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Remembered Today:

Dunsterforce


Will O'Brien

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Hello Martin

Thanks, nice little website with some interesting books.

Regards

Borden Battery

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  • 1 month later...

Hi guys,

I have compiled a pretty hefty bibliography surrounding the Battle of Baku, of which Dunsterforce was a part, and I thought I might post it here, but as of now it is incomplete. If you want to look at Dunsterforce, I would say to first consider the context, because there is a lot of writing about and around the topic from a multitude of angles. The best basic text on the matter is probably "The Adventures of Dunsterforce" by Dunsterville himself, if you're looking to understand the general British and Commonwealth history of the expedition.

That being said, there is a lot on the Battle of Baku from other sources, some of it published in English, including Turkish, Soviet Russian and Armenian interpretations.

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Just for information: A rather rare book was written by Captain Stanley Savige DSO MC around 1920. A very limited edition called 'Stalky's Forlorn Hope'. This book was about his exploits as part of Dunsterforce. Very well worth a read. Not exagerated but the feats of his detachment are still celebrated annually in Armenia.

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Sorry, I just remembered I have another book in my library. It's called 'Persian Expedition - The Australians in Dunsterforce' by Alan Stewart. It is copywrited 2006 by Australian Military History Press.

Wayne

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Guest steve101

I am researching my grandfather Arthur james Kenneth McIntosh he served with the 14th (Kings) Hussars service #12291 A private att'd Dunsterfors died 31/08 1918. I only found him from faulty family memories, he went by his last initial Kenneth (Kenny) after searching under his first name for long while. According to family stories he was taken prisoner at Kut and died on a forced march to Baghdad this is not the case and until recentlythis has led me astray. Can anyone point me in the right direction as to what the 14th Hussars were doing in the Dunsterforce,any good reads about the operation or anything about my granfather would be much appreciated.

thanks Steven Rowe

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Guest steve101

The 14th Hussars and additional units were known as 'Bridges Column' after Lieutenant Colonel E J Bridges, 14th Hussars. By the way, any cavalry in the Hampshire photos???

Hello, my grandfather served with the 14th Hussars in Mesopotamia he was attached to the Dunsterforce His name was Arthur James Kenneth Mcintosh a private service number 12291 died 31/08/1918 age 31. If you have any info or suggested reading I would be grateful

regards

Steven Rowe

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Best book about Baku battles remains Nasır Yüceer's book. The author made use of Turkish military archives. Unfortunately it is in Turkish only.

Nasır Yüceer, Birinci Dünya Savaşında Osmanlı Ordusunun Azerbaycan ve Dağıstan Harekatı [Ottoman Army's Azerbaijan and Dagistan Operations during WWI], (Ankara: Genelkurmay Basımevi, 1996)

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According to Yüceer's book when Ottoman troops entered Baku in September 15, 1918 they captured 17 Armenian, 9 Russian and 10 Georgian officers, 1151 Armenian, 383 Georgian, 4 British and 113 other national soldiers. The Dunsterforce departed during the night (around 22.00 hours)of September 14.

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Just noticed this interesting thread, but did not have the stamina to look thru all of it. A question comes to mind.

What role or attitude did "Dunsterforce" have to, when they and allied forces, many Armenian, took Baku, the Armenians seemingly going about murdering a lot of the local Azeris? This was an event that still has repercussions in matters in the area in the year 2011. (I will imagine that someone will chime in and say that it never happened.)

The history about this time in this area was extremely tangled, by any standard, even including German and Turkish troops fighting each other.

Bob Lembke

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Dear Bob

Just to clarify a few things about Azerbaijan, Baku and Armenians.

Before 1918, Azerbaijan was a huge geographic area encompassing parts of today's southern Caucasus and northern Iran. There was no such thing as an ethnic Azerbaijani before 1918. There were Mozlem Tatars, Armenians, Jews, Persians, Russians etc living in the georgraphic area. The geographic term, Azerbaijan, was used by the Persians and is a comparitively new georgraphic designation for the area. Historically, according to Arabic, Greek, Roman and Armenian sources, the east side of the Kur River was known as Caucasian Albania (inhabited by a Christian people now extinct) and the west side of the Kur river has always been referred to as part of Armenia. The Tatars began to invade and settle in the area in the middle ages which created a demographic change over time.

