Mark Lambert Bristol

Admiral, U.S. Navy

Mark Lambert Bristol was born on 17 April 1868 in Glassboro, NJ. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1887. During the Spanish-American War, he served aboard USS Texas and participated in the Battle of Santiago de Cuba. From 1901 to 1903, he served as Aide-de-Camp to the Commander-in-Chief North Atlantic Fleet. He commanded USS Oklahoma (BB-37) during World War I.

He served as the U.S.' High Commissioner in Turkey (1919-27). His correspondence and other documents he gathered are often cited during discussions on numerous events of that era. His writings of the period reveal extreme anti-Semitism and anti-Armenianism in his character. In one article, he wrote "The Armenians are a race like the Jews, they have little or no national spirit and have poor moral character... Armenian merchants have been the leeches in this part of the world sucking the life blood out of the country for centuries." His characterizations of the Armenian minority in Ottoman Turkey sounded eerily like the later Nazi depictions of Jews. Bristol was in fact the architect of the post-World War I policy of negation and dilution of the facts of the Armenian Genocide of 1915-23, and was an avid opponent of American efforts to grant the survivors of the massacres a homeland under a U.S. mandate. His position was that the U.S. government should be an enabler and facilitator of business ventures and that Turkey's crime against humanity should not stand in the way of expanding commercial relations with that country.

On 9 September 1927, Bristol was promoted to the four-star rank of Admiral and assumed command of the Asiatic Fleet. Admiral Bristol served as Chairman of the General Board of the U.S. Navy from 1930 until 1932.

Honors

Two ships have been named USS Bristol in his honor.

He helped found the American Hospital in Nişantaşı, İstanbul, in 1920, as well as the annexed nursing school which is named after him to this day (Admiral Bristol Nursing School). While Bristol is hailed today in Turkey as a friend of the Turkish people, he has been castigated by Armenians and Greeks alike for his fanatical efforts to erase the memories of Turkey's extermination of its Christian minorities from the minds of Americans and advance business interests in the Near East at the expense of the survivors of those genocides.

Death and Burial

Admiral Mark Lambert Bristol died on 13 May 1939. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, VA, in Section 3, Site 1735-E.