman’s statistics (Cuinet spent twelve years compiling them); 1.5 million as the prewar Armenian population was the consensus for the period, as with New York Times wartime propaganda articles; see these two written by Armenians, at 1.2m and 1.1m — and one million survived, even according to “genocide scholar” and racial supremacist extraordinaire, Samantha Power, and this Armenian champion (James Gerard)’s report from the U.S. archives vouched for 1.2 million survivors in 1922. (The most powerful Armenian lobby in the nation, the ANCA, has unwittingly admitted to 1,132,000 survivors; see page 2. U.S. Senate Resolution, Nov. 10, 1919 – Doc 151, p. 8 : 1,293,000 Armenians alive and accounted for.)

Here is the math: 1.5 million prewar minus at least 1.0 million survivors cannot equal 1.5 million dead. The half-million remainder mainly perished from famine and disease, causes killing the majority of everyone else. The Post allowed for this venomous man to use the word, “systematically”; did anyone check what the evidence was? (Does the Post regard “say-so” as evidence?)

The Congressional resolutions (the ones which passed) that was written by the Armenian lobbies (and that our politicians signed with their eyes closed; an analysis has been attached) have also extended this imaginary “genocide” until 1923, five years after WWI had ended in 1918 and with key regions of the defeated empire occupied by the Allies; in other words, the Ottomans were no longer in charge. (Genocides cannot happen by themselves; someone needs to be in charge.)

Greece took advantage of the country’s postwar devastation by invading in 1919-22. The “Christian” Inter-Allied Commission concluded (May 23, 1921; p. 535) in areas “occupied by the Greek army, there is a systematic plan of destruction of Turkish villages and extinction of the Moslem population.” There were 1.3 million fewer Turks and Muslims in Western Anatolia by the end of 1922, and 640,000 were civilians who died as a result of Greek atrocities. (Numbers: “Death and Exile,” McCarthy, 1995.) Even Raphael Lemkin, the “father” of genocide, classified the Greek invasion as a genocide. So the Turks were getting annihilated, and yet those as this awful bigot the N.Y. Post has legitimized instead chose to portray Turks in their Western-familiar role of annihilators.

Arthur Moss and Florence Gilliam in “The Turkish Myth,” The Nation, June 13, 1923, quoted Colonel Haskell of the American Red Cross: “America should feed the half million Turks whose hinterland was willfully demolished by the retreating Greeks, instead of aiding the Greeks and Armenians who are sitting around waiting for America to give them their next meal. The stories of Turk atrocities circulated among American churches are a mess of lies. I believe that the Greeks and not the Turks are barbarians.”

What Toufic Baaklini does not mention is that the other Christian groups, Greeks and Assyrians, traitorously rebelled almost as badly as the Armenians had done. (Military conflicts disqualify the genocide label, per the 1948 U.N. Convention on Genocide; the formula must be “predator vs. prey.”) He went on to write half of the Christian population of two specified regions were “slaughtered or died of famine.” They were not “slaughtered”; he unethically has no evidence.

There were certainly Armenians and others who were massacred, and yet the Ottomans could not have been the culprits, because during 1915-16 the Ottomans took to court 1,673 and executed ten percent of decided cases of murderers who acted outside the control of the central government. (For which even The N.Y. Times lent reluctant evidence, dishonestly using the word “rebel” to describe one of the three Young Turk leaders, so that their propaganda may keep making sense. Compare with how we punished the sole officer tried for Vietnam’s My Lai.) The Christians mostly died of famine (and disease), but so did most of everyone else. (Ironically, the killer of many Armenians were their own allies, Britain and France, who conducted a “genocidal” naval blockade with the express purpose of starving the citizenry.)

(The bankrupt “Sick Man” could not even adequately take care of the only line of defense between national life and death; three times as many Ottoman soldiers died of famine and disease, than from combat.)

Toufic Baaklini is a Lebanese, perhaps of Arab heritage. If he is going to claim the Armenians were victims of a genocide, next he may claim the ones we all know about who also rebelled (from the film, Lawrence of Arabia), were victims of a genocide as well. (Yet he probably will not, because the traitorous Arabs who died in battle were mainly Muslims. Only Christian lives matter, to Toufic Baaklini.)

