In 1985. he was one of 69 specialists in Turkish studies who signed a petition urging that a House of Representatives resolution condemning the crime of genocide should not include the Armenian massacres. These crimes. the petition stated. were the result of "intercommunal warfare" complicated by "disease. famine. suffering and massacres." "In my opinion." he said in an interview. "it was a total breakdown in civil authority on the part of a young. revolutionary government fighting a world war simultaneously on a number of fronts. That governments decision to relocate its Armenian citizenry into north Syria created a situation in which the deportees were subjected to attacks by marauding Kurdish tribesmen. starvation and the ravages of cholera and typhus epidemics." The current scholarly debate over the Armenian deaths focuses on three principal sources of evidence: the memoirs of Henry Morgenthau. who was the United States Ambassador to Turkey from 1913 to 1916. a remark that Hitler reportedly made in 1939. and cable traffic and other messages from German diplomats stationed in Turkey during World War I. Vahakn N. Dadrian. a sociologist who wrote "The History of the Armenian Genocide" (Berghahn Books.
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deportees