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Turkey: A Past and a Future: Part 2
http://www.yerkir.am/en/news/34740.htm
12:35 - 06.11.2012
The established writers in the traditional style made a hard fight,
but Tekin Alp claims that the Yeni Lisan (New Language) "is to-day in
possession of an absolute and unlimited authority." Borrowed rhythms
have been banned as well as borrowed words, and there is even an
agitation to replace the Arabic script by a new Turkish alphabet - an
imitation of the Albanian movement which was opposed so fiercely by
the Turks themselves before the Balkan War.
"Because it is written in the Koran that Islam knows no nationalities,
but only Believers, the Islamjis thought that to occupy oneself with
national questions was to act against the interests and principles of
Islam itself.... According to the Nationalists, the pronouncement in the
Koran was directed exclusively against the very frequent dissensions
of clans and parties in the various Arab races." (A sneer which is
meant to have a modern application.) "Although the Nationalists
proclaim themselves the most zealous followers of Mohammed,
nevertheless they do not conceal the fact that their interpretation of
Islam is not the same as that of the Arabs. They maintain that the
Turks cannot interpret the Koran in the same manner as the Arabs....
Their idea of God is also different."
The Ministry of Evkaf (Religious Endowments) recently made a grant of
£50,000 (Turkish) towards the publication of works on these worthies;
the students at the Military College in Constantinople are alleged to
have been diverted from their studies by their devotion to such
literature, and on the eve of the War the Professor of Military
Education there is reported to have delivered the following address to
an instruction class of reserve officers:
"We are, gentlemen, before all, Turks. I wonder why we are called
Ottomans, for who is Osman after whom we are named? He is a Turk from
Altai, who overran this country with his Turkish Army. Therefore it is
more of an honor to us to be named after his origin than after
himself. We have so far been deceived by the ignorance of our
forebears, and fie on these forebears who made us forget our
nationality.... Be sure that Turkish nationality is better for us than
Islam, and racial pride is one of the greatest social virtues."
"They sought after a judicious mingling of the religious and national
impulses. They realized only too clearly that the still abstract
ideals of Nationalism could not be expected to attract the masses, the
lower classes, composed of uneducated and illiterate people. It was
found more expedient to reach these classes under the flag of
religion."
This sentence reveals in a flash one motive of the Armenian
"Deportations," which followed Turkey's intervention in the War; and a
celebrated German authority, in a memorial written in 1916, gives this
very explanation of their origin.
"Turkey's entry into the War," he writes, "was unwelcome to Turkish
society in Constantinople, whose sympathies were with France, as well
as to the mass of the people, but the Panislamic propaganda and the
military dictatorship were able to stifle all opposition. The
proclamation of the 'Holy War' produced a general agitation of the
Mohammedan against the Christian elements in the Empire, and the
Christian nationalities had soon good reason to fear that Turkish
chauvinism would make use of Mohammedan fanaticism to make the War
popular with the mass of the Mohammedan population."
The evidence presented in the British Blue Book on the Treatment of
Armenians in the Ottoman Empire shows that this explanation is
correct. The Armenians were not massacred spontaneously by the local
Moslems; the initiative came entirely from the Central Government at
Constantinople, which planned the systematic extermination of the
Armenian race in the Ottoman Empire, worked out a uniform method of
procedure, dispatched simultaneous orders to the provincial officials
and gendarmerie to carry it into effect, and cashiered the few who
declined to obey.
The Armenians were rounded up and deported by regular troops and
gendarmes; they were massacred on the road by bands of chettis,
consisting chiefly of criminals released from prison by the Government
for this work; when the Armenians were gone the Turkish populace was
encouraged to plunder their goods and houses, and as the convoys of
exiles passed through the villages the best-looking women and children
were sold cheap or even given away for nothing to the Turkish
peasantry. Naturally the Turkish people accepted the good things the
Government offered them, and naturally this reconciled them
momentarily to the War.
A Turkish officer, taking our informant for a Turk too, remarked to
him: "Those Arabs wish to get rid of us and are secretly in sympathy
with our enemies, but we mean to get rid of them ourselves before they
have any chance of translating their sympathy into action." This caps
what a Turkish gendarme in Armenia said to a Danish sister serving
with the German Red Cross: "First we kill the Armenians, then the
Greeks, then the Kurds." Every non-Turkish nationality in the Ottoman
Empire is threatened with extermination.
A German teacher in the German Technical School at Aleppo, who
resigned his appointment as a protest against the Armenian atrocities
in 1915, thus records his personal judgment in an open letter to the
Reichstag:
"The Young Turk is afraid of the Christian nationalities - Armenians,
Syrians and Greeks - on account of their cultural and economic
superiority, and he sees in their religion a hindrance to Turkifying
them by peaceful means. They must therefore be exterminated or
converted to Islam by force. The Turks do not suspect that in so doing
they are sawing off the branch on which they are sitting themselves.
The Turks, the least gifted of the races living in Turkey, are
themselves only a minority of the population, and are still far behind
the Arabs in culture.
"We teachers, who have been teaching Greeks, Armenians, Arabs, Turks,
and Jews in German schools in Turkey for years, can only pass judgment
that of all our pupils the pure Turks are the most unwilling and the
least talented. When for once in a way a Turk does achieve something,
one can be sure in nine cases out of ten that one is dealing with a
Circassian, an Albanian, or a Turk with Bulgarian blood in his veins.
>From my personal experience I can only prophesy that the Turks proper
will never achieve anything in trade, industry, or science.
