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  • Turkish "Nation State" Preconditions

    TURKISH "NATION STATE" PRECONDITIONS
    Ruben Melkonyan

    http://www.noravank.am/en/?page=analiti cs&nid=1498
    04 December 2008

    In the beginning of November of the current year the Turkish Defense
    Minister Vecdi Gonul paid an official visit to Brussels to take part
    in the meeting of the European Union Defense Ministers. The latter
    one made a speech in the ceremony in commemoration of Ataturk held
    on November 10 in the Turkish embassy in Brussels and expressed a
    very noteworthy and, at the same time, scandalous idea connected with
    Turkish "nation state."

    According to him, for the homogeneous form of up-to-date Turkey they
    are obliged to a number of circumstances - the exchange of population
    between Turkey and Greece in 1923, according to which the Greeks
    inhabited in Turkey were exiled to Greece, and the Muslim Turks in
    there - to Turkey. During that exchange, according to different
    sources, for about 1.5 - 2.5 million Greeks moved to Greece and
    350-500 thousand Turks moved from Greece to Turkey. By the way,
    the Turkish Defense Minister said, "Today if Greeks went on living
    in the Aegean Sea basin and Armenians - in many places in Turkey,
    would we be able to be the same nation state. I don't know how to
    explain how important the exchange of Greeks was."

    In reality these words hide a whole ideology of the present day
    Turkish state, the roots of which are long enough to reach the Ottoman
    Empire. According to that ideology, Turks cannot peacefully coexist
    with Armenians, Greeks or other non-Muslims in the same state and,
    as they say, be a "nation state."

    In perhaps inconsiderate words of the Defense Minister is also hidden
    the traditional approach of the Turkish ruling elite, that's to
    say, Armenians, Greeks and other non-Muslims are to be annihilated,
    assimilated or exiled from the country. At the same time this honest
    confession about ethnic discriminations made us reconsider the issue
    of peaceful coexistence with Turks, because, as a matter of fact,
    the Turkish officials themselves directly or indirectly prove that
    these propagandas are either false or have no value for them.

    The Defense Minister Vecdi Gonul has also emphasized the importance of
    the principles the Turkish Republic applied in its formation period
    - "nation building" and economy: "I used to work in the Chamber of
    Commerce in Izmir, and there wasn't even one Muslim among the chamber
    founders, they all were Europeans. Before the Republic was established
    in Ankara there were four districts in Ankara, which belonged to
    Armenians, Greeks, Jews and Muslims. The fertile lands of Aegean
    Sea were in the hands of minority." Criticizing the "sad" past the
    Turkish Defense Minister must be very happy with the present condition,
    as the picture today is quite different from the past. The Minister
    Gonul spoke positively about expulsion of non-Muslims from economy.

    The ides of the Minister Gonul found a wide respond both in
    Turkey and above its boarders. For example, a well-known Turkish
    political scientist Professor Baskin Oran estimates the population
    exchange of 1923 as ethnic and religious cleansing and considers
    that this exchange and "1915 exile of Armenians destroyed Turkey's
    multiformity." According to the Professor, all these did a lot of harm
    to Turkey, at that, in different spheres. Oran has also considered that
    the expression of these ideas, especially in abroad, is wrong: "These
    words have been told in abroad. I first think what the foreigners must
    have said at this. It is right, the exchange of Greeks by the Turkish
    Republic was not bloody, like in case of the Ottoman Empire, however,
    how expedient it is to say it in the presence of foreigners. These
    words are culturally, economically and politically wrong."

    A number of Armenians from Constantinople wrote an open letter
    concerning to the Minister's words to the Turkish Prime-Minister
    and were supported for about 20 intellectual-scientists. According to
    them, the Minister was proud and was boasting of ethnic discriminations
    practiced in their country, as a result of which millions of people had
    been exiled from places they were inhabited for thousands of years. The
    official Athens=2 0also responded to the Minister's words: the Press
    Speaker of Greece's Foreign Ministry Yorgus Kumuchakos estimated it in
    the following way. "One can notice dangerous and unacceptable logic in
    the Minister's announcement." In the Turkish "Zaman" newspaper Ihsan
    Daghin asks a truthful question - Is the Minister Gonul the member of
    the ruling Justice and Development Party or the Committee for Union
    and Progress of Young Turks? And he thinks that the confession of
    Enver Pasha's our day successor may become an important trump card in
    the issue of the "Armenian exile," certainly, not in favor of Turkey.

    Many people blame the Minister that he had made a serious mistake to
    say these words, which will be used by Turkey's enemies, and first of
    all by the Armenian Diaspora. The Turkish "Solidarity for Human Rights
    and Persecutions" organization brought an action against the words
    of the Minister, saying that there were clearly expressed elements
    of ethnic discrimination in his words.