The current independant state of Azerbaijan was carved out of the Soviet section of what was known as Greater Azerbaijan by the mainly Moslem Tatar population.

Your assertion that Armenians massacred "a lot of local Azeris'" is etymologically incorrect as there was no such thing as an Azeri at the time (you must be referring to the Tatars). There may have been some murders but I would like you to provide some contemporary sources.

However, the massacres of Armenians by the Tatars at the time is very well documented.

The Armenians of Baku were massacred in large numbers by the Mozlem Tatars in 1905. A great book on this subject called "Fire and Sword in the Caucasus" by a contemporary eyewitness, Luigi Villari, published in 1906 can be downloaded at

http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028756082 A warning, there are some graphic images of the massacres and the details are quite horrific.

In regards to the massacres of Christian Armenians by the Ottoman Turks and local Tatars following the retreat of the Dunsterforce in 1918, the following provides some insight:

Regular Ottoman troops were not permitted to enter the city for two days, so that the local irregulars – bashibozuks – could perform their historic role of looting and pillaging. And the fury with which they turned on the Armenians knew no bounds. Khristofor Mikhailovich Evangulov, in charge of posts and telegraphs, one of those who negotiated the surrender of the city and vainly tried to prevent the worst excesses, noted:

"Robberies, murders and rapes were at their height [at 4.00 p.m. on 15 September]. In the whole town massacres of the Armenian population and robberies of all non-Muslim peoples were going on. They broke the doors and windows, entered the living quarters, dragged out men, women and children and killed them in the street.

From all the houses the yells of the people who were being attacked were heard. … In some spots there were mountains of dead bodies, and many had terrible wounds from dum-dum bullets. The most appalling picture was at the entrance to the Treasury Lane from Surukhanskoi Street. The whole street was covered with dead bodies of children not older than nine or ten years. About eighty bodies carried wounds inflicted by swords or bayonets, and many had their throats cut; it was obvious that the wretched ones had been slaughtered like lambs.

From Telephone Street we heard cries of women and children and we heard single shots. Rushing to their rescue I was obliged to drive the car over the bodies of dead children. The crushing of bones and strange noises of torn bodies followed. The horror of the wheels covered with the intestines of dead bodies could not be endured by the colonel and the asker (adjutant). They closed their eyes with their hands and lowered their heads. They were afraid to look at the terrible slaughter. Half mad from what he saw, the driver sought to leave the street, but was immediately confronted by another bloody hecatomb." Jacques Kayaloff, The Fall of Baku (Bergenfield, N.J., 1976), p. 12

I hope the above information is of some use.

Regards

David

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Dear Bob

Just to clarify a few things about Azerbaijan, Baku and Armenians.

Before 1918, Azerbaijan was a huge geographic area encompassing parts of today's southern Caucasus and northern Iran. There was no such thing as an ethnic Azerbaijani before 1918. There were Mozlem Tatars, Armenians, Jews, Persians, Russians etc living in the georgraphic area. The geographic term, Azerbaijan, was used by the Persians and is a comparitively new georgraphic designation for the area. Historically, according to Arabic, Greek, Roman and Armenian sources, the east side of the Kur River was known as Caucasian Albania (inhabited by a Christian people now extinct) and the west side of the Kur river has always been referred to as part of Armenia. The Tatars began to invade and settle in the area in the middle ages which created a demographic change over time.

The current independant state of Azerbaijan was carved out of the Soviet section of what was known as Greater Azerbaijan by the mainly Moslem Tatar population.

Your assertion that Armenians massacred "a lot of local Azeris'" is etymologically incorrect as there was no such thing as an Azeri at the time (you must be referring to the Tatars).

