TURKS AND ARMENIANS.

Manawatu Times, Volume XLII, Issue 1808, 5 May 1921, Page 8

TURKS AND ARMENIANS.

EXTERMINATION POLICY | CONTINUING. J The following extracts from letters recently received from a trustworthy private source in Constantinople have been published in the "Manchester Guardian ": — The establishment of the Bolshevik regime in America has apparently brought great disorder into the country, although reports from Bolshevik Armenia arc as contradictory as are reports from Bolshevik Russia. But that the Bolshevisation of Armenia was due to the failure of the Entente countries to come' to the aid of their harassed and impoverished war-worn ally is a fact which all observers are agreed upon, and consequently that fact, far from losing for Arriienia the sympathy of her allies, lays upon them a still heavier obligation—that of seeing that her independence and territorial integrity (within the limits prescribed by the Sevres Treaty, viz., the' Wilsonian, line) arc not endangered by Bolshevik Russia any more than they are by Kemalist Turkey.

The intentions of the Russian Soviet Government may be gathered from tho following item from Tiflis to the Djagadamard of January 9: — Armenia has been proclaimed an independent Soviet, State and the (official) language Armenian, nevertheless all instructions come from Moscow, and the Governmental' language is gradually becoming Russian. The Russian Ninth Army's -extraordinary commission is working in Armenia with full freedom of action and unrestricted right to imprison and condemn to death. No one has the right to demand account of its activities." The intentions of the Kemalist Government, on the other hand, are equally clear. They are commandeering food and clothing in the occupied districts of the Armenian Republic \Kat9 and Alexandropol), and arc settling Moslem immigrants in the district around Kars, in preparation, no doubt, for a plebiscite. The Djagadamard report as follows: —"The Governor of Kars has asked for funds for the support of Turkish immigrants. The Assembly has sent 50,000 liras." This same process of settling Moslem refugees in the province of Van, Erzerum, Bitlis, etc., has been going o.i since the armistice, so that the Armenian plurality in those districts has been reduced not only by massacre and deportation of Christians, but also by the influx of Moslems. The appeal to the Wilsonian principle of self-deter-mination and demand for a plebiscite in those districts on the part of the Kemalist Government is under the circumstances a most cynical flouting of the very principles for which Wilson stood} if only the Turks could see it. As to guaranteeing tho rights o" subject races, a foreigner who has recently been in Anatolia* stated in my hearing that tho Kemalists have no more. intention of giving equal rights to the Armenians than had Abdul Hamid or Enver and Talaat. They regard the Armenians in the land as.a menace, yet they will not allow the Armenians to emigrate, for if they should go to Armenia they would only swell the Armenian army, and if they should go to Europe or America they would only carry on an anti-Turk propaganda. • Hence the Kemalists intend to keep the Armenians who are in their power and crush them. That the Kemalist Government might make the Armenians a valuable pro-Kemalist prppaganda agency by treating them fairly .apparently does not the, heads of the educated, college-gradu-ate element in the Angora Government.