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The Turkish Paradox, Part II

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  • The Turkish Paradox, Part II

    The Turkish Paradox, Part II

    FrontPageMagazine.com
    December 16, 2004

    By Gamaliel Issac

    Was the Turkish Destruction of Smyrna Vengeance?

    Mustafa Akyol wrote[i] that the Turks were not invading Smyrna, they
    were liberating the city from the occupying Greek army. He also wrote
    that the Greeks had previously committed atrocities against the Turks
    and that ?The bloodshed in Smyrna in September, 1922 was an act of
    vengeance.? If the bloodshed in Smyrna was an act of vengeance
    against the Greeks then why did the Turks also annihilate the Armenian
    population of Smyrna? If vengeance against atrocities committed by
    the Greek Christians against Turkish Muslims was the motive, than why
    did the Turks commit atrocities against the Armenians and Greeks in
    Smyrna before the Greek re-occupation? The reason the Greeks
    re-occupied Smyrna to begin with was to prevent more of these
    atrocities. Perhaps the atrocities committed by the Greeks were
    vengeance.

    The Turkish Paradox

    Why were the Turks so brutal to the Armenians and yet as Mr. Akyol
    pointed out in his previous article[ii], did they offer refuge to Jews
    fleeing from European Nations. In order to understand this we need to
    first understand the concept of Dhimma. Tudor Parfitt in his book,
    The Jews in Palestine[iii] 1800-1882 (The Boydell Press, 1987)
    explains that concept as follows:

    ?Dhimma is the relationship between the protector (in this case the
    Sultan) and the protected (the Dhimmi) and was the dominant factor in
    the status of the ahl al-kitab (People of the Book) i.e. Jews,
    Christians, Sabeans, (sabi?un) and later Persian Zoroastrians, in the
    Muslim state. Dhimma required the state to protect the life and
    property of the Dhimmi, exempt him from military service and allow him
    freedom of worship, while the Dhimmi was expected to pay the poll
    tax(cizye), not to insult Islam, not to build new places of worship
    and to dress in a distinctive fashion in order not to be mistaken for
    a Muslim. In cases of civil and family law, non-Muslims had judicial
    autonomy except in such cases which involved both a Dhimmi and a
    Muslim, in which event the case would be tried before a Muslim court
    (mahkama) where the Dhimmi?s legal testimony was unacceptable?The
    measure of religious toleration that obtained under Islam had to be
    purchased: and the price was a considerable one. ?

    The Jews and Armenians as long as they meekly tolerated the
    depredations of Dhimmitude were not considered enemies. In fact a
    jizya [tax] paying infidel was considered a very valuable commodity.
    Joan Peters, in her book, From Time Immemorial[iv] wrote how after the
    conquest of Alexandria, Caliph Omar received word from his general
    describing the wealth they had just attained.

    ?I have captured a city from the description of which I shall
    refrain. Suffice it to say that I have seized therein 4,000 villas
    with 4,000 baths, 40,000 poll-tax paying Jews and four hundred places
    of entertainment for the royalty."

    Mr. Akyol responded to two quotes from the Koran from my previous
    article, by referring the reader to two articles he had written. In
    one of those articles ? Still Standing For Islam and Against
    Terrorism?[v], Mr. Akyol, quoted Karen Armstrong?s writings about the
    aftermath of the fighting at Badr as follows:

    ?The Muslims were jubilant. They began to round up prisoners and, in
    the usual Arab fashion, started to kill them, but Muhammad put a stop
    to this. A revelation came down saying that the prisoners of war were
    to be ransomed.?

    The quote chosen by Mr. Akyol demonstrates that money was what kept
    the Muslims from murdering the infidel. Ransom was why Muhammad put a
    stop to the Muslim murder of the prisoners of war from Badr. Money is
    the reason that subjugated people, who pay the jizya and karaj taxes
    are not killed.