    After the clamor resulted by the words of Gonul, the Defense Minister
    made a few unsuccessful efforts to proofread his words, saying that
    he didn't mean our days, but the events which happened 80 years
    ago. However, isn't the picture today the depiction of what had
    happened at the beginning of the century?

    Just like it was fairly mentioned by the Turkish sci entist Cengiz
    Aktar, "It was God who made Gonul speak" and these words have been
    defined to be confession. And really, it may be considered to be
    a confessing announcement about the state adopted policy, as, as a
    result of the Armenian Genocide, massacres of Greeks and Assyrians,
    the successor of the Ottoman Empire, the Turkish Republic, has
    inherited incomparably less number of communities of national-religion
    minorities, however, the state policy and attitude adopted to them has
    remained the same - the minorities are dangerous, enemy and strange.

    One can state as a fact that from the very first day the Turkish
    republic was establish, national minorities has been subject to
    different persecutions and pressures, although their rights were
    theoretically protected by the Lausanne Treaty. A whole complex
    of pressures was exerted in the Turkish Republic to non-Muslims -
    exile, assimilation, religious, political, economic persecutions,
    and all these directed to form a homogenous, "national" Turkey. A
    number of components of the persecution policy adopted by Turkey,
    such as tax of Property1, military draft of 20 classes2, the events3
    of September 6-7, 1955, actions of "compatriot, speak Turkish4" etc.,
    were serving this objective.

    1In the beginning of WWII (1942) the Turkish government headed by
    the Prime Minister Sukru Saracoglu submitted the so called law on
    "Property tax" for=2 0approval of the Great National Assembly, which
    was adopted on November 11, 1942 by unanimous voting of 350 deputies of
    the Parliament session. Even with the naked eye it is obvious that the
    law is directed against national-religious minorities. "Property tax"
    divides tax-payers into 4 groups - according to religious belonging
    a)Muslims, b)non-Muslims, c) apostates d) foreign subjects. As a matter
    of fact, by this was violated the regulation of the Constitution
    according to which all the citizens, including non-Muslims, were
    enjoying equal rights in Turkey, and it was more reminding the period
    of the Ottoman state, when non-Muslims paid taxes quite different
    from the ones of Muslims. Not including the apostates into the group
    of Muslims, the Turkish state once more demonstrated that it didn't
    trust that group and didn't perceive it as "true Muslims." There are
    also facts that some Armenian, Greeks and Jews who adopted Islam paid
    taxes not like Muslims or apostates, but like non-Muslims.

    In the law it was envisaged that Muslims and foreign subjects had to
    pay taxes at the rate of 12.5%, non-Muslims- 50%, apostates (i.e. the
    ones Islamized) - 25% of the whole property. As in Turkey of that
    period the biggest non-Muslim communities were Armenian, Greek and
    Jewish ones, it is quite natural, that the tax was mainly directed
    against them.

    To determine the rate of the tax and its collectio n, was established a
    special commission. Special attention was devoted to all the commission
    members to be pure-blooded Turks. It is not to be given secondary
    importance to the issue that there were many former Ittihads. One of
    the illegal clauses of the law was the fact that the commission itself
    determined the extent of the tax, i.e. there were no clear criteria.

    However, illegal clauses were not limited by this: the other norm
    roughly violating human rights was that the tax-payer had no right
    to bear a complain against the extent of the tax, i.e. the tax rate
    willfully fixed by the commission was final. While determining the tax
    rates the commission did not take into consideration real incomes and
    means of a tax-prayer and he was taxed approximately, at will and mood.

    In the process of collecting taxes there was another important
    detail, to which we would like to attract attention. The Turkish
    authorities also made a difference among non-Muslims and Armenians,
    who, in comparison with other non-Muslims, were taxed at the highest
    percents. So, for example, a Turkish tradesman was to pay 4.7%,
    Greek-156%, Jew - 232% and Armenian - 232% of his annual income, and,
    as a matter of fact, the Greek tradesman, in comparison with the Turk,
    paid 31, the Jew - 36 and the Armenian 47 times more. 15 days-long
    term was fixed for the tax to be paid, which was later on prolonged to
    30 days. If, during this period the tax-payer could not pay the tax,
    his movables and immovables was alienated and sold by auction at low
    prices: but before that the tax-payers themselves tried to pay their
    belongings at low prices. Let's also mention that in case there were
    short of money, the belongings of his relatives were also subject
    to confiscation and selling. And, if this money was not enough too,
    the taxpayers were condemned to penal servitude to work and pay their
    "debt" to the state. The main place for servitude was Ashkale province
    in Erzurum district famous for its cold climate, which was also called
    "Turkish Siberia".