David

David;

You are using the same logic or tactic as the notorious Peters book that surfaced about 20 years ago, which attempted to undercut any argument that there was an Israeli/Palestinian issue by claiming that the Palestinian people do not in fact exist, supposedly basing the assertion on a variety of old Ottoman sources, such as censuses, of course generally written in Ottoman Turkish, a language almost impeneterable to almost anyone. Peters' work was initially embraced by a number of respected scholars in the US and the UK, who should have known better, but then several Israeli specialists familiar with the material identified the fabrications and misuse of sources used to pursue a political agenda, and the acceptance of this book has plummeted, although you still see extremely partisan people on the Internet still citing it.

I am having some mechanical problems with the Forum's rudimentary word processor, so I will post this and then look closer to your assertions in another post.

Bob

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Before 1918, Azerbaijan was a huge geographic area encompassing parts of today's southern Caucasus and northern Iran. There was no such thing as an ethnic Azerbaijani before 1918. Azerbaijan was a huge geographic area, but there was not a single ethnic Azeri? On the face of that, it seems contradictory. I assume that you are saying that all of the people in this "huge area" were members of the various ethnic groups you mention in the next sentence. There were Mozlem Tatars, Armenians, Jews, Persians, Russians etc living in the georgraphic area. Current sources, including the CIA World Book, put the current ethnic mix at over 90% Azeris, with the Tatars, Armenians, Russians, and one or two other groups at about 1.5% each. Note the identification of the Tatars as a seperate ethnic group totaling about 1.5% or 1.6% of the population. The Jewish residents have mostly left. (There currently is a mass grave recently found in Baku supposedly from the non-existant massacre being forensically excavated, and the victims identified to date were not only Azeris, but also some Jews and another local ethnic group, something like Lazins, also currently about 1.5% of the population. But I admit that everyone here are trying to score points.)

The geographic term, Azerbaijan, was used by the Persians and is a comparitively new georgraphic designation for the area. Historically, according to Arabic, Greek, Roman and Armenian sources, the east side of the Kur River was known as Caucasian Albania This kingdom was formed 2400 years ago, of course not Christian at first. (inhabited by a Christian people now extinct) and the west side of the Kur river has always been referred to as part of Armenia. I have to look into where the Kur River runs. I suspect that you are trying to establish that part of Azerbaijan is actually Armenian. The Tatars began to invade and settle in the area in the middle ages which created a demographic change over time.

The current independant state of Azerbaijan (In 1918 the Azerbaijan state was formed, with a democratic form of government, and with female sufferage, predating the US or the UK. The Soviet Union took it over in 1920.) was carved out of the Soviet section of what was known as Greater Azerbaijan by the mainly Moslem Tatar population.

Your assertion that Armenians massacred "a lot of local Azeris'" is etymologically incorrect as there was no such thing as an Azeri at the time (you must be referring to the Tatars).

Here you go again. You seem to state that the population of the area was mostly Tatars, and there were no people called Azeris. But now over 90% of the population are Azeris, and the formerly majority Tatars have become 1.5% of the population. Where did this vast majority of the population come from?

David

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]

Dear Bob

Just to clarify a few things about Azerbaijan, Baku and Armenians.

Before 1918, Azerbaijan was a huge geographic area encompassing parts of today's southern Caucasus and northern Iran. There was no such thing as an ethnic Azerbaijani before 1918. There were Mozlem Tatars, Armenians, Jews, Persians, Russians etc living in the georgraphic area. The geographic term, Azerbaijan, was used by the Persians and is a comparitively new georgraphic designation for the area. Historically, according to Arabic, Greek, Roman and Armenian sources, the east side of the Kur River was known as Caucasian Albania (inhabited by a Christian people now extinct) and the west side of the Kur river has always been referred to as part of Armenia. The Tatars began to invade and settle in the area in the middle ages which created a demographic change over time.

David

Well, I looked up the Kur or Kura River, and accepting it as the border would make about 60% of the entire country of Azerbaijan Armenian territory.

