Today’s Zaman, Turkey
May 20 2012
German militarism’s connivance with Committee of Union and Progress
by Ümit Kardaþ*
20 May 2012 /
Wolfgang Gust, the foreign news chief of Der Spiegel and the editor of
Spiegel-Buch, and his wife, Sigrid Gust, have worked on the German
Foreign Ministry’s political archives concerning the disaster and
massacre Armenians suffered in 1915 and 1916.
Their book, “Alman Belgeleri: Ermeni Soykýrýmý 1915-1916” (German
Documents: Armenian Genocide 1915-1916), published by Belge Yayýnlarý
in Turkey, is 992 pages long, of which 179 pages are allocated to the
evaluation and interpretation of the documents and some additional
resources, while the remaining 813 pages present the archived
documents. These documents testify to the sheer magnitude of the
forced relocation of Armenians for eventual destruction, and its
portrayal of the German administration in this tragedy makes this book
important.
German policies concerning Turkey and Armenians were being shaped by
the German army’s top-down management style. Clearly, Germany had an
authoritarian regime in which Prussian militarism played a dominant
role. When the bourgeois revolution that sought to implement the
ideals of the French revolution in Germany in 1848 failed, 2.8 million
Germans left their country, and most of them went to the US. The
notion of human rights did not exist in the German language. The
German academic world argued that German culture would disintegrate
without German militarism.
German culture had sprung from militarism thanks to the protection it
provided. Therefore, this mentality was opposed to Western
civilization. In response, Western-minded Armenian elites didn’t like
Germans. And Germans didn’t like Western-minded Armenians. In a report
he sent from Damascus to the chancellor of the German Empire, Theobald
von Bethmann-Hollweg, German propagandist and Intelligence Bureau for
the East head Max Freiherr von Oppenheim described American and
British missionary and consulate activities as provocative and
malicious. For this reason, Germans started to regard Armenians as
their seventh ally (i.e., after Oppenheim started sowing discord
between the Germans and the Americans and the British, the Germans
began to warm to the Armenians).
Germans sought to extend the Baghdad railway not just to Baghdad but
also to Basra on the Persian Gulf and perceived the region as an area
of interest as a German colony and to ensure German economic dominance
in the region and eventually to annex the region to the German Empire.
The center of this area of interest was the Çukurova/Adana region
(Cilicia).
In a letter he wrote in July 1913 to German Ambassador Hans Freiherr
von Wangenheim, Foreign Ministry Undersecretary Gottlieb von Jagow
summed this up as follows, “Turkey will maintain its presence in Asia
until we reinforce our limits of work and complete the annexation.”
The German plan to reach through the depths of Anatolia to Palestine
started swiftly in 1912. Their goal was to reach the Suez Canal. This
policy pitted the Germans against the British, who had investments and
enterprises in Ottoman territories and pursued similar policies.
In addition to Britain, Russia and France were uneasy about
cooperation between Germany and the Committee of Union and Progress
(CUP). Germans made progress in their projects in the fields of
economy, commerce, agriculture, navigation and education in the
Ottoman territories. Parallel to these developments, Enver Paþa made a
secret agreement with the Germans for the reforming of the army, and
General Otto Liman von Sanders and 50 German military officers from
Berlin were invited to the Ottoman Empire. In practice, these military
officers also meddled with the political affairs of the CUP.
Non-Muslim groups living in the Ottoman Empire posed an obstacle to
Germany’s economic and ideological aspirations in the East. Thus began
the connivance of German militarism with the CUP for inhumane
practices against non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire.
Turkey allies with Germany
As Turkey allied with Germany in World War I, a savage and ruthless
practice against Greeks and Armenians commenced. In 1914, an
oppressive campaign was launched against Greeks, and the destruction
of Greek settlements started. In early 1915, Deutsche Palastine Bank
(German-Palestine Bank) distributed flyers in Turkish that provoked
Muslims in the East and incited hatred against Christians and that
told Muslims to cut their commercial ties with them. Forced relocation
of Greeks in Ayvalýk was conducted upon official demand from Gen.
Liman von Sanders (see Mihail Rodas: “Almanya Türkiye’deki Rumlarý
Nasýl Mahvetti?” [How did Germany Destroy Greeks in Turkey?]).
With the start of the war, the military recruitment system had been
altered so that non-Muslims who wanted to serve in the army would have
to pay a specified tax or become military deserters. Moreover, labor
battalions were formed from the Christians sent from Anatolia for road
construction and other forced labor work. Thousands of Christians who
were forced to work in these battalions were not paid and were not
provided with adequate nutrition, and they would lose their lives
under hard climatic conditions. This compulsory military service model
destroyed the most efficient groups of ethnic and non-Muslim
minorities, and this model was further assisted by confiscations and
compulsory taxes. Thus, the wealth of these minorities was
confiscated, and their shops were looted.
As wealth and commerce were Turkified and Islamified, Germany took its
share through its banks and companies. Muslims were prohibited from
developing commercial ties with Greeks, who were banned from exporting
goods. The government decided to confiscate all properties of those
who were forced to migrate. Another method was to force Christians to
become Muslims. Gen. Liman von Sanders collected taxes from Christians
to establish an orphanage in Bandýrma. Here, boys would be
assimilated, and girls would be forced to marry Turkish boys.
