Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

What's Wrong with Turkey?

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • What's Wrong with Turkey?

    FrontPageMagazine.com, CA
    Jan 12 2005


    What's Wrong with Turkey?
    By Gamaliel Issac
    FrontPageMagazine.com | January 12, 2005

    In my previous article, Turkey's Dark Past I exposed the falseness of
    the claims of Mustafa Akyol that `Turkey has had an Islamic heritage
    free of anti-Westernism and anti-Semitism' Mr. Akyol wrote a
    rebuttal, What's Right With Turkey, in which he argued that the
    Turks have a great record when it comes to the Jews and that when the
    Jews were expelled from Spain, they were welcomed by the Sultan. In
    addition he writes that Jews expelled from Hungary in 1376, from
    France by Charles VI in September 1394, and from Sicily early in the
    15th century found refuge in the Ottoman Empire. Mustapha Akyol
    points out that the blood libel and other such standard anti-Semitic
    nonsense was unknown in Muslim lands until the 19th century and that
    these were introduced to the Middle East by the "westernized" elite,
    who had been infected by the anti-Semitic plague from its ultimate
    source: Europe. He points out that Mr. Salahattin Ulkumen, Consul
    General at Rhodes in 1943-1944, was recognized by the Yad Vashem as a
    Righteous Gentile "Hassid Umot ha'Olam" in June 1990 for his efforts
    to save Jews and how Marseilles vice-consul Necdet Kent, boarded a
    railway car full of Jews bound for Auschwitz, risking his own life in
    an attempt to persuade the Germans to send them back to France.

    How can we reconcile the refuge provided by Turkey for the Jews of
    Europe and the heroic efforts made by Turkish politicians such as Mr.
    Ulkumen and Mr. Kent with the atrocities committed by the Turks
    against the Armenians and against the Jews of Palestine which I
    described in my article, "Turkey's Dark Past?"

    Akyol's explanation is that what the West sees as an unjust massacre
    of the Armenians was simply fighting between Turks and Armenians. In
    his article "What's Right With Turkey" he wrote: `What happened in
    1915, and beforehand, was mutual killing in which the Armenian loss
    was greater than that of the Muslims (Turks and Kurds), but in which
    the brutality was pretty similar on both sides.' Another rationale
    for the Turkish `fighting' provided by Mr. Akyol was that of Armenian
    revolutionary agitation and aid given the invading Russians by
    Anatolian Armenians.

    In my article "Turkey's Dark Past" I quote passages from Serge
    Trifkovic's book, The Sword of the Prophet, which convincingly
    demonstrate that what happened at Smyrna was a massacre. Akyol argues
    that Dr. Trifkovic is an unreliable source and that what happened at
    Smyrna was simply fighting between the two sides. Mr. Akyol also
    writes that Smyrna was an Ottoman city that was liberated by the
    Turks from the occupying Greek army.

    Akyol addressed my arguments about the role of Islam in the massacre
    of the Armenians by referring the reader to two articles he has
    written, two articles which do shed light on the massacres of the
    Armenians but not in the way he intended.

    In this article I will point out the errors in Akyol's arguments and
    provide an alternative explanation for the paradox of Turkish
    tolerance to the Jews of Europe and cruelty to the Armenian
    Christians. In addition I will discuss the paradox of the refuge
    given the European Jews by the Turks in Anatolia in the context of
    the intolerance of the Turks towards the Jews of Palestine. Finally
    I will discuss the relevance of Turkish history to the question of
    whether or not Turkey should be accepted into the European Union.


    Smyrna, A Greek or an Ottoman City?

    Akyol wrote that `The truth is that Smyrna (known as Izmir in
    Turkish) was an Ottoman city that included a Greek quarter, and the
    Turks were not invading Smyrna, they were liberating the city from
    the occupying Greek army.'

    Akyol's argument that Smyrna was an Ottoman and not a Greek city
    ignores over a thousand years of history. According to the
    Encyclopedia Britannica Online:

    `Greek settlement is first clearly attested by the presence of
    pottery dating from about 1000 BC. According to the Greek historian
    Herodotus, the Greek city was founded by Aeolians but soon was seized
    by Ionians. From modest beginnings, it grew into a stately city in
    the 7th Century, with massive fortifications and blocks of
    two-storied houses. Captured by Alyattes of Lydia about 600 BC, it
    ceased to exist as a city for about 300 years until it was refounded
    by either Alexander the Great or his lieutenants in the 4th century
    BC at a new site on and around Mount Pagus. It soon emerged as one of
    the principal cities of Asia Minor and was later the centre of a
    civil diocese in the Roman province of Asia, vying with Ephesus and
    Pergamum for the title `first city of Asia.' Roman emperors visited
    there, and it was celebrated for its wealth, beauty, library, school
    of medicine, and rhetorical tradition. The stream of Meles is
    associated in local tradition with Homer, who is reputed to have been
    born by its banks. Smyrna was one of the early seats of Christianity.