    Another argument in Mr. Akyol?s article is that according to Islam
    there is no compulsion in religion. Although Muslims have violated
    this law frequently, a recent example being the forced conversion of
    the wife of an Egyptian priest[vi], there have actually been cases
    where they have compelled infidels not to convert.

    Bernard Lewis in his book The Arabs in History[vii] wrote that during:

    ?The time of `Abd al-Malik the Muslim government actually resorted to
    discouraging conversion ? in order to restore the failing revenues of
    the state."

    In 1492, when Spain expelled the Jews, Sultan Bayazid II ordered the
    governors of the provinces of the Ottoman Empire "not to refuse the
    Jews entry or cause them difficulties, but to receive them cordially".
    One reason for this was the wealth that the Sultan knew the Jews would
    bring to Turkey. The Sultan even said that: "the Catholic monarch
    Ferdinand was wrongly considered as wise, since he impoverished Spain
    by the expulsion of the Jews, and enriched Turkey".

    Serge Trifkovic in an article in Chronicles Magazine titled Turkey in
    the European Union: a lethal fait accompli[viii] (10/29/04) wrote
    about the Sultan?s offer of refuge to the Jews of Spain as follows:

    ?The act that resonates with modern Ottoman apologists was the
    invitation to the Jews of Spain to resettle in the Sultan's lands
    after expulsion under Ferdinand and Isabella. They were invited not
    because of the Turks' "tolerance," however, but primarily because it
    was necessary to replace the vast numbers of Christians who had been
    killed, expelled, or reduced to penury, and thus to maintain the
    Sultan's tax base. The fact that the Ottoman Jews held a more favored
    status within the Empire than the giaours (infidel Christian dogs) is
    as much a reason for celebration of the Ottoman "tolerance" as is the
    fact that the Nazis were somewhat more "tolerant" of occupied Slavs
    than of the Jews the reason to exonerate them for their many crimes. ?

    If the Dhimmi explanation above were the whole story that leaves the
    question of why the Armenians? Dhimmi status didn?t protect them from
    genocide. It doesn?t explain why Smyrna was burned while Kemal
    Atatürk who was secular in his beliefs was in command. It also
    doesn?t explain the Turkish atrocities against the Jews of Palestine.

    The Jews of Palestine and the Armenians of Turkey had one crucial
    thing in common that endangered them, Turkey was occupying their
    homeland and they wanted to liberate their homeland. The ultimate
    crime as far as the Turks were concerned was the Armenian and Jewish
    desire for freedom, because such freedom threatened the integrity of
    their empire.

    Liberation, the Root Cause of Turkish Revenge

    Turkish vengeance occurred when they felt there was a threat to the
    integrity of their empire. In April 1876 when Bulgarians fought for
    their freedom, the Turks committed mass slaughter in Bulgaria, killing
    12000-15,000 Bulgarians.

    Graber, in his book, Caravans to Oblivion, The Armenian Genocide[ix],
    explained how the threat of Armenian liberation led to revenge by the
    Turkish authorities.

    ?It was in Geneva in 1887 that the first radical Armenian political
    organization was born. It was called Hunchak, meaning ?bell,? and it
    was revolutionary in its aims. It was followed in 1890 by the
    foundation of the much more important and longer lived Dashnakstutium.
    Both organizations called for an independent Armenia?This was
    basically a new position for the Armenians. Its effect on Abdulhamid
    was predictable. He felt he was faced with a sinister revolution that
    he must use all his resources to combat.

    When Armenian resistance first arose in 1893, however, it was not
    driven by urban radicals or intellectual leaders. Its voice was the
    Armenian peasantry in Sassun, deep in the Armenian mountains. It was
    not based primarily on a yearning for freedom; its cause was much
    nearer to the hearts of a peasant society. The wandering Kurdish
    tribes had been given tacit allowance by the sultan to extort the
    peasant Armenian communities in the way that gangsters extort
    protection money for use of their turf. According to the historian
    Christopher J. Walker, ?The Kurdish aghas [commanders] used to demand
    from them a kind of protection tax ? an annual due of crops, cattle,
    silver, iron ore?agricultural implements or clothes? In many places
    the Armenians were forced to pay double taxes?