We have gone over similar issues before. For a small people, there is a very large Armenian industry re-writing history, and promoting various chauvanistic causes. The Armenian diaspora are passionately opposed to either any resolution of issues between Turkey and Armenia, and to any attempt to get to the bottom of the tangled and painful issues between these nations and peoples. Recently, after Armenia tentatively agreed to Turkish suggestions for a transparent international study of these matters, the President of Armenia, on a visit to France, had to be saved from a violent mob of Armenian expatriates by a phalanx of French riot police. I can go on for several pages in this direction, but will not.

Years ago I did a fair amount of reading on the tangled affairs in that part of the world at the end of WW I and for the next few years, never once resorting to Turkish or Armenian sources, not focusing on the various ethnic horrors, but of course in any such reading they are in your face, and several sources refered to the Armenian massacre of several thousand Azeris when Armenian forces allied with Dunsterforce entered Baku. Of course, I am sure that Azeris murdered Armenians several weeks before, and I am sure that they did again a few weeks later. From the time of the Armenian uprising against the Turks in 1894 (and for several thousand years before, I am sure), till 1923, everyone in the area, every group, seemed to be happily murdering each other at every opportunity.

If I can remember whatever I said to set this off, I was wondering about the narrow question of what the Brits in Dunsterforce felt or reacted when their temporary allies started knocking off some local civilians. As to the larger questions, I would hope that the proposed international, transparent study commission to at least narrow the distance between the various narratives of this miserable period. I know that in the past David has strongly opposed such an investigation.

I have my own prejudices (my father fought in the Turkish Army in 1915, thankfully no where near this miserable area), but I make at least a pretense of attempting to be objective, if possible, and I have a passion to get to the bottom of controversial matters. In fact in 1914 my grand-father committed a (hopefully) non-fatal war crime in Belgium, and I am about to approach a Belgian student of the period who I think has special qualifications in the area. But I feel I take lumps when I ask questions in areas in which PC attitudes make open inquiry morally related to charging the enemy with a baby on your bayonet.

Bob

Bob

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...thankfully no where near this miserable area..., but I make at least a pretense of attempting to be objective, if possible...
Oops, Bob. Mutually exclusive comments juxtaposed ;)

Robert

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Dear Robert;

My fading intellect and neurology misses your finely honed point.

Bob

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DearAll

I'm sorry if my previous post seemed to be off topic, however the story of the Dunsterforce is intertwined with the fate of the Armenians. For example, Colonel Stanley Savige, An Australian officer in the Dunsterforce, received a Distinguished Service Order for his role in rescuing approximately 80,000 Armenian and Assyrian refugees fleeing the Ottoman Turkish army in the summerof 1918.

I needed to respond to Bob's post which like many of his previous posts on thisforum attempts to portray Armenians as perpetrators of massacres when in fact it's the complete opposite. The Armenians were victims of what Lord James Bryce described in 1915 as "an attempted extermination of a race". The denial of this event by the perpetrator has meant that even until today, Armenians are victims of an assault on their history . There are also certian powers that are attempting to complete the erasure of the Armenian historical presence in the region by rewriting the history. This is a very complex issue and not one for this thread.

Dear Bob

Those identified as Tatars in Azerbaijan today according to the CIA figures are those who consider or identify themselves as being Tatars and not "Azeris". They may include those Tatars who have migrated to Azerbaijan from Russia or other areas of the ex-Soviet Union. For more information on Tatars see http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/584107/Tatar The majority of those identified as "Azeris" today are descendants of those who before 1918 were called Tatars and lived in the region. I know it seems confusing but one needs to factor in the changing identity of Tatars in the southern Caucasus region due to the establishment of the Azerbaijani state in 1918 and of the history of Azeri nationalism/identity since 1918.

I challenge you, Bob, to provide this forum one contemporary source before 1918 that mentions or describes an ethnic "Azeri". Otherwise, in my opinion, your attempts to engage on this issue are not motivated by a sincere desire to ascertain historic truth.