    Capital of the naval theme (province) of Samos under the Byzantine
    emperors, Smyrna was taken by the Turkmen Aydin principality in the
    early 14th Century AD. After being conquered in turn by the crusaders
    sponsored by Pope Clement VI and the Central Asian conqueror Timur
    (Tamerlane), it was annexed to the Ottoman Empire about 1425.
    Although severely damaged by earthquakes in 1688 and 1778, it
    remained a prosperous Ottoman port with a large European population.

    Izmir [Smyrna] was occupied by Greek forces in May 1919 and
    recaptured by Turkish forces under Mustafa Kemal (later Kemal
    Atatürk) on September 9, 1922. `

    One problem with the encyclopedic summary above is that as a
    necessary consequence of its brevity we do not realize what the
    events described really entail. Here is what Marjorie Housepian
    Dobkin, wrote about the first conquest of Smyrna in 1402 by Tamerlane
    and his Muslim army in her book The Smyrna Affair.

    `In 1402 Tamerlaine butchered the inhabitants and razed the buildings
    in an orgy of cruelty that would become legendary. While the
    inhabitants slept, his men stealthily undermined the city's wall and
    propped them up with timber smeared with pitch. Then he applied the
    torch, the walls sank into ditches prepared to receive them, and the
    city lay open to the invader. Smyrna's would be defenders, the
    Knights of Saint John, escaped to their ships by fighting their way
    through a mob of panic-stricken inhabitants. They escaped just in
    time, for Tamerlaine ordered a thousand prisoners beheaded and used
    their skulls to raise a monument in his honor. He did not linger
    over his victory - it was his custom to ravage and ride on. He rode
    on to Ephesus, where the city's children were sent out to greet and
    appease him with song. 'What is this noise?' he roared, and ordered
    his horsemen to trample the children to death."


    Corroboration of Mr. Trifkovic

    Akyol argues that Mr. Trifkovic is not a reliable source yet there
    are many independent sources that corroborate the excerpts of Mr.
    Trifkovic's book that I included in my previous article. I include a
    corroboration of his account about the attack on Archbishop
    Chrystostom in an appendix to this article.

    Here are a few accounts not included by Mr. Trifkovic that
    corroborate his argument that what happened at Smyrna was not just
    fighting but rather a massacre of the infidel inhabitants of Smyrna
    and the burning of the city by the Turks.

    `Anita Chakerian, a young teacher at the [American Collegiate]
    Institute, saw the Turkish guards dragging into the building large
    sacks, which they deposited in various corners. They were bringing
    rice and potatoes the men said, because they knew the people were
    hungry and would soon have nothing left to eat. The sacks were not
    to be opened until the bread was exhausted. Such unexpected
    generosity led one of the sailors to investigate; the bags held
    gunpowder and dynamite. On Tuesday night, wagons bearing gasoline
    drums again moved through the deserted streets around the College...

    "At 1:00 A.M. on Wednesday, Mabel Kalfa, a Greek nurse at the
    Collegiate Institute, saw three fires in the neighborhood. At 4:00
    A.M. fires in a small wooden hut adjoining the College wall and on a
    veranda near the school were put out by firemen. At noon on
    Wednesday a sailor beckoned Mabel Kalfa and Miss Mills to the window
    in the dining room. 'Look there,' he said. 'The Turks are setting
    the fires!' The women could see three Turkish officers silhouetted
    in the window of a photographer's shop opposite the school. Moments
    after the men emerged, flames poured from the roof and the windows...
    Said Miss Mills: 'I could plainly see the Turks carrying tins of
    petroleum into the houses, from which, in each instance, fire burst
    forth immediately afterward.'

    It was not long before all of Smyrna was on fire. Ms. Housepian
    writes:

    `The spectacle along the waterfront haunted Melvin Johnson for the
    rest of his life. 'When we left it was just getting dusk,' he
    remembers. 'As we were pulling out I'll never forget the screams.
    As far as we could go you could hear `em screaming and hollering, and
    the fire was going on... most pitiful thing you ever saw in your life.
    In your life. Could never hear nothing like it any other place in
    the world, I don't think. And the city was set in a - a kind of a
    hill, and the fire was on back coming this way toward the ship. That
    was the only way the people could go, toward the waterfront. A lot
    of `em were jumping in, committing suicide, It was a sight all
    right.'"