Mr. Baaklini’s line, “the erasure of Turkey’s Christian heritage” (untrue; faithful tourists by the throngs keep paying visits to Christian sites in Turkey that have been carefully preserved; how many Muslim sites remain in Armenia, Greece and Serbia?) had a link to another Post article, which one would assume “proved” the implication of that line, the way in which inhuman Turks deliberately performed this “erasure.” (Ms. Gotthelf and Mr. Giancola, we are all aware the New York Post has published many hatred-inducing “Armenian genocide” articles through the years, while race-preferentially ignoring so many other cases of historical inhumanities; these two articles serve only as the tip of the iceberg, so the Post has much to be ashamed of.) This other article was written by Carl Anderson, the CEO of the Knights of Columbus, another “Christian defending” organization.

Mr. Anderson’s concerns over how Christians were targeted by ISIS barbarians (albeit their main victims were Muslims) were the concerns of all. Yet he shamefully couldn’t resist depicting Turkey as nearly indistinguishable from ISIS. He wrote, “Turkey launched an incursion into northeast Syria, home to many Christian communities,” as though the aim of these Turkish barbarians was to get rid of Christians! (The both of you were in charge at the time this mid-November 2019 article was permitted publication; Ms. Gotthelf and Mr. Giancola, do you honestly believe what Carl Anderson wrote was a fact? You could not be that racially prejudiced… can you?)

The next line that the two of you allowed for this xenophobe to write was: “Ankara has protested the recent bipartisan congressional resolution to recognize the Turkish genocide against Armenians and other Christians…” (why did he choose the word “Turkish,” instead of the correct word, “Ottoman”? When he refers to the Roman Empire, does he say, “Italian”? The reason is so that his hatred may be transferred to today’s Turks, and those of Turkish heritage. And why shouldn’t “Ankara” have protested, not that they made any real show of it? If Mr. Anderson were to be falsely accused of a crime, would he not have the right to protest?), “…and it has done little to alleviate concerns that its actions in the region will restage elements of those dark days when it comes to Christians and other regional minorities.”

That last line was simply unpardonable. What he’s getting at is that Terrible Turks have a gene that predisposes them to act homicidally, thus reinforcing the worst negative racial stereotype in existence. Would the two of you, Ms. Gotthelf and Mr. Giancola, have permitted this terrible bigot to have used the N-word?

(Carl Anderson has a law degree; Toufic Baaklini has an honorary law degree. Neither care for the necessity for evidence, nor for the basic legal tenet of “innocent until proven guilty.”)

Anderson followed up with, “Most Christians in northeastern Syria are either the descendants of people who fled from the Turks during and after World War I.” (Notice again his usage of the word, “Turks,” instead of “Ottomans.”) This was a giant falsehood; the Christians (and they were almost all Armenians) did not “flee,” but were temporarily relocated primarily to the area known as the inhabitable Fertile Crescent (the propaganda is fond of claiming the Armenians were sent to the “desert”), because the Ottoman Empire happened to own that territory.

Armenian champion Henry Morgenthau himself recorded in his private diary entry of September 26, 1915 that some 500,000 (One of his consuls, J. B. Jackson, confirmed that figure, in Feb. 1916) displaced Armenians “were fairly well satisfied… have already settled down to business and are earning their livings.” (556,000 was the total for relocated Armenians, per demographer, Prof. Justin McCarthy, 2015 book, Turks and Armenians, p. 152. Armenian leader Boghos Nubar’s estimate was 600,000-700,000. Note how the propaganda from other articles revels in how almost all died from so-called “death marches.”)

Armenia’s first prime minister, Hovhannes Katchaznouni, 1923 manifesto: “We had embraced Russia wholeheartedly”; the confession for treason comes straight from the horse’s mouth. The Ottomans handled the Armenians’ treason in a far more humanitarian manner than our country probably would have during the WWI era. In the next world war, our nation also temporarily relocated some of our WWII “Axis” citizens, with the differences that the ones we targeted were innocent, and imprisoned, and the USA was not in danger of extinction. The other difference is, no one has equated the USA’s temporary relocation with a “genocide.”

