General Bronsart [von Schellendorf], who was Chief of Staff to the Ottoman Commander-in-Chief, wrote as follows in an article in the 24 July 1921 issue of the newspaper Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung:
As demonstrated by the innumerable declarations, provocative pamphlets, weapons, ammunition, explosives, &c., found in areas inhabited by Armenians, the rebellion was prepared for a long time, organized, strengthened and financed by Russia. Information was received on time in Istanbul about an Armenian assassination attempt directed at high ranking state officials and officers.
Since all the Muslims capable of bearing arms were in the Turkish Army, it was easy to organize a terrible massacre by the Armenians against defenceless people, because the Armenians were not only attacking the sides and rear of the Eastern Army paralysed at the front by the Russians, but were attacking the Muslim folk in the region as well. The Armenian atrocities which I have witnessed were far worse than the so called Turkish brutality
The Armenians were forced to emigrate because they had joined the ranks of the enemy.Turkey did not kill them, but relocated them. As it was impossible to adopt a better solution under the circumstances, it cannot he accepted that those who died because they were unable to resist the hardships of the journey were killed by the Turks.
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There remain only those who were killed en route, defenceless. The responsibility here lies with the Government because it was unable to protect these individuals, or because officials winked at the killings. The Government arrested those who were responsible for this, as far as it was able to determine the culprits, and sent them to the martial law court. Quite a few of them were executed.
How many individuals lost their lives as they were killed defencelessly? Even at that time it was not possible to determine this, and it is impossible to determine it today
Another method of computation is possible. In Toynbee’s computation in the document we have mentioned above (note No. 92), it is stated that on 5 April 1916, in the regions of Zor, Aleppo, and Damascus, the number of emigrants was 500,000. It is natural that this figure will have considerably increased up to the end of 1916, because the process of emigration continued until the end of 1916, and because all those who had been required to emigrate were not sent only to these three regions.
We stated that the number of those who were required to emigrate was 702,900. Even if the emigrants who were alive on 5 April 1916 were from these three regions, and even if all those who emigrated after this date died, the number of those who died during the emigration would be 200,000. Because it is impossible that the sum of those who emigrated other than to the regions of Zor, Damascus, and Aleppo on 5 April 1916 and the sum of those who emigrated after this date could have died, it is apparent that, based upon this computation, the number of those who died from all causes was well below 100,000. And this would indicate that most of the casualties occurred during armed confrontations outside the process of emigration.
Therefore, every computation indicates that the number of casualties (we use this term because this is a society at war) of the Armenians of Turkey, for all reasons, did not exceed 300,000. It is obvious that among these casualties the number of deaths which occurred for whatever reason during the emigration will be less than this figure, and the number of those who can be considered as having been killed will be even less.
A murderer is a murderer, no excuse can be given. Just as we do not condone the fact that the Armenians massacred the Turks, we do not condone the fact that the Turks massacred the Armenians. However, the Armenians who were massacred were not massacred on the orders of the Government. As we have stated above, the culprits who were arrested were sent to the courts, were given sentences, including the death sentence, and the sentences were carried out.
We would have wished that the Armenians who massacred the Turks had also been punished. But, in Armenian books, they are portrayed as national heroes
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