    Ms. Housepian wrote how:

    `On the Iron Duke, Major Arthur Maxwell of His Majesty's Royal
    Marines, watching through binoculars, distinguished figures pouring
    out buckets of liquid among the refugees. At first he took them to
    be firemen attempting to extinguish the flames, then he realized, to
    his horror, that every time they appeared there was a sudden burst of
    flames. 'My God! They're trying to burn the refugees!' he
    exclaimed."

    Ms. Housepian included the account of reporter John Clayton who
    wrote:

    `Except for the squalid Turkish quarter, Smyrna has ceased to exist.
    The problem for the minorities is here solved for all time. No doubt
    remains as to the origin of the fire...The torch was applied by Turkish
    regular soldiers.'


    The Rebellion Excuse:

    Akyol started his article by excusing the Armenian Genocide with the
    excuse that the Armenians rebelled against the Turks and helped the
    Russians.

    One reason that this is a poor excuse is that the Armenians had every
    reason to rebel against the Turks. Marjorie Housepian, describes
    what Dhimmi life was like under the Turks.

    "Beginning in the fifteenth century, Ottoman policy drove the most
    unmanageable elements, such as the Kurds, into the six Armenian
    provinces in the isolated northeast. Thereafter, the Armenians were
    not only subjected to the iniquitous tax-farming system (applicable
    to the Moslem peasants as well), the head tax, and the dubious
    privilege of the military exemption tax, but also to impositions that
    gave the semi barbarous tribes license to abuse them. The
    hospitality tax, which entitled government officials 'and all who
    passed as such' to free lodging and food for three days a year in an
    Armenian home, was benign compared to the dreaded kishlak, or
    winter-quartering tax, whereby - in return for a fee pocketed by the
    vali - a Kurd was given the right to quarter himself and his cattle
    in Armenian homes during the long winter months, which often extended
    to half the year. The fact that Armenian dwellings were none too
    spacious and the Kurdish way of life exceptionally crude proved the
    least of the burden. Knowing that the unarmed Armenians had neither
    physical nor legal redress, a Kurd, armed to the teeth, could not
    only make free with his host's possessions but if the fancy struck
    him could rape and kidnap his women and girls as well."

    In addition the Turks would abduct Christian boys at an early age,
    sequester them for military training and use them to quell unrest and
    to fight their battles for them.

    Marjorie Housepian wrote about the Armenian `rebellions' as follows:

    `After the Treaty of Berlin, Hamid defiantly gerrymandered the
    boundaries in the northern provinces, usurped Armenian lands, moved
    in more Kurds, and increased the proportion of Moslems. When the
    Armenians were driven to protest to Britain that the Porte [Turkish
    Government] was breaking the terms of the treaty, Hamid denounced
    them as traitors conspiring with foreigners to destroy the empire.
    Yet it was not until 1887 that a number of Armenian leaders,
    despairing of every other means, organized the first of two Armenian
    revolutionary parties - the second was organized in 1890. The Church
    discouraged revolutionary activity, fearing that it would lead to
    nothing more than intensified bloodshed, and the people were on the
    whole inclined to agree with their religious leaders. Small bands of
    Armenian revolutionaries nonetheless staged a number of
    demonstrations during the 1890's and gave Hamid exactly the pretext
    he sought. Declaring that the only way to get rid of the Armenian
    question is to get rid of the Armenians, he proceeded to the task
    with every means at hand. He sent masses of unhappy Circassians, who
    had themselves lately been driven from Europe, into Eastern Anatolia
    - where the Armenian population had already been reduced by massacre
    and migration - and encouraged them, along with the Kurds, to attack
    village after village. He roused the tribesmen to the kill by having
    his agents spread rumors that the Armenians were about to attack
    them, then cited every instance of self-defense as proof of rebellion
    and as an excuse for further massacre. He sent his special Hamidieh
    regiments to put down 'revolts' in such districts as Sassoun, where
    the Armenians were protesting that they were unable to pay their
    taxes to the government because the Kurds had left them nothing with
    which to pay...'

