Grief of all Anatolian people; Christian, Jewish, and Muslim

Dear Honorable Members of the House of Commons,

One-sided pro-Armenian narrative claims that one and a half million Armenians were deported, massacred, or marched to their deaths in the final years of the Ottoman Empire by Turks.

Although the figures reporting the total pre-World War I Armenian population vary widely, demographic studies prove that prior to World War I, fewer than 1,5 million Armenians lived in the entire Ottoman Empire. British, French and Ottoman sources give figures of between 1,200000 to 1,5 million. Only certain American and dubious Armenian sources claim a pre-war population larger than 1.5 million. Thus, the allegations that 1,5 million Armenians from Eastern Anatolia died must be viewed as grossly exaggerated.

Moreover, the post-war figures of Armenian population also clearly prove that a great portion of the Ottoman Armenians did not die as claimed. Boghos Nubar , the President of the Armenian National Assembly and the head of the Armenian delegation at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919-1920, declared that some 600.000 to 700.000 Armenians were relocated from Anatolia. And after the war 280,000 Armenians remained in the Anatolian portion of the occupied Ottoman Empire while 100,000 of Armenians had emigrated to other countries.  

Besides war related causes and intercommunal conflict perpetrated by both Christian and Muslim irregular forces, the totality of documents of the time thus far uncovered by historians verify that during the relocation of Armenians to Syria [an Ottoman province at that time] hundreds of thousands of Armenians had died on account of disease, famine and many other consequences of the war. 

With these in mind, even if the fabrications about the Armenian losses are corrected, the revised numbers will not tell us the exact manner of death of the citizens of Anatolia, regardless of ethnicity. They were caught up in both an international war and an intercommunal conflict and vengeful acts instigated by the Dashnaks – the irregular group from which today’s active Armenian Revolutionary Front (ARF) was born. This group aided and abetted the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA), killing more than 42 Turkish diplomats and their families as recent as the nineteen-eighties and promotes such dastardly acts against Turks and their families even today.

Additionally, the corrected numbers will not be the complete story of the 1915 events. Truth demands every side of the story to be told. If only one side of the tragedy is to be accepted while the other side is regarded as perpetrators of the same tragedy, this leads us, without a doubt,  into the realms of racial and religious discrimination and of double standards.

Each needless death, either Christian, Jewish or Muslim, is a tragedy. Equally tragic are the double standards designed to inflame discrimination and provoke hatred. 

The statistical information tells us that nearly 1,1 million Anatolian Muslims (Turks, Kurds) and Jews also perished because of the same war related events, and this should equally be acknowledged as a tragedy and suffering for all the other peoples. Although the evidence for this is overwhelming and confirms the over a million of loss of life an suffering, the actions of several countries and their Parliaments remember only the Christian deaths and suffering! 

What happened during this period cannot be considered solely the grief of the Armenians who were harmed and suffered. It is the grief and suffering of all Anatolian people, Christian, Jewish and Muslim. The politicians who ignore these facts sadly display their bias and discrimination against Turks and Turkish Nation.

The events of  1914-1919 constitute a horrible “war time tragedy” for humanity. Therefore, the pain of Anatolia triggered by the World War I of that period should be shared and, when required, mourned together. 

Yours sincerely,

Uluc Gurkan

Lecturer in Politics

www.ulucgurkan.net – www.twitter.com/Uluc_Gurkan

[email protected] – [email protected]

0090 312 4198777 – 0090 532 2180758

• Deputy Speaker-Turkish Grand National Assembly/TGNA (1995-1999)
• Vice President-Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe/PACE (2000-2002)
• Vice President–Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe/OSCE-PA(1992-1995) 
• Head of the Turkish Delegation-Parliamentary Assembly of the Western European Union/WEU-PA (1999-2002)

          Member- Turkish Grand National Assembly/TGNA (1991-2002)

          Middle East Technical University and Ufuk University (2003-….)