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[b]Swedish Archives Confirm: It was a genocide in 1915![/b]
Press Release
April 21, 2008Armenica.org
Uppsala,
[email protected]
www.armenica.org
Swedish Archives Confirm:
It was a genocide!
A recently conducted study at the Uppsala University has revealed highlyinteresting information in the Swedish Archives, which once again confirmthe researchers' view of the events in the Ottoman Turkey during the FirstWorld War: the Christian minorities, the Armenians in particular, weresubjected to genocide. The massacres in Ottoman Turkey during the First World War claimed thelives of approximately 1.5 million out of a world population of fourmillion Armenians, while over 250,000 Assyrians/Chadeans and equal numberof Pontic Greeks. In 1923, for the first time in over 2,500 years,Armenians no longer lived on 85 % of their fatherland. Thus, the Armeniangenocide was, in a sense, a successful genocide, acquiring theperpetrators an Armenia without Armenians. The conducted survey covers the period between 1915 and 1923 and includes,among others, reports which the Swedish Ambassador, Cosswa Anckarsvärd,and the Swedish Military Attaché, Einar af Wirsén, both stationed inConstantinople, sent to the Foreign Department (found in the NationalArchive) and the General Staff Headquarters (found in the War Archive) inStockholm, respectively. In total, about eighty documents were found withdirect relevance to the so-called Armenian Question, of which some areover-explicit in their message: the Turkish Government conducted asystematic extermination of the Armenian Nation. On July 6, 1915, Ambassador Anckarsvärd, writing to the Swedish ForeignMinister, Knut Wallenberg, concludes:
“Mr. Minister, The persecutions ofthe Armenians have reached hair-raising proportions and all points to thefact that the Young Turks want to seize the opportunity, since due todifferent reasons there are no effective external pressure to be feared,to once and for all put an end to the Armenian question. The means forthis are quite simple and consist of the extermination [utrotandet] of theArmenian nation [emphasis added].“ Anckarsvärd's reports until 1920persisted in the same insight. At several occasions, the Ambassador pointsout that “It is obvious that the Turks are taking the opportunity to, nowduring the war, annihilate [utplÃ¥na] the Armenian nation [emphasis added]so that when the peace comes no Armenian question longer exists.“ In alater report (1917) he underlines that the massacres are not clashesbetween the Muslim and the Armenian populations, but “that thepersecutions of Armenians have been done at the instigation of the TurkishGovernment [emphasis added]...“
As an explanation to the prevailing faminein Turkey during 1917, the Embassy Envoy Alhgren mentions the shortage ofworkers, which is claimed partly to be a result of “the extermination ofthe Armenian race [utrotandet af den armeniska rasen] [emphasis added]“.Major Wirsén's reports to the General Staff concur with Anckarsvärd'sanalysis. In 1942 Wirsén published his memoirs, entitled Minnen frÃ¥n fredoch krig (“Memories from Peace and War“), reflecting upon his time asSwedish Military Attaché in the Balkans and Turkey. In a chapter entitledMordet pÃ¥ en nation (“The Murder of a Nation“), Wirsén renders hisobservations of the Armenian massacres: “Officially, these [deportations]had the goal to move the entire Armenian population to the steppe regionsof Northern Mesopotamia and Syria, but in reality they aimed toexterminate [utrota] the Armenians [emphasis added], whereby the pureTurkish element in Asia Minor would achieve a dominating position.“ In theconclusion of this chapter he recalls his conversation with the TurkishGrand Vizier Talaat Pasha and notes: “The annihilation of the Armeniannation [emphasis added] in Asia Minor must revolt all human feelings...Theway the Armenian problem was solved was hair-raising. I still can see infront of me Talaat's cynical expression, when he emphasized that theArmenian Question was solved.“ The mentioned quotations are a fraction of the information presented inthe study. In addition to the mentioned archives of the Foreign Ministryand the General Staff, the reports from the Swedish missionaries and theSwedish newspapers were also included in the study and concur with thesame view. The surveyed documents are mainly in regard to the ArmenianQuestion, but the data bed indicates that other Christian groups, such asGreeks and Syriacs, were affected by the same fate. The study clearly emphasises the concept of “bystander“. While the worditself implies that the bystanders do not participate in the genocide,some contend that they are far from just a neutral viewer to the tragedy,but passive participators in the annihilation. The British statesman andpolitical thinker Edmund Burke's statement captures the essence of thebystanders to genocide: “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evilis for good men to do nothing.“ The documents clearly indicate that theSwedish Government was well informed about the state-orchestratedextermination of the Armenians. They also disclose that the Government,fully in accordance with the policy of a small state, consciously chosenot to intervene in the matter, neither during the massacres nor afterwhen the League of Nations suggested Sweden as a mandate power in Armenia.While resorting to isolationism during the period of the implementation ofthe genocide, Sweden followed the general stream, in particular that ofthe Major Power's, during the post-war period when the question ofsecuring the future of the Armenian Nation was discussed. Sweden, as allother states, chose to secure its national interests rather than standingout from the rest by advocating Armenia's right and the question ofpunishing the perpetrators of the Armenian genocide. The present-daySwedish Government does not seem to be willing to become involved in thequestion either. Just last fall, the Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, duringan interpellation in the Swedish Parliament, refrained from officiallyrecognising the 1915 genocide, partly by referring to “the need ofadditional research about what really transpired in the Ottoman Empire.“The surveyed documents should at least quench that need; the officialreports from the Swedish Ambassador and the Swedish Military Attaché inConstantinople are unambiguous: Armenians were subjected to genocide. The study in its whole is included in a master thesis paper which will bepresented in the Higher Seminar at the Uppsala University's Department ofHistory. It will also be available at
Vahagn Avedian,
Editor of Armenica.org and Master Degree Student at UppsalaUniversity, Uppsala, Sweden.
