According to him, these persecutions were instigated by the Ottoman authorities, who aimed at intimidating the Greek population in order to cleanse them from these regions.
Akçam quotes several inconsistent figures on the number of Greeks who had fled the Ottoman Empire, some of which are grossly exaggerated. Basing his claims on a book by Cemal Kutay, Akçam quotes Eşref Kuşçubaşı, a prominent Special Organization (SO) agent, as stating that “in 1914 alone” the number of the deported “Greek-Armenian population in the Aegean region, concentrated and settled especially in the coastal areas,” was 1,150,000 (p. However, there is no other source that could verify and corroborate a population movement on such a grand scale “in 1914 alone. ” In his footnote, Akçam further asserts that “Celal Bayar, who presents detailed passages from Kuşçubaşı’s memoirs, gives separate figures for specific cities.
The total of these is the same as the figure above 1,150,000″ (p. However, the total given in Bayar’s memoirs is not 1,150,000, but 760,000.
More critically, according to a different work by Cemal Kutay, the figures in question were actually taken from a book prepared by Athens University and were inflated. 6 At the end of the third chapter, Akçam discusses the relationship between the persecution of Greeks and the deportations of Armenians in a section titled “Was the Greek Relocation of 1913-1914 a Prelude to the Armenian Cleansing of 1915-1917?” (pp. His contention is that there was a connection between the two cases in terms of both the “organization” and the “cadres” that implemented them. However, Akçam is able to identify only “three persons” who, according to him, were involved in both cases.
Even when one takes it at face value, his thesis is still not fully convincing and would require more empirical research than he offers. More important, of the three names that he provided in support of his thesis, two are problematic. One of these is Şükrü (Kaya) Bey, who later You’re not the earliest who is looking for the very best document dissertation organizations phd dissertation database looking for a customized economical e-book review writing services headed the Ottoman “Directorate for the Settlement of Tribes and Refugees” and was involved in the relocation of Armenians.
Akçam produces no evidence demonstrating that he was involved in either the persecution or the migration of Greeks, focusing instead on the fact that Şükrü Bey had been a member of the Ottoman delegation that conducted negotiations with Greece in the summer of 1914 conceing the proposed exchange of minorities (p. However, when World War I broke out, this project had not been realized. Akçam’s other example is “Pertev (Demirhan) Pasha,” who, he asserts, was involved in the deportation of Greeks in weste Anatolia and would later take part “in the deportation and the murder of Armenians” in the Sivas region (p.
Here Akçam confuses Major General Pertev (Demirhan) Pasha, the commander of the 4 th Army Corps, with Lieutenant Colonel Pertev Bey, the deputy commander of the 10 th Army Corps in Sivas. When Colonel Pertev Bey was in Sivas, 7 Pertev (Demirhan) Pasha was actually in Buca, İzmir. To support his claim of Pertev Bey’s involvement in the deportation and murder of Armenians in Sivas, Akçam refers to an article by the Armenian scholar Vahakn N. Dadrian, purportedly describing “the mission” of Pertev Bey (p.
Although Dadrian’s article confirms that Colonel Pertev Bey served in Sivas, it contains no evidence about “the mission” or, Pertev Bey’s involvement “in the deportation and the murder of Armenians. ” 10 Thus, the author’s argument that there was a connection between the two cases remains unconvincing. The fifth, sixth and seventh chapters, which constitute the longest part of the book as well as its main subject, are devoted to the relocation of Armenians.
Akçam’s main argument is that the policies adopted against the Armenians were aimed at their annihilation and that the documentary evidence from the Ottoman archives confirms this.