The German memorialist presses the indictment:
"You cannot become a merchant by murdering one. You cannot master a
handicraft if you smash its tools. A sparsely-populated country does
not become more productive if it destroys its most industrious
population. You do not advance the progress of civilization if you
drive into the desert.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
http://www.yerkir.am/en/news/34740.htm
12:35 - 06.11.2012
The established writers in the traditional style made a hard fight,
but Tekin Alp claims that the Yeni Lisan (New Language) "is to-day in
possession of an absolute and unlimited authority." Borrowed rhythms
have been banned as well as borrowed words, and there is even an
agitation to replace the Arabic script by a new Turkish alphabet - an
imitation of the Albanian movement which was opposed so fiercely by
the Turks themselves before the Balkan War.
"Because it is written in the Koran that Islam knows no nationalities,
but only Believers, the Islamjis thought that to occupy oneself with
national questions was to act against the interests and principles of
Islam itself.... According to the Nationalists, the pronouncement in the
Koran was directed exclusively against the very frequent dissensions
of clans and parties in the various Arab races." (A sneer which is
meant to have a modern application.) "Although the Nationalists
proclaim themselves the most zealous followers of Mohammed,
nevertheless they do not conceal the fact that their interpretation of
Islam is not the same as that of the Arabs. They maintain that the
Turks cannot interpret the Koran in the same manner as the Arabs....
Their idea of God is also different."
The Ministry of Evkaf (Religious Endowments) recently made a grant of
£50,000 (Turkish) towards the publication of works on these worthies;
the students at the Military College in Constantinople are alleged to
have been diverted from their studies by their devotion to such
literature, and on the eve of the War the Professor of Military
Education there is reported to have delivered the following address to
an instruction class of reserve officers:
"We are, gentlemen, before all, Turks. I wonder why we are called
Ottomans, for who is Osman after whom we are named? He is a Turk from
Altai, who overran this country with his Turkish Army. Therefore it is
more of an honor to us to be named after his origin than after
himself. We have so far been deceived by the ignorance of our
forebears, and fie on these forebears who made us forget our
nationality.... Be sure that Turkish nationality is better for us than
Islam, and racial pride is one of the greatest social virtues."
"They sought after a judicious mingling of the religious and national
impulses. They realized only too clearly that the still abstract
ideals of Nationalism could not be expected to attract the masses, the
lower classes, composed of uneducated and illiterate people. It was
found more expedient to reach these classes under the flag of
religion."
This sentence reveals in a flash one motive of the Armenian
"Deportations," which followed Turkey's intervention in the War; and a
celebrated German authority, in a memorial written in 1916, gives this
very explanation of their origin.
"Turkey's entry into the War," he writes, "was unwelcome to Turkish
society in Constantinople, whose sympathies were with France, as well
as to the mass of the people, but the Panislamic propaganda and the
military dictatorship were able to stifle all opposition. The
proclamation of the 'Holy War' produced a general agitation of the
Mohammedan against the Christian elements in the Empire, and the
Christian nationalities had soon good reason to fear that Turkish
chauvinism would make use of Mohammedan fanaticism to make the War
popular with the mass of the Mohammedan population."
The evidence presented in the British Blue Book on the Treatment of
Armenians in the Ottoman Empire shows that this explanation is
correct. The Armenians were not massacred spontaneously by the local
Moslems; the initiative came entirely from the Central Government at
Constantinople, which planned the systematic extermination of the
Armenian race in the Ottoman Empire, worked out a uniform method of
procedure, dispatched simultaneous orders to the provincial officials
and gendarmerie to carry it into effect, and cashiered the few who
declined to obey.
The Armenians were rounded up and deported by regular troops and
gendarmes; they were massacred on the road by bands of chettis,
consisting chiefly of criminals released from prison by the Government
for this work; when the Armenians were gone the Turkish populace was
encouraged to plunder their goods and houses, and as the convoys of
exiles passed through the villages the best-looking women and children
were sold cheap or even given away for nothing to the Turkish
peasantry. Naturally the Turkish people accepted the good things the
Government offered them, and naturally this reconciled them
momentarily to the War.
A Turkish officer, taking our informant for a Turk too, remarked to
him: "Those Arabs wish to get rid of us and are secretly in sympathy
with our enemies, but we mean to get rid of them ourselves before they
have any chance of translating their sympathy into action." This caps
what a Turkish gendarme in Armenia said to a Danish sister serving
with the German Red Cross: "First we kill the Armenians, then the
Greeks, then the Kurds." Every non-Turkish nationality in the Ottoman
Empire is threatened with extermination.
A German teacher in the German Technical School at Aleppo, who
resigned his appointment as a protest against the Armenian atrocities
in 1915, thus records his personal judgment in an open letter to the
Reichstag:
"The Young Turk is afraid of the Christian nationalities - Armenians,
Syrians and Greeks - on account of their cultural and economic
superiority, and he sees in their religion a hindrance to Turkifying
them by peaceful means. They must therefore be exterminated or
converted to Islam by force. The Turks do not suspect that in so doing
they are sawing off the branch on which they are sitting themselves.
The Turks, the least gifted of the races living in Turkey, are
themselves only a minority of the population, and are still far behind
the Arabs in culture.
"We teachers, who have been teaching Greeks, Armenians, Arabs, Turks,
and Jews in German schools in Turkey for years, can only pass judgment
that of all our pupils the pure Turks are the most unwilling and the
least talented. When for once in a way a Turk does achieve something,
one can be sure in nine cases out of ten that one is dealing with a
Circassian, an Albanian, or a Turk with Bulgarian blood in his veins.
>From my personal experience I can only prophesy that the Turks proper
will never achieve anything in trade, industry, or science.
The German memorialist presses the indictment:
"You cannot become a merchant by murdering one. You cannot master a
handicraft if you smash its tools. A sparsely-populated country does
not become more productive if it destroys its most industrious
population. You do not advance the progress of civilization if you
drive into the desert.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress