The Independent Australia
April 18 2015
Gallipoli and the Armenian genocide: the battle for history and
understanding – Part 1
Associate Professor Evan Jones
A hundred years since Gallipoli and a hundred years since the Armenian
genocide in Turkey. How many of us can honestly say we knew about the
second centenary? Prompted by David Boyajian and Vicken Babkenian who
opened the door on this bloodshed, Dr Evan Jones investigates this
little reported `holocaust’.
The ruling classes have in their hands the army, money, the schools,
the churches, and the press. In the schools, they kindle patriotism in
the children by means of histories describing their own people as the
best of all peoples and always in the right. Among adults they kindle
it by spectacles, jubilees, monuments, and by a lying patriotic press.
Above all, they inflame patriotism in this way: perpetrating every
kind of harshness and injustice against other nations, they provoke in
them enmity towards their own people, and then in turn exploit that
enmity to embitter their people against the foreigner.
~ Leo Tolstoy, Patriotism and Government, 1900.
A HUNDRED years since Gallipoli. A hundred years since the Armenian
genocide. The what?
David Boyajian and Vicken Babkenian have opened the door on the
bloodshed by which `modern’ Turkey was built.
For those as ignorant as I am, a chapter in Robert Fisk’s 2005 The
Great War for Civilisation is a useful primer.
The decrepit Ottoman Empire is at war, on the other side. A `Young
Turk’ movement takes control, acquiring `a nationalistic, racist,
pan-Turkic creed’. According to Fisk:
`Encouraged by their victory over the Allies at the Dardanelles, the
Turks fell upon the Armenians with the same fury as the Nazis were to
turn upon the Jews of Europe two decades later. Aware of his own
disastrous role in the Allied campaign against Turkey, Winston
Churchill was to write in The Aftermath ¦ that `it may well be that
the British attack on the Gallipoli Peninsula stimulated the merciless
fury of the Turkish government.’
Certainly, the Turkish victory at the Dardanelles over the British and
Australian armies ¦ gave a new and ruthless self-confidence to the
Turkish regime. It chose 24 April 1915 ¦ to arrest and murder all the
leading Armenian intellectuals of Constantinople. They followed this
pogrom with the wholesale and systematic destruction of the Armenian
race in Turkey. ¦
For Margada [Margadeh, Syria] and the Syrian desert around it ` like
thousands of villages in what was Turkish Armenia ` are the Auschwitz
of the Armenian people, the place of the world’s first, forgotten,
Holocaust.’
An estimated one million and a half Armenians died from strategically
devised and calculated slaughter. In this barbarism, the Turks
enlisted the Kurds (latter day victims of Turkish and other tyrannies)
to expedite the massacres, given the sheer scale of the undertaking, a
task they took on brutally. Churchill, presumably without a hint of
self-castigation, was the first to call this genocide a `holocaust’.
The massacres and its genocidal character were reported on immediately
by European residents in the Empire, and the information disseminated
widely. Babkenian highlights that some Australian soldiers were
witnesses and that the Australian public also became aware via local
media reporting. To no effect for the victims.
There were others observing the event. German military personnel had a
substantial presence in organising the Sultan’s armed forces, and some
participated in the slaughter. Thus Franz von Papen ‘was chief of
staff of the Fourth Turkish Army’, later Chancellor in 1932 and
Vice-Chancellor under Hitler in 1933-34. He later became the Third
Reich’s ambassador to Turkey. (He died of old age in 1969.)
Lieutenant General Hans von Seeckt ‘was chief of the Ottoman General
Staff in 1917. He laid the groundwork for the Wehrmacht in the 1920s ¦
Rudolf Hoess ‘joined the German forces in Turkey as a teenager. In
1940, he was appointed commandant of Auschwitz, and he became deputy
inspector of all Nazi concentration camps at SS headquarters in 1944’.
Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter ‘was German vice-consul in Erzurum and
witnessed Turkish massacres of Armenians in Bitlis province, writing a
long report [and many subsequently, in great detail] on the killings
for the German chancellor [von Bethmann Hollweg]’. Post-war,
Scheubner-Richter befriended Hitler and became a racist polemicist
calling for a campaign against Jews so that Germany could be
`cleansed’.
The battle for history
Half of Fisk’s chapter is devoted not to the genocide itself but to
the violent fight over its representation. The Turkish state has
criminalised an accurate rendition of the events. The most courageous
of recent truth-tellers, Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, was
murdered in Istanbul in 2007.