Since the bigoted and the brainwashed have come to believe these “innocents” no longer populate Turkey because they were all massacred and “deported” (that word means banishment outside of a country’s borders, which is the way WWI Britain, France and Russia cruelly handled their suspect populations, “just in case” they may turn traitor), this excerpt of the aforementioned 1919 report concluded that the Armenians’ unbelievable crimes “makes it impossible for [the] two races to live together at the present time.” In other words, the Armenians who left chose to leave, for having had the bad judgment to follow their terrorist Dashnak leaders, and they left in a leisurely fashion, since their wartime allies were in de facto charge of the defeated Ottoman nation; they were not thrown out.

(These two biased Americans who were sent by the Near East Relief to aid Armenians, Niles and Sutherland, could not have known how forgiving a people the Turks are; any Armenian who chose to leave would be allowed to return, per the Gumru and Lausanne Treaties.)

The Turks get the blame for the postwar Greek-Turkish population exchange, because Turks are to be blamed for everything. The reality is, the Turks protested when the Greek prime minister Venizelos insisted on the exchange, in part to make up for the tremendous wastage of Greek men from Greece’s ill-fated 1919-22 invasion. (He also wanted to take advantage of the Allies’ grants for refugees.) There were bigger fish to fry with the difficult Lausanne negotiations, and the Turks finally consented. The fact is, Turkey preferred to hold on to their Greeks.

Ms. Gotthelf and Mr. Giancola, when you enable for xenophobes as these two to write articles without care for facts, you not only make a shambles of the Journalists’ Code of Ethics, you betray your responsibility as decent human beings. (Not to mention your patriotism; creating or furthering racial “animus” violates the Fourteenth Amendment.)

If some of those reading are Trump-supporters, if you were to publish articles that are truthful about what really happened in the WWI era (a one page FACTS report has been attached), not only would you be serving the cause of truth and justice (assuming such niggling matters mean anything to the ones behind the New York Post), you would have a powerful weapon. You would be exposing the “liberal hypocrisy” of those who cry “racism” at everything, and yet those such as Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, Joe Biden, AOC, Elizabeth Warren and many others (certainly, hatred knows no partisanship; the other side of the aisle does not go lacking, with those such as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio and many other Turk-despising conservatives), or the most zealous “Armenian genocide” advocates, are the greatest racial supremacists. (Frankly, these Democrats are worse than card-carrying racists, because the latter cannot influence general society.)

Ms. Gotthelf, Mr. Giancola and others of the New York Post: telling the truth about this subject is not simply a matter of journalistic responsibility; the matter goes beyond Armenians. The politicians work hand-in-hand with the haters; here is a 2014 example, where a biased Gov. Jerry Brown was pressured into signing an “education bill,” teaching Californian public schoolchildren propaganda, and racial hatred. These “education” bills faithfully duplicate the claims of Armenian propaganda word-for-word; facts simply do not matter, and it’s unconscionable.

The public schools are expected to pass along information that is based upon the facts. Not only are the facts being deviated from, virtual blank slates as young as ten-years-old or younger are being taught there exists a “race” of alleged humans who are monsters at heart.

The “genocidists” have caused immense harm to U.S. and world societies by injecting “genocide education” into the public schools. (The ridiculous logic is that this is supposed to lead to “genocide prevention.”) Perhaps a third of the nation’s public schools are now engaged in indoctrinating impressionable ten-year-olds (here’s Michigan’s example, among many others), and the ending stated goal of the recently passed “Armenian genocide” resolutions is to make this insanity a national policy.

Our city and state have been affected, as well. A Turkish-American family contacted us last year because they were traumatized by an “Armenian genocide” homework assignment that was given to their child in Brentwood High School (Long Island, New York), making Turks out to be unqualified for the human race; fortunately, the principal and social studies head met with us and understood what they had done was very wrong. A woman we know from Western Europe, now in her fifties, still has nightmares because of Holocaust footage that was shown in a pre-college classroom. (She has learned that opening the window at night reduces the chances for recurrence.)

The contamination of the schools should not be acceptable even with a real genocide. We do not need George Orwell, as he has written, to tell us that history and politics can never mix. Prof. Norman Finkelstein, the author of The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, has correctly stated: “Holocaust studies are a nonsense. It has nothing to do with scholarship and everything to do with politics.” (Also racism.) “Genocide education” is not just about falsehoods, politics, and racism. It is a form of violence.

Does anyone reading have children attending the public schools? How could anyone who is proud of being an American tolerate such evil? (Imagine the schools being allowed to teach the worst stereotypes of blacks, or Jews.)