    Marjorie Housepian explained that the Armenians went great efforts
    not to rebel. She wrote:

    `In order to prove the rebelliousness of the victims it was necessary
    first to provoke them into acts of self-defense, which could then be
    labeled 'Insurrectionary.' A campaign of terror such as had been
    practiced earlier in the Balkans was already under way in Armenian
    towns and villages near the Russian border, and had been ever since
    Enver's impetuous winter offensive against the Russians had turned
    into a disaster; Turkish leaders had publicly ascribed the defeat to
    the perfidy of the Armenians on both sides of the Russo-Turkish
    frontier. The Turkish Armenians, however, proved themselves
    incredibly forbearing in the face of provocation. 'The Armenian
    clergy and political leaders saw many evidences that the Turks ... were
    [provoking rebellion] and they went among the people cautioning them
    to be quiet and bear all insults and even outrages patiently, so as
    not to give provocation,' wrote Henry Morgenthau, American Ambassador
    to Turkey. 'Even though they burn a few of our villages,' these
    leaders would say, `do not retaliate for it is better than a few be
    destroyed than that a whole nation be massacred.''

    Was the Turkish Destruction of Smyrna Vengeance?
    Akyol wrote 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.' Undoubtedly vengeance played a role but that
    explanation is incomplete. 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 atrocities committed by Greeks
    during the re-occupation of Smyrna is the explanation for Turkish
    atrocities, then why did the Turks commit atrocities against the
    Armenians and Greeks in Smyrna before the Greek re-occupation? It
    has been estimated that during the seven centuries of Turkish
    presence in Asia Minor several millions of Greeks,... were
    systematically massacred.

    John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the United States
    (1824-1828) had the following to say about the suffering of the
    Greeks under the Turks:

    `If ever insurrection was holy in the eyes of God, such was that of
    the Greeks against their Mahometan oppressors... They were suffered to
    be overwhelmed by the whole mass of the Ottoman power; cheered only
    by the sympathies of all the civilized world, but without a finger
    raised to sustain or relieve them by the Christian governments of
    Europe; while the sword of extermination, instinct with the spirit of
    the Koran, was passing in merciless horror over the classical regions
    of Greece, the birth-place of philosophy, of poetry, of eloquence, of
    all the arts that embellish, and all the sciences that dignify the
    human character.'

    The reason why the allies assigned Greece the responsibility to
    administer Smyrna after World War I was stated by Alexander
    Millerand, president of the Supreme Allied Council as follows:

    `The Turkish government not only failed in its duty to protect its
    non-Turkish citizens from the looting, violence and murders, but
    there are many indications that the Turkish government itself was
    responsible for directing and organizing the most cruel attacks
    against the populations, which it was supposed to protect. For these
    reasons, the Allied powers have decided to liberate from the Turkish
    yoke all the lands where the majority of the people were non-Turks."

    Persecution against the Greeks in Turkey continues to this very day.


    The Turkish Paradox

    Why were the Turks so brutal to the Armenians and yet as Mr. Akyol
    pointed out in his previous article, 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 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."

    One reason it was difficult to obey the Dhimma contract was that in
    addition to infidels being required to pay exorbitant taxes they were
    also required to live in lowliness and degradation. This was
    explained by the Sultan of Morocco, Mulay Abd ar -Rahman in a letter
    he wrote in 1841 to the French Consulate at Tangiers as follows:

    `The Jews of Our fortunate Country have received guarantees from
    which they benefit in exchange for their carrying out the conditions
    imposed by our religious Law on those people who enjoyed its
    protection: these conditions have been and still are observed by our
    coreligionists. If the Jews respect these conditions, Our Law
    prohibits the spilling of their blood and enjoins the protection of
    their belongings, but if they break so much as a single condition,
    [then] Our blessed Law permits their blood to be spilt and their
    belongings to be taken. Our glorious faith only allows them the
    marks of lowliness and degradation, thus the sole fact that a Jew
    raises his voice against a Muslim constitutes a violation of the
    conditions of protection.'