Christian families would be sent to predominantly Turkish villages,
and they would not be allowed to leave the village. In addition to
general massacres, there were also individually committed murders. The
two-phased policy — implemented mainly against Greeks in 1914 but
later expanded to include Armenians — had a single aim: to destroy
the Christian components so that the Ottoman Empire could be converted
into a purely Turkish/Muslim state. Kurds were excluded from this
policy as they were Muslims and therefore could be Turkified. Kurdish
and Circassian gangs played a role in this massacre.
Germany’s policies regarding their interests in the East had
overlapped with the CUP’s policy of homogenizing the country. This is
clearly evidenced by the fact that German Ambassador to the Ottoman
Empire Count Wolff-Metternich, who criticized the developments, was
removed from office by the Kaiser on the grounds that he “undermined
the dignity of Turks and failed to act according to German interests
by interfering in favor of Christians.” Armenians, who were the first
tribe to accept Christianity, were being crushed between the Russian
hammer and the Turkish-German anvil.
There were 800 German military officers in the Ottoman territories
under the service agreement signed by the Ottoman Empire and the
German Military Aid Delegation in 1913. They not only trained Turkish
military officers, but also formed part of the Turkish army. German
military officers assumed critical positions everywhere in the Turkish
army. The number of German military officers who openly voiced
objection to the forced relocation and massacre was very few. Three
German military officers who opposed forced relocation in Erzurum paid
dearly for their opposition.
A brutal report
In a report attached to a letter he sent to Chancellor of the German
Empire Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, Rudolf von Valentini from the
Privy Council of the German emperor said the following based on
observations that Martin Niepage, a teacher at the German school in
Aleppo, made in September 1915: “The men are slaughtered on the way;
the women and girls, with the exception of the old, the ugly and those
who are still children, have been abused by Turkish soldiers and
officers and then carried away to Turkish and Kurdish villages, where
they have to accept Islam. They try to destroy the remnant of the
convoys by hunger and thirst. Most of them are suffering from typhoid
and dysentery. If one brings them food, one notices that they have
forgotten how to eat. They just lie there quietly, waiting for death.
… Under such circumstances our educational work flies in the face of
all true morality and becomes a mockery of human sympathy.
Mohammedans, too, of more sensitive feelings — Turks and Arabs alike
— shake their heads in disapproval and do not conceal their tears
when they see a convoy of exiles marching through the city, and
Turkish soldiers using cudgels upon women in advanced pregnancy and
upon dying people who can no longer drag themselves along. They cannot
believe that their government has ordered these atrocities, and they
hold the Germans responsible for all such outrages, Germany being
considered during the war as Turkey’s schoolmaster in everything.
Moslem intellectuals believe that even if the German nation condemns
this massacre, the German government will not be inclined to prevent
it for the sake of its friendship with the Turkish government.”
Yunus Nadi wrote the following at the end of his article titled
“Bankruptcy and cleaning” that appeared in Tasvir-i Efkar on Oct. 7,
1916: “Under pressure from realities, we have to turn toward a new
target. We have to realize that the policy of ensuring a union among
the said ethnic groups has gone bankrupt and the era of ‘cleaning’ for
the sake of the homeland has started.” A German missionary defined
this strategy of murder as follows: “Exile, execution and bullets
until the last member.” A German military officer narrated his
observations as follows, “Amid the endless serenity of the desert,
wheezing sounds of those who are in the throes of death and the cries
of those who lost their minds were filling the skies.”
In the early 1900s, a similar tragedy occurred in the desert of
Omaheke in South-West Africa — currently Namibia. The victims were
not Armenians, but the Herero, who were massacred by the German
Imperial Forces led by Gen. Lothar von Trotha (who had violently
suppressed the Boxer rebellion in China). As he drove the Herero into
the desert of Omaheke, where they would die, Gen. Trotha justified the
massacre by saying, “I believe that the nation as such should be
annihilated.” Perhaps, Gen. Trotha had advised the CUP leaders that
they should implement the recipe of destruction he had applied in
Africa.
The conclusion confirmed by the documents published by Gust is that
German military officers as agents of German militarism endorsed the
forced relocation, and they found military justifications for it. They
thought that Germany’s interests in the region preached this. And the
CUP leaders violently implemented its Turkification and Islamification
policies with support and connivance from Germany. When the scope of
forced relocation was expanded to the entire country, the Germans did
not raise objections to it. Reading the details of the documents Gust
has managed to retrieve from the German Foreign Ministry’s Political
Archives — although the Germans had destroyed a significant portion
of these documents — has left me in utter shame and gripped my soul.
Germany has a tradition of offering official apologies about such
periods of shame in their history. If German Chancellor Angela Merkel
and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoðan together condemn the
atrocities and massacres their ancestors performed, the souls of the
victims, squeezed somewhere, will turn into doves. Does conscience
tell us to spare our words from the oppressed?
*Ümit Kardaþ is a retired military judge.
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