The Memoirs of Naim Bey

According to Andonian, the documents were collected by an Ottoman official called Naim Bey, who was working in the Refugees Office in Aleppo, and handed by him to Andonian. Each note bears the signature of Mehmed Talaat Pasha, the Minister of Interior and later Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire. The contents of these telegrams "clearly states his intention to exterminate all Armenians, outlines the extermination plan, offers a guarantee of immunity for officials, calls for tighter censorship and draws special attention to the children in Armenian orphanages."Permanent Peoples' Tribunal. A Crime of silence: the Armenian genocide. London: Zed Books, 1985 The telegrams remain in coded form and are written in Ottoman Turkish.

The overall picture emerging from these narrations points to a network of the extermination for most of the deportees.Dadrian, Vahakn. The Naim-Andonian Documents on the World War I Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians: The Anatomy of a Genocide. International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 18, No.3, August 1986, p.1 It overwhelmingly confirms the fact of what British historian Arnold J. Toynbee (LSE, University of London) called "this gigantic crime that devastated the Near East".The Viscount Bryce, The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, 1915–1916: Documents Presented to Viscount Grey of Fallodon by Viscount Bryce, with a Preface by Viscount Bryce. The Armenian Atrocities: The Murder of a Nation. Hodder & Stoughton and His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1916, Miscellaneous No. 31. p.653.

{{cquote|One day the following order came from the Minister of the Interior:

{{blockquote|Although the extermination of the Armenians had been decided upon earlier than this, circumstances did not permit us to carry out this sacred intention. Now that all obstacles are removed, it is urgently recommended that you should not be moved for feelings of pity on seeing their miserable plight. But by putting an end to them all, try with all your might for obliterate the very name ’Armenia’ from Turkey.The Most Fearful Genocide in the History of the Human Race by Edmond Kowalewski, Page 5}}

{{blockquote|A new and awful order arrived from the Ministry of the Interior. The Government commanded that the life and honour of the Armenians should be destroyed. They no longer had any right to live.}}}}

File:Bahaeddin Şakir telegram 4 July 1915.png telegram of 4 July 1915: "Have Armenians who were deported from there been eliminated? Have those harmful elements who were distanced [from there] through deportation been liquidated or simply deported?"{{sfn|Akçam|2018|pp=17–18}} The original was found by Taner Akçam in 2017.{{sfn|Akçam|2018|pp=17–18}}{{cite news |title=Recently Discovered Telegram Reveals Evidence For Armenian Genocide |url=https://www.npr.org/2017/04/24/525441639/recently-discovered-telegram-reveals-evidence-for-armenian-genocide |access-date=14 December 2020 |work=NPR.org |language=en}}]]

In 1983, the Turkish Historical Association published a now discredited work titled "Ermenilerce Talat Pasa’ya Atfedilen Telgraflarin Gercek Yüzü" by Şinasi Orel and Süreyya Yuca.{{Citation needed|date=April 2021}} In the introduction to "The Talat Pasha Telegrams: Historical Fact or Armenian Fiction", its English-language edition published in 1985, Orel and Yuca wrote that the term "genocide" and the term "massacres" were being wrongly applied to characterize the Armenian genocide (which its authors describe as an Armenian "claim" and a "calumny directed against Turkey"), and that the documents contained within The Memoirs of Naim Bey were forgeries that had been, for more than 60 years, used as the basis for those charges of genocide and massacre.Şinasi Orel and Süreyya Yuca, "The Talat Pasha Telegrams: Historical Fact or Armenian Fiction", Nicosia, 1986. [http://www.eraren.org/index.php?Lisan=en&Page=YayinIcerik&IcerikNo=179]

The French historian Yves Ternon who convened at the 1984 Permanent Peoples' Tribunal contends that these telegrams however, "were authenticated by experts…[but] they were sent back to Andonian in London and lost."Permanent Peoples' Tribunal. A Crime of silence'', 1985

Historian Vahakn N. Dadrian argued in 1986 that the points brought forth by Turkish historians are misleading and countered the discrepancies they raised.Dadrian, Vahakn. The Naim-Andonian Documents on the World War I Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians: The Anatomy of a Genocide. International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 18, No.3, August 1986, p. 550