    By 1892 Abdulhamid had authorized the formation of some thirty
    regiments of Hamideye, each about five hundred men strong and each
    composed of itinerant Kurds whose spoken or unspoken function was to
    suppress the Armenians. To defend themselves against the depredations
    of the Kurds and the corruption of the Turkish officials, Armenian
    peasants in the Sassun district retreated into the mountains and held
    out against successive attacks mounted by Kurds and regular Turkish
    army units. ? In the end, despite some early success, the Armenian
    peasants were overrun and murdered ? men, women and children ? in
    their mountain hideouts.?

    The Armenian desire for national liberation ultimately led to their
    destruction. Graber wrote that:

    ?In November 1914, the Russians published a declaration that promised
    national liberation to the Armenians on the condition that they oppose
    their Ottoman masters. Some Armenians answered the call; small
    numbers of Armenian soldiers deserted from the Turkish army and some
    in the areas of the battles gave assistance to the Russian
    forces... In the winter of 1914-15, the Ottoman army mounted a major
    attack against the Russians? Enver Pasha, who had assumed command of
    the Third Army, made fatal errors which led to the loss of most of his
    forces and the loss of wide stretches of territory to the Russian
    army. There are those who point to Enver Pasha?s direct
    responsibility for the military defeat as the motive for his search
    for a scapegoat; the Armenians were accused of treachery by Enver
    Pasha and his supporters. It was alleged that Armenian betrayal,
    according to the Empire?s rulers, had caused the defeat? To this day,
    the Turkish government claims the treachery of the Armenians as the
    explanation for what subsequently befell them.

    During the night, between April 23 and April 24, 1915, the
    Constantinople police broke into the homes of the Armenian elite in
    the city. Two hundred thirty five Armenian leaders politicians,
    writers, educators, lawyers, etc. ? were taken to the police station
    and then deported.?

    The method of elimination by deportation is explained by Graber as
    follows:

    ?The Young Turks had no railroad system to collect and dispose of the
    Armenians. Despite the efforts to proceed with the construction of
    the Berlin to Baghdad railroad, there were few miles of track
    available, and the condition of most highways was appalling.
    Consequently, those charged by the Teshkilati Mahsusa with the
    responsibility of eliminating the Armenian community evolved a system
    of such primitive brutality that even today, after our century has
    witnessed the indiscriminate massacre of many millions, the Ittihadist
    project still evokes the most fundamental feelings of revulsion.
    There is no doubt that if a more sophisticated machinery for slaughter
    had been available, the Young Turks would have used it. Lacking such
    machinery, their system of eradication worked along the following
    lines, as described by one scholar of the period:

    ?Initially all the able-bodied men of a certain town or village would
    be ordered, either by a public crier or by an official proclamation
    nailed to the walls, to present themselves at the Konak [government
    building]. The proclamation stated that the Armenian population would
    be deported, gave the official reasons for it, and assured them that
    the government was benevolent. Once at the konak, they would be
    jailed for a day or two. No reason was given. Then they would be led
    out of jail and marched out of town. At the first lonely halting
    place they would be shot, or bayoneted to death. Some days later the
    old men and the women and children were summoned in the same way; they
    were often given a few days grace, but then they had to leave. It was
    their misfortune not to be killed at the first desolate place. The
    government?s reasoning appears to have been: the men might pose a
    threat ? leaders might spring up among them, who would defy the
    order; but why waste valuable lead on women, old men and children?
    Instead they were forced to walk, endlessly, along pre-arranged
    routes, until they died from thirst, hunger, exposure, or exhaustion.?

