Armenian Genocide - Quotes

Talat Pasha: 6/1/1915 – “Turkey is taking advantage of the war in order to thoroughly liquidate (grundlich aufzaumen) its internal foes, i.e., the indigenous Christians, without being thereby disturbed by foreign intervention.”

“What on earth do you want? The question is settled. There are no more Armenians.”

Jemal Pasha: “800 000 Armenian deportees were actually killed... by holding the guilty accountable the government is intent on cleansing the bloody past.” I am ashamed of my nation”

Enver Pasha: 5/19/1916 – “The Ottoman Empire should be cleaned up of the Armenians and the Lebanese. We have destroyed the former by the sword, we shall destroy the latter through starvation.”

“You are greatly mistaken. We have this country absolutely under our control. I have no desire to shift the blame onto our underlings and I am entirely willing to accept the responsibility myself for everything that has taken place.”

Prince Abdul Mecid: I refer to those awful massacres. They are the greatest stain that has ever disgraced our nation and race. They were entirely the work of Talat and Enver. I heard some days before they began that they were intended..

“I went to Istanbul and insisted on seeing Enver. I asked him if it was true that they intended to recommence the massacres which had been our shame and disgrace under Abdul Hamid. The only reply I could get from him was: It is decided: It is the program.”

Damad Ferid Pasha: He described the treatment of the Armenians as; “A crime that drew the revulsion of the entire humankind.”

Mustafa Arif: 12/13/1918 – “Surely a few Armenians aided and abetted our enemy, and a few Armenian Deputies committed crimes against the Turkish nation... it is incumbent upon a government to pursue the guilty ones. Unfortunately, our wartime leaders, imbued with a spirit of brigandage, carried out the law of deportation in a manner that could surpass the proclivities of the most bloodthirsty bandits. They decided to exterminate the Armenians, and they did exterminate them.”

Mustafa Kemal “Ataturk”: 8/1/1926 – “These left-over from the former Young Turk Party, who should have been made to account for the millions of our Christian subjects who were ruthlessly driven en masse, from their homes and massacred, have been restive under the Republican rule.”

German Quotes:

Hans Freiherr von Wangenheim: 6/17/1915 – Deportation of the Armenians from their homes in the vilayets of Eastern Anatolia, and their resettlement in other regions is implemented cruelly... it becomes obvious that deportation of the Armenians arises not only from military necessity, the internal minister Talat Bey told about it honestly to Doctor Mortsman, who is employed at the Empire Embassy now. Talat said: “The Sublime Porte intends to make use of the world war for cleaning the whole country from internal enemies, the local Christians, so that foreign countries won’t hinder doing it by their diplomatic interference. This measure will serve to the interests of all allies of Turkey, especially the Germans...”

Count Wolff-Metternich: 7/10/1916 – “In its attempt to carry out its purpose to resolve the Armenian question by the destruction of the Armenian race, the Turkish government has refused to be deterred neither by our representations, nor by those of the American Embassy, nor by the delegate of the Pope, nor by the threats of the Allied Powers, nor in deference to the public opinion of the West representing one-half of the world.”

Adolf Hitler: 8/2/1939 – “I have placed my death-head formations in readiness – for the present only in the East – with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space (Lebensraum) which we need. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”

British Quotes:

Viscount James Bryce: 10/6/1915 – “The massacres are the result of a policy which, as far as can be ascertained, has been entertained for some considerable time by the gang of unscrupulous adventurers who are now in possession of the Government of the Turkish Empire. They hesitated to put it in practice until they thought the favourable moment had come, and that moment seems to have arrived about the month of April.”

Viscount James Bryce: 5/11/1918 – “The Armenian massacre was the greatest crime of the war, and the failure to act against Turkey is to condone it... ...the failure to deal radically with the Turkish horror means that all talk of guaranteeing the future peace of the world is mischievous nonsense.”

Lord Robert Cecil: 11/16/1915 – “I think it may be said, without the least fear of exaggeration, that no more horrible crime has been committed in the history of the world. This is a premeditative crime determined on long ago. It was a long-considered, deliberate policy to destroy and wipe out of existence the Armenians in Turkey. It was systematically carried out. It was ordered from the above..”

Winston Chuchill: “In 1915 the Turkish Government began and ruthlessly carried out the infamous general massacre and deportation of Armenians in Asia Minor. There is no reasonable doubt that this crime was planned and executed for political reasons.”

American Quotes:

Henry Morgenthau Sr.: 1/1/1919 – “When the Turkish authorities gave the orders for these deportations, they were merely giving the death warrant to a whole race; they understood this well, and, in their conversations with me, they made no particular attempt to conceal the fact. I am confident that the whole history of the human race contains no such horrible episode as this. The gr6eat massacres and persecutions of the past seem almost insignificant when compared to the sufferings of the Armenian race in 1915.”

Ronald Reagan: 4/22/1981 – “Like the genocide of the Armenians before it, and the genocide of the Cambodians which followed it, ... the lessons of the Holocaust must never be forgotten.”

Russian Quotes:

S. D. Sazonov: I had to refer to the unprecedented sufferings of this unfortunate nation before. Under the favourable control of the allied Germany, the Turks evidently intend to fulfil their long-standing dream to exterminate the Armenians which do not submit to the influence of the Muslims and the hinder the plans of Germany to subdue the Turkish Empire in economy and politics...

Envoy Smirnov from Cairo: 6/25/1915 – “Cruelties committed against the Armenians in Syria and neighbouring vilayets, violations, massacres and very often mass slaughter of the population of the Armenian villages are constantly repeated; families are cruelly separated, wives are separated from husbands, children are separated from parents, and all of them are exiled in various directions. Especially the Armenian clergy are pursued cruelly; the priests are haunted, tortured, their nails are pulled out.”

Israeli Quotes:

Yossi Beilin: 4/27/1994 – “It was not war. It was most certainly massacre and genocide, something the world must remember... We will always reject any attempt to erase its record, even for some political advantage.”

Other Quotes:

Valery Brusov: 1916 – “Turks continued their previous policy. They would not stop to commit massive and most awful massacres that even Leng Timur would not dare to do.”

Prof. Stanley Cohen: 12/1/1995 – “The nearest successful example (of collective denial) in the modern era is the 80 years of official denial by successive Turkish governments of the 1915-17 genocide against the Armenians in which 1,5 million people lost their lives. This denial has been sustained by deliberate propaganda, lying and cover-ups, forging documents, suppression of archives, and bribing scholars.”

Prof. Colin Tatz: 1/1/1996 – “The Turkish denial (of the Armenian Genocide) is probably the foremost example of historical perversion. With a mix of academic sophistication and diplomatic thuggery of which we at Macquarie University have been targets, the Turks have put both memory and history into reverse gear.”

Orhan Pamuk: Feb/2005 – “ one million Armenians were killed in these lands and nobody but me dares to talk about it.”

Rep. Adam Schiff: 2007 – “The legacy of the Armenian Genocide is woven into the fabric of America. So let us call genocide, genocide. Let us not minimise the deliberate murder of 1,5 million people. Let us have a moral victory that can shine as a light to all nations.”

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 1111