A rejoinder: the debate on Captain Torossian revisited

Abstract

Reading Edhem Eldem's article on the Torossian debate has created in me a sense of déjà vu. In February 2013, he participated in the debate by analysing the documents acquired from Torossian's family. 1 In June 2015, we published an extensive volume on the Captain Torossian debate entitled Tarih, otobiyografi ve hakikat: Yüzbaşı Torosyan tartışması ve Türkiye'de tarihyazımı (History, autobiography and the truth: the Captain Torossian debate and historiography in Turkey). In this edited volume, my long article answered all of the criticisms that he put forward in 2013. 2 Additionally, Taner Akçam, Suavi Aydın and others all replied to him in their lengthy articles. Later, he published a review criticizing the book and attacking me by repeating the same arguments he had used previously. 3 Now I see the same arguments put forward again, this time in English. I decided to supress my sense of déjà vu and reply to his comments. In doing so, I would like to take the opportunity to revisit this untranslatable 'alla turca debate' and make it more comprehensible to the non-Turcophone audience. First, I would like to start with a hypothetical example from British military history. Let us imagine Lieutenant Sean O'Connor was serving in the Royal Dublin Fusiliers and landed at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915. Let us again assume that Lt. O'Connor kept a diary during the campaign. He survives the war, but contracts the Spanish flu and dies in 1919. His diary stays intact for ninety years in a drawer, until his grandson Michael O'Connor discovers it in the attic of his Dublin house. Proud and impressed by his grandfather's prose and displayed heroism, Michael has this diary published in London. If the published version of Lt. O'Connor's account creates some suspicion among military historians because of his unusual critical judgements of rank and file, and sweeping statements on the conduct of the war, then what would the British military historians do?They would simply go to the British National Archives on a fact-finding mission. First, they would check his personnel file in order to understand whether Lt. O'Connor was actually serving in the Royal Dublin Fusiliers. They would then compare his narrative with the daily 'war journals' written by his unit commanders in 1915. They would compare his account with the memoirs of other Irish soldiers published previously. As one can imagine, all documents of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers are preserved and they are open to readers without restrictions.Let us now focus on the story of our protagonist, Sarkis Torossian. He was born in 1893 in Kayseri, Central Anatolia. His family sent him to study in Edirne, where he graduated from Cadets' School (Askeri Rüşdiye). He graduated from the artillery school in 1914 and was sent to Germany for a short period of training. On his return, he was appointed to Gallipoli as an artillery officer at Ertuğrul (fort no. 1). He fought not only in the naval campaign, but later also in land battles during the summer of 1915. Wounded twice during battle, he was pr...