Bulgarian Democracy and the Armenian Connection - 4
"The original Bulgars were Turkic tribes running away from the Mongols of Central Asia"
Ahmet Gursoy, Special to The Turkish Times (Part IV of IV) - After the massacre of Van in 1915, it was clear that the Special Forces established by the government were ineffective and the Ottoman army was spread too thin to fight against the Armenian terrorists. The new options had to be examined. On May 13, 1915, the prime minister's office issued a temporary law in which the proposed guidelines for the relocation of the Ottoman citizen who are "collaborating with the Enemy of the Nation" were described. The law stated that Armenians residing in Van Bitlis, Erzurum, Adana, Mersin, Kozan, Elazig, and Maras districts were to be relocated to the south and north borders of Van, the south and southeast region of Aleppo, and to the appointed areas of eastern Syria for their long-term protection.

The mortality of the Armenians during the relocation in World War I is an unknown quantity. In the 1919 Paris Conference, Armenian authorities were estimated to be 600,000. According to Justin McCarthy, the total Armenian population in Anatolia in 1912 was 1.465 million; after the war 881,000 survived, of which 500,000 went north to the present Armenia and 584,000 perished.(57) Turks did not start the bloodshed, they were simply responding to the Armenian atrocities, started in 1890 and continued until the massacre of Van in 1915. Relocation of the innocent Armenians were carried out to remove them from the war zone and to place them in a safe environment. It was a tragic event in some cases, but it was not genocide. On paper, every detail for the needs of human health and the protection of family wealth and well-being during the relocation were taken care of.

From the end of World War I to the birth of the Turkish Republic in 1923, the Armenian relocation activities followed the movements of the Allied occupation forces in Anatolia. As the allied armies started landing in late November 1918, the French army first took the port of Iskenderun and moved to Cilicia, a region that included the cities of Mersin, Adana, Maras, and Gazi Antep. The French army, having returned from the World War I, was decimated, and a nebulous adventure in the Middle East was not a national priority in France. For the Cilician operation a special unit containing mostly Algerians and Armenians was established in the Island of Cyprus under the command of General Louis Romieu. It was named "Armenian Legion" similar in the make up of the French Legion d' Orient.

The Cyprus operation originally started in 1914 by the British to mobilize their colonial armies for the Gallipoli campaign, but later changed hands in 1916 with the arrival of French forces to establish the Armenian Legion. For the Cilician operation, most of the recruits came from the Armenian lobby organized by the son of the former Prime Minister of Egypt, Boghos Nubar Pasha.

The initial landing by the Armenian Legion in November 1918 was so brutal and devastating, with clear atrocities perpetrated against the innocent civilians, like raping women, killing children, and burning villages, that the French General had to bring new French reinforcement in June 1919 and took most of the Armenian Legion back to Cyprus. Nevertheless, resistance by the local militia was tremendous and by summer 1921 the French government decided to abandon its Allies and signed a separate peace agreement with Turkish nationalists in Ankara. Despite of its brutal beginning, by the end of 1922 a total of 175,000 Armenians were departed to settle in Syria and Lebanon in an orderly manner from the port of Mersin by ships or by trains to Aleppo, while an American destroyer monitored the operation anchored at the bay of Mersin. The majority of the Armenians who left Cilicia with anger came from Eastern Anatolia (1919-1920) with hope of establishing an independent Armenia in the region, promoted by the lobbiest Gabriel Noradoungian an ex-Ottoman Foreign Minister of 1912, and promised by the Allies, also supported by the United States. After the French-Turkish armistice, Noradoungian went to see and convince Lord Curzon of England and French Premier Aristide Briand that the National Assembly in Ankara was nothing more than criminals, bandits, and Bolsheviks, without success.

Financial resources for arms and operational expenses, including salaries for the Armenian Legion, came largely from popular subscription campaigns, mounted throughout the war in the United States and Great Britain, nominally, intended to feed "starving Armenians."(58) The Treaty of Sévres, signed after the conclusion of the World War I in August 1920, charged the Ottoman government to hold trials for the war crimes in Turkey, with the creation of the tribunal by the Allies. Nearly 200 defendants were selected and some were sent to Malta for trials, and a year later were released by the British prosecutor based on the lack of evidence. After the establishment of the Turkish Republic, the Sévre treaty was replaced by the Lausanne Treaty, signed in July 1923, and a general amnesty for all the war crimes was declared.

In the Lausanne Peace Conference the topic of establishing a separate Armenia in the Eastern Anatolia (in addition to the one in Russian Caucasus) was discussed for more than three months and it was supported by the United States. At the end of the three months, once the American delegation realized that the Allied delegates had no intention of giving real backing to the Armenian State in Turkey, but would continue to use Armenians to achieve their own military and political goals while putting a show to satisfy the Armenian lobby, the American delegation left Switzerland with 5 million signatures in their hand, without waiting for the final resolution. The Armenian lobby still operates in Washington, DC, using every opportunity to embarrass the children of the young Turkish Republic in the eyes of the United States Congress. Ironically nearly one hundred years later, the new generations of both parties has no knowledge of what really did happen at the City of Van in 1915. Since September 11, the ASALA and the Armenian lobby is desperately trying to change their terrorist image of the 1980s by pursuing to build a museum in Washington, DC.

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