Turkey has perennially threatened other governments with reprisals and
has funded Western academic positions to push a most un-academic
`correct line’ official version of the period.
The western media, by contrast with its contemporaneous reporting, has
fallen into line.
The representation of the genocide has become that the facts are
“controversial” and their meaning `hotly debated’.
Thus the Wall Street Journal Europe, 20 November 2000:
‘¦ whether the majority of these deaths [an estimated 600,000
Armenians, possible more] were the result of a deliberate policy of
extermination or of other factors is a matter of contentious scholarly
debate.’
A variation on the `controversy’ is the account in the just published
The War with the Ottoman Empire, by Jeffrey Grey. The account is a
mere couple of paragraphs, because the book is about Australian
involvement in the War. But the analysis sets on the notion that the
deaths were `understandable’, in the context.
Thousands of Armenians were fighting with the Tsarist forces.
Moreover, the Brits decided to reconnoitre around the coast in late
1914 and early 2015 near the Armenian town of Alexandretta (now
Turkish Iskenderun), with the possibility that Armenians might join an
Allied assault. Did the Allies consider the implications?
The Turks were thus paranoid of a `fifth column’ in their midst, and
reacted to quell this internal `threat’. Understandable’. Shades of
Stalin’s ethnic cleansing during and after World War II (which no-one,
to my knowledge, has sought to interpret as understandable).
It is true that Britain, France and Russia, even Greece and Italy, had
their eyes on parcels of the decrepit Empire. Well might the young
Turks be paranoid. But was genocide the way to shore up territory and
invent nationality?
The Turks went first for the Armenian urban bourgeoisie. A prospective
fifth column? Moreoever, there was an entrée to 1915 in the mid 1890s
when large-scale massacres of Armenians and other Christians occurred
(the `Hamidian’ massacres), initiated by the then Sultan in a bizarre
reaction to Ottoman decline. Babkenian also notes:
‘Just two weeks prior to the Anzac landings, the Ottoman authorities
deported about 22,000 of the peninsula’s native Greek population into
the interior of Anatolia (current day Turkey). Many would die of harsh
conditions. This was only a precursor to the larger persecutions to
follow.’
An article in memory of the 1915 massacres by Vicken Cheterian, a
Geneva-based author, has been published in the April English edition
of Le Monde Diplomatique (unfortunately, subscriber only). Cheterian
notes:
‘When genocide takes place in the shadows of war, and the world
behaves as if nothing had happened, what then? A crime that goes
unrecognised also goes on.’
The ethnic cleansing (of Christian communities) continued post-War, as
Boyajian notes. Particularly at Smyrna in 1922, Greeks and Armenians
were victims. Allied vessels looked on, but the western powers were
more interested in oil than humanitarian principles, and that meant
rapprochement with Atatürk.
In the 1930s it was the turn of the Turkish Jewish community. Then it
was the turn of the previously accommodating Kurds, who rebelled after
Turkey reneged on promised autonomy.
In 1939, the French, post-World War I colonial rulers over what became
Syria, including the province surrounding Alexandretta, abandoned the
latter area (and its inhabitants to death, destitution and renewed
exile) in the hope of enticing Turkey to join the Allies in the
forthcoming war.
During World War II, the Turkish authorities imposed a prohibitive
wealth tax on minorities, destroying their economic viability. In
1955, further ethnic cleansing of minorities (especially Greeks) took
place in Istanbul.
Turkey set about systematically obliterating the physical and cultural
embodiment of the Armenian presence. It did the same for the Greek
community with the total destruction of the previously vibrant city of
Smyrna (now Turkish Izmir) in 1922. Notes Cheterian:
‘Thousands of churches and monasteries were dynamited. In 1914,
according to the Armenian patriarchate, the Ottoman empire had an
Armenian population of nearly 2 million, out of 16-20 million. Today
there are only around 60,000 Armenians in Turkey. Out of 2,500
Armenian churches, only 40 have survived, 34 of them in Istanbul. ¦’
[To repeat]
‘When genocide takes place in the shadows of war, and the world
behaves as if nothing had happened, what then? A crime that goes
unrecognised also goes on.’
In August 1939, in preparation for his invasion of Poland, Hitler
declaimed to his generals:
“Accordingly, I have placed my death-head formations in readiness ‘
for the present only in the East ‘ with orders to them to send to
death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of
Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living
space which we need. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation
of the Armenians?”
