In an article published by , Turkey’s top defense official Hulisi Akar argues that the mass killing and deportation of ethnic Armenians in the early 20th century Ottoman Empire was not an act of genocide.
Akar’s article was posted on April 21, three days before Armenian Remembrance Day was marked on April 24 and before Joe Biden became the first U.S. president to use the phrase “Armenian genocide” in an .
“Each year on this day, we remember the lives of all those who died in the Ottoman-era Armenian genocide and recommit ourselves to preventing such an atrocity from ever again occurring,” Biden said.
According to , Biden told the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on April 23, that he “intends to recognize” the massacres of Ottoman Armenians as genocide in his Remembrance Day statement.
Turkey, officially a U.S. ally and member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, does not recognize the Armenian genocide, and in a nationally broadcast TV speech on April 26, that Biden had taken a “wrong step,” and that his comments were “groundless and unfair.”
, Erdogan has denounced the accusation of genocide during World War I as “slander” against his country.
In his article, Akar argued that he was writing from the perspective of a history professor whose doctoral research was on a 1920 U.S. report on the Armenian situation titled “.” His piece in Real Clear Defense has been translated into Turkish and republished by all major media in Turkey with praise for its expert knowledge.
The report Akar relies on is from a U.S. military commission that was headed by , sent by President Woodrow Wilson to the region in 1919 to the Armenian situation.
Akar's article, headlined “Lessons from General Harbord,” claims that the deaths of Armenians were an unfortunate consequence of the Ottoman Empire’s dissolution but not a unique one, and that many other groups besides the Armenians suffered similarly during the war.
He also blamed the “controversy” around the issue on “propaganda” and a “smokescreen” created by the “pro-Armenian lobby.” Armenians in the U.S. and elsewhere have for decades pressed for the events to be recognized as genocide.
But the Harbord report, Akar wrote, “managed to see through the propaganda and the smokescreen and demonstrated objectivity along with intellectual honesty in its approach to the war-time relationship between the Ottoman Empire and its Armenian subjects.”
Yet while praising the Harbord report’s “objectivity,” Akar cherry-picked it to suit his argument, even contending that the “report and its annexes also help us in establishing the atrocities committed by the Armenians against other subjects of the empire.”
That is misleading.
As Akar tells it, Harbord’s report showed that "massive humanitarian crises” took place inside the Ottoman Empire “and in neighboring geographies” during its final period, “as was the case during the disintegration of other empires.”
“In fact, Ottoman Armenians lost their lives under the harsh conditions of the First World War, which is when relocation took place," he wrote. "Other Ottoman citizens also died because of epidemics and migrations, as well as acts of sedition spearheaded by gangs and armed groups that escalated as a result of the weakening of state authority."
Harbord could not have used the word genocide in the report: The term only came to international use after WWII, when the United Nations adopted the in 1948.
However, the Harbord report recounted the displacement and killing of hundreds of thousands, stating that Armenians were targeted for their race and Christian faith.
From the report:
The report went on to describe the selling of young Armenian girls and other abuses. Armenian genocide scholars the Harbord report as evidence of genocide.
Armenia’s deputy foreign minister Avet Adonts praised Biden’s move, the Washington Post reported, while the Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu firmly rejected it on Twitter.