    At the Turkish governmental session held on November 7, 1943 was
    adopted a regulation of labor liability under19288 including the
    following articles: according to I article, were classified tax-payers
    condemned to forced labor. First of all labor camps were to be sent
    those who hadn't paid taxes at all, than the ones who paid partially
    and so on. It was envisage to pay the convict certain number of money
    making 250 kurushes a day, 60 kurushes of which were to be kept for
    nourishment, dwelling and other expenses and the other part was to
    be kept for paying debts for "Property Tax." According to the 15th
    article, the tax-payer was to work till all his debts for "Property
    Tax" were paid. However, this article made an absurd situation for
    many tax payers, and perhaps meant life-long penal servitude. Thus,
    for example, the tax-payers who had 400-500 liras and more debts had
    to work 1600 years to pay their debts with their salaries. In 1869
    the tax-payers sent to camps were from Istanbul, 889 - from Izmir, 100
    -from Baku. According to the official data 1400 non-Muslim tax-payers
    were sent only to Ashkale, 1229 of which were from Istanbul. 21 out
    of them (according to another data) died in Ashkale.

    It was also important the issue to whom the belongings taken from
    nationalists and sold by auction passed on: as the facts have come
    to prove all these belongings were at very low prices bought by
    Turkish businessmen, organizations and banks. As a matter of fact,
    "Property tax" carried out its mission - to hand all the economy of
    the country over to Turks.

    Only after material, moral, spiritual and physical devastation of
    national minorities, the Turkish authorities, also yielding to foreign
    pressure, canceled "property tax" as a manifestation of "good will."

    2Among other persecutions registered in different periods of the
    history of the Republic of Turkey little importance is devoted or is
    completely ignored the so called conscription of 20 classes draft
    in 1941 (according to some sources, from May 1-15) to non-Muslim
    inhabitants by Turkish authorities. At the height of WWII Turkish
    authorities hurriedly declared conscription : according to 20 classes
    the adult men representatives of national minorities from 18-60,
    Armenians, Greeks, Jews, were sent to "army."

    Everybody was conscripted without any exceptions, even the ones
    who had just returned from military service. The peculiarity of the
    conscription was the fact that it was applied only to non-Muslims
    citizens. Another important nuance was that the conscription was not
    declared about beforehand: potential conscripts were gathered within
    several hours, without prior notification.

    Turkish sources accentuate that the decision about conscription was
    thought over thoroughly: special efforts were made for no one to know
    about this decision but corresponding authorities. This conscription
    was notable as the male non-Muslims conscripts were not solders: they
    did not get military education, they were not given arms and military
    uniform. These unarmed "solders" did construction works. After the
    conscription they did not obey the Ministry of Defense, but the
    Ministry of Public Works in Turkey.

    The non-Muslim conscripts were mainly inhabited in camps located in the
    country's eastern regions, where because of extremely bad conditions
    were spread diseases becoming the reason of death and disablement
    of many people. In spite of the fact that there aren't nay official
    figures left about the number of ones perished, according to eye
    witnesses and many sources, there were many of them.

    In one of=2 0the sources is mentioned an extremely important fact:
    together with non-Muslims, Islamized Armenians were also taken to
    "service." It has come to prove that the conscription of 20 classes had
    a clearly defined ethnic shade, and even forcedly Islamized Armenians
    were source of danger for Turkish authorities. This fact has also
    came to prove that the state structures, from the very beginning of
    Islamization, kept them under their rapt attention and controlled
    everything happening in their surrounding.

    After all there were not considered to be Muslims in reality.

    While speaking about the reasons and aims of the conscription of 20
    classes, it is to be mentioned that a little number of sources and the
    stories of witnesses confirm that this, along with other derivative
    goals, was directed at ethnic cleansing. An important reason of
    conscription is considered that in those years, getting ready to
    the possible war, the Turkish authorities in advance gathered and
    neutralized national minorities called "The 5th Column." Different
    sources mention that by this conscription the state also had an
    objective of removing non-Muslims from the sphere of trade, where
    they had serious positions.

    3On September 6-7 of 1955 Greek and Armenian inhabitants of Istanbul
    and Izmir became subject to hooligan assaults prepared on the state
    level beforehand. The cause of it became news spread by the state
    about firing the house of Ataturk who was in Salonika. After that
    furious mobs assaulted Greek and Armenian blocks, robed and fired
    houses, shops, and churches; tortured, raped and killed people. But to
    this Turkish authorities reacted only a day later, when the work was
    done. The facts unfolded later on in course of court investigation
    proved that the assault was organized by the state, under direct
    participation of high ranking state officials.

    4In different periods of the history of the Turkish Republic (for
    example ,in 1930, to 1960) were carried out so called actions
    "Compatriot speak Turkish," the main targets of which were again
    national minorities.

    Groups of young people were mainly walking through blocks
    mainly inhabited by national minorities and claiming them to
    speak only Turkish: In case of disobedience the consequences
    were unpredictable. In reality, it was the continuation of the
    centuries-long policy of language assimilation.
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