Scottish historian Niall Ferguson, professor of history at Harvard University, senior research fellow of Jesus College, University of Oxford, and senior fellow of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and Richard Albrecht among others also point to the fact that the court did not question the authenticity of the telegrams in 1921–which, however, were not introduced as evidence in court–and that the British had also intercepted numerous telegrams which directly "incriminated exchanges between Talaat and other Turkish officials",{{cite book|last1=Ferguson|first1=Niall|author-link=Niall Ferguson|title=The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West|date=2006|publisher=Penguin Press|location=New York|isbn=1-59420-100-5|page=[https://archive.org/details/warofworldtwenti00nial/page/179 179]|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/warofworldtwenti00nial/page/179}} and that "one of the leading scientific experts, Vahakn N. Dadrian, in 1986, verified the documents as authentic telegrams send out by [...] Talat Pasha". He adds:

{{cquote|"These flaws involve miscounting, misdating, misconversion of dates from old to new style, and careless editing, despite the availability of manifold resources, including staff assistance provided by the Turkish Historical Society—which in the chaos of the armistice were neither available nor affordable by either Naim or Andonian. Besides being incidental rather than central, such problems are endemic to the cumbersome nature of the material itself.

The argument of falsification has been found to be untenable, since the few instances on which the argument is predicated merely involve irregularities. Irregularity is not coterminous, however, with forgery. Forgery presupposes skill, caution, and above all a measure of sophistication geared to avoiding mistakes. The presence and easy detection of such defects in the material under review mitigate against that charge. Indeed, no forger of any value would have produced material so incomplete and so flawed with glaring imperfections; these could have been easily avoided by anyone disposed to forge. Furthermore, a government apparatus known for its chronically erratic methods of transactions cannot be held exempt from such irregularities. Moreover, one is dealing here with highly secret transactions in the midst of a consuming “Great War,” initiated and directed by a political party that relied on diversions and camouflage for the pursuit of its secret designs; irregularity is an integral part of such a mentality."}}

Historians Hans-Lukas Kieser and Margaret Lavinia Anderson wrote in 2019 that Dadrian's rebuttal to the charges of forgery "remains convincing".{{cite book |last1=Kieser |first1=Hans-Lukas|last2=Anderson|first2=Margaret Lavinia|title=The End of the Ottomans: The Genocide of 1915 and the Politics of Turkish Nationalism |date=2019 |publisher=Bloomsbury Academic |isbn=978-1-78831-241-7 |page=7 |language=en|chapter=Introduction}}

Turkish historian Taner Akçam mentions similarities between the telegrams published by Andonian to extant Ottoman documents.{{cite book|last1=Akçam|first1=Taner|author-link=Taner Akçam|title=The Young Turks' Crime Against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire|date=2013|publisher=Princeton University Press|isbn=978-0691159560|page=254}} In a book published in 2016, named “The Naim Efendi Memoirs and Talat Pasha Telegrams”, he affirmed the authenticity of the memoir and the telegram.{{cite web|author=Estukyan, Vartan|url=http://www.agos.com.tr/en/article/16694/are-talat-pasha-telegrams-real|title=Are "Talat Pasha Telegrams" real?|publisher=Agos|date=2016-10-07|access-date=2019-06-23}} - Turkish version: "[http://www.agos.com.tr/tr/yazi/16694/talat-pasa-telgraflari-gercek-mi Talat Paşa telgrafları gerçek mi?]" -- An abridged version of this interview, translated by a different person, is at: “[http://armenianweekly.com/2016/10/11/akcam-memoirs-telegrams/ Akçam: The Authenticity of the Naim Efendi Memoirs and Talat Pasha Telegrams]” in: The Armenian Weekly, October 11, 2016.

{{update|date=December 2020}}

{{ill|Şinasi Orel|tr}} and Süreyya Yuca claimed in their 1983 book The Talât Pasha "telegrams": historical fact or Armenian fiction? that Naim Bey did not exist, and his memoir and the telegrams were forgeries. According to Turkish historian Taner Akçam, their claims "were some of the most important cornerstones of denying the events of 1915" and "the book became one of the most important instruments for the anti-Armenian hate discourse".{{cite news |date=11 October 2016 |title=Akcam: The Authenticity of the Naim Efendi Memoirs and Talat Pasha Telegrams |work=The Armenian Weekly |url=https://armenianweekly.com/2016/10/11/akcam-memoirs-telegrams/ |access-date=26 November 2020}} Akçam wrote a book, Killing Orders, in order to debunk the claims of Orel and Yuca and prove that the telegrams were authentic. In 2017, Akçam was able to access one of the original telegrams, archived in Jerusalem, which inquired about Armenian liquidation and elimination.{{cite news |last=Arango |first=Tim |date=22 April 2017 |title='Sherlock Holmes of Armenian Genocide' Uncovers Lost Evidence |work=The New York Times |location=United States |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/22/world/europe/armenian-genocide-turkey.html |access-date=24 April 2017}}
{{cite news |author= |date=24 April 2017 |title=Recently Discovered Telegram Reveals Evidence For Armenian Genocide |work=All things Considered |publisher=National Public Radio |location=United States |url=https://www.npr.org/2017/04/24/525441639/recently-discovered-telegram-reveals-evidence-for-armenian-genocide |access-date=24 April 2017}}
{{cite news |last=Mandell |first=Ariane |date=23 April 2017 |title=Lost Evidence of Armenian Genocide Discovered in Jerusalem Archive |work=The Jerusalem Post |location=Israel |url=http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Lost-evidence-of-Armenian-Genocide-discovered-in-Jerusalem-archive-488694 |access-date=24 April 2017}}

