Ayntap 1915: Turkish historian publishes book on Armenian Genocide

Ümit Kurt, a Turkish historian specializing in Armenian studies, has released a new book exploring the history of the 1915 Genocide.

Ayntap 1915: Genocide and Villains, was printed by the publishing house Iletishim. What makes the piece of literature unique is the author's focus on the three masterminds, the detailed description of their past lives, and their role in the Armenian Genocide and subsequent life in Turkey, Agos reports.  

Kurt had the chance to talk to the descdentants of two. Mehmed Yasin Kutlugh's grandson, Mr Noyan (who talked to the historian), continued his ancestors' traditional denial of histoical facts, preferring instead to focus more attention on Kutlugh's “heroic deeds” and contribution to the Turkish state’s development.

Mr Noyan also avoided publicity, asking the author not to record the interview with him.

                             
But the conversation with Ali Jenan’s grandson appeared to have been more sincere and open, as he admitted his grandfather’s possible role in the confiscation of the property owned by the Ottoman-Turkish Armenians.

“The book isn’t an attempt to prove anything at all; I didn’t have such ambitions. That book is just an endeavor to give an understanding of the motivation and process that made those three characters – accused of such an atrocity - participants in the Genocide,” Kurt told the Turkish-Armenian publication.

The scholar also considered controversial the image of “savior” - often appearing in stories on the Genocide in the writings of many Turkish authors. The Turkish historian insists that those masses, often branded as “saviors”, were either guided by personal interests or acted under the influence of the circumstances surrounding them at the specific moments. He noted that many Muslims who saved Armenians in the 1890s stood in the first row of those who robed Armenians of property as early as in 1915.

“If you ever ask if there was anyone willing to save the Armenians in Ayntap, there certainly was, but I don’t know to what extent it is correct to call them saviors,” said the scholar.

Kurt had earlier published Priest Nerses Babayan’s dairy of Genocide survivors’ memories in a single volume.

In the book entitled Ayntap 1915-1922, Priest Babayan tells about the ungrounded arrests of many Armenians, the gang attacks against the Armenian quarters in Ottoman Turkish cities and  towns and the deportation and massacres of the local Armenian residents.

The priest, who lived in Ayntap until 1922, depicted the Armenian repatriates’ self-organized battle against the Turkish Army after the town’s seizure by French troops in 1918.