As representatives of the Fourth Estate, those of you at the New York Post have the responsibility to call out corruption. Please find the strength to summon the Edward R. Murrow within you, and take on “Senator Joe McCarthy.” You must expose the malevolence caused by the world of genocide, those who are not interested in “morality,” but political and financial rewards, as well as spreading their racial hatred, at the expense of powerless people.

Underneath the firsthand testimony of a Russian officer which is directly below, the letter to the Post’s author and leader of the Knights of Columbus has been included; a reading of this letter is requested.

Sincerely,

Ibrahim Kurtulus

(Here is an idea of how the “innocent” Armenians behaved; “529,000” is not just a number, but is comprised of actual human beings who were not thought of as human beings back then, and are reprehensibly not considered as such even in our more “enlightened” times.)
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Hearsay reports from preferred “Christian” Armenians that biased missionaries and foreign consuls accepted at face value is what comprises the endless volumes of massacre stories the “Armenian genocide” industry has compiled. (All of which were rejected by the British as evidence, while conducting their 1919-21 investigation for the abortive Malta Tribunal, intended to be the first Nuremberg.) In contrast, the way in which Armenians behaved came from those who often served as firsthand witnesses, and who were their allies, those without conflicts-of-interest. Here is one such report, by a Russian officer (as even the mass-murdering Dashnak Garo Pasdermadjian, from his 1918 propaganda book, Why Armenia Should Be Free, admitted: “The Armenians resolved to aid the Russian armies in every possible way”).

“While leaving Erzurum, I saw on the road of Kars more than 70 dead bodies riddled with bullets on the head, the neck and the chest as well as wounds from bayonets in the region of the heart and the abdomen. …Now I shall endeavour to draw a picture of February 26, the night of nightmare and blood. The Armenians entered, several times by force, the houses of the Turks and seized the male section from the age of 11 up to very aged, and formed them in columns and led them with blows of whips and rifles, outside the town, where they massacred them in the most savage manner. Once I asked them where they were taking the Turks and if it was to make them work? ‘No’ replied the soldiers with an air of satisfaction ‘we shall probably kill them.’

…Cries of children and lamentations of Turkish women were heard everywhere in the town. The Armenian soldiers were walking about in groups in the town and were continually forcing open the doors of Turkish houses. Finally, came the terrible night that shook the spirit of desolation. The blood congeals at the thought of the horror of this night. The cries increased. One should like to go to the rescue of the unfortunate victims, but when one goes there, one receives everywhere the impertinent answer “do not interfere” which is accompanied with threats.

I heard the cries of women. I opened the door and climbing up the stairs I entered a room. Here I saw seven Armenian soldiers fully armed, one of them holding a candle in his hand, some searching for what they could find and some were massacring in a savage manner. There were three unveiled Turkish women, down whose faces blood was trickling. Their blouses were torn showing their breasts covered with blood. On their sides, children were there so terrified that they appeared dead with fear. A child cried out in an extraordinary voice opening the eyes full of tears. One of the Armenians prevented it from crying, but the terrified child understood nothing and kept on crying. Then the Armenian delivered a blow on the head of the child with his rifle and the child stopped crying and fell on the floor. When the mother saw the child in this condition she began to sob. Then he slaughtered the child with his bayonet and landed a blow on the head of the mother and bayoneted her. The other women seeing this began to cry with their hands over the eyes. The children folded their arms and awaited their turn with bent heads, but at once a dagger was aimed at my abdomen. I thought it advisable to retire.

…Everywhere the same horrible picture that breaks one’s heart was to be seen, the same cries, the same moaning of women and children. The victims of these crimes have been so numerous that I take the liberty of saying that only 250 Turks, who could hide themselves, have been left alive in the whole town.

…The Armenians set the town on fire. They also burned non-military buildings and the house of the American Consul, M. Stempleten. Now and then we heard rifle reports; they completely massacred the remainder before the arrival of the Turkish Army. All the roads leading from the gate of Kars to Hasankale were covered with massacred Turkish bodies, despoiled of their dresses, and the noses and ears of a great number of them had been cut off…”

(First Lieutenant Abgral, Military Commandant of Erzurum, March 3, 1918. Russian official document, 18 March 1920, No. 22, Muslim Outlook, London.)

• Ibrahim Kurtulus
• Turkish-American
• Turkish-American Community