For example, while in Baku (capital of the current state of Azerbaijan), General Lionel Dunsterville, in his 1920 book, The Adventures of Dunsterforce, wrote, "The population is approximately 300,000, chiefly Armenians, Tatars and Russians; there are also a few Georgians and Greeks, and smaller colonies of British, French, Americans and others. The country is entirely barren, except for avenues of trees grown in the town with the aid of the new water supply, and for the surrounding villages, which are really oases in the midst of sandy deserts and partly dried-upsalt lakes."

Why did Dunsterville not see any "Azeris"?

The following two books which are among the most descriptive books on Baku published early in the 20th century do not mention the word or ethnic group "Azeri"once in any of its pages. See for yourself!

Baku:An eventful History by James Hodd published in 1905 available at http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028739088

Fire and sword in the Caucasus by Luigi Villari published in 1906 available at http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028756082

Just in case you don't know, in PDF format, you can do a word search. Isn't technology so great!

In respect to the initiators of this thread, I'm not going to continue debating with Bob on this topic. However, I would advise all third parties to scrutinise any of Bob's assertions when it's related to the Armenians.

Regards

David

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Yesterday I was finishing one of my typically over-long posts, and the God of Cyberspace (who is reported to be Armenian) erased it behind my back just before I posted it.

Anyone notice that David is, surprisingly, not disputing my mention of the (very small) massacre of Azeris and others by Armenian forces accompagning Dunsterforce, but rather focusing on a multi-pronged attempt to de-ligitimize both the Azeris as a nationality and Azerbaijan as a nation-state? This reported massacre was actually small beer by the standards of the area; for example, a few months later in the same area Azeris seemingly managed a much larger massacre of Armenians, reportedly 10,000 to 20,000, much more than the perhaps 2000 victims of the Dunsterforce fandango.

Interestingly, reportedly in 2007 one of the mass graves of the first event was found, and it is being forensically excavated by archeologists. (Reports vary, some say that it is solely Azerbaijan scientists, another report says that foreign experts are also involved.) Referred to as the "Guba mass grave", it is said that so far 600 victims have been interred, 100 of them women, 50 of them children. Anthropological study of the skeletons indicate that the large majority are Azeris, but that some of the victims were Jews or members of the Lozgins ethnic minority, still present in Azerbaijan. (My wife is trained in archeology and forensic physical anthropology, has done this sort of stuff. Bones can say a lot. My wife is very proud that, whereas the skull features of most us European types suggest that we are 4% Neanderthal, her percentage is much higher, based on the four human skull features that speak "Neanderthal".)

As I have said, this seems to have been a quite unremarkable, everyday massacre for this neck of the woods, really quite small. The conflict between the Armenians and Azeris has been going on to the present day (Armenia presently holds 16% of the land area of Azerbaijan, the enclave of Nagorno Karabakh, and some surrounding Azeri territory, supposedly displacing over a million Azeris as refugees in their own country {frankly, this number seems a bit high to me}, and at this very time the presidents of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Russia are meeting for something like the ninth time to try to resolve this mess. Armenia, which most observers agree could not stand up to an open conflict with Azerbaijan, has called in the Russians, who have installed their feared S-300 missiles to protect Armenia and the siezed enclave. The Russians have been the partner of the Armenians in these conflicts for over 100 years.)

This is a bit of the unspoken background to this discussion, perhaps explaining some of David's seemingly mistifying digressions from the delightful topic at hand, Dunsterforce and associated mayhem; in which David veers off in several directions to assert the non-existence of the Azeri people, and his absurd assertion that the Turkic Azeris are actually Mongolian-derived Tatars, quite a different ethnic group. The Turkic Oghuz ethnic group were well-established in the area of current Azerbaijan by 1030 AD, about 300 years before the Mongol Tatars ever left the depths of Asia on their great migration westward into Europe. (Part of the confusion may be caused by the fact that the many Tatar groups mostly eventually adopted al-Islam and some Turkic languages, and in part eventually intermarried with many other ethnic groups.) David's Mongol Azeri theory is disproved by the very source that he provides a link to, which I suspect that no one bothered looking at.

Anyone have an answer to my original question; did any of the Dunsterforce participants mention this very modest massacre? My guess was that they were somewhat embarrassed by it, but it was predictable; if they had brought a force of Azeri irregulars I am sure that they would have "offed" some unfortunate Armenians and perhaps a Russian or two.