    Jewish Liberation and The Revenge of the Turks

    A declaration about Zionism released in January 25, 1915 by the
    Turkish Authorities and published by Haherut, a Hebrew language
    newspaper, demonstrates that Turkish hostility was to the Jewish
    liberation movement of Zionism more than it was to the Jews. The
    declaration was:

    ?The exalted Government, in its resistance to the dangerous element
    known as Zionism, which is struggling to create a Jewish government in
    the Palestinian area of the Ottoman Kingdom and thus placing its own
    people in jeopardy, has ordered the confiscation of all postal stamps,
    Zionist flags, paper money, banknotes, etc., and has declared the
    dissolution of the Zionist organizations and associations, which were
    secretly established. It has now become known to us that other
    mischief makers are maliciously engaged in libelous attempts to assert
    that our measures are directed against all Jews. These have no
    application to all of those Jews who uphold our covenant?We hope and
    pray that they will be forever safe, as in the past?It is only the
    Zionists and Zionism, that corrupt incendiary and rebellious element,
    together with other groups with such delusionary aspirations, which we
    must vanquish.?

    Yair Auron, in his book, The Banality of Indifference, Zionism and the
    Armenian Genocide[x], wrote how the Turks almost annihilated the
    Jewish community of Palestine because of the threat of Zionism. He
    wrote:

    ?In the spring of 1917, the small Jewish community in Palestine was
    stunned by an order issued by the Turkish authorities for the
    deportation of the 5,000 Jews from Tel Aviv to the small farming
    villages in the Sharon Plain and the Galilee. This may have been the
    beginning of a plan to deport the Jews in the villages and in the
    Jerusalem region as an emergency war measure, and the decree aroused
    grave concern about the future of the Jewish settlement in the
    country. When the deportation order became known to the Nili
    organization [a hebrew spy organization], its members publicized the
    plan in the world press. American Jewry was shocked, and the nations
    fighting against Turkey released reports on Turkish intentions to
    exterminate the Jews in Palestine, as they had already done to the
    Armenians. Public opinion in the neutral countries, as well as in
    Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was outraged and Jamal Pasha
    was forced to reconsider his plan of action.

    The Role Played by Islam

    Although the direct cause of the massacres of the Armenians was the
    threat they posed to the integrity of the Ottoman Empire the
    underlying cause was Islam. Islam was one of the factors that led to
    the Jihad that led to the conquest of Armenia. Islam was responsible
    for the creation of the oppressed Armenian Dhimmi class. It was that
    oppression that forced the Armenians to fight back even at tremendous
    risk to themselves. The role of Islam in the massacre of the
    Armenians also becomes clear in a communication between a German
    witness to the deportations Scheubner Richter and the German
    ambassador in Constantinople, Wangenheim, about the deportation.
    Mr. Richter wrote[xi]:

    ?This large scale evacuation is synonymous with massacre, for in the
    absence of any means of transport , hardly half of the refugees will
    reach their goal alive?. Those who convert to Islam are not evicted.?

    The fact that those who converted to Islam were protected shows that
    the infidel status of the Armenians played a role in the thinking of
    those who massacred them. Many Armenians converted in order to
    survive until Talaat, Turkey?s minister of the interior, issued a
    circular banning the conversion of Armenians to Islam.

    Although Islam prevented the killing of Armenian converts to Islam,
    Islam made it permissible to kill the Armenians and the Jews when they
    rebelled. Chief Dragoman (Turkish-speaking interpreter) of the
    British embassy reported regarding the 1894-96 massacres:

    ??[The perpetrators] are guided in their general action by the
    prescriptions of the Sheri [Sharia] Law. That law prescribes that if
    the "rayah" [dhimmi] Christian attempts, by having recourse to foreign
    powers, to overstep the limits of privileges allowed them by their
    Mussulman [Muslim] masters, and free themselves from their bondage,
    their lives and property are to be forfeited, and are at the mercy of
    the Mussulmans. To the Turkish mind the Armenians had tried to
    overstep those limits by appealing to foreign powers, especially
    England. They therefore considered it their religious duty and a
    righteous thing to destroy and seize the lives and properties of the
    Armenians?"

