Abstract
An Armenian Source Declening the Genocide Allegations: Armianskii Vestnik
Following the Relocation- Resettlement Law passed on May 27, 1915 to maintain the security of the country and the authority of the Ottoman government, intensive propaganda campaigns have been launched against the Turks in the sense that the Law was implemented only among Anatolian Armenians to destroy them. Such propaganda was deliberately manipulated and intensified with the allegation that a considerable number of Armenian people between 800.000 and 1.000.000 were murdered under circumstances of atrocity during the Great War, in 1915. Such claims have actually not been supported by any sound and objective information, but emotional and unobjective media.
?Armenian Bulletin?, a weekly journal issued in Moscow by Armenians in 1916, however, published series of news based on research and analyses about Armenians losses during the War. The articles in the journal drew attention to the aforementioned numbers of Armenians losses during the 1915 and 1916, and urged the information that these figures were beyond the reality because after the Eastern Anatolian provinces occupation by the Russian forces, the numbers of the surviving Armenians were beyond all forecasts and assumptions. Nevertheless, in these articles the reasons for the first exaggerated figures relating Armenian losses were written on the cause of the ?overwhelming high tension and anxiety? within the Armenians circuits.
Armenian publisher Arshak Chobanian admits that inflated numbers of the alleged ?Armenian losses were exaggerated and presumed numbers?. Chobanian believed that ?exaggeration in such a crisis was unavoidable. The tragedy has not yet calculated in detail? But it is not true that Armenians were eradicated in Turkey? and it appears that alleged numbers for the war period are prejudiced, approximated and highly exaggerated. It is an established fact that the Armenians losses are indeed very exaggerated; and it can be seen via other Armenians sources and the Russian archival documents that the Armenians were not annihilated as claimed. Furthermore, even the Armenian sources underline the fact that Muslim losses in Anatolia during the war period were much more than the Armenians losses during the replacement operation etc.<
Keywords
Armenian Bulletin (Armyanskiy Vestnik), Armenian Population, Armenian Losses, Muslim Losses, Exagger