Edward J. Erickson

Edward J. Erickson is a retired regular U.S. Army officer at the Marine Corps University who has written widely on the Ottoman Army during World War I. He is an associate of International Research Associates, Seattle, Washington and as of July 2016 was also listed as an advisory board member of the Ankara-based, Turkish government aligned think-tank, Avrasya Incelemeleri Merkezi (AVIM), which goes by the English name Center for Eurasian Studies.

He has been criticized for his writings denying the Armenian genocide, instead presenting the events as a counterinsurgency campaign. In 2004, Vahakn Dadrian published a review of Erickson's Ordered to Die. A History of the Ottoman Army in the First World War in the Journal of Political and Military Sociology, characterizing it as "methodologically contaminated" due to the source material (Turkish military archives) and Erickson's relationship to that material. Erickson responded two years later in a letter to the Journal of Political and Military Sociology, explaining the delay as due to being in Iraq and labeling Dadrian's allegations as "deliberate obfuscations, misquotes, and slanderous comments." The journal did not publish the letter.

Erickson's article on Ottoman military policy was also critiqued in an article published in 2014 in Genocide Studies International for an error concerning Armenian volunteer units that fought with the Russian Army. Erickson claimed that they were made up entirely of Ottoman Armenian citizens who had crossed the border into Russia, a claim that is "flatly contradicted by many sources showing that the four volunteer regiments formed were composed primarily of Russian Armenians." The claim is also contradicted by Erickson's earlier 2001 book.

Richard Hovannisian reads the title of the book Ottomans and Armenians as "clearly indicating that, like the Young Turk dictators in their ideological exclusion of Armenians from true Ottoman society, the author does not regard the Armenians as being bona fide Ottoman citizens but, instead, as an internal alien element". Hovannisian also criticizes the book for factual accuracy, stating "The questionable or spurious assertions made in Ottomans and Armenians are far too numerous to list in their entirety."

Erickson "enthusiastically recommend[ed]" a book by the Turkish diplomat Yücel Güçlü, whose main purpose was to deny the Armenian genocide, a recommendation which was criticized in the International Journal of Middle East Studies in 2013.

Writings The Euphrates Triangle: Security Implications of the Southeast Anatolia Project, co-author with F.M. Lorenz, Natl Defense Univ Pr, (1999), Ordered to Die: A History of the Ottoman Army in the First World War, Greenwood Press (2000), Defeat in Detail: The Ottoman Army in the Balkans, 1912–1913, Praeger Publishers (2003), "Turkey as regional hegemon—2014: strategic implications for the United States," Turkish Studies, V-3, 2004, pp. 25–45. Ottoman Army Effectiveness in World War I: A Comparative Study, Routledge (2007), Gallipoli & The Middle East 1914–1918, London, Amber Books (2008), A Military History of the Ottomans, From Osman to Atatürk, co-author with Mesut Uyar, Westport, Connecticut, Praeger Publishers (2009), By the Light of a Candle. The Diaries of a Reserve Officer in the Ottoman Army - First World War Diaries and Other Records of the Period of 1915-1919, Istanbul-Piscataway (New Jersey): The Isis Press/Gorgias Press, 2009 (introduction and comments). Gallipoli, The Ottoman Campaign, Barnsley, UK, Pen and Sword Books (2010), "Template for Destruction: The Congress of Berlin and the Evolution of Ottoman Counterinsurgency Practices," in Hakan Yavuz et Peter Slugett (ed.), War and Diplomacy. The Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 and the Treaty of Berlin, Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2011. "In the Nick of Time: Transformation in the Ottoman Army, 1911," in Peter Dennis and Jeffrey Grey (ed.), 1911 Preliminary Moves. The 2011 Chief of Army History Conference, Canberra: Big Sky Publishing, 2011. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Oxford-New York, Osprey Publishing, 2013. Ottomans and Armenians. A Study in Counter-Insurgency, New York, Palgrave MacMillan, 2013. Strategic Water, Iraq and Security Planning in the Euphrates-Tigris Basin, co-author with F.M. Lorenz, Quantico, Marine Corps University Press, 2014. Gallipoli, Command Under Fire, Oxford, Osprey Press, 2015. Palestine, The Ottoman Campaigns of 1914-1918, Barnsley, UK, Pen and Sword Publishing, 2016. A Soldier's Kipling, Poetry and the Profession of Arms, Barnsley, UK, Pen and Sword Publishing, 2018. A History of Relocation in Counterinsurgency Warfare, London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. Phase Line Attila, The Amphibious Campaign for Cyprus, 1974, co-author with Mesut Uyar, Quantico, VA: Marine Corps University Press, 2020.

Military awards Bronze Star Medal (1st Oak Leaf) – Fourth Infantry Division, Tikrit, Iraq, 2003 Bronze Star Medal – Third Armored Division, Safwan, Iraq, 1991 Legion of Merit – NATO Hqs, Naples, Italy, 1997 Joint Service Commendation Medal – NATO Hqs, Sarajevo, Bosnia, 1996 Defense Meritorious Service Medal – NATO Hqs, Izmir, Turkey, 1994 Meritorious Service Medal – Germany, Turkey, USA Army Commendation Medal – Germany, USA