Bob

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Dear All

As promised, I'm not going to continue engaging with Bob on the Armenian/Azerbaijan issue. Bob's inability to provide "one" pre-1918 contemporary source that a distinct ethnic "Azeri" existed at the time, displays his lack of knowledge on at least the demographic history of the region. Bob's latest post is almost identical to the narrative that is publicised by the Azerbaijani Foreign Office and he makes accusations against me on issues which I did not even raise. I am all for an Azerbaijani state, however, it needs to be a state that respects the rights of its indigenous population and their cultural heritage.

To understand the current and past issues in the Caucasus, one needs to be aware of the ideology of Pan Turkism and the economic/military interests of the Great Powers. The policy of Turkifying the region and creating homogenous Turkic states is the underlying cause of the disappearance of the indigenous Armenians from areas which now encompass current day Turkey and Azerbaijan. A good book on this subject is "Pan-Turkism from Irredentism to Cooperation" by Jacob Landau.

Without an in-depth knowledge of the Turkification process, one can not understand the underlying causes of the current conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan/Turkey. There are 3 steps in the process. The first step has been the physical removal of the Christian Armenians from the region especially duringWW1 (the event was used by Raphael Lemkin, the man who coined the word Genocidein 1944, as a defining example of what the word meant). The second step has been the destruction of their cultural monuments/heritage to remove any trace that they ever existed. The third step is the dissemination of misinformation including a narrative that the Armenians never existed in the region and that they are the ones who have persecuted the Turks/Azeris. Any attempt by Armenians to defend themselves from this onslaught on their identity is used by propagandists as evidence of "Armenian aggression" and provides a pretext for further persecution.

The current political realities are that Turkey is among the top 20 industrialised countries in the world, a member of Nato, a huge market for western arms, and a potential energy hub of Central Asian oil to western markets. Azerbaijan, with its huge oil reserves, spends more money on weaponry than the whole GDP of impoverished and landlocked Armenia. Russia protects Armenia through treaty, however, this does not mean that Russia has always supported Armenian ambitions in the region. In 1905, for example, the Russians had played a role in inciting the Moslem Tatars to massacre Armenians in Baku.

To conclude, for those who are interested in getting to the bottom of the maze of opposing narratives on the issue, one needs to familiarise themselves with the region's demographic history, imperialism and Pan-Turkism, the formation of nation states, the current geo-politics, vested interests, and most importantly understanding the power balance in the region. Once this is accomplished, one is in a better position to sort out fact from fiction.

The story of the Dunsterforce provides interesting insight into one small time frame in the long history of this region.

Regards

David

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David's last post is generally quite a nice essay, and very nicely written, and I will happily agree with much of it. I also feel that this is not the right forum on which to kick about the current Armenian/Azeri conflict, except that I am taking exception to continued efforts to de-ligitimize the Azeri people, and his continuing to pronounce me ignorant on the subject of the demographical history (warning: I am a professional demographer, worked in it for years, although certainly not in the demography of this area.) of the area, based on a sophistic and false philological argument over thw word "Azeri" and its use in the area. I don't mind (much) if he calls me ignorant, but this argument is being made, IMHO, largely to create the impression that the Azeri people do not exist, or really are Tatars (I believe that I exploded that false and subversive idea in my last post), or only arrived in the area in the very recent past.

Dear All

As promised, I'm not going to continue engaging with Bob on the Armenian/Azerbaijan issue. Bob's inability to provide "one" pre-1918 contemporary source that a distinct ethnic "Azeri" existed at the time, displays his lack of knowledge on at least the demographic history of the region.

Note above. David is clearly claiming that the Azeri nationality did not exist before 1918. This rediculous assertion, a parallel to the radical Zionist argument that the Palestinian people literally did not exist prior to the time that Jewish European settlers started settling in Palestine/Israel, does reflect on the history of the Dunsterforce expedition.

