Talk:Aram Andonian

Comment

I just created this article and hope that we can expand more on Andonian's role concerning the telegrams. This article is partial and I hope we can also include some of Andonian's personal life. Cheers --MarshallBagramyan 05:36, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

I will expend this article once I have some time. Fad (ix) 23:43, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Hi, just dropped by while doing some general wiki cleanup. You have a link to Armenian, which is a disambiguation page, and should not be linked to directly. I'm not sure if you are referring to his ethnicity or his nationality. If the former, you should use [[Armenians|Armenian]]; if the latter, [[Armenia|Armenian]]. (If either is correct, I would probably choose the former.) Thanks. -- Xtifr 11:18, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Never mind, someone else cleaned it up, tx. :) -- Xtifr 23:49, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Authenticity

"Among others, Turkish professors have asserted that Andonian's telegrams are in fact forged..." Not only Turkish professors have asserted this. Look what Guenter Lewy has to say about the documents: >>Turkish authors are not alone in their assessment that the Naim-Andonian documents are fakes. Dutch historian Erik Zürcher, writing in 1997, argued that the Andonian materials "have been shown to be forgeries." British historian Andrew Mango speaks of "telegrams dubiously attributed to the Ottoman wartime minister of the interior, Talât Pasha." It is ironic that lobbyists and policymakers seek to base a determination of genocide upon documents most historians and scholars dismiss at worst as forgeries and at best as unverifiable and problematic.<< For further reading: http://www.meforum.org/article/748#_ftnref40 .

Why read Middle east Forum, which is a advocacy group that accepts funds from Turkey, when one can read the full Zucher quote which ME Forum and Levy cut out:

"We have to conclude that even if the Ottoman government as such was not involved in genocide, an inner circle of the CUP, under the direction of Talat, wanted to solve the eastern question by the extermination of the Armenians and it used relocation as a clock for that policy." (zucher page 116, 2004 edition)

Indeed Zucher never examined the telgrams authenticity issue himself. He simply is noting Levy..

Zucher also notes many many materials exist, including documented and corroborating undisputed memoirs of Turkish officials.

And: >>For example, the alleged thirty-one telegrams of Talât Pasha contained in the Naim-Andonian volume, some of which order the killing of all Armenians, are rejected as crude forgeries not only by Turkish historians but also by almost all Western students of Ottoman history. Hilmar Kaiser, cited by Dadrian and the one exception to this rule, did say documents from the Ottoman Ministry of the Interior "confirm to some degree" two telegrams, but he concluded that "further research on the ‘Naim-Andonian' documents is necessary."<< http://www.meforum.org/article/895

Again Middle East Forum, hardly credible.

An essay by a historian becomes less credible because it was published on an ME forum? Would you be happier if a list was provided of all the western publications that this same historian has been featured in? Were the publishers of this historians book also an advocacy group that accepts funds from Turkey? Is not the Zoryan Institute, for who Dadrian was a director, an advocacy group? Is Dadrian not a self-proclaimed recognition advocate? Can we not post multiple Western historians criticising Dadrian for using evidence selectively, wilful mistranslations, assertions not supported by the source documents, misleading use of elipses and otherwise arguing like a prosecutor seeking conviction rather than a truth seeking historian?

Did Dadrian not in fact claim that these documents had been authenticated by the German court (as this article initially tried to do before it was called on it, and after resistence and a revert, as can be seen on this discussion page) - when in fact the record of that case shows no authentication occured?

You can at best provide some sort of flimsy motivation that the ME forum would have cause to favour Turkey - and even if that were true, all they are guilty of is publishing the work of a historian that supports some Turkish assertions. They never wrote the work, and the historian in question has been widely published internationally making the same claims.

In that case of Dadrian, we can go beyond that motive and demonstrate that he has in fact made untrue claims about these documents, intentionally or unintentioally (although it would be difficult to believe he wrote a paper on these documents without having seen the Court transcript). If we can discard the ME forum, we can certainly discard Dadrian.

Even Dadrian's Zoryan Institute fellow, Taner Akcam accepts "There are important grounds for considering these documents fake"

The section relating to authenticity rather brushes over just how vast the weight of opinion against the authenticity of the telegrams are - to a degree it seems to try to minimalise it, using only the term 'among others' to refer to the vast array of international scholarship that discards the documents as crude forgeries, while finishing up with Dadrian's defence of his use of them.

Dadrian, the present director of the Zoryan Institute, claims that they were authenticed by a German court when, as Lewy points out, the stenographic record published in 1921 shows otherwise they were withdrawn as evidence before any authentication was attempted. Other Armenian campaigners have used the same ploy, notably Peter Balakian in his book Burning Tigris - of which Norman Stone wrote "There is one mistake which really blows Balakian’s effort sky high. He relies on a forgery that was exposed as such over eighty years ago, the Naim-Andonian documents." Stone was referring to the fact that British officials at the Tribunal dismissed these as forgeries generated in Paris in 1920 by Aram Andonian.