Quite. When Fisk first started writing about the Armenian genocide in
1993 he faced a tidal wave of condemnation from Turkish sources,
official, unofficial and personal. According to Fisk:
“This flood of mail was performing something very disturbing: it was
turning the perpetrators of the Armenian genocide into the victims and
the victims into murderers and liars.”
Thus we have the ongoing war over controlling the facts, controlling
the interpretation, controlling history, controlling understanding,
controlling political and civic responses.
Raison d’état trumps humanity and integrity
And the response of the (self-)righteous amongst the nations?
Israel?
In April 2001, prior to an official visit to Ankara, Shimon Peres,
then foreign minister, claimed:
“¦ we reject attempts to create a similarity between the Holocaust and
the Armenian allegations. Nothing similar to the Holocaust occurred.
It is a tragedy what the Armenians went through but not a genocide.
[Regarding any consideration of the `allegations’] it should be done
with great care not to distort the historical realities.”
Historical realities indeed. The recent reaffirmation by Pope Francis
of the Armenian genocide has been reported in the Jerusalem Post under
the category `Christian News’ (!), where the emphasis is not on the
genocide but on the problematic impact of the Pope’s statement on
Turkish relations.
The Pope’s reaffirmation shares billing with the JP’s attention to the
Kardashian sisters’ (of Armenian origin) stop-off at Yerevan
(compulsory photo-op) on their way to Israel and the Western Wall.
Charming.
Israel’s cheer squads lobby globally to have made compulsory in
national educational syllabuses the study of the Jewish holocaust. But
how can such study occur out of context? Out of context, understanding
of the Jewish holocaust is denied, distorted. That is the intention.
The Jewish experience is, after all, claimed to be unique whereas it
is built on the bones of the Ottoman Christian populations.
Not unique also is the Zionist’s treatment of the indigenous
Palestinians (then a majority of the population). Just as Germany took
inspiration from the Turks, so also did the Zionists absorb the spirit
of the Turks in the ethnic cleansing of the Nakba and in the
subsequent obliteration, where possible, of the physical and cultural
embodiments of Palestinian presence, and in the ongoing denial that
any such ethnic cleansing took place. Which history gets to be
official?
Great Britain?
In 1999, a Blair Government spokesperson claimed:
‘¦ in the absence of unequivocal evidence to show that the Ottoman
administration took a specific decision to eliminate the Armenians
under their control at the time, British governments have not
recognised the events of 1915 and 1916 as `genocide’. ¦ [Armenia and
Turkey should] resolve between themselves the issues which divide them
¦ we could not play the role of supportive friend to both countries
were we to take an essentially political position on an issue so
sensitive for both.’
Yet the `unequivocal evidence’ was in the documentation by
contemporary observers, now in British archives.
In 2000, Blair decreed that there would be an annual Holocaust
Memorial Day in Britain. A Jewish Holocaust Memorial Day that is. In
response to Armenian community objections to its selective focus, the
Home Office’s Race Equality Unit claimed that the organisers wanted
‘¦ to avoid the risk of the message becoming too diluted if we try to
include too much history. ¦ [The purpose of the Holocaust Day was to]
ensure a better understanding of the issues and promote a democratic
and tolerant society that respects and celebrates diversity and is
free of the influence of prejudice and racism.’
The U.S.?
In 2000, the US Congress proposed a resolution acknowledging the
Armenian genocide. Congress asked President Clinton to use the term
`genocide’ in his forthcoming Armenian commemoration address. Fisk
notes:
‘Turkey warned Washington that it would close its airbases to American
aircraft flying over the Iraqi `no-fly’ zones. The Turkish defence
minister, Sabahattin ÇakmakoÄ?lu, said that Turkey was prepared to
cancel arms contracts with the United States. The Israeli foreign
ministry took Turkey’s side and President Clinton shamefully gave in
and asked that the bill be killed. It was. All across the United
States, this same pressure operates.’
France?