"Azeri" is supposedly a Persian word, meaning "mounted courier", and was a term used to signify both the Turkic people and the Turkic language that they spoke, as they moved into the area. Old Persian's period was 525 BC to 300 AD, Middle Persian from 300 AD to 800 AD, and Modern Persian from 800. In an earlier post, I went into how this area, into which the Turkic Oghuz people moved into in the 900s, becoming dominant by 1030, was named after a Persian general appointed to rule the area by Alexander the Great in 330 BC (It would be useful to know his name in Old Persian, not his Hellenized name Atropates, or the Hellenized placename of Atropatene given to the area after this general.) Without sorting out the details of this, it would seem that a name related to the word "Azeri" became afixed to the region over 2000 years ago, in the Old Persian language prevalant at the time.

Evidentally the name became to be applied to the Turkic Oghuz as they arrived before 1000 AD, when this occured exactly I have no idea, but I doubt that it was post 1918. We see that the Turkic people whose decendants now form (with all sorts of interbreeding over the succeeding 1000 years) the bulk of the Azeri people, supposedly over 90% of the present population. David had instructed us that the present-day Azeris (90.6% in the 2009 census) are actually Tatars, a Mongoloid people (a la Gengis Kahn and the Golden Horde) who only moved out of the Far East toward Eastern Europe in about 1300, about 300 years after the Turkic Oghus arrived. David provided a link to an article in the on-line Encyclopedia Brittanica as proof of this asertion, but if anyone bothered on clicking on that link, the moderately long article lists many places where the Tatars ended up, but does not even mention any ending up in Azerbaijan. (A more lengthy article on the topic which mentioned dozens of enclaves of Tatars, including Finland (currently two villages and one mosque) and Brooklyn, did mention a few ending up in Azerbaijan as well.

In defense of David, and in part based on some of his assigned reading, the term "Tatar" is applied (one source specified as a derogatory term) to Turkic people in the area; I would suspect (and perhaps David can confirm) that "Tatar" is a term applied by Armenians to Azeris. This use of this derogatory term (bringing up associations with pillaging Mongoloid hordes building pyramids of over 100,000 human heads, which the real Tatars did in fact do.) does not make Turkic people into Mongoloids.

David offers as proof of his "no Azeris pre-1918" theory two western books, published in English in 1905 and 1906, and provided links. The first, written by a British oilman active in the Baku and Russian oilfields pre-1918, expressed his contempt of the locals, and certainly any labor organization of his workers, and even in the forward expressed his desire to bring about a foreign (British?) military occupation, so that he could more firmly "manage" his labor force. The second book seems to be by an Italian travel writer, who came to Baku to write his book on the area. There is no evidence that I saw of them having any of the local languages, or a deep grasp of the demographics of the area. (The Brit did mention that Baku contained people of 44 nationalities.) David has again asserted that the (supposed) fact that these two outsiders did not use the term "Azeri" to name any of the people in the area of Baku (demographically hardly a representative sample of the demographics of Azeribaijan.), and their use of the word "Tatar" to identify some locals, proves that the Azeri nationality did not exist in 1918. However, the truth is that the Turkic Oghuz had migrated in over 900 years before, the Azeri language is based on the language that they brought with them in the 900s. Additionally, the word "Azeri" came into use in the area over 2000 years ago, and is a word in Modern Persian which was more or less established in 800, but whose origins suggest that it might have been used in Old Persian even a 1000 years before that.

I have no idea what the Azeris use to describe themselves, it hardly matters. That some people, presumably the translators of the two visitors, called Turkic people "Tatars" does not erase 900 years of Turkic presence and dominance in the area. Linguistic sources state that Turkic languages were dominant in the area by 1300.

One of my advisors in this area, my Armenian friend Hagop, is scared to death that Armenia is taking such an agressive posture in these matters that it may be destroyed. There are 8 million Azeris in Azerbaijan, and another 16 to 20 million in Iranian Azerbaijan and elsewhere in Iran. There are about 230 million Turkic people. Recently Azerbaijan increased its military spending by a factor of 20-fold. I just saw a TV documentary about how Azeris pushed out of the areas in the recent events are paying for and taking private education in sniping at a private sniping academy set up in Baku by Azeri veterans.

