Morgenthau's "Story": A Blueprint for Racism?
Mustafa Artun - Of all the books used by the Armenian propagandists and their sympathizers to vilify Turkey, arguably the most often-quoted is Ambassador Morgenthau's Story by Henry Morgenthau who served as the American ambassador in Istanbul for twenty-six months from 1913 to 1916. First published in 1918, the book has been reprinted numerous times over the years. A new edition, edited by a leading Armenian propagandist, Peter Balakian, is being published this year with good deal of publicity fanfare. The book has been a standard reference for most of the so-called "scholarly" publications as well as journal and newspaper articles on the subject. The latest addition to the long list of publications that have utilized Ambassador Morgenthau's Story as if it were an and objective and factual account of the events in 1915 is Samantha Power's A Problem From Hell: America in the Age of Genocide which won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize in 2003. In her book, Power portrays Morgenthau as a heroic figure who strove to stop the killing of the innocent Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Turks. Equally important is the fact that whenever a resolution to condemn Turkey is introduced in state legislatures or at the U.S. Congress, Morgenthau's book is presented as prima facie evidence in support of the Armenian claims.

That Ambas-sador Morgen-thau's Story has been a powerful arsenal in the Armenian propaganda machine against Turkey in the U.S. is not surprising. After all, Morgen-thau was appointed by President Wilson to be the official representative of this country in the Ottoman Empire. Ambassadors are normally expected to provide factual, honest, and unbiased reporting about the countries where they serve.

Consequently, Ambassador Morgenthau's book, which seeks to indict the Young Turk leadership of having engaged in a systematic campaign of violence against the Armenians, carries the official stamp of credibility. What makes the book even more enticing for those who seek to slander Turkey is that Morgenthau's "story" includes lengthy passages about the author's alleged conversations with the leading Young Turk officials such as Talat Pasha where they confess their plans to annihilate the Armenians to the American Ambassador.

Although Morgenthau's book is widely quoted and used as an important and reliable source on the Armenian question, few seem to take notice its blatantly racist contents. In fact, Ambassador Morgenthau's Story is littered with the most appalling and demeaning characterizations of the Turks, their history and culture. For Morgenthau, the Turk is "psychologically primitive" (p.236) and a "bully and a coward" who can be "brave as a lion when things are going his way, but cringing, abject, and nerveless when reverses are overwhelming him" (p. 275)*. According to the Ambassador, the Turks "like most primitive peoples, wear their emotions on the surface" (p.195) and that the "basic fact underlying the Turkish mentality is its utter contempt for other races" (p. 276). Morgenthau describes the Turks variously as "inarticulate, ignorant, and poverty-ridden slaves" (p. 13), "barbarous" (p.147), "brutal" (p.149), "ragged and unkempt" (p. 276), and "parasites" (p.280). The Ambassador's unabashed hatred of all things Turkish leads him to make the following observation: "The descendants of Osman hardly resemble any people I have ever known. They do not hate, they do not love; they have no lasting animosities or affections. They only fear" (p.99).

Morgenthau's view of Turkish history and the treatment of non-Muslim communities in the Ottoman Empire offer further glimpses into his distorted and biased mindset. He notes, for example, "after five hundred years' of close contact with European civilization, the Turk remained precisely the same individual as the one who had emerged from the steppes of Asia in the Middle Ages" (p. 284). According to the author, when Turks conquered a territory, they "found it occupied by a certain number of camels, horses, buffaloes, dogs, swine, and human beings. Of all these living things the object that physically most resembled themselves they regarded as the least important" (p. 279). Even the millet system, long regarded by most historians as an important mechanism for peaceful coexistence among different ethnic and religious groups in the Ottoman Empire, does not escape the Ambassador's wrath: "The sultans similarly erected the several peoples" he writes "such as the Greeks and the Armenians into separate 'millets' or nations, not because they desired to promote their independence and welfare, but because they regarded them as vermin" (p. 280). In contrast to his utter disdain for the Turks, Morgenthau has nothing but praise for the Armenians. "The Armenians," he writes, "are known for their industry, their intelligence, and their decent and orderly lives. They are so superior to the Turks intellectually and morally" (p. 287). According to the author, the Armenians lived like "a little island of Christians surrounded by backward peoples of hostile religion and hostile race" (p. 288). And the Ambassador enthusiastically declares that like the Arabs who had revolted against the Ottomans in World War I, the Greeks and the Armenians "would also have welcomed an opportunity to strengthen the hands of the Allies" (p.227). Ambassador Morgenthau's Story stands as one of the remarkable documents of early 20th century-not for its value as an objective piece of historical writing, as the Armenian propagandists and their supporters claim, but for revealing the deep-rooted racist outlook of a person who managed to reach one of the highest and most prestigious positions in the U.S. government. It is telling that at a time when racism has become punishable by law in this country, a book that is filled with appalling racist remarks continues to be glorified in the American academia, intellectual circles, and legislative bodies by Armenians and their sympathizers determined to distort history and slander the Turks at any cost.

*All the quotes are from Henry Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau's Story (New York: Doubleday, Page and Company, 1918).