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...Press, 2006. vii and 296 pages, 11 maps and an index. $25.00, paperback.
At last, nearly a century after the ghastly events following the deportation of the Armenian population of Eastern Anatolia in 1915-16, a carefully balanced and scrupulously fair study, presenting an analysis of the accounts of both sides, has finally appeared. Guenter Lewy deserves the highest praise for his sober and reasoned approach to this saga of horrors, which began on April 24, 1915, during the early stages of World War I. It resulted in the mass dispersal of both Christian and Muslim populations in the region and the death of 642,000 Armenians--according to the author's own reckoning, nearly 40 percent of the prewar Armenian population of the Empire (p. 240). Of those surviving by the time of the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, all but a handful living in Constantinople had fled to Russia, Syria, Lebanon, Greece or further abroad. Nor does this take into account those Armenians, especially women and children, who were forced to convert to Islam to save their lives. Total numbers are not known, he says, but "it is said to have been high" (p. 177). In his preface, Lewy states, "I have no special ax to grind" (p. x), and as one reads through the book, it becomes clear he does not.
The main point of dispute, as the subtitle indicates, is not that hundreds of thousands of Armenians perished in horrific circumstances, but whether their demise was the result of a calculated plan by the CUP (Committee...
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