    An example of the consequences of violating the Dhimma contract is
    given by a letter written by Porter, a British ambassador to Turkey
    to a colleague in London on June 3, 1758, about an unfortunate Jew
    and an Armenian who thought the dress codes had been forgotten. I
    include an excerpt below:


    `This time of Ramazan is mostly taken up by day in sleep, by night in
    eating, so that we have few occurrences of any importance, except
    what the Grand Seignor [Sultan Mustafa III] himself affords us he is
    determin'd to keep to his laws, and to have them executed, that
    concerning dress has been often repeated, and with uncommon
    solemnity, yet as in the former reigns, after some weeks it was
    seldom attended to, but gradually transgress'd, these people whose
    ruling passion is directed that way, thought it was forgot, and
    betook themselves to their old course, a Jew on his Sabbath was the
    first victim, the Grand Seignor going the rounds incognito, met him,
    and not having the Executioner with him, without sending him [the
    Jew] to the Vizir, had him executed, and his throat cut that moment,
    the day after an Armenian follow'd, he was sent to the Vizir, who
    attempted to save him, and and condemn'd him to the Galleys, but the
    Capigilar Cheaia [head of the guards] came to the Porte at night,
    attended with the executioner, to know what was become of the
    delinquent, that first Minister had him brought directly from the
    Galleys and his head struck off, that he might inform his Master he
    had anticipated his Orders.'

    Jews and Armenians as long as they meekly tolerated the depredations
    of Dhimmitude and obeyed all the rules were generally not killed
    outright because as jizya [tax] paying infidels they was considered a
    valuable commodity. Joan Peters, in her book From Time Immemorial,
    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."

    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," 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 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 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, there have actually been cases where they
    have compelled infidels not to convert.

    Bernard Lewis, in his book The Arabs in History, 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." This act of kindness may have at least in part been
    motivated by financial need. 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 (10/29/04), argued that
    tolerance did not play a role in the welcome extended to the Jews by
    Sultan Bayazid II. He wrote:

    `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 Jews of Turkey as a whole did not violate the Dhimma contract.
    The Armenians by rebelling and seeking assistance from foreign powers
    did violate the contract. The Zionist movement also violated the
    Dhimma contract by advocating an independent state of Israel. This
    is one explanation for the paradox of Turkey giving refuge to Jews
    and massacring Armenians and threatening to massacre Jews in
    Palestine.

    "A report of the Chief Dragoman (Turkish-speaking interpreter) of the
    British embassy regarding the 1894-96 massacres supports this
    explanation. He wrote:

    "...[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..."

    Violation of the Dhimma contract is not the only reason the Armenians
    of Turkey were massacred and the Jews of Palestine were threatened
    with massacre. 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 in addition to
    violating the Dhimma contract, 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,
    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.'"

    Armenians were also slaughtered enroute. The following is a story of
    a young girl, who was deported:

    `I was twelve years old, I was with my mother. They drove us with
    whips and we had no water. It was very hot and many of us died
    because there was no water. They drove us with whips, I do not know
    how many days and nights and weeks, until we came to the Arabian
    Desert. My sisters and the little baby died on the way. We went to a
    town, I do not know its name. The streets were full of dead, all cut
    to pieces. They drove us over them. I kept dreaming about that. We
    came to a place on the Desert, a hollow place in the sand, with hills
    all around it. There were thousands of us there, many, many
    thousands, all women and girl children. They herded us like sheep
    into the hollow. Then it was dark and we heard firing all around. We
    said, `The killing has begun.' All night we waited for them, my
    mother and I, we waited for them to reach us. But they did not come,
    and in the morning, when we looked around, no one was killed. No one
    was killed at all. They had not been killing us. They had been
    signaling to the wild tribes that we were there. The Kurds came later
    in the morning, in the daylight; the Kurds and many other kinds of
    men from the Desert; they came over the hills and rode down and began
    killing us. All day long they were killing; you see, there were so
    many of us. All they did not think they could sell, they killed. They
    kept on killing all night and in the morning - in the morning they
    killed my mother.'

    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 to Jews in Palestine
    resulted from the threat of Jewish liberation. 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, 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.

    Mustafa Kemal's Reforms and Turkish Humanitarianism


    Mustafa Kemal believed that Islam was responsible for Turkish enmity
    toward the Western world as well as Turkish regression. In a speech
    he gave in March 1923 he said:

    "You know there is an unforgiving enmity between the societies of the
    Muslim world and the masses of the Christian world. Muslims became
    eternal enemies of Christians, and Christians those of Muslims. They
    viewed each other as non-believers, fanatics. The two worlds
    co-existed with this fanaticism and enmity. As a result of this
    enmity, the Muslim world was distanced from the western progress that
    took a new form and color every century. Because, Muslims viewed
    progress with disdain and disgust. At the same time, the Muslim world
    had to hold on to its arms as a result of this enmity that lasted for
    centuries between the two groups. This continuous occupation with
    arms, enmity, and disdain for western progress constitute another
    important cause of our regression."