In France, genocide denial is an offence ` but which genocide? In 1999
(in Beirut, home to tens of thousands of descendants of the 1915
holocaust) and in 2000, then President Jacques Chirac dodged the
Armenian question. But in late 2000 the French Senate and in early
2001 the Assembly (reaffirming a 1998 vote) voted to acknowledge the
Armenian genocide. Prime Minister Jospin and President Chirac signed a
single-sentence law ` `France publicly recognises the Armenian
Genocide of 1915′. According to Fisk:
‘In revenge, the Turkish government cancelled a $200 million spy
satellite deal with the French company Alcatel and threw the arms
company Giat out of a $7 billion tank contract.’
The Turks also retaliated with publicity of dark periods of France’s
recent past ` the crimes of the Vichy regime and France’s sins in
Algeria during the Algerian War, adding to the list the French
massacre of Algerians in 1945 (Sétif).
But the 100 year anniversary of both Gallipoli and the genocide has
renewed afresh France’s `diplomatic’ difficulties, for internal as
well as external reasons.
A law criminalising holocaust denial was passed in 1990 (the Gayssot
Law). Basing its wobbly legitimacy (the law required an amendment to a
1881 law on the Freedom of the Press) on Nuremberg Tribunal edicts,
the law de facto proscribed denial of the “Jewish” holocaust.
Penalties were attached to denial. No penalties were attached to the
2001 law regarding the Armenian genocide. Persistent attempts to
remedy this asymmetry have failed.
However, with the commitment of Marseille Deputy Valérie Boyer, a
“penalisation” law was passed in early 2012. (Turkey was furious.) It
was soon overturned by the Constitutional Council. Two weights, two
measures? President Hollande has formally claimed his support for
penalisation, but is in no hurry to further the agenda.
The Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan has invited 100 world leaders to
join Turkey in a commemoration of Gallipoli where, according to
legend, the `founding father’ of Turkey, Mustapha Kemal (Atatürk),
distinguished himself in battle. Erdogan has strategically and
grotesquely chosen the 24 April as the day of remembrance to `head off
at the pass’ the Armenian memorialising. Surprisingly, Hollande has
committed himself to travel to Yerevan for the 24 April commemoration
of the genocide.
For Hollande’s almost comprehensively gutless performance as President
to date, this is a significant gesture.
Its significance can be gauged by the fact that France has long played
footsies with Turkey and Israel (as well as disabling Lebanon through
cementing sectarian divisions). According to journalist René Naba (in
French), in return Turkey accommodated France’s attempt to retain
Algeria. France has never apologised for the abandonment of Armenians
in 1939.
More, Iran has long been an ally of the Armenian population, and Syria
has protected the Armenian’s most significant shrine at Deir-ez-Zor,
scene of an annual pilgrimage on 23 April. But France has chosen to
treat Iran as a pariah and to contribute to dismantling Syria to
destroy the current regime. The Armenians and other Christian
populations have thus suffered from the vacuity and myopia of France’s
realpolitik.
To keep Turkey onside for France’s uncharacteristic gesture on 24
April, Hollande has promised a stand-in, “at the highest level”, at
Gallipoli. The excuse is the remembrance of the 10,000 French dead on
the Eastern Front. But the straddling is also rooted in the commercial
calculus.
In 2013, a Franco-Japanese consortium (Areva, GDF Suez and Mitsubishi)
was granted the contract for the construction of Turkey’s second
nuclear power facility. Areva is currently in meltdown (sic), running
up massive losses, and desperately needs the business. An anti-missile
battery contract hangs in the balance for a Franco-Italian consortium
(Thales and MBDA). And a long planned giant bridge spanning the
Dardanelles is in the sights of the French construction giants.
Raison d’état is entrenched just beneath the thin veneer of principle.
Apart from the filthy lucre, Turkey is essentially part of `our’ team.
An erratic ally, however, as it transparently supports the various
Islamic State groups (funneling Western would-be jihadis into the
ranks) and it stood by during the IS attack on Kurdish Kobane. It also
plays knees-up with Russia on a prospective gas line.
No matter. Turkey is an integral part of NATO, and is implacably
oriented towards the vanquishment of the Assad regime in Syria (hence
the support of IS). It has also made up with Israel, effectively
excusing the latter for the murder of Turkish nationals on the
Gaza-bound flotilla in May 2010. So, on balance, from `our’
perspective, a force for the right outcomes in that troubled region.
Of what relevance is this long skirmish over an event of 100 years
vintage to the average Australian punter?
Part 2 to follow: Bread and circuses
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https://independentaustralia.net/article-display/gallipoli-and-the-armenian-genocide-the-battle-for-history-and-understanding–part-1