Finally, I have never read anything put out by the Azeri Foreign Ministry, or gone on an Azeri web-site, for much the same reasons that I do not read either Armenian or Turkish sources on these matters, mostly reading the memoires of western Europeans who were present in the area and who published in German and French.

I have just come across a valuable source on this general topic, a recent doctoral thesis at Princeton University, on the topic of the pre-1914 meddling of the Russians in the area, encouraging the Armenians to rebel and arming them. I will dredge up a citation and provide it in a small post (if I am able to write one). I have already seen to it so that my wife's university has purchased the thesis, so that it will be available throughout the north-east of the US thru the BorrowDirect library system.

Bob

Bob

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The previous post provides an interesting summary of the demographic history of Azerbaijan from a purely Turkophile point of view. To Bob's credit, it does contain some historically accurate information, obviously written by someone with a well acquainted knowledge of Turkish history.However, he omits too much fundamental demographic and historical information which reveals his bias.

The labelling of the "Oghuz Turks" as "Tatars" by westerners may be a result of the fact that both the Oghuz Turks and Mongol Tatars stem from central Asia and are relative new comers to Anatolia and the Caucasus. The additional fact that both their languages stem from the Ural-Altaic family of languages (also originating from central Asia), adds to the confusion. Whether the Tatars in Baku referred to by westerners earlier last century were actually Oghuz Turks, has no changing affect to my argument that there was no distinct "Azeri" ethnic identity before 1918. I used the term Tatars in my previous posts because that is what they were referred to in contemporary western accounts.

Bob tells us that the word Azeri was used by the Persians for the region some 2000 years ago. He then tells us that the Oghuz Turks first came to the region in 900AD and entrenched themselves by 1030AD. Does this mean that those who were living there before the Turkic invasions are the first Azeris? It is indisputable that the Armenians have been living in western Azerbaijan continuously for at least 2700 years (well before the Turkic invasions). After all, the Indo-European speaking Armenians are heirs to the ancient civilisation that existed in the region for thousands of years i.e. Hittites,Urartians, Phrygians, Hurrians. Therefore, we can deduce from Bob's demographic information that the first Azeris were in fact Armenians.

It may be this uncomfortable reality that makes the mere existence of Indo-European speaking Armenians and their pre-Turkic Christian cultural heritage, such a threat to the national foundation myths of both Azerbaijan and Turkey.

I would also like to make the following point. Despite article 301 of the Turkish penal code that makes "insulting Turkishness" a crime, there are a growing number of Turks who are challenging the official history of Turkey. The most prominent of which is Orhan Pamuk, Turkey's first and only noble prize laureate, who was prosecuted under the code for merely mentioning to a Swiss newspaper the fact that "1,000,000 Armenians had been killed in Turkey and no one dares talk about it." Also, I would like to add that I by no means intend on delegitimizing the right of Turks or Azeris to live in the region and enjoy the fruits of the geography. My intention is for historical truth to prevail and the right of the Armenians to exist and for their monuments to be preserved and not destroyed.

I would like to end my post with an analogy of the Armenian plight with that of the 'HostTree' which was told to me by a student of Comparative Genocide Studies. I will leave it to the reader to deduce the identity of the Strangler Fig:

The Strangler Fig: "The roots grow down to the forest floor where they take root and begin to take nutrients from the soil. Gradually the roots wrap around the 'host tree', widen, and slowly form a lattice-work that surround the host's trunk. The fig's crown grows foliage which soon overshadows the tree. Eventually, the host tree dies leaving the fig with a hollow trunk"

When someone glances at the Fig Tree, they don't realise that underneath the Fig Tree was once another tree!

Regards

David

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As the originator of this thread (many moons ago), I feel its original purpose has been fulfilled. That purpose was never to debate the Rights/Wrongs & Truth/Lies of the Turkish/Armenian story. As interesting a topic as it is, I would respectfully ask that the debate be had elseware.

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