    Mustafa Kemal abolished the Caliphate, replaced Shariah rule with
    penal codes based on European models, emancipated women, enforced
    equality for all citizens regardless of religion, adopted modern
    Western clothing and the Latin script, and abolished the religious
    education system.

    It is possible that Mustafa Kemal's reforms improved the attitude of
    the Turks toward Turkish Jews, and made possible the heroic and
    humanitarian efforts made by men such as Salahattin Ulkumen to save
    Turkish Jews from the Nazis during World War II.


    The Failure of Democracy in Turkey

    In 1924 and again in 1930 President Mustafa Kemal Atatürk approved
    the formation of opposition parties in his effort to introduce
    democracy in Turkey. As soon as the parties began to speak publicly,
    they drew wide spread political support, and it became clear that
    people were dissatisfied with the governments secularist and economic
    policies. In both cases, the parties were promptly disbanded. The
    next attempt to transition toward a multiparty democracy occurred in
    1945. The president of Turkey, Ismet Inonu, agreed to allow a
    multiparty system and opposition parties quickly formed. The
    Democratic opposition party (DP), that supported bringing Islam into
    politics won the election but opposition to it grew. The DP
    responded with legislation that restricted freedom of speech and the
    press. In 1960, the military overthrew the DP government. In the
    next election Turkish voters voted in the successor parties to the
    DP, the Justice Party and the New Turkey Party They essentially
    put back into power the party that was ousted by the military in
    preceding year. In 1995 Necmettin Erbakan was elected prime minister
    of Turkey. His radicalism can be seen in a speech he gave to Kurds,
    pleaded for their support "to save the world from European infidels."
    Three years later, the Constitutional Court banned the Welfare Party
    on the grounds that it was engaged in fundamentalist activity and was
    violating the secular principles of the Turkish constitution. In the
    1999 elections most of the former members of the Welfare party were
    reelected to parliament as members of the new Virtue party. Today,
    Recep Tayyip Erdogan, leader of the Justice and Development Party is
    prime minister even though he was sentenced to jail in 1998 for
    inciting religious hatred. If it wasn't for the military, Turkey
    would probably have reverted to a Shariah state long ago. There are
    many who complain that because of the military Turkey is not
    democratic enough, the truth is that without the military Turkey
    would not be democratic at all.

    The opinions of the Turkish masses are moving against the United
    States and Israel partly as a result of Prime Minister Erdogan
    governments influence over the media according to an article by Soner
    Cagaptay in the Middle East Quarterly. The growing influence of
    Islam and the growing hostility toward Israel and the United States
    is alarming because it indicates that Turkey is regressing from the
    enlightenment that made possible the rescue of Jews during World War
    II toward the dark ages of Turkey's fundamentalist past.


    Should Turkey be Accepted into the European Union?

    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 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' If the influence of the army is eliminated
    Europe may find itself with an Islamic army in its midst.

    Some European Leaders in their eagerness to appease the Islamic world
    are oblivious to this threat. 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 by European leaders, I think the most
    suitable way to finish this article is with the final sentence of
    Marjorie Housepian Dobkin's book The Smyrna Affair.

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

    __________________________________________________ _

    Appendix

    Here is a corroborating account to that told by Serge Trifkovic about
    the tragic attack on the Armenian Patriarch Chrysostomos as told by
    Marjorie Housepian Dobkin. Archbishop Chrysostomos tried to protect
    his Armenian flock from the depredations of the Turks, and when given
    an opportunity to flee by an American friend refused to abandon them.
    Marjorie Dobkin recounts his fate below:
    `The Patriarch was walking slowly down the steps of the Konak when
    the [Turkish] General appeared on the balcony and cried out to
    waiting mob, 'Treat him as he deserves!' The crowd fell upon
    Chrysostomos with guttural shrieks and dragged him down the street
    until they reached a barber shop where Ismael, the Jewish proprietor,
    was peering nervously from his doorway. Someone pushed the barber
    aside, grabbed a white sheet, and tied it around Chrysostomos's neck,
    shouting, 'Give him a shave!'

    "They tore out the Patriarch's beard, gouged out his eyes with
    knives, cut off his ears, his nose, and his hands. A dozen French
    marines who had accompanied Chrysostomos to the government house were
    standing by, beside themselves. Several of the men jumped
    instinctively forward to intervene, but the officer in charge forbade
    them to move. 'He had his hand on his gun, though he was trembling
    himself,' one of the men said later, 'so we dared not lift ours.
    They finished Chrysostomos there before our eyes.''

    http://frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16611
Working...