Guenter Lewy, a political scientist and genocide denier, also states that the telegrams form the "centerpiece" of "the case against the Turks", that the authenticity of the Naim-Andonian documents "will only be resolved through the discovery and publication of relevant Ottoman documents", and calls Orel and Yuca's work a "painstaking analysis of these documents" that makes "any use of them in a serious scholarly work unacceptable".Guenter Lewy The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide, University of Utah Press 2005, pp. 65-73 About this position David B. MacDonald wrote that Lewy is content to rely on the work of "Turkish deniers Şinasi Orel and Sureyya Yuca": "Lewy's conception of shaky pillars echoes the work of Holocaust deniers, who also see Holocaust history resting on pillars... This is a dangerous proposition, because it assumes from the start that genocide scholarship rests on lies which can easily be disproved once a deeper examination of the historical 'truth' is undertaken".{{cite book|last1=MacDonald|first1=David B.|author-link=David Bruce MacDonald|title=Identity Politics in the Age of Genocide: The Holocaust and Historical Representation|url=https://archive.org/details/identitypolitics00macd|url-access=limited|date=2008|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-0-415-43061-6|page=[https://archive.org/details/identitypolitics00macd/page/n152 140]}}

Other opinions include Dutch professor Erik-Jan Zürcher (professor of Turkish studies at Leiden University);{{cite book |last= Zürcher |first= Erik-Jan |title= Turkey: A Modern History |url= https://archive.org/details/turkeymodernhist00zrch |url-access= limited |edition= Revised Edition (Hardcover) |date= September 23, 2004 |publisher= I. B. Tauris |isbn= 1-85043-399-2 |pages= [https://archive.org/details/turkeymodernhist00zrch/page/n129 115]–116 |quote= The Armenian side has tried to demonstrate this involvement, but some of the documents it has produced (the so-called Andonian papers) have been shown to be forgeries.}} Zürcher does however point to many other corroborating documents supporting the Andonian Telegrams assertion of core involvement and premeditation of the killing by the central CUP members.{{cite book |last= Zürcher |first= Erik-Jan |author-link= Erik-Jan Zürcher |title= Turkey: A Modern History |url= https://archive.org/details/turkeymodernhist00zrch |url-access= limited |edition= Revised Edition (Hardcover) |date= September 23, 2004 |publisher= I. B. Tauris |isbn= 1-85043-399-2 |pages= [https://archive.org/details/turkeymodernhist00zrch/page/n129 115]–116 |quote= From the eyewitness reports not only of German, Austrian, American and Swiss missionaries but also of German and Austrian officers and diplomats who were in constant touch with Ottoman authorities, from the evidence given to the postwar Ottoman tribunal investigating the massacres, and even, to a certain extent, the memoirs of Unionist Officers and administrators, we have to conclude that even if the Ottoman government was not involved in genocide, an inner circle of the CUP, under the direction of Talat, wanted to solve the eastern question by the extermination of the Armenians and it used relocation as a clock for that policy."}} Scholars who share revisionist opinions about the Andonian documents include Bernard Lewis (Professor Emeritus of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University and Genocide denier), who classifies the "Talat Pasha telegrams" among the "celebrated historical fabrications", on the same level than The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East, London, Phoenix Paperbacks, 2005, p. 480. Andrew Mango (a biographer of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk) who speaks of "telegrams dubiously attributed to the Ottoman wartime Minister of the Interior, Talat Pasha",Andrew Mango Turks and Kurds, in Middle Eastern Studies 30 (1994), p. 985 Paul Dumont (Professor of Turkish studies at Strasbourg University) who stated in one of his books that "the authenticity of the alleged telegrams of Ottoman government, ordering the destruction of Armenians is today seriously contested","La mort d'un empire (1908-1923)", in Robert Mantran (ed), Histoire de l'Empire ottoman, Paris: Fayard Publishers, 1989, p. 624 Norman Stone (Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey), who calls the Naim-Andonian book "a forgery";Norman Stone, "Armenia and Turkey", Times Literary Supplement, nº 5298, October 15, 2004; [http://www.spectator.co.uk/essays/all/269381/part_4/what-has-this-genocide-to-do-with-congress.thtml "What’s this ‘genocide’ to do with Congress?"], The Spectator, October 21, 2007. {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110212181922/http://www.spectator.co.uk/essays/all/269381/part_4/what-has-this-genocide-to-do-with-congress.thtml |date=February 12, 2011 }} and by Gilles Veinstein, professor of Ottoman and Turkish history at Collège de France, who considers the documents as "nothing but fakes"."Trois questions sur un massacre", L'Histoire, April 1995.