    The Turkish Rescue of Jews From the Holocaust

    Although Turkey turned back the Jewish refugee ship, the Struma during
    World War II, there were heroic Turks who risked their lives to save
    Turkish Jews from the Holocaust. This cannot be explained by desire
    for money, this can only be explained by compassion, humanitarianism
    and heroism. Perhaps the reforms ending the discriminatory laws of
    Dhimmitude introduced into Turkish society in the 19th century by the
    European powers, can partly explain the changes in Turkish society
    that made this possible.

    Should Turkey be Accepted into the European Union?

    The stabilizing factor in Turkey that prevented radical Islamists from
    taking over was the military. The army did not act to prevent the
    current radical Islamic government of prime minister, Recep Tayyip
    Erdogan from coming to power. The opinions of the Turkish masses are
    moving against the United States and Israel partly as a result of this
    governments influence over the media according to an article by Soner
    Cagaptay in the Middle East Quarterly[xii]. This is alarming because
    it suggests a movement away from the enlightenment that made possible
    the rescue of Jews by Turks during World War II and a movement back
    toward the beliefs that led to Turkey?s terrible past.

    The secular Turkish army has been a stabilizing force on Turkey in the
    past but if Turkey joins the European Union it is unlikely to be able
    to play this role. The Anatolia news agency[xiii] quoted the European
    Union envoy to Turkey, Ambassador Hansjorg Kretschmer, as saying that
    ?the European Turkey's EU-inspired democracy reforms will be
    incomplete if the country fails to curb the influence its powerful
    army wields in politics?

    New EU commissioner Olli Rehnn said on Oct. 20 that "Turkey's EU
    membership will open new horizons for both Turkey and the Union and
    bring forth new challenges." On the same day Germany's foreign
    minister Joschka Fischer went a step further and declared that Turkish
    entry to the EU would be as important for Europe as the D-Day invasion
    60 years ago - a key way to liberate Europe from the threat of
    insecurity from the Middle East and "terrorist ideas."


    In light of these comments and the threat faced by Europe, I think the
    most suitable way to finish this article is with the final sentence of
    Marjorie Housepian Dobkin?s book The Smyrna Affair[xiv].

    ?The course of history in recent years suggests that the ultimate
    victims may be those who delude themselves.?

    NOTES

    [i] Akyol M., "What's Right with Turkey",
    FrontPageMagazine.com, 12/3/04

    [ii] Akyol M., "What's Right with Turkey",
    FrontPageMagazine.com, 12/3/04

    [iii] Parfitt, T., ?The Jews in Palestine 1800-1822",
    The Boydell Press, 1987

    [iv] Peters, J.. ?From Time Immemorial?, Harper & Row,
    1984

    [v] Akyol, M. "Still Standing for Islam - and Against
    Terrorism" FrontPageMagazine.com 10/8/04

    [vi] Klein, A. "Christians protest kidnapping forced
    conversion", Worldnetdaily.com 12/6/04

    [vii] Lewis, B. ?The Arabs in History?, Oxford
    University Press, 1993

    [viii] Trifkovic, S. ?Turkey in the European Union? a
    lethal fait accompli?, Chronicles Magazine, 10/29/04

    [ix] Graber, G. S. :Caravans to Oblivion, The Armenian
    Genocide: John Wiley and Sons 1996

    [x] Auron, Y., The Banality of Indifference, Zionism
    and the Armenian Genocide, Transactions Publishers,
    New Brunswick, NJ 2000

    [xi] Graber, G. S. :Caravans to Oblivion, The Armenian
    Genocide: John Wiley and Sons 1996

    [xii] Cagaptay, S., ?Where Goes the U.S.-Turkish
    Relationship?? Middle East Quarterly, Fall 2004

    [xiii] ?Turkish Army should Toe European Union line,
    EU official says,?, EU Business, 6/14/03

    [xiv] Dobkin, M., The Smyrna Affair, Harcourt Brace
    Jovanovich, [1st ed.] 1971


    http://www.frontpagemag.com/articles/readarticle.asp?ID=16318&p=1
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