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Great War seen as root of conflict in Middle East, Armenian genocide

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  • Great War seen as root of conflict in Middle East, Armenian genocide

    The Japan Times, Japan
    June 29 2014

    Great War seen as root of conflict in Middle East, Armenian genocide

    'First genocide of the century' still divides Turkey and West; Levant
    remains religiously riven

    by Philippe Alfroy


    ISTANBUL - A century later, World War I casts a haunting shadow far
    from the trenches of Western Europe, having spawned two crises that
    still strain international relations: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
    and the Armenian genocide.

    When Ottoman Sultan Mehmed V declared "holy war" on Britain, France
    and Russia on Nov. 24, 1914, his five-century-old empire was already
    in decline and had lost most of its European territory.

    Convinced that Germany, an ally, was destined for a speedy victory,
    the empire's governing "Young Turks" movement saw the war as a chance
    to consolidate its grip on power, block the economic rise of London
    and Paris, and reclaim Central Asia.

    The Ottoman Army inflicted a brutal defeat on British and French
    forces on the strategic Gallipoli Peninsula during the Dardanelles
    campaign in 1915, but its war turned into a nightmare on the eastern
    front against Russia.

    Tens of thousands of soldiers died in battles that drew in Armenian
    fighters who fought alongside Russian troops in a bid to cast off
    Ottoman rule.

    Defeated by Russia in Armenia and the Caucasus, the Ottomans responded
    by attacking the Armenian minority in their midst.

    The Armenians: 'us or them'

    "There are two alternatives: either the Armenians will liquidate the
    Turks, or the Turks will liquidate them," an Ottoman official, Mehmed
    Resid, wrote in his memoirs. "Faced with the need to choose, I did not
    hesitate long. Before they do away with us, we will get rid of them."

    The arrest and massacre of 2,000 Armenian leaders in Istanbul on April
    24, 1915, began what is described as the first genocide of the 20th
    century -- although modern-day Turkey categorically refutes the term.

    In less than a year, hundreds of thousands were forcibly displaced and
    their possessions were seized. Many of them were killed. A century
    later, the mass killings continue to fuel a bitter controversy,
    regularly upsetting relations between Turkey and the West.

    Armenians, backed by many historians and a growing number of foreign
    parliaments, say up to 1.5 million of their kin were systematically
    killed in the dying days of the Ottoman Empire.

    Turkey admits large-scale massacres took place, but says they were
    perpetrated in self-defense against the Russian threat. Overall, it
    says, 500,000 died in fighting and of starvation.

    The Armenian academic Rouben Safrastian rejects the Turkish arguments.
    "Massacres of Armenians took place well before World War I," he
    argued. "The war was simply a good excuse to carry out a criminal
    plan."

    "For us, the question is just as painful as it was 100 years ago,"
    said the vice president of the Armenian national assembly, Eduard
    Sharmazanov. "Turkey needs to end its policy of denial and apologize
    to the Armenian people."

    There have been gradual signs of change in Turkey. During a trip last
    year to the Armenian capital, Yerevan, Foreign Minister Ahmet
    Davutoglu called the events of 1915-16 a "mistake" and an "inhuman
    act."

    "In recent years, there have been commemorations in Turkey, university
    conferences. It's a small revolution," said Turkish analyst Burcu
    Gultekin Punsmann. "A pretty deep process of revision is underway in
    Turkish society, even if it is not yet obvious at the political
    level."

    Conflict in the Middle East

    World War I also redrew the map of the entire Middle East, sowing the
    seeds of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

    In 1916, Ottoman forces, led by German generals, quickly gained the
    upper hand over British troops in Palestine and Mesopotamia, an area
    that covers modern-day Iraq, Kuwait and parts of Syria.

    But British forces proved highly adept at mobile warfare in the
    desert, one of the few places where fighting on horseback was still
    possible.

    They were assisted by the actions of T.E. Lawrence, the fabled British
    archaeologist who rallied Arab nationalists in revolt against Turkish
    rule and sultans.

    His hit-and-run attacks on Turkish supply lines were a marginal part
    of the campaign, but the legend of "Lawrence of Arabia" had dramatic
    propaganda value, and his writings on insurgency tactics remain highly
    influential.

    By 1917, the British had turned the tide of the campaign, taking
    Baghdad and Jerusalem. By the following year, Allied forces had
    occupied Damascus and Beirut and had effective control over the entire
    region.

    The Arabs who supported them had bought into promises from Britain and
    France that they would win independence after the war, but they were
    to be bitterly disappointed. Behind the scenes, Britain and France had
    already carved up the region between themselves under the Sykes-Picot
    Agreement of May 1916: Lebanon and Syria to France; Jordan, Palestine
    and Iraq to the British.

    Adding to the confusion, and cutting across their agreements with both
    the French and the Arabs, the British had also announced the infamous
    Balfour Doctrine in 1917, in which Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour
    had promised a homeland for Jewish people in Palestine. The doctrine
    formed the basis for the creation of the Israeli state three decades
    later, and a conflict that continues to tear apart the region to this
    day.

    The armistice signed at Mudros in Greece on Oct. 30, 1918, marked the
    final dissolution and dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire. Five
    centuries of imperial rule was at an end.

    But the fighting was not over for Turkey, which spent another four
    years in a war of reconquest to regain lost lands in Anatolia,
    particularly against the Greeks. It was these battles that allowed
    Mustafa Kemal, who later took the surname Ataturk, to lay the
    foundations of modern-day Turkey.

    http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/06/29/world/great-war-seen-root-conflict-middle-east-armenian-genocide/#.U7DIPD9OXIU

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