• The Memoirs of Naim Bey: Turkish Official Documents Relating to the Deportation and the Massacres of Armenians, compiled by Aram Andonian, Hodder and Stoughton, London, ca. 1920
• Documents sur les massacres arméniens, Paris, 1920 (incomplete translation by M. S. David-Beg)
• Մեծ Ոճիրը (The Great Crime), Armenian language edition, Hairenik, Boston, 1921

Note: Although the Armenian edition was published after the other two versions, historian Vahakn Dadrian states that the Armenian text constitutes the original that Aram Andonian wrote back in 1919. Taking into account the delay in its publication helps to explain some "errors" identified by some Turkish authors in dating the documents.

• Witnesses and testimonies of the Armenian genocide
• Johannes Lepsius

{{Reflist|2}}

• {{cite journal |last= Dadrian |first= Vahakn N.|author-link= Vahakn Dadrian |date=August 1986|title=The Naim-Andonian Documents on the World War I Destruction of Ottoman Armenians: The Anatomy of a Genocide|journal= International Journal of Middle East Studies|publisher=Cambridge University Press |volume= 18|issue=3 |pages=311–360 |doi= 10.1017/S0020743800030506|s2cid= 154901860}}
• {{cite book |last=Ferguson |first=Niall |author-link=Niall Ferguson |date=2006 |title=The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West |url=https://archive.org/details/warofworldtwenti00nial/page/179 |location=New York |publisher=Penguin Press |page=[https://archive.org/details/warofworldtwenti00nial/page/179 179] |isbn=1-59420-100-5 |url-access=registration }}
• {{cite book |last=Lewy |first=Guenter|author-link= Guenter Lewy|date= 2005|title= The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey|location= Salt Lake City|publisher= University of Utah Press }}
• {{cite book |last= Ternon|first= Yves|author-link= Yves Ternon|date= 1989|title= Enquête sur la négation d'un génocide [analysis by Yves Ternon stating the telegrams are probably authentic]|location= Marseille|publisher= éditions parenthèses|isbn= 2-86364-052-6}}
• {{cite journal|author=Mouradian, Claire|url=https://www.cairn.info/revue-revue-d-histoire-de-la-shoah-2015-1-page-507.htm#|language=fr|title=Le télégramme, outil de génocide : le cas arménien|journal=Revue d'histoire de la Shoah|date=January 2015|volume=202 |issue=202|pages=507–535}}
• {{cite book |last1=Akçam |first1=Taner|author-link=Taner Akçam|title-link=Killing Orders |title=Killing Orders: Talat Pasha's Telegrams and the Armenian Genocide |date=2018 |publisher=Springer |isbn=978-3-319-69787-1 |language=en}}

• [http://www.imprescriptible.fr/ternon/ Enquête sur la négation d'un génocide]. An analysis of the Andonian telegrams {{in lang|fr}}
• [http://www.firstworldwar.com/source/armenia_talaatorders.htm Primary Documents: Talaat Pasha's Alleged Official Orders Regarding the Armenian Massacres, March 1915-January 1916] - Translated versions of these telegrams
• {{cite interview |last=Akcam |first=Taner |subject-link=Taner Akçam |interviewer=Agos |interviewer-link=Agos |url=http://armenianweekly.com/2016/10/11/akcam-memoirs-telegrams/ |title=Akçam: The Authenticity of the Naim Efendi Memoirs and Talat Pasha Telegrams |work=Armenian Weekly |date=2016-10-11}}

{{Works about the Armenian Genocide}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Memoirs of Naim Bey}}

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Naim Bey

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Category:Hodder & Stoughton books

Category:Talaat Pasha