Erich Feigl describes his meeting with a previous director of the Zoryan Institute, Gerard Libaridian:

Since it seemed reasonable to assume that Libaridian knew that the papers were forgeries, I did not want to waste a single word on the subject. There were so many other, more interesting things to talk about. But remarkable enough, he stuck with Aram Andonian's book, and its "documents". Finally I had to say, "But Doctor Libaridian, you know as well as that these 'Andonian papers' are forgeries!" I will never forget Dr.Libaridian answer or his facial expression as he replied simply and briefly to my reproach:

"And?"

Feigl is not exactly credible. He is not a scholar. He is noted in Turkish publications as "Prof" but holds no professorship, no peer reviewed publications anywhere. He is a film maker that has worked on projects for the government of Turkey.

Again with the 'not exactly credible' - the only source on this page that, by virtue of verifiably false claims made about the documents, is not credible is Dadrian. Yet anyone who questions him are dismissed as not exactly credible. The bias here is shocking.

"Armenian historian Vahakn Dadrian has argued that the points brought forth by Turkish historians are misleading and has countered the discrepancies they have raised."

Dadrian used the same 'counter' that was attempted on this page in the paragraph relating to the German court - he claimed that they had been authenticated during the court case. As the transcript of the case shows, they were never entered into evidence and never authenticated.

So his counter was at best, the result of poor research and at worst a bare faced lie.

Again, the paragraph implies that only Turkish historians dismiss the authenticity of the telegrams. Dadrian and Balakian have in fact been criticised for using these documents in their work by multiple Western historians.

German Court

"These telegrams were also used in the trial of Soghomon Tehlirian, who assassinated Talat Pasha in Berlin, Germany on March 14, 1921. The introduction of these documents in court help acquit Tehlirian; albeit on grounds of temporary insanity due to the traumatic experience he had gone through during the Genocide."

As described under the Authenticity discussion, these documents were never introduced as evidence. The motion was withdrawn. Whilst I will leave the issue of authenticity, which is an issue of a biased representation of the debate, for discussion, I am removing the above statement immediately as it can be empirically demonstrated as false by the court records published in 1921.

Wikipedia relies on the threshold of verifiability, not fact. News articles at the time stated that the documents themselves indeed were submitted to the court. I'll attach a citation to go along with it.--MarshallBagramyan 23:00, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Newspaper reports can provide a degree of verification that the documents were submitted. The court recorts can provide absolute verification that the newspaper reports were wrong and they were not entered. However, my good faith has been depleted by such a pointless line of argument that it is better I withdraw. Keep your article and your agenda as it is. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.145.232.135 (talk • contribs) 06:20, 4 December 2006 (UTC).

This article evidently proclaims a large bias on it's author's part. It cites works of authors known for botched scholarship (Dadrian and Balakian), proclaims the indisputable authenticity of documents believed by many credible historians to be forgeries, and the author has not even acknowledged this when it was pointed out in the above discussion. The fact that he or she deliberately overlooks these statements is a blazing signal of his or her prevalent agenda or personal bias.

I made a change

I reverted a change, in which somebody put in that Talaat Pasha was the alleged mastermind of the Armenian Genocide, this is an established, incontrevertible historical fact that cannot be disputed or argued against so I removed the word "alleged" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.174.223.63 (talk) 07:46, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Biographic article of Aram Andonian

Seemsclose's deleting the chapter about the memoirs of Naim Bey is well done. We need to rewrite here a proper biographic article about Aram Andonian. We can refer shortly to The Memoirs of Naim Bey [in the original Armenian edition: Մեծ Ոճիրը; The Great Crime]. Otherwise it will become disproportionate. And I suggest that the WikiProject Turkey banner is moved to he Memoirs of Naim Bey. I cannot imagine (up to now) that Turks might be interested in Aram Andonian's life and accomplishments except the Memoirs. Apocolocynthosis (talk) 00:02, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

 Done WikiProject Turkey banner so moved.  --Lambiam 11:21, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Tanks a lot! Apocolocynthosis (talk) 13:42, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Working for the Young Turks ?

Did Aram Andonian really work for the Young Turks ? Is it possible to give a source for this information ?

--Moumine70 (talk) 10:57, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

No answer and no reference for two months, I removed the sentence. --Moumine70 (talk) 14:31, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, I missed the question. If it is true that Andonian "served in the department of military censorship", as the article states (without source), then presumably this was the department of military censorship of the Turkish (Ottoman) government, so in that case he worked for the Turkish government, which at the time was in the hands of the Young Turks – or what became of them when they were not so Young anymore. So "Young Turks" was apparently used as a metonym for the Turkish government. At least, that is, I presume, what the creator of the article meant to convey by this phrase. I see that at creation time the article did reference a source:

A Crime of silence : the Armenian Genocide by the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal. London [England] : Zed Books ; Totowa, New Jersey : US distributor, Biblio Distribution Center, c1985.

I did not check when and why this was removed. I don't have access to that book, and I don'r want to (re)add references I can't check.  --Lambiam 12:27, 20 March 2008 (UTC)