In the study of the crimes committed against the Armenian people in different historical periods of the Ottoman Empire, not only the testimonies of foreign diplomats, missionaries and eyewitnesses, but also the memoirs of Turkish state, political and public figures, especially the high officials who issued the orders related to the deportations and massacres of Armenians, are very important.
In the last decades, the memoirs of Talaat, Cemal, Enver and Sultan Abdul Hamid II have been published several times in the world.
In his memoirs, although Abdul Hamid II made very limited references to the problems related to Armenians, he tried to present the historical reality as the internal problems of Armenians, thus hiding the essence of his policy, especially the crimes committed against Armenians.
The historian makes an important pointմ the vocabulary of the memoirs does not correspond to the spoken or written language of the time, moreover, it is much closer to the written and spoken style of modern Turkish. Turkish historian and jurist Ekrem Bughra Ekinci also expresses the same opinion, pointing out that it was not usual for sultans to write memoirs in the Ottoman Empire.
Engin Deniz Akarl, author of several scientific works on the history of the Ottoman Empire, also believes that the memoirs attributed to Abdul Hamid II do not actually belong to him. The writer Abdulhamid Kermiz is also convinced of this, because during the administration, he probably would not have had time to write them, and in 1909 The Ittihadists forbade the exiled ex-sultan in Thessaloniki to write his memoirs, in which one could also find negative thoughts on the activities of the Ittihadists.
Also in 1913 the socio-politician, statesman, Arshak Jamalyan published a series of articles entitled “Memoirs of Abdul Hamid” in the newspaper “Horizon” of Tiflis. However, he translated the articles not from the German original, but from the French newspaper “Le Temps” published in Paris. It was proved later that the memoirs of Abdul Hamid II were published in the German periodical “Nord und Süd” in 1913, in the months of February, March and April, however, the part of the series of articles of the German newspaper, which was published only in one month, came to